An exactly similar proceeding is recorded in the Third Odyssey. When Telemachus and the pseudo-Mentor approach the banquet of Nestor, Pisistratus, the youngest son, first goes to greet them, and then places them in the seat of honour, between his father and his eldest brother[81],

that is, by the side of Nestor; Thrasymedes giving way to make room for them, and remaining on the other side of them, like Minerva in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad.

Homer has left no express record on this particular point with reference to Apollo. In the ancient Hymn,[70] however, a part of which is quoted by Thucydides, this honour is distinctly assigned to that divinity in these fine lines[82]:

4. More remarkable and important, however, than this precedence of Minerva in the Olympian Court, are the relations of will and affection between Jupiter and these two, as compared with his other children.

To these, and these only, does he ever use any term of positive endearment. Minerva is twice called φίλον τέκος, and Apollo is twice addressed in the vocative as φίλε Φοῖβε[83]. This is the more worthy of note, because it might have been expected that other divinities rather than these, for example, Mercury on account of his youth, or Venus for her beauty and blandishments, would have been the preferable objects of these phrases. But there is nothing of the sort in the case of Mercury, and in that of Venus, the nearest approach is τέκνον ἐμόν (Il. v. 428). She is only addressed as φίλον τέκος by Juno, who was not her mother, and this at a moment when it was convenient to pass a gross deception upon her[84].

Minerva is, indeed, sufficiently forward to place herself in opposition to Jupiter for purposes of her own: she does not exhibit the principle of full obedience, but then she is strong in the self-consciousness of right as well as in power. She goes all lengths in thwarting Jupiter in the Iliad, excites his wrath, and draws down on herself his menaces[85]. But her general aim is to give effect to[71] a design so unequivocally approved in Olympus, that Jupiter himself has been constrained to give way to it; namely, the vindication of justice by the fall of Troy. And consequently, upon the slightest indication from her of a conciliatory disposition, Jupiter shows himself appeased, and seems to regret his own rigour[86].

The case of Apollo stands alone as an exhibition of entire harmony with the will of Jupiter. On no single occasion does he act or speak in a different sense from that of his parent. In the Olympian Council of the Twenty-Fourth Iliad, having to make a strong remonstrance respecting the dishonoured condition of the body of Hector, he is careful to address it not to Jupiter, but to the body of gods present[87];

And consequently, when Juno follows with a sharp invective aimed at him, Jupiter immediately checks her[88], and gives effect to the counsel of Apollo. Generally throughout the poem he is the organ of Jupiter for all that is about to be effected on behalf of Troy, but never for any purpose which is to prove abortive. When, under the divine decree, Hector is about to be slain by Achilles, Apollo withdraws from the doomed warrior, and Minerva joins the favoured one.

This union of the will of Apollo with that of Jupiter must not be lightly passed by. It is in truth one of the very strongest arguments to show the presence of traditionary elements in this great conception. For wide as is the prevalence of the law of discord upon earth, that evil is hardly less rife in Olympus. Not only do menaces form the supreme sanction by which in many cases its government is carried on, but every[72] kind of personal grudge and quarrel abounds, as well as a general tendency to intrigue and insubordination. So that it does not sound strange to us, when Jupiter uses to his son Mars what nevertheless upon examination we must allow to be an astonishing expression;

Among all the rest of the prominent divinities, there is no single instance of a positive harmony of will pervading the whole course of action, either as between any one of them and Jupiter, or as among themselves. I therefore take it as a very strong indication that materials were brought for this tradition, so different in kind from what Olympus yielded, out of a source higher than Olympus.

5. In the point next to be stated Apollo is chiefly concerned.

It is the remarkable tradition, which makes that god the defender and deliverer of heaven and the other Immortals.

Otus and Ephialtes, twin grandchildren of Neptune, and the most huge in stature of all beings reared on earth, as also the most beautiful after Orion, threaten even in their boyhood war against heaven, and propose to scale it by piling the mountains. And this they would have accomplished, had they attained to their proper age and full size (ἥβη): but Apollo destroyed them first[90].

This is a tradition which cannot properly belong to Greek invention: for what has Apollo to do, when so regarded, either with the wielding of vast physical force, or with laying it prostrate? Neither as physician, harper, poet, prophet, archer, nor angel of Death, does he appear to have been the person who would have been chosen for this purpose. The thunderbolt of[73] Jupiter is the weapon we should have expected to be employed in preference, or the mighty spear and terrifying Ægis of Minerva, or even the brute bulk of Mars. The gentle death, which it was Apollo’s mythological office to bring about, is totally unsuited to the subject.

It is only when we expand that mild conception into the character of the Avenger, partially exhibited in the First Iliad, that Apollo becomes the fitting destroyer of Otus and Ephialtes. This tradition in aftertimes was apparently combined with a larger one relating to the Giants, at which Homer darkly glances[91].

Ovid makes Jupiter his own defender[92]: a fine passage in Horace introduces many divine combatants, but retains a rather prominent place for Apollo, while it gives another to Minerva; and these two with Jupiter appear to bear the brunt of the battle[93].

It admits of but one satisfactory explanation, namely that, coming from a source higher than the mythology, it does not, so to speak, wear the livery of that system: and that this performance is assigned to Apollo, either because he represented the Person to whom all power was to belong in heaven and earth both for destruction and for deliverance, or else because tradition actually assigned to that same Person the glory of having already overcome a rebellion of powerful beings against the Most High.

There is no precise parallel supplied by Homer, in the case of Minerva, to the tradition which makes Apollo the destroyer of the rebels. But though not the defender of the divine order at large, she is the champion of Hercules, the favourite son of Jupiter,[74] under circumstances when apparently, but for her, his divinity would have been at fault. ‘What!’ says Minerva, when thwarted by her parent in the Eighth Iliad, ‘has he forgotten how many times I saved his son in the labours imposed upon him by Eurystheus? Had I, at the time when Hercules was sent by him to fetch Cerberus out of the under-world, known how he would behave now, never should he have escaped the dread streams of Styx[94].’ We are left to infer from this curious legend that Minerva had a power, available in the world below, which tradition did not assign to Jupiter, and that he found her use of it on this occasion absolutely indispensable for the fulfilment of his wishes, even in regard to a favourite son.

Each of these functions, assigned to Apollo and Minerva respectively, recalls to memory those Jewish traditions, which set forth the direct and especial power of the Messiah over the fallen angels and over the grave.

6. The last characteristic of the two peculiarly traditive deities which will be mentioned under this head is, that they are never foiled, defeated, or outwitted by any other of the gods. In no single case has Minerva, where she is in action, to encounter any one of these forms of dishonour: nor has Apollo, in any instance except only when he is pitted against Minerva. Of this class there are two cases: one, when the Greeks are losing ground[95], and he is made to arrange with her for stopping the general conflict, by prompting the personal challenge from Hector in its stead: a matter which was certain to end to the credit of the Greeks. The other is in the Doloneia[96], when he causes an alarm just in time[75] to find that Diomed and Ulysses, guided by Minerva, have accomplished the bloody purpose of their errand. Among men, as among gods, Minerva touches nothing except what is destined to triumph. She is not, therefore, invoked by the doomed Patroclus: and she renders him no aid.

To appreciate the importance of this consideration, we must bear in mind that there is no one of the purely invented deities, who is not at one time or another subject in some form to disparagement. Mars is worsted by Minerva, through Diomed, as well as directly subject to her control; Vulcan is laughed at by the gods in general; Mercury dares not encounter Latona; Ceres sees her lover slain by Jupiter; Venus is not only smitten to the ground by Minerva, but beaten by Diomed without his having any divine aid to strengthen him, and befooled by Juno; Juno outwits Jupiter himself; but Juno also, together with Aides, is wounded sorely by Hercules; and it is also recorded of her, that she had been subjected by her husband to the ignominious punishment of hanging in chains, with an anvil at each foot[97].

Neptune is no where subjected to personal ignominy; but he is baffled by Laomedon, and is also unable to avenge effectually the mutilation of his son Polyphemus. Nay, Jupiter himself, besides being deceived by Juno, was menaced by a formidable combination, who were about to put him in fetters, when Briareus came to his aid[98].

On the other hand, Apollo arrests with sudden shock the victorious career of Diomed[99], and again of Patroclus[100]. And in the destinies of Ulysses, Minerva, who[76] protects him, effectually, though after a struggle, prevails against Neptune, who does his uttermost against him. In order, however, justly to estimate the weight of this consideration, we must not omit to notice, that it has cost Homer an elaborate, and what we might otherwise call a far-fetched contrivance[101], to save Apollo from dishonour in the Theomachy. He is there matched against Neptune, a deity of rank equal to that of Jupiter, and in force inferior to his elder brother alone. It was therefore inadmissible that such a god should be subjected to defeat. But if Apollo were no more than one of the ordinary deities of invention, no similar reason could apply to him. He was junior: he was a son of Jupiter, like Mars or Mercury: he was on the losing side, that of the Trojans: why should he not, like Mars, be well thrashed by his antagonist? It could only be, I think, in consequence of some broad line of demarcation between them: some severance which determines their characters and positions as radically and fundamentally, and not by mere accident, divided.

If we consider the mere birth of these two deities according to the Olympian order, every consideration derived from that source would tend to assign to Mars a higher place than Apollo. His function was more commanding: for in an age of turbulence, and among a people given alike to freebooting and to open war, what pacific office could compete, abstractedly, with that of the god of arms? Again, Mars is the son of Juno, who is the eldest daughter of Saturn, the original and principal wife of Jupiter, the acknowledged queen of Olympus: the coequal in birth of the great trine brotherhood,[77] and second in power to none but Jupiter himself. Why should the child of Latona be placed so far above the child of one so much his superior in birth, according to the mythological order? Why is his position so different from that enjoyed by the child of Dione, or the child of Ceres?

But so studiously does Homer cherish the dignity of Apollo, that he does not even throw on him the burden of taking the initiative in proposing the plan by which it is to be saved. This is managed with great care and art. ‘Let us two fight,’ says Neptune, ‘but do you begin, as I am the older, and know better.’ And then, by bringing up their common grudge against Laomedon, he proceeds to show of what absurdity Apollo would be guilty if he were to follow the ironical advice, and thus makes it easy, indeed inevitable, for him to echo the sentiment, and say, let us leave them, hapless mortals, to themselves.

With this we may compare two other arrangements conceived in the same spirit. In the Fifteenth Iliad, Jupiter takes care that the mission of Apollo to assist the Trojans shall only begin when Neptune, the formidable friend of the Greeks, has already quitted the field of battle[102]. And in the Fifth Odyssey, it is contrived that only when Neptune withdraws from the persecution of Ulysses, then at length Minerva shall instantly appear to resume her charge over him[103].

When we come to discuss the position of Latona, both generally and in the Theomachy, further force will, I think, be added to the foregoing considerations. On the other hand, I admit that the legend of Apollo with Laomedon, which represents that he and Neptune were deceived by that king, is not, so far as I see, explained in[78] any manner which should place it in entire harmony with the general rule we have been considering, unless we may consider that he had his revenge in the opportunity afforded him by the Theomachy of refusing to fight for Troy. But this is a case of treatment by a mortal, not by a god; and it belongs to a different order.

I now proceed to touch upon the pre-eminence of Minerva and Apollo in points connected with their terrestrial relations, and with what may be termed the physical conditions of their existence.

1. It is quite clear from Homer, that these two deities received from men a special and peculiar honour: though it may be open to question, whether this retained only the indeterminate form of a sentiment, or whether it was embodied in some fact or usage.

Pallas and Apollo have the exclusive distinction of being invoked in conjunction with Jupiter, in the remarkable line

This verse meets us, not upon occasions having reference to any peculiar rite or function, but simply when the speaker desires to give utterance with a peculiar solemnity or emphasis to some strong and paramount desire. Thus Agamemnon wishes, with this adjuration, that he had ten such counsellors as Nestor[104]: and again, that all his warriors had the same activity of spirit as the two Ajaxes[105]. Nestor with these words wishes himself young again[106]: as does old Laertes[107]. Achilles prays in this form, when exasperated, for the destruction of Greeks and Trojans alike[108]: Menelaus for the appearance of Ulysses among the Suitors[109]; Alcinous thus expresses the wish that Ulysses could[79] be the husband of Nausicaa[110]: and lastly, Telemachus, that the Suitors were in a worse condition than the disabled Irus[111].

The expression never is heard from the mouth of any Trojan; for Homer, on whatever account, rarely allows them the use of the same formulæ with the Greeks. But the whole substance of it is contained, and in a shape even more restrictive, in the line twice spoken by Hector,

This language is indeed so pointed, that it suggests the question, whether there must not have been some peculiar form of external honour, which in the Heroic age was rendered to these deities, and not to others.

And, singularly enough, of the temples of the Homeric poems, all that we can point out as unequivocally named, and in existence, are temples either to Apollo or to Pallas. But the phrases may also have pointed towards others of their very numerous distinctions. I do not, accordingly, venture to assert that this actually was the exclusive honour of the two deities; but there is nothing absurd in the supposition that it may have been so. It would not have been inconsistent with a belief in Jupiter as the highest god, that those, who were believed to be in a peculiar sense his ministers and organs for the government of the world, should either have received at the hands of mankind a larger share of the substantial tributes of worship than he did, or should have enjoyed it under a peculiar form and conditions.

2. It would appear to be indubitable, that Apollo and Minerva were objects not of partial but of universal worship, within the sphere of the knowledge of Homer.

[80]

Even without examination of details, the proof of this proposition might rest upon their relative positions in regard to the two parties of Greeks and Trojans. Minerva, the great Hellenizing deity, is the object of the supplicatory procession of Trojan women in the Sixth Book. She is the peculiar patroness at once of the highly Pelasgian Attica[112], and of the characteristic type of Hellenic character represented in Ulysses. On the other hand, Apollo, the one really effective champion of the Trojans, is acknowledged by every Greek chieftain, except Agamemnon, at the very outset of the poem[113]. Agamemnon himself has only been misled by his own avarice and passion, and he shortly sends a solemn mission to appease the offended divinity[114].

Setting aside the case of Jupiter, who stands on a different level, there is nothing attaching to the other deities of the War, which at all resembles the position of command enjoyed in common by these two, both among their friends, and with those against whom they are contending. There is not even a difference of degree to be traced between the reverence paid them on the one side, and on the other.

When we turn to particulars, we find that Minerva has a temple in Troy, a temple in Athens, a sacred grove in Scheria. She is worshipped by Nestor on the sea-shore at Pylos, and, near the Minyeius; by Telemachus in Ithaca; by Ulysses and Diomed in the Greek camp. She accompanies Ulysses every where, while he is within the circle of the Greek traditions; only refrains of her own free will from going beyond it; and rejoins him when, near Scheria, he has at length again touched upon the outermost border of the Greek world.

[81]

There is no deity, without excepting even Jupiter, with respect to whom we have such ample evidence in the poems of the development of his worship in positive and permanent institutions, as is given in the case of Apollo. He has a priest at Chryse, a temple in Troy, a priest and grove at Ismarus in Thrace, a grove and festivals in Ithaca, oracles at Delos and at Delphi.

Besides these positive institutions, there are in Homer innumerable marks of his influence. He worked for Laomedon, he is worshipped at Cille; the name of Lycia seems to have been probably derived from him and his attributes; the Seers, whom he endows with vision, are found in Peloponnesus, and even among the Cyclops; he feeds the horses of Admetus either in Pieria or in Pheræ, claims the services of Alcyone, the daughter of Marpessa, in Ætolia, and slays the children of Niobe near mount Sipylus. So far as the Homeric signs go, they would lead us to suppose that he was regarded by the Poet as a deity no less universal than that Scourge of Death, to which he stands in such a close and solemn relation.

With the exception of Jupiter, there is no other deity of whom we can so confidently assert that he receives an universal worship: and Neptune is the only other, with Minerva, in regard to whom the indications of the poems render it probable. Of him we may infer it, from his appearing to be known or to act at places so widely separated by distance; on the Solyman mountains, in Troas under Laomedon, in Greece near the Enipeus, in the land of the Cyclops, in the sea far north of Phæacia. But this is entirely owing to the wide extent of the θάλασσα, his portion of the great kingdom of external Nature, which, being as broad as the Phœnician traditions of the Odyssey, at once gives him[82] a place in them. It is clearly not due to any thing more divine in the conception of him, for he carries many chief notes of limitation in common with the divinities of pure invention.

The wide extension of the class of Seers may of itself be taken as a proof of the equally wide recognition of the influence of Apollo: for he it was who made Polypheides[115] to be first of that order, on the death of Amphiaraus. Now these Seers appear to have been found every where, under the form either of the μάντις, or of the οἰωνίστης. Not in Greece only and in Troas proper; but in Percote, among the Mysians, and even among the Cyclops in the Outer Zone[116].

3. The next distinction I shall note in the traditive deities is, that they are confined to no one spot or region for their abode; a limitation, which is imposed, either more or less, upon every other prominent deity except Jupiter only.

With respect to some of them, this is made quite clear by positive signs. Except when in Olympus, or else when abroad on a special occasion, Mars does not quit Thrace, nor Vulcan Lemnos, nor Venus Paphos. But even upon higher and older deities there are signs of some kind of local limitation. The rigidly Argeian character of Juno, though it does not express, yet implies it. Demeter would appear to have a local abode, probably in Crete. Aidoneus and Persephone are ordinarily confined to the Shades, where their proper business lies. Neptune himself, when dismissed from the battle-field, is desired to repair either to the sea or to Olympus. His regular worship among the Greeks was, as appears from a speech of Juno, at Helice and Ægæ[83] in Ægialos; which it is not easy to account for, except upon the supposition that he resided peculiarly at these places[117]. Now it is expressly declared that his palace was in Ægæ: from thence he sets out for the plain of Troy, and thither he repairs when he desists from the persecution of Ulysses. The name Ægæ is not mentioned in the Catalogue, and Helice, as it is called εὐρεῖα, was evidently a district; thus it may have been the district in which Ægæ stood, perhaps as its seaport[118]. Before the time of Strabo Ægæ[119] had disappeared.

Now Minerva has a peculiar relation to Athens, and is once mentioned as betaking herself thither[120]. Again, the epithet Λυκηγένης, rarely given to Apollo, has suggested a connection with Lycia. If, however we form our judgment from Homer, Lycia may derive its name from Apollo, but not Apollo from Lycia.

But it is plain from the poems that the influence, the activity, and the virtual, if not positive presence of Apollo and Minerva pervade the whole Homeric world. This is shown partly by their universal action; in Troas, in Lycia[121], in Thrace, in Scheria, and all over Greece. It is also demonstrated by the manner in which prayer is addressed to them: and neither the one nor the other is ever represented either as having a palace or residence in any particular spot, or as showing, like Juno, an exclusive partiality to any particular race or city.

[84]

4. Although invocation of divinities is frequent in the poems of Homer, it does not seem to have been sufficiently observed, that the Olympian personages, to whom it is ordinarily addressed, are very few in number.

In the Twentieth Odyssey, Penelope beseeches Diana to put a period to her mournful existence. I presume that she is here invoked, not on account of her superiority as a traditive deity, but because the subject is connected with her especial office in regard to Death.

Neptune again is occasionally addressed by mortals; as by his descendant Nestor on the sea-shore at Pylus, and in like manner by his son Polyphemus, on the beach of the country of the Cyclops. So also he is invoked by the Envoys on their way to the encampment of Achilles: here again their course lies along the sea-shore. I will assume accordingly, though with a good deal of doubt, that any Olympian deity might be made the object of supplication under given circumstances of time, place, or person. But it is manifest from the poems that the general rule is the other way. They are ordinarily not made the subjects of invocation, even in connection with their own peculiar gifts. There is no invocation addressed in Homer to Venus, Mars, Mercury, or Vulcan; nor even, which is more remarkable, to Juno.

Prayer however is very usual in the poems: but it is confined to three divinities only.

Jupiter, Apollo, and Pallas are addressed by persons in difficulty, not with reference to any peculiar gift or office that they fill, but quite independently of peculiar rites, and local or personal relations. Thus Ulysses and[85] Diomed in the Doloneia invoke Minerva[122]. Menelaus, when about to attack Euphorbus, prays first to Jupiter[123]. Nestor, too, addresses Jupiter, and not his own ancestor Neptune[124], in the great straits of the Greek army. Glaucus beseeches Apollo to heal his wound[125]; and if this address be thought to belong to his medical function, it is still very remarkable from its containing a direct assertion, that he is able both to hear and to act at whatever distance. The same may be said of the prayer of Pandarus[126]. His priest Chryses offers prayer to him from the plain of Troas (Il. i. 37): but this may be incidental to the office. The cases of prayer to Jupiter and Minerva are purely private petitions, without notice, suggested by the circumstances of the moment: and they show that though Homer had perhaps no abstract idea of omnipresence, he assigned to these deities its essential characteristic, that is to say, the possession of powers not limited by space.

The evidence that Apollo was invoked independently of bodily presence at a particular spot, and for the general purpose of help and protection, not simply in the exercise of particular mythological functions, if it be less diversified is still, I think, not less conclusive. It is, in the first place, supplied by the trine invocation repeatedly addressed to him together with Jupiter and Minerva[127]:

But the general capacity of Apollo, like Minerva, to receive prayer, is demonstrated by the language of Diomed to Hector in the Eleventh Book, when Apollo was not on the battlefield (363, 4); ‘for this time,[86] Phœbus Apollo has delivered you: and doubtless you took care to pray to him, when you ventured within the clang of spears:’

5. We may now pass on to another head of special prerogatives.

Both Minerva and Apollo are generally exempt from the physical limitations, and from the dominion of appetite, to which the deities of invention are as generally subject. Though, when a certain necessity is predicated of the gods in general, they may be literally included within it, we do not find that the Poet had them in his eye apart from the rest, and the particular liabilities and imperfections are never imputed to either of them individually. What is said of them inclusively with others, is in reality not said of them at all, but only of the prevailing disposition of the body to which they belong: just as we are told in the Iliad (xi. 78), that all the gods were incensed with Jupiter because of his bias towards the Trojans, when we know that it was in reality only some among them, of the greatest weight and power. Neither Apollo nor Minerva eats, or drinks, or sleeps, or is wearied, or is wounded, or suffers pain, or is swayed by passion. Neither of them is ever outwitted or deluded by any deity of invention, as Venus is, and even as Jupiter is, by Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad. When Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, receives the cup in the Pylian festivities, she passes it on to Telemachus, but it is not stated that she drinks of it[128]. With this compare the meal of Mercury on the island of Calypso[129], the invitation to Iris to join in the banquet of the Winds, and her own[87] fear lest she should lose her share of the Ethiopian hecatombs[130].

Their relations to animal sacrifice are different from those of the other, at least of the inventive, gods. Apollo, indeed, is charged by Juno with having attended at the marriage of Thetis together with the rest of the gods, where they all banqueted[131];

and in the Third Odyssey Minerva comes to attend the gracious sacrifice of Nestor offered in her honour[132],

Chryses pleads the performance of the sacrificial rites, as one ground of favour with the god[133]: in which, however, he is, after all, only showing that he has not failed to discharge the positive obligations of his office. And of course these two were the objects of sacrifice like other deities. Had they not been so, the fact would have been in conflict with their traditional origin, instead of sustaining it. They stand in the same category with the rest of the Olympian company, in that sacrifice is acceptable to them all: but first, it is plain that they are never said to take a sensual pleasure in it; and secondly, it does not appear that their favour to individuals either was founded upon it, or when lost could be recovered by it. It is restitution, and not sacrifice, which is sought and demanded in the case of Chryses. The moral character of the whole of those proceedings is emphatically and authoritatively declared by Calchas[134],

So Diomed and Ulysses have the closest personal rela[88]tions with Minerva; but are nowhere said to have acquired their place in her good-will by sacrifices: though both Apollo for Hector, and Minerva for Ulysses, plead in the Olympian court, before the other gods, the sacrificial bounty of those heroes respectively[135]. Nor do we here rest wholly upon negative evidence. In the First Book, the sacrifice of the Greeks to Apollo, by the hands of Chryses, is described in the fullest detail: and the Poet tells us what it was that the god did take delight in; it was the refined pleasure of the mind and ear, afforded to him by the songs they chanted before him all the day in his honour: ὁ δὲ φρένα τέρπετ’ ἀκούων[136]. Further, the contrast may be drawn not with divinities of their own generation only, but with the long journeys of Neptune[137] for a feast, and with the marked and apparently unvarying language of Jupiter himself.

They receive sacrifice with a dignity, which does not belong to the other deities. When prayer and offerings are presented to Jupiter by the Greeks, and he means to refuse the prayer, it is added, that he notwithstanding took the sacrifices[138]:

In the nearly parallel case of Minerva (Il. vii. 311.), it is simply stated that she refused the prayer of the Trojans, while no notice is taken of their promised offerings. Again, when Minerva had been offended by the Greeks, and Agamemnon sought to appease her with hecatombs, it is described as a proof of his folly that he could entertain such an idea[139]:

With this we may contrast the case of Neptune, who had threatened to overwhelm the city of the Phæa[89]cians with a mountain; but who is apparently diverted from his purpose simply by the sacrifice which, under the advice of Alcinous, they offer to him[140].

Mere attributes of bulk stand at the bottom of the scale of even human excellence; and it is so that Homer treats them, giving them in the greatest abundance to his Otus, his Ephialtes, and his Mars. Minerva has them but indirectly assigned to her; and when arming for war, Apollo never receives them at all. When his might is described, it is always described in the loftiest manner, that is to say, in its effects; and effort or exertion is never attributed to either of them.

Even so with respect to locomotion. The highest picture by far is that which is most negative. In general, Apollo and Minerva move without the use of means or instruments, such as wings, chariots, or otherwise. While Neptune steps, and Juno’s horses spring, so many miles at each pace, the journeys of Apollo and Minerva are usually undescribed, undistributed. Minerva is going from Olympus to Ithaca; when she has departed, then she has arrived:

Only within the last few years have the triumphs of natural philosophy supplied us with an approximative illustration of these movements over space, in the more than lightning speed of the electric telegraph.

So Apollo, too, has by personal dignity what the messenger gods have by office. It is said of him and Iris, when in company, that their journey began; and that it ended:

[90]

On one occasion, however, Minerva is represented, even when unattended by any other deity, as employing the foot-wings which Mercury commonly used, and they are said to carry her[143]:

But there are no stages or intermediate points either here or elsewhere in her journey.

With the movements of Apollo and Minerva, thus conceived by the Poet, we may do well to compare those of Mercury (Od. v. 50–8), Neptune (Il. xiii. 17–31), and Juno (Il. xiv. 225–30).

6. Again, an important difference prevails between the different divinities, in regard to the conduct they pursue when offended by mortals. In general, this is one of the points that prominently exhibits the sovereignty of Jupiter; for the common course is to appeal to him, and to obtain retribution either with his permission or by his agency. Not from greater self-will or a spirit of rebellion, but from higher dignity and a certain substantiveness of character and position, Apollo and Minerva always appear as acting for and from themselves, in vindication of their offended prerogatives.

Even Neptune, when he is incensed at the erection of the unconsecrated rampart of the Greek camp, and fearful that it will eclipse the renown of his own handiwork, the wall of Troy, appeals to Jupiter on the subject, and receives from him the permissive suggestion, that he should himself destroy it so soon as the war is over[144]. He pursues a similar course, when he is anxious to chastise the over-boldness and maritime success of the Phæacians[145]. Venus, wounded by Diomed, does not[91] even by appeal attempt to obtain redress[146]. Mars, in the same condition, makes his complaint, both of Diomed and of Minerva, to Jupiter. It is true that afterwards, on the death of his son, he proposes to appear on the field of battle: but then he is in a state of fury[147], and is aware that the act would be one of rebellion against Jupiter: accordingly, it is rudely stopped by Minerva. Again, when Dionysus and his nurses are attacked by Lycoorgus, it is Jupiter that strikes the offender blind, and his life is short because he was become hateful to the gods[148]. Dionysus had made no appeal; but Jupiter avenged the insult to his order. The Sun, after his oxen have been eaten by the companions of Ulysses, lodges his appeal with Jupiter and the Olympian Council: and in this case Jupiter himself undertakes to give effect to the wishes of the offended luminary for vengeance[149]. When Aides, or Pluto, repaired to Olympus after the wound he had received from Hercules, the presumption perhaps arises, that it may have been not simply to obtain the healing hand of Paieon, but also to move Jupiter for redress.

There are indeed a certain set of cases in which the rule is probably different, that is to say, when a deity is thwarted or offended in the exercise of his or her own special function. Thus Neptune, though he would not touch the rampart without leave, yet of his own mere motion destroys Ajax when he is at sea. Venus threatens Helen with her summary vengeance, in case of prolonged resistance to the expressed command that she should repair to the chamber of Paris. The Muses, offended by Thamyris[150], proceed to maim him, probably in voice[92] or hand, the organs connected with his profession. This power to punish within each particular province appears to form an exception to the general rule. It is probably under this exceptional arrangement, that Diana proceeds towards the Curetes, in the Legend of the Ninth Iliad: but some doubt may hang over her case on account of the fact, that she partakes radically of the traditional, as well as of the mythological character.

Offended by the omission to include her in the hecatombs offered to the Immortals, she sends a wild boar to desolate the country. She puts Ariadne to death on the application of Dionysus, without any notice of an appeal to Jupiter. In both these cases she may be acting in virtue of her particular powers. But when she is matched with Juno in the Theomachy, she appears as utterly unequal to her great antagonist.

When Apollo comes into view, the mode of proceeding is very different from that of the deities of invention. Apollo and Diana at once destroy the children of Niobe, to avenge the insult she had offered to their mother: and this case is the more worthy of note, because Jupiter, at a later stage, participates in and extends the vengeance[151]. But the most conspicuous instance of the independent retributive action of Apollo is in the Plague of the First Book; since here he wastes the army of the Greeks, to the great peril of the enterprise promoted by so many powerful divinities, on[93] account of what he esteemed a moral offence, and an outrage to his priest Chryses. Now it is to be remembered that the damsel had suffered no peculiar wrongs: the whole offence consisted in this, that, being the daughter of a priest of Apollo, at a place apparently insignificant, she had not been on that account exempted from the common lot of women, but had been treated just as she would have been treated had she been a king’s daughter. Nor must we forget, in appreciating this act, that the families of priests had no priestly privilege: and that Maron paid to Ulysses (Od. ix. 201–5) a very handsome price for his own life, together with that of his wife and child.

It is less easy to bring out the application of the rule now before us in the case of Minerva, from the paucity of clear instances in the poems where she personally has received offence.

There is one important case, where her wrath appears; and it is there described as μῆνις ὀλοὴ, and as δεινὸς χόλος[152]. Her name, and her interest in this affair, are to some extent mixed with those of Jupiter. The Poet tells us, that Jupiter designed for the Greeks a calamitous Return, ‘since they were not all upright, whereupon many of them miserably perished through the inexorable wrath of Minerva.’ And then the order is inverted: Agamemnon, we are told, projected the offerings, that he might appease the anger of Minerva, and thereupon dissension arose, for Jupiter suspended calamity over the host. It is clear that, so far as Minerva is to be regarded as having received separate and personal offence in this proceeding, there is no sign of her referring to Jupiter for aid, or for permission to punish the offenders. But the case rather appears to be one in which the Poet is describing the Pro[94]vidential Government of the world, and in which the intermixture of the names of Jupiter and of his daughter belongs to their system of concurrent action, under which she shares with Apollo the office of acting as his habitual organ in administering retributive justice to mankind. In one clear instance, however, we find it stated, that when the Greeks offended Minerva, she punished them by a storm (Od. v. 108).

7. Apollo and Minerva carry this among other notes, that we find them administering mythological or natural powers, which are otherwise the special property of Jupiter.

No other Olympian deity, but Juno, stands invested with a similar honour. We sometimes find the aerial powers of Jupiter wielded by her hand. But, with the exception of the sort of precedence accorded to her on Olympus, in virtue of which the gods rise from their seats when she enters their company, there is no one of the gifts that she exercises, which would not appear to lie within the range of the offices of Minerva, if not also of Apollo. In the remarkable case where she thunders in honour of Agamemnon just after he has armed, it is recorded that this was the joint act of the two divinities, of whom, on this occasion, Minerva takes precedence[153]:

This association is to be observed in another passage, where these goddesses jointly communicate courage to a warrior. But when we find them associated in administering the powers of atmospheric phenomena, it is obvious that we must resort to different sources for the means of explaining the respective agencies. Juno, mythologically related to Jupiter as a wife, in[95] that capacity may, without exciting surprise, take in hand what belongs, so to speak, to the ménage. Minerva, as a daughter, has no such claim; and her possession of a standing ground which enables her to use these powers can only be explained by a prior and more profound affinity of traditional character, which makes her the organ of the supreme deity.

But while, in the highest marks of power adhering to Juno, Minerva seems everywhere to vie with her, there are others, and those among the most strictly characteristic of the head of Olympus, in which both Minerva and Apollo share, but which are not in any manner imparted to Juno.

One of the high characteristic epithets of Jupiter is αἰγίοχος. And we never hear of the Ægis out of the hands of Jupiter, except it be in those of Minerva, or of Apollo. The Ægis is the peculiar arm of Minerva; apparently, it belongs to her; and from the description of it in the Fifth Iliad, it appears to be the counterpart, on her side, of the chariot on the side of Juno[154]. The tunic she puts on, however, is the tunic of Jupiter, and the Gorgon head upon it is his sign: while the shield she carries is not to be assailed even by his thunderbolt[155]:

Again, the Fifteenth Book of the Iliad, Jupiter intrusts Apollo with his own Ægis, that he may wave it on the field of battle to intimidate the Greeks[156].

Partly in the relation of Minerva to Mars, whom she punishes or controls, but more peculiarly in the use of the magnificent symbol of the Ægis by Minerva and Apollo, we appear to find that development of the martial character which has been mentioned above as included among the Jewish ascriptions to the Messiah.

[96]

Proximate to, but extending beyond, the last named distinction, there is a function mythologically confined to Jupiter throughout the poems, with two exceptions only. The function is that of giving indications, palpable to men, of coming events, by the flight of birds in many instances, but likewise by atmospheric signs. This power is distinguished, by its connection with the future, from a mere power over nature.

The exceptions are Apollo and Minerva. The former deity is in general more largely endowed than Minerva in regard to the future, though a less conspicuous figure in the direction of the present. Still she partakes, with him and with Jupiter, of this peculiar honour.

On the return of Telemachus to Ithaca there appears to him the bird called the wheeling falcon[157],

sent by Apollo as an omen of success to himself, and of confusion to the Suitors.

In the final crisis of the Odyssey, which is doubtless meant to exhibit a normal example of Providential retribution, it seems to have been the object of the Poet to divide the theurgic action between Minerva and Apollo, as joint administrators of the general government of the world. To Minerva, as the goddess of wisdom, falls what may be called the intellectual share[158], the actual instruction and guidance of Ulysses, Penelope, and Telemachus, as well as the bewildering and hardening operations on the minds of the Suitors. Special arrangements appear, however, to have been introduced, so as to make a corresponding place for[97] Apollo. Hence it is that Theoclymenus, as the representative of a great prophetic family, is brought into the company of Telemachus, that he may become the organ of Apollo in the remaining part of the drama. This is the more remarkable, because Theoclymenus does not repay the friendly aid he had received by taking part in the final struggle on the side of Telemachus; so that his share in the proceeding stands out the more conspicuously as one altogether theurgic. In cooperation with this arrangement, it is provided that the crisis shall come to pass on the festival of the god, and that the manner of trial, by the Bow, shall place it especially under his auspices.

In the magnificent passage of the Twentieth Book[159], which describes the phantasmagoria in the palace of Ulysses, immediately before the trial of the Bow, there are two parts. First, the minds of the Suitors are befooled (παρέπλαγξεν δὲ νόημα). Secondly, the hall is filled with sensible portents: preternatural night envelopes the company, the walls and beams are blood-bespattered, phantoms glide along with downward movement, as on their way to Erebus, the very meat they eat is gory, their eyes are charged with involuntary tears, their lips with unnatural smiles. Of all this the announcement is made by Theoclymenus, a trait which I interpret as referring the array of the phenomena to his master Apollo. To him is thus given that part of the operation which lies within the domain of sense: while the purely intellectual one, that of stupefying the Suitors, is expressly assigned to Minerva.

But Minerva has likewise the power over signs, which is enjoyed by Jupiter and Apollo. As Diomed and Ulysses are setting out on their nocturnal expedi[98]tion in the Tenth Iliad, Minerva sends the apparition of a heron to cheer them[160]: they do not see it, on account of the darkness; but they hear the flapping of its wings.

It has accordingly attracted the attention of Nägelsbach[161], that the power of exhibiting signs is confined to Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and Minerva: though he has not proceeded to combine this with other distinctions, at least equally remarkable, enjoyed by the two latter divinities.

I have not, it will be observed, reckoned as a τέρας, or sign of the future, the case in which Juno endows the horses of Achilles with the gift of speech: because it appears that the prediction of their master’s death is their own; and that she only removes the barrier to its expression[162]. She stands, therefore, in a different position to that of Apollo and Minerva.

9. This command, however, over natural portents may be viewed as part of a general dominion over nature, of which the most varied manifestation is in Minerva.

It is true that, in common with most of the Olympian deities, she does not extend her action from the inner, or Greek, into the general range of the outer, or Phœnician world. Nor does Apollo. But we have clear proof that this was by a poetical arrangement, and not from a lack of divine power: since (1) she does act in Scheria, and assists in bringing Ulysses to the shore of that island: (2) the class of μάντεις are found among the Cyclops: (3) Calypso is amenable to[99] the command of the Olympian court, and speaks of herself as belonging to the same wide class of deities with Aurora and Ceres. (4) Minerva assigns a special reason, namely, regard towards her uncle Neptune, for not having accompanied Ulysses all along his voyage (Od. xiii. 341).

The power of Minerva over nature seems to be universal in kind as well as in place.

1. She and Apollo assume the human form in common with other deities: but I do not find that the gods in general become visible to one person without being visible to all. Minerva in the First Iliad (198) reveals herself only to Achilles. It seems as if, in Il. xvii. 321–34, Homer meant that Apollo did the same to Æneas. The recognition of Venus by Helen, I take as most probably a sign of nothing more than that the case was one of disguise, rather than of transformation[163].

2. Apollo frames an εἴδωλον, or image of a man, which moves and fights[164], representing Æneas on the battle field: and Minerva frames an εἴδωλον of Iphthime, to appear in a dream to her sister Penelope, and to convey to her a revelation of Minerva’s will[165]. This power is exercised by the two divinities exclusively.

3. Minerva on many occasions assumes the shape of a bird[166]: sometimes in common with Apollo[167]. Ino Leucothee, the marine goddess, becomes a water-bird, and Ὕπνος takes the form of the bird Chalcis, when he has to act upon Jupiter. Both these operations may probably be considered as belonging to the special functions of these agents: with Apollo and Minerva, the[100] power appears to belong to a general supremacy over nature, which the other Olympian deities do not share.

4. The transformations and retransformations of Ulysses in Ithaca by Minerva, appear to indicate some organic power over matter and life. It is not the appearance but the reality of his person that is stated to be changed. Not only is the skin wrinkled and the eye darkened, but the hairs are destroyed. They are afterwards restored, and his stature is increased. In like manner she gives increased height to Penelope, and again to Laertes[168].

As respects power over inanimate nature, we have seen Minerva joined with Juno in the act of thundering. She can order out a rattling zephyr (κελάδοντα), or simply a toward breeze, or again a stiff Boreas (κραιπνὸν), to speed her friend across the main[169]: and, as Juno accelerated the setting of the sun before Troy, so Minerva forbids the dawn to appear in Ithaca, until, when she thinks the proper time has come, she withdraws the prohibition[170].

Nor is the power of Minerva over nature for purposes of wrath less clear than for purposes of favour: since Mercury tells Calypso that, inasmuch as the Greeks had offended her, she sent a storm upon them[171],

On the other hand, when Ulysses and his companions have propitiated Apollo on behalf of the Greek army, then he sends them a toward breeze for their return to the camp[172]. But we have a still more notable in[101]stance of miraculous power over nature ascribed to Apollo, over and above the sublime portents of the Twentieth Odyssey, in the conversion of the mouths of the eight Idæan rivers for nine whole days to efface the Greek rampart[173]. To Neptune is left the task of restoring them to their channels: perhaps on the same principle as the treatment of Juno, relatively to Minerva, in the preparation and use of the chariot[174].

We have not yet, however, done with the subject of powers exercised over nature.

The most prominent and pointed characteristic of Apollo is one shared with his sister Diana. It is the mysterious relation which these two deities hold in common to death.

The Messianic tradition, first divided between Apollo and the great Minerva, is now subdivided between him and his sister Diana, who forms a kind of supplement to his divinity. The bow and arrows, the symbol which they bear in common, marks the original union in character, out of which their twin peculiarities had grown.

Apollo, indeed, as we see in the first Book of the Iliad, could himself become, like his sister, the immediate agent in the destruction of animals: but his principal function is with men. Hence the terrible slaughter of the Plague: hence his extraordinary and otherwise unsatisfactory participation in the death of Patroclus: hence, above all, though he is not the patron of Ulysses, and has no special connection with him, yet the slaughter of the Suitors in the Odyssey is appointed to take place on his festival, and therefore, as well as because it is effected by the Bow, under his auspices. But again; his office is not of a single aspect: he is a saviour from death, as well as a destroyer. Hence it is he, and not Venus, who saves[102] Æneas[175]: it is he who carries Hector out of danger[176]. Yet a third, and very peculiar form of his office do we discover, common to him and to his sister. She is upon occasion strong enough to exercise the office of destruction properly so called[177], for sometimes she slays in wrath. But more usually, as he does for men, so she more especially exercises for women the mysterious function of administering painless and gentle death.

This singular and solemn relation of Apollo and Diana to death appears to have an entirely exclusive character attaching to it. There is a clear distinction between death inflicted by the symbolical arrows of these twin deities, which are the symbols of an invisible Power, and death resulting from physical or any other palpable causes, whether it be violent, or what we term natural. I do not now speak of the agency of Apollo the destroyer in (what we call) the Plague, nor of his slaying Eurytus on account of a personal insult (Od. viii. 227), but of the much more distinctive and prominent office assigned to him and to Diana, that of (so to speak) taking the sting from Death. Death by disease, Death by a broken heart[178], Death by shipwreck, or by the lightning of heaven[179], or by the fury of Scamander, whirling warriors to the sea, and burying them in the sand and shingle[180], are matters altogether distinct from this. Death through second causes, even man can bring about: Death without second causes is palpably Divine; and this it is that is assigned to Apollo and Diana only among the Homeric gods. There is no instance, if I remember rightly, in which any other among them brings about the death of a mortal, otherwise than by means of second causes. And there is one curious passage, from which it[103] would appear that some other deities had to apply to them in order to set in motion this Divine prerogative. For when Theseus was carrying Ariadne to Athens, she did not reach her journey’s end:

A period was put to her life in the island of Dia, by the goddess Artemis, at the instance of Dionysus. As if the tradition bore, that Dionysus or Bacchus, desiring her death, and having at his command no natural agency of mortal effect, was obliged to apply to Artemis or Diana to bring about this purpose.

The great enemy and scourge of mankind, under the treatment of the twin deities, is stripped of his terrors; and the very verse of Homer, ever responsive to his thought, changes to an easy and flowing movement as he describes this mode of passage from the world[182]:

Nor is the expression casual; it is one of the regular Homeric formulæ. Sometimes she discharges this office in actual concurrence with Apollo. The happy island, where Eumæus passed his childhood, knew neither famine nor disease: but when its people reached the term of their old age, then[183]

Again, when the corpse of Hector is by preternatural agency restored, after the lacerations it had undergone, to integrity and freshness, it is said to have become like to the body of him upon whom Apollo has come, and put him to death with his tender darts[184].[104] The god has a sword, indeed, which must appertain to his destroying office. But his sword, and his only, among all we hear of, is formed of gold, χρυσάορος. The epithet has probably been chosen from its affinity to Light.

Among the instances in which Diana ministers to death, there are many where she clearly exercises a mitigating and favouring agency; and this may probably be signified in nearly all. Even of the children of Niobe[185] it may be meant, that they were thus gently removed, the innocent causes of their mother’s pride; while she was reserved for heavier punishment, and doomed to weep eternally in stone.

In considering what may have been the early traditional source of these remarkable attributes of the children of Latona, we should tread softly and carefully, for we are on very sacred ground. But we seem to see in them the traces of the form of One, who, as an all-conquering King, was to be terrible and destructive to His enemies, but who was also, on behalf of mankind, to take away the sting from Death, and to change its iron band for a thread of silken slumber.

The share of Messianic tradition accorded in this particular province to Minerva appears, as has already been observed, to consist in her peculiar power within the realm of Aidoneus himself.

10. Lastly, we appear to find, that in the conduct of those operations in which their power over Nature is exhibited, Minerva and Apollo are not tied down, or at least are not tied down in the same degree with the other deities generally, to the use of instruments or symbols.

We find that Neptune, when he has to inspire courage into the two Ajaxes, strikes them, (Il. xiii. 59.) As[105] an accompanying significant act, of a nature tending by itself to produce the result, this greatly weakens the force of the passage in proof of divine or extraordinary power. In like manner, when the same divinity converts the ship of the Phæacians into a rock, he drives it downward with his hand[186].

But Apollo performs no such outward act when he infuses courage into Hector, or into Glaucus; or when he heals the wounds of the latter chieftain[187].

So likewise, when Minerva alters the personal appearance of Telemachus, Ulysses, Laertes, or Penelope, by improving it, she uses no sign or ministrative act. Only when she effects an organic though partial transformation in the case of Ulysses[188] does she strike him with her wand: but then this total transformation is an exercise of power, of which we have no other example among the Olympian deities. Again, when Minerva finally endows the hero with heightened beauty of figure and countenance, it is done without the use of any visible sign whatever[189].

This employment of instruments is, in fact, susceptible of two significations. They may be, like the tokens of Jupiter, intended to act upon the senses of men. But where they have not this meaning, there is a decided tendency to convey the conception of the instrument as being itself the power which the deity merely directs and applies. Thus it is in the cestus of Venus and the wand of Mercury that the divine energy resides[190], not less than it is in the herbs of Paieon and in the fire of Vulcan. So that any exemption from the use of these symbols is a sign of belonging to a high order of deity.

[106]

We now approach the third and last division of this subject; namely, those points of distinction which most essentially belong to the moral tone and personal character of these two great divinities.

Their moral standard is conspicuously raised above that of the Olympian family in general.

It partakes indeed, as we might expect, of taint. Each has begun to give way; and each in the way adapted to their several relations with man and woman’s nature respectively. Apollo’s character has just begun to be touched by licentiousness: and the character of Minerva is not above condescension to deceit.

She is nowhere, however, associated either directly or indirectly, in word or act, with anything impure. The contest of beauty, in which Paris was the judge, is mentioned by Homer[191]: but the notice, a very succinct one, though not quite in keeping with her highest dignity, does not imply any deviation from her elevated chastity. Neither of Juno, nor of Thetis, can the same virtue be fully predicated: both of them, though in different modes, are brought into immediate contact with the subject of sensual passion.

Pallas is, in truth, no less chaste than Diana: but her purity is absorbed in the dazzling splendour of her august prerogatives, while it is more observed in the Huntress-maid, because it is the most salient and distinguished point in her character.

In the post-Homeric, but yet early, hymn to Venus, three beings alone in the wide universe are declared to be exempt from her sway. One of them is Hestie, who represents the impersonation of the marriage bond and the family life, and whose exemption therefore[107] testifies directly to the nature of the dominion from which it frees her. The other two privileged beings are Pallas and Diana[192].

The character of Apollo in this respect is by some degrees less elevated: for he is an enjoying spectator of the scene described by the certainly licentious lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey, from which the goddesses in a body absent themselves. In the legend, too, of the Ninth Iliad we find that Apollo carried off the daughter of Marpessa, afterwards named by her parents Alcyone: but this passage, we shall see, is susceptible of an interpretation, which gives it another construction, and one certainly far more agreeable to the general character of this divinity. The epithet enjoyed by the Homeric Diana, expressive of purity, is accorded by Æschylus[193] (whose accuracy and truthfulness often recall those of Homer) to Apollo;

And here the question arises, how did it happen that, while the element of purity was strictly preserved in the tradition of the Wisdom, it was lost in the twin tradition of the Seed of the woman?

The Wisdom naturally, when impersonated, assumed the feminine form. Now the character of woman seems to be in itself better fenced against impurity than that of man. Her comparatively dependent condition, and the more direct operation of her failure in this respect on the marriage tie through the disorganization of the family, have had a further influence in giving an additional stringency to the ideas of mankind with respect to her observance of this virtue; a stringency not the less real, because it exemplifies the partial administration of a law essentially just, nor because it[108] has become rather less conspicuous since the Gospel laid down with rigour, upon higher grounds, one law for all. Thus it remained possible to conceive a woman chaste, after the conditions of that idea had been almost lost in connection with the standard of excellence in the other sex: and this virtue, banished from the earth in general, still found here and there, even down to the fœtid corruption of the time of Martial[194], a last refuge in individual cases of untainted womanhood. This course of thought and feeling is exemplified in the Minerva of the Olympian Court.

Yet the idea was not simply extinguished in the twin tradition, of which Apollo is the chief representative. Submerged in him, a home is found for it in the appropriate form of Diana as his sister. The power and majesty of this form of the Messianic tradition fall chiefly to his share: she retains what was then, to the shame of our race, thought its less precious ingredient, freedom from sensual taint. Apollo would have been its natural vehicle: but in him, for the reason that he was a man, it was perhaps to the Greek mind inconceivable: a new vehicle was either framed, or adapted, in order to carry it: the idea of the great Deliverer that should be born was thus disintegrated, like other traditions, and like other historical characters, which men could not so readily embrace in their integrity.

As this is the first point in the discussion at which we have encountered an actual instance of this disintegration, it may be well to explain the meaning I attach to the term.

It seems indubitable, that moral combinations, which are intelligible as well as credible to one age, may be[109]come incredible to another. Just as there are individual men at every epoch, who cannot believe in generosity and elevation of character, because they have in themselves no mirror which can reflect such qualities; so a generation ruled by more debased ideas cannot comprehend what another, influenced by less impure tendencies, could readily embrace. On the same principle, the Gospel gives not to the sagacious, but to the ‘pure in heart,’ the greatest triumph of mental vision, namely, that ‘they shall see God[195].’

Accordingly, when it happens that a tradition becomes unintelligible to the mind of a given people, it is lost. It may be lost by the disappearance even of its outward form and shell. Or it may be lost by the alteration of its meaning while its words are retained. Or the work of destruction may take another turn: it may be lost by being torn into pieces; the effect being that one old tradition disappears, and more than one partial substitute for it is created.

The highest fraud and the highest force appear to have been, according to original tradition, joined in the Evil One: they were separated in the Grecian forms of[196] that tradition. The Apollo of Homer was still one, with a great diversity of gifts; but mythological solecisms were already apparent in his character, like cracks in a stately building. This, too, was settled by disintegration; and in the later mythology there were many Apollos: other causes probably concurring to extend the multiplying process.

The same operation took effect upon the traditions of human character. Homer, with the finest powers of light and shade, has represented Helen as erring,[110] and as penitent. The moral sense of later, less simple, and more deeply corrupted, times became impervious to a balanced conception of this kind. Accordingly, the one Helen was torn into two, and supplied material both for the guilty Helen, or εἴδωλον of Helen, at Troy, and for the innocent Helen detained in Egypt. In like manner, it became a question, probably first when Athens had grown great, how Minos could on the one hand be great and wise, and could on the other have made war and imposed tribute upon Attica. Hence the fable of two Minoses[197]: so that those who venerated the ancient traditions of Crete might still be allowed to cherish their pious sentiment, while, upon the other hand, the Athenian dramatists might exercise a fertile imagination in inventing circumstances of horror for the biography of the piratical enemy of their country.

It was, I conceive, an early example of this disintegration, which divided between Apollo and Diana different members of a primitive Messianic tradition. And, when we again combine the two personalities of the brother and the sister in one, the tradition resumes its completeness and roundness.

It is likely that the same mental process, which thus deposited the element of chastity in the person of the comparatively feeble Diana, also conferred on her the figure of the Huntress-Queen. For thus she lived in seclusion from the ways and haunts of man: and it was only by seclusion that she could be kept in maiden innocence.

But although the logical turn of the Greek mind soon came to place Apollo in morally disadvantageous contrast, under this particular head, both with his sister and with Pallas, he may be favourably compared with the[111] other Homeric gods. There is something in the tradition that he was unshorn (ἀκερσεκόμης), which is evidently intended to connect him with the innocence of youth. And in Homer, unless it be by the legend of the Ninth Iliad, he is unharmed by connection with any of those relations which assign to Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, and Mercury, human children as the fruit of their indulgence.

The reasons which lead me to suppose that the legend of Marpessa is not of a sensual character are these. The words used are[198];

Now none of the numerous intrigues of the mythical deities with women include violence: they always appear, so far as the language used gives them a specific character, to have been voluntarily accepted connections[199]. It was not likely that the case of Apollo should have been the exception. Again, they are always mentioned as having led to the birth of children: but there is no such mention in this case, and Apollo has no human progeny. Lastly, the word used does not mean ravished, but seized and carried up. It nearly corresponds with the expression in the case of Ganymede[200],

and it may have been either a case of translation, or one in which the maid was conceived to have been taken for the service of the deity, perhaps at the neighbouring shrine of Delphi.

After the part which the lay of Demodocus assigns to him, the most, perhaps the only, discreditable transaction assigned to Apollo in the poems is the manner in which he disarms and partially disables Patroclus.[112] Nothing can be more wretched than his operations on this occasion. The god comes up to the hero enveloped in cloud; strikes him from behind on the back; and knocks off his armour. I can conceive but one explanation for this singular passage, which appears alike unsatisfactory from a poetical and from a mythological point of view. That explanation I think is to be sought in intense nationality. The main purpose of the poem required the sacrifice of a principal Greek hero: but no genuine Greek hero could be killed by fair means, therefore it was necessary to dispose of him by such as were foul. It is perhaps also worth remark that the audacity of Patroclus in pushing on to the city may perhaps have rendered him punishable (Il. xvi. 698–711).

It is remarkable, however, that the character of each of the two great traditive deities had begun to give way to corruption, and each in the point at which, according to the respective sex, its yielding might have been anticipated. As unchastity is more readily pardoned, according to social usage, in the man, so is deceit in the woman. And in this point the standard had already fallen for Minerva.

Of this we have one most clear indication, in her being commissioned to undertake the charge of inciting Pandarus to a very black act of treachery, the breach of the Pact. So far from being unwilling in this matter, she was even eager[201];

Besides judgment and industrial skill, she gave κέρδεα to Penelope[202]: and she describes herself[203] as excelling among the gods in craft as well as counsel;

With the exception of this initial tendency to de[113]generate on the side of craft, we may say with truth that the highest moral tone, both of speech and action, is reserved for Minerva in particular throughout the poems, whether in the Olympian Court, or in her intercourse with men. Alike in the Iliad and the Odyssey, her counsel, which prevails, undoubtedly also deserves to prevail. She is in both the champion of the righteous cause. And when she states for the second time the case of Ulysses before the assembled gods, it is not now as before his liberality in sacrifice that she pleads, but, as a last resort, she makes bold to urge the bad moral effect which will result, if they discourage virtue by permitting the ruin of this excellent man[204].

2. It is in conformity with the expectations, which the superior morality of Apollo and Minerva tends to raise, that we find them occupying a position such as is accorded to no other deity in the Providential government both of the human mind and will, and likewise of the course of events external to it.

The origin of this position may, as I conceive, be found in the traditions which they inherit, and according to which they would naturally be exhibited as the administrators of the government of the world, on behalf, if I may so speak, of the Godhead.

But there were, among the inborn tendencies of polytheism, two at least which powerfully tended to give to these divinities a position not only associated with that of Jupiter, but on the one hand more palpable and practical, and on the other of higher moral elevation. These were the tendencies which, among the incidents of his supremacy, on the one hand,[114] blessed him with personal repose, and, on the other, endowed him with unbounded appetite. The first, by making Apollo and Minerva, as his organs, the practical governors of the world, tended to increase their importance at the expense of his, and the second gave them a moral title as it were to gain ground upon him. In the time of Homer this process was considerably advanced; so that while they seem to share with Jupiter the office of general direction, which they hold subject to his control, it falls to one of them, to Minerva especially, to conduct the highest of all the divine processes in the administration of moral discipline, and in the exercise of influence over the human soul.

In the war before Troy, what is done by Juno or by Neptune is commonly done in the way of unauthorized, or even of forbidden, interference. In this, Minerva shares: for she has a less perfect conformity of will with that of Jupiter than Apollo, though she has a more profound moral resemblance of character to the ideal, from which the Homeric Jupiter was a depravation. Of the action before Troy, however, as a whole, thus much remains true: that, when the will of Jupiter is to be wrought out in favour of the Greeks, it is done entirely by Minerva, and when in favour of the Trojans it is done entirely by Apollo. Each therefore appears as the proper minister of Jupiter, when willing, for conducting the government of mankind. One of them is always willing: and though the other is not equally acquiescent, still it is the view of the case taken by her, in common with other gods more weighty than numerous, to which Jupiter ultimately gives way. Thus we may discern, graven as it were upon the relation between themselves and Jupiter, the[115] mark which shows that it was originally derived from the office of Him, ‘by whom God made the worlds[205].’ Scarcely ever do we find Homer deviate from the general rule which exhibits them as the ordinary Providence of the world for governing the detail of life. There is, I think, but one part of the Iliad which exhibits to us any considerable assumption of this function by Jupiter himself. It is during the latter part of the day which was to be closed by a sunset fatal to Hector, that, besides sending forth Apollo with the blinding Ægis, he himself descends to such acts of minute interference as breaking the bowstring of Teucer[206].

Regarded from without, these two deities appear to us as frequently receiving from men the ascriptions of Divine Providence.

The idea of Divine Providence is frequently expressed by Homer under the names θεὸς, θεοὶ, ἀθάνατοι, δαίμων. It is also often conveyed by the name Jupiter alone, or by such an expression as ‘Jupiter and the other immortal gods,’ in which he appears at their head. In one place of the Odyssey, though only one, the day being the festival of Apollo, this very extraordinary distinction is assigned to him: and the τις of the Suitors thus places him at the head of the Olympian company[207];

Sometimes mortal men look to one of these deities for success in their enterprises, even without naming Jupiter: sometimes that name is conjoined with one of theirs. Apollo himself, appearing to Hector in the form of Asius his uncle, exhorts that chieftain to[116] attack Patroclus, ‘in the hope that Apollo may give him success[208].’ Presently, Patroclus, dying, attributes Hector’s victory to Jupiter and Apollo, his own death to Apollo and Μοῖρα[209]; Apollo, says Xanthus the immortal horse, slew Patroclus, and gave glory to Hector[210]. This cannot well apply to the direct agency of the god in the matter, as he only disarmed the Greek hero. Again, when Patroclus is slain, Minerva takes no part in the proceedings. When Hector is about to be vanquished Apollo retires, and Minerva straightway appears upon the field[211]. In the Doloneia, Ulysses and Diomed succeed, because Jupiter and Minerva befriend them[212]. Minerva rejoices, when she finds her name invoked first of all the gods[213]: and she instructs Laertes to call upon Jupiter with herself, assuming for her own name the first place;

Agamemnon feels that he is certain to take Troy, if only Jupiter and Minerva will it[215]. Ulysses expects to slay the Suitors ‘by the favour of Jupiter and Minerva[216].’ But in fact, the whole scheme of divine retribution, of which that hero is the organ, was planned by Minerva and not by Jupiter, as is twice declared to us from his own lips[217]. I must not, however, omit to notice one passage of peculiar grandeur, in which Jupiter and Minerva are combined, as joint arbiters of great events. In the Sixteenth Odyssey, Telemachus exhorts his father, amid their gloomy and doubtful prospects, to bethink[117] him of obtaining some ally. He nobly replies as follows: ‘I will tell you, and do you answer me and say, whether Athene with Zeus her father will not suffice for us, or whether I shall study to find some other defender.’ The rejoinder of Telemachus is in the same exalted strain. ‘Yes, these are good, though they be afar off, sitting on high; for they prevail over all others, whether they be men, or whether they be immortal gods[218].’

It should be observed, that they are not the lower and more external forms of providential action which devolve on Minerva, with a reservation of the higher parts to Jupiter. On the contrary, in what we may call external and wholesale Providence, Jupiter is supreme; and in the conflict between Ulysses and the Ithacan rebels, as well as in various passages of the Iliad relating to external action, Jupiter interposes to check her eager spirit. In the last Odyssey she asks his designs. He recommends a pacification. She thereupon exhorts and assists old Laertes to begin the battle. At length a thunderbolt descends from Jupiter, and it falls at Minerva’s feet. She then interposes to make peace[219].

Thus it is in battle and matters of the strong hand: but the higher and deeper forms of providential action appear to be unheeded by Jupiter, and to fall to the lot of these two deities, more particularly of Minerva.

In the Odyssey, one of the Suitors, Amphinomus, better minded than the rest, anticipates evil at an early juncture, and is disposed to take the advice given him by Ulysses, that he should quit the palace, and return home. But he did not even now, says the[118] Poet, escape doom: for Minerva fettered him, that he should fall beneath the hand of Telemachus[220]. And further, she works inwardly on the minds of the Suitors, ‘not suffering them,’ such is the remarkable phrase, ‘to abstain from their biting insolence:’ so that pain might yet more deeply pierce the soul of Ulysses[221]:

This passage is subsequently repeated; and it stands as one of those remarkable Homeric formulæ, which are used with such extraordinary grandeur of effect in the later books of the Odyssey; returning upon the ear like the solemn tolling of a funeral bell.

But the sentiments which the passage contains are in themselves most remarkable, and perhaps only find a parallel in the awful language of Holy Writ; ‘and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he should not let the people go[222].’ They describe at once the doctrine of Providence, and the essential laws of human nature, in their loftiest and severest form. They show us the hardening power of a long continued course of offences against the moral law, which at length converts the most unbounded license into the most absolute slavery, under the iron yoke of habitual depravity; and they likewise exhibit the figure of Deity superintending this terrible, but natural as well as judicial retribution, which is the ultimate and effective sanction of the whole moral code, alike in the earlier and in the later stages of the Divine dispensations. Besides all this, the passage exhibits to us pain administered to the just man, in order to prove his resolution, and steel him, that he[119] may be the fitting minister of divine vengeance. Nor does this process of probation cease here: for the conflict with the Suitors is a prolonged one; and it is prolonged, because Minerva was still making trial of the constancy of Ulysses and his son[223], as of metal in the fire.

It is hard to find even approximations to such a picture in the later heathen literature, particularly after Æschylus: and in Homer no function of this kind is ever attributed to an ordinary deity; nor even to Jupiter, whose place in the government of mankind, if estimated morally, is lower than that of Minerva. I shall have occasion shortly to glance further at this subject.

The higher powers attaching to the character of the great Deliverer of man, besides being more or less obscured in each case, are by the disintegration, with which we may now have become familiar, divided between Apollo and Minerva; so that while in some, and indeed in most, points of view, it is a common character which distinguishes and severs them from the deities of mere invention, in others we must combine the gifts of one with those of the other, in order to get at the entire outline of the ancient tradition.

Thus we have seen, that Minerva exercises higher functions in Providential government, and in the administration of the general laws of our nature, than are wielded even by the Homeric Jupiter. We have also partially considered why it is, that she thus attains a superiority which, undoubtedly, no pristine tradition could while unaltered accord to her. At present I proceed to observe, that we may find a counterpart to this paramount prerogative of Minerva in the gift of fore and[120] after knowledge, possessed most peculiarly and largely by Apollo.

Calchas, Seer of the Greek army, knew what was, what had been, and what was to be, by the gift which Phœbus Apollo had conferred on him[224]. It is the business of this order, who are ministers of Apollo, to interpret all signs and presages to men in virtue of the prerogative of that deity. In the Fifteenth Book, indeed, Apollo inquires of Hector the cause of his evil plight: but he has not yet put off his incognito, as we see from the reply of Hector;

And, while Jupiter has the single and remote oak of Dodona for the delivery of oracles to men, Apollo has already his Pythian temple in the very heart of Greece, and hard by the great highway across the Corinthian gulf, and has likewise a shrine at Delos for that purpose; for we must presume that, when Ulysses[226] stopped to visit Delos on his way home, it was in order to obtain information as to his fate. Thus Apollo appears to stand first of the gods in regard to knowledge of events, as Minerva does with respect to the ordinary government of mankind. Nor does Homer scruple to call this favourite divinity the first of the gods; an expression, however, which he employs with latitude, and which must not be too rigidly construed[227]:

I have already observed that the abstract words θεὸς and θεοὶ, which are generally used by Homer to convey the idea of Providence, are when so used commonly referable in the main to Jupiter, so far as we can con[121]nect them at all with any of the Olympian personages. Sometimes, however, they are determined by the sense of the passage to signify Minerva or Apollo; but I think they never, when they relate to Providential action, mean any other divinity.

It is by no means from any merely national, or even personal predilection, but it is mainly from the lofty standing ground of a Providence, that Minerva follows Ulysses: it is in the same general character that Apollo is made a party in the final crisis of the Odyssey through the introduction of his festival, and of the Bow.

In the Olympian assemblage, it is Minerva who really represents the element of mind and its inborn supremacy over all other forces. She proceeds upon principles, when Juno acts upon partial attachments; and her superiority is so great, as to be wholly inexplicable under the hypothesis which would represent the characters and attributes of all alike as the mere products of invention.

The offices of both these deities, but especially of Minerva, in relation to the guidance of human conduct, are much higher than those of any other deity in their kind. Not only do they both act in the largest and most free manner on the human mind by inward influence, but, if there is any trace in the Homeric system of what may be called spiritual religion, of the tender and intimate relations which have from the first subsisted between the children of faith and their Father in Heaven, it is in Minerva that we must seek for it. It is indeed but a faint resemblance that we shall find; the very application of the word may be disputable. Yet it is something, which appears to show that it was at any rate not of heathen origin: that it is a flower, sickly,[122] because transplanted from a better to a less kindly soil; a shadow, or a wreck of something greater and better, and not a scheme built up from beneath. The mode in which Minerva cares for Ulysses deserves at least thus much of honour. It is a contact so close and intimate, a care so sleepless and so tender, embracing alike the course of events without, and the state of mind within; so affectionate in relation to the person, yet so entirely without the least partiality or caprice; so personal, yet so far from what Holy Scripture calls, with the highest perfection of phrase, respect of persons; so deeply founded on general laws of truth and justice, even if some deviations can be detected, by a jealous eye, in the choice of subsidiary means; that, as it is without any thing like a parallel in the ruder and meaner relations of men with the deities of invention, so it makes its own audible and legitimate claim to a higher origin. The principle at least of inward and sustained intercourse between the Deity and the soul of man is perceptibly represented to us by the literature of Greece in a case like this, and, with the very partial and qualified exception of the δαίμων of Socrates, in such a case only.

Minerva, again, can affect the mind with a friendly bewilderment; as when she paralyses for a moment the understanding of the nurse Euryclea, that she may not give an answer, which would be inconvenient, to the question of Penelope[228]. To her Ulysses looks for the right rearing of his son: and she assures him he need have no anxiety[229]. Even as respects the human person, no powers so large are any where ascribed by Homer to any other deity as those which she exercises, especially in the transformation and re-transformation of Ulysses.

[123]

3. Another very remarkable distinction, or rather cluster of distinctions, attaching to these deities, relates to the manner in which they bear their attributes. Speaking generally, the deities of pure invention are the mere impersonations of a passion, or of an elemental or bodily power, or of a mental gift. They are, in the order of ideas, posterior and ministerial to their own attributes: the mere vehicles for carrying them into movement and action, so that in truth the persons are the embellishments and the attributes of qualities, and not the qualities attributes of persons. To state it at the very highest, the inventive divinity is the steward of his own gifts.

Now the traditive god is their proprietor and master. In the case of the two great traditive deities, Apollo and Minerva, the relation between function and person exactly reverses that which has been described. Here the attribute is something attached to, something in the possession and under the command of, the person; as much so, as the unerring bow of Apollo, or the invincible spear of Minerva. It is not Apollo, but it is the bow of Apollo, which stands in the relation to his office as minister of death, that Vulcan himself bears to the element of fire and to the metallic art, or Mars to the passions and the strong hand of war. If we except the single case of the choice garment of Juno[230], Minerva neither spins nor hammers. Mars always appears fighting, but Apollo does not always appear prophesying or playing the lyre, a function which he seems to perform only in the company of the gods.

The difference is strongly marked in Homer, by the fact that the invented divinities of the second order are identified in common language with their offices. Ares[124] is a synonym for a spear: fire is φλὸξ Ἡφαίστοιο, or even simply Ἥφαιστος[231]: the name Ἠέλιος is absolutely identified with a great natural object: corn is Δημήτερος ἀκτή. But no analogous phrase is applicable to Apollo or to Minerva in Homer. As, with the lapse of time, the will and fancy of man did its work more fully upon the idea of deity, the names of other divinities fell within the circle; and the remembrance of tradition having become fainter and fainter, in the time of Horace the word Minerva could be used for wit (Hor. Sat. II. ii. 3);

But, as is often the case, in this change, external as it is, and apparently slight, we have an outward sign of the profound alterative process, which in Homer’s time had largely begun, and which continued until the incrustation and absorption of religious truth became entire.

4. In conformity with the last-named indication is another, which I have next to notice. The traditive god is capable of receiving new functions; apparently because he is not the servant of the old ones: but the deity who is a mere personal expression for a certain idea, can, as a general rule, have no duty or prerogative beyond its bounds, more than can a counter beyond the thing which it has been chosen to signify. Hence Vulcan, Venus, Mars, Ceres, Bacchus, even Mercury, the god of gain, continue, after as well as in Homer, to be devoted to and identified with their several functions. Only in the case of Mercury, as traffic involves motion from place to place, and the acts of both honest and dishonest persuasion, he is in Homer, and he afterwards continues to be more generally, a messenger and con[125]ductor, a negotiator and a rhetorician, as well as a thief. But even Juno, elevated as she is in station, yet, having been called into Olympus as a vehicle for conveying the idea of maternity, continues to be charged with that office, and is not specifically invested with any other. Such attributions as are implied in the Venus Victrix, or other like dedications, are indeed at variance with these propositions; but they belong to a later and greatly altered state of the old mythology, when it had reached to an immeasurable distance from its source, and had lost the traces even of its own early features. But in the cases of Apollo and Minerva, we perceive that the traditive deity was not thus ‘cabined, cribbed, confined.’

We find the Apollo of Homer the deity of the following particular functions:

1. The lyre and poetry, Il. i. 603.

2. Divination, Il. i. 72.

3. Healing, Il. xvi. 517.

4. The bow, Il. i. 49. ii. 827.

5. Death, either gentle and painless, or not referable to any known cause, such as ordinary disease or wounds.

Besides all this, he may be called, with Pallas, the god of Help in general; and, even within the range of single attributes, he shews an immense diversity. He was the god at once of the severe and simple music of the Dorians[232], and of the rabid ecstasy of the Pythoness.

It is hardly possible that he could have begun his career in the Greek mythology with such an assemblage of functions, not only not united by any obvious tie, but some of them in apparent contradiction with one[126] another. Probably the constitutive ideas of the tradition he represented were fitted out by a gradual process with this outward apparatus of prerogatives; each of which, when taken singly, was in harmony with them. Nor was the operation completed even in the time of Homer, as we see from the curious case of the Sun.

We may, I apprehend, view that case in either of two aspects. We may consider what was historically the progress of the traditions concerning the Sun from their source to their maturity, when they were incorporated into the comprehensive deity of Apollo: or we may examine the moral affinities, which determined the direction and conclusion of their career.

Historically, I presume that the Homeric tradition of the Sun represents a separate and recent importation from a foreign country, which had not as yet been fitted into a place of its own in the Greek mythology. It therefore wanders as it were unappropriated, and hangs in temporary suspense.

The Apollo had already undergone a formative process, and the ornaments of fancy had been embroidered upon the tissue of an ancient tradition. After Homer’s time, the function of animating and governing the Sun was added to the multifarious offices of that deity. As respects himself, this is a proof that his receptiveness was not yet exhausted; that he was independent and disengaged. As respects the Ἠέλιος, this result shows that there was some sympathy or moral gravitation, which led to the absorption of this Homeric divinity in Apollo.

The oscillating condition of that conception in the Homeric poems, and the indeterminate state of its affinities, will be considered in the next Section.

In Homer the deities of invention are, without an[127] exception, limited either to a single function (and this in the great majority of cases), or to functions which are connected, as in the case of Mercury, with one common and central idea, itself such as may belong to a mythological formation. But there is no such idea on which, as on a string, we can possibly hang all the various attributes of Homer’s Apollo: and the case becomes stronger when we find that it is this very god, already (if he be mythological only) quite overstocked, who shows a yet further capacity to absorb into his own person new powers of divinity, which in Homer’s time as yet stood apart from him.

As respects mere multiplicity and diversity of function, the case of Minerva is somewhat less marked than that of Apollo: for it may be practicable to associate together all her offices as they are described in Homer, around one grand combination of Power with Wisdom, as their central point. But even then, when we consider that she supremely administers political society, personal conduct, war, and skilled industry, in fact that the whole intelligence of the world, individual and collective, appears to be under her paramount guidance, besides all the power she exercises over inanimate and animate nature, and even in the innermost sphere of personal action, we perceive that, apart from the elevation and glory of her position, the range of her gifts goes to an extent which, simply as such, could never have been assigned by mere human invention to any deity but the supreme one. The idea of the goddess of Wisdom, conceived as largely as it must be in order to cover all Minerva’s Homeric attributes, leaves no room for the other conceptions necessary to fit out a mythology.

[128]

For what a range do these attributes include!

Minerva is in heaven armed with such power that to none of the gods, except Jove only, and to him scarcely, does she succumb. She is supreme in war, supreme in policy, supreme in art; supreme in prudence and the practical business of life; supreme in manual skill; supreme in or over all contests of force: while at the same time the lower and executory parts of each of these functions, where she drops them, are taken up, as we have seen, by deities far inferior to her, though still of the first or Olympian order. Even physical strength, if combined with skill, is under her supreme management: for it is through her aid that Tydeus wins in the games at Thebes[233], as well as Mecisteus on another occasion, and that Nestor conquers Ereuthalion[234].

When Jupiter admonishes Venus to abandon attempts at war, he adds[235],

There can be no doubt which of these two war-divinities was superior and which subordinate; the exploit of Diomed alone would avail to settle the question: but more direct evidence is to be found in the singular passage which describes Minerva as invested with the charge of chastising Mars, and in the mode after which, in the Fifteenth and Twenty-first Books, she herself recognises and fulfils the obligation of her office. (Il. v. 766. xv. 123–42).

Again, her name is connected with that of Vulcan as to his own special and sole art of working in metals.[129] Twice in the Odyssey the silversmith is introduced in a simile, and he is called a man educated by these two[236];

Only in the arts of tissue and embroidery she seems to have no coadjutor. This probably is on account of their purely feminine character. But generally all the principles and foundations of art are hers. Thus she even teaches mensuration to the carpenter[237]:

As some of her distinctive epithets, like ἐρυσίπτολις, φθισίμβροτος refer especially to war, so she has others which look either mainly or exclusively to the supreme care of political order. Such are ἀλαλκομένηις, λαόσσοος, and ἀγελείη (collector or leader of a people). It is the executory duty that is intrusted to Themis. She is the messenger, who summons the deities, and she both collects and dissolves human assemblies[238]: thus discharging a subordinate function, where Pallas is the presiding goddess. It is probably for this reason that, notwithstanding the strong political spirit of Homer, we find Themis act so secondary a part in Olympus.

Thus Wisdom is the centre, and every thing that flows forth from it is hers, whether in peace or war.

Over and above all these offices, which seem to have a connection with her ordinary attributes, she appears to share in the most recondite and peculiar functions of other deities. She enters into Apollo’s knowledge of the future; for in the Ithacan cave she foretells to Ulysses all that he has yet to suffer. Her power even descends, as we have seen, into the nether world.[130] It seems as if this power in the Shades were the portion falling to her out of the supremacy over death, assigned by tradition to the Messiah. And she has also, if not the jurisdiction over death lodged peculiarly in her hands, a faculty yet more wonderful ascribed to her, that of staying its approach; for Euryclea bids Penelope in her distress pray to Minerva, who can deliver Telemachus from death; that is, can raise him up again:

In truth it seems to be the distinctive character of Minerva in the Homeric theo-mythology, that though she is not the sole deity, yet the very flower of the whole office and work of deity is every where reserved for her: and though she is not directly invested with the external form and body of every gift, yet she has the heart, essence and virtue of them all; insomuch that, practically, no limit can be placed upon her powers and functions. The whole conception is therefore fundamentally at variance with the measured and finite organization of an invented system of religion, and by its own incongruities with that system it proves itself to be an exotic element.

By another path, we arrive at the very same conclusion for Apollo. He too has much of that inwardness and universality of function, which belongs to Minerva, as well as a diversity of offices peculiarly his own. But the argument here admits of being presented in a different form. All his peculiar gifts in Homer are referable to one of three characters, those of Prophet, Deliverer, and Avenger, or Judge. In the first, gifted with all knowledge, he is also the God of Song, which was its vehicle. In the second, he is the hearer of[131] prayer, the healer of wounds, the champion of Heaven itself against rebellion. In the third, he punishes the guilty, and especially administers the one grand penal law of death. All this he does as the organ of one, with whom in will he is perfectly united. The tangled thread runs out without knot or break, when we unravel it by primitive Messianic tradition; because it was fundamental in that tradition, that the person who was the subject of it, should exhibit this many sided union of character and function. But could Deliverance and Destruction, there combined, any where else have been read otherwise than as contradictory to one another, and incapable of being united in the same being?

I know no other principle, on which we can satisfactorily explain either the double character of Apollo as Saviour and as Destroyer, or the apparently miscellaneous character of the attributes which successively attached to him[240]. How strange in itself, that the God, who alone has a peculiar office in bringing death, should also be the God of deliverance from it! The contradiction is harmonized by the supposition of a traditionary origin, but otherwise it obstinately remains a contradiction. Again, look at the nature of this peculiar relation. Death by slow disease was not thought worthy to be referred to the agency of a god, (Od. xi. 200.): the calm death of old age, the sharp and agonizing death of a plague, both these were so, and both are referred to Apollo. How can this be, and what has become of the fine[132] imaginative discrimination of the Greeks, and of their love for logical consistency even in that domain, if we suppose that in all this they were working by pure fancy? Now the difficulty vanishes, if we suppose them to be the mere utterers of the disjointed fragments of pristine tradition, when they had lost the key to their common meaning. For then, He that was to grind his enemies to powder, was likewise to take the sting from death itself, and to make the king of terrors gentle and humane. Again, why was Apollo, thus associated with death, likewise the god of foreknowledge? Why did he, and he only, partake of this privilege with Jupiter? Nay, he enjoyed knowledge apparently in a greater degree; for we are not furnished with any case in which Apollo is grossly deluded like Jupiter by Juno. Why, again, should the god of foreknowledge be the god of medicine? And why should the god of medicine also absorb into himself the divinity of the sun, separate from him in Homer, but afterwards identified with him? Why does his character, as compared with that of the other gods, approach to purity? As the dignity of Minerva is explained by our supposing her to impersonate the ancient traditions of the Wisdom; so in the case of Apollo, we obtain a thread upon which each and all of these otherwise incongruous notions may be hung, if we suppose that he, after a certain severance of those shades of character, which could only find expression for a Greek in the female order, represented the legendary anticipations of a person to come, in whom should be combined all the great offices, in which God the Son is now made known to man as the Light of our paths, the Physician of our diseases, the Judge of our misdeeds, and the Conqueror and disarmer, but not yet abolisher, of death?

[133]

Again, as these great deities are anomalies in themselves, so are they likewise in the Olympian order.

If we were to remove Minerva and Apollo from Olympus, we should indeed take away the breadth and boldness of its sublimity, but we should add greatly to its mere symmetry: especially as some other minor figures would for the same reasons follow. There would then remain there the polygamous monarch of the skies, with his chief and secondary wives, the ranks of earth supplying him from time to time with further satisfaction for his passions; and in his various children or companions would be represented the various essential functions, as they were then estimated, of an organized community. Themis would represent policy, Mercury gain, the Muses song, and with it all knowledge; Vulcan, manual skill; Mars, the soldier; Paieon, the surgeon; Venus, that relaxed relation of the sexes to which mankind has ever leaned. For corn there would be Demeter or Ceres, and for wine, Dionysus or Bacchus. I grant that there is here inserted one single ingredient not known to the Homeric Olympus. His Muses are not stated to have any foreknowledge. But, after allowing for this trifling exception, I think it remains clear that though the ethics and the poetry of that region would be fatally damaged by the removal of Apollo and Minerva, its mere statistics might be visibly improved.

The discussions which have arisen upon the etymology of the name Apollo, are in themselves significant of the difficulty of accounting for his origin mythologically. Müller mentions the derivation from the sun (Ἠϝέλιος, ΑΠέλιος) in order to reject it; as he repudiates (and very justly) the whole theory, which treats this deity as an elemental power. Passing over others as unworthy of serious notice, he rejects ἀπόλλυμι[241], as[134] ‘founded on a partial and occasional attribute of the god,’ and adopts ἀπέλλων the averter (sc. of evil) or defender, as most expressive of his general function: in other words, though he does not go on to say so, he is the darkened shadow of the Saviour. But the really characteristic name of Apollo he conceives to be Φοῖβος, the bright and clear[242]. Clemens Alexandrinus, in the Stromata, fancifully derives the name from ἀ privative, and πόλλων, and interprets the name as signifying the negation of plurality, and thus the unity of the Godhead[243].

The name of Athene would appear to be formed by transposition from the Egyptian Neith[244], to whom, according to ancient inscriptions, very high and comprehensive dignities were assigned. It does not follow that we are to regard the Athene of Homer as an Egyptian divinity; though an Egyptian name may have been the centre, around which gathered the remarkable and even august fragments of the Messianic traditions that we have found represented in her.

In quitting a subject of so much importance, I will now endeavour to sum up, in the most concise form of which it is susceptible, the evidence to be drawn from Homer of the different position held by Apollo and Minerva from that of the other Olympian deities.

I. Points of distinction in their relations to the Olympian Court and its members.

1. The dignity accorded to them is quite out of[135] keeping with their rank, as belonging to the junior generation of the mythological family, which was, as such, inferior in rank and power to the senior one[245].

2. They bear visible marks, even in the mythological order, of an antiquity greater than that of the other deities in general.

3. The external administration, or subordinate parts of the functions assigned to them in the mythological system, are commonly devolved upon another set of deities, here called Secondaries.

4. A peculiar dignity, in the nature of precedence, is accorded especially to Minerva.

5. We have next noted the singular union of Apollo with Jupiter in will and affection, and the relation of both to him, as the proper and regular ministers of the supreme dispensations of heaven, apart from the partial and individual action of particular gods.

6. The defence of heaven against rebellion is dimly recorded to have been the act of Apollo; and indispensable assistance was also rendered on another occasion to Jupiter by Minerva.

7. These great divinities are never baffled, disgraced, or worsted in any transaction between themselves and any other deity; nor ever exhibited by the Poet in a disadvantageous or disparaging position.

II. Points of distinction in their terrestrial relations and their conditions of physical existence.

1. They were known by men to be entitled, either alone, or in common with Jupiter only, to a peculiar reverence or honour.

2. They were the objects of worship in all parts of the Homeric world.

3. Neither of them are bound to any local residence[136] in particular; and for Apollo there is no trace of any such residence at all.

4. They are both the objects, Minerva more particularly, of general invocation and prayer, irrespective of place and circumstances.

5. They are exempted from the chief physical limitations, as of time, place, and perceptive organs, which are generally imposed upon the deities of invention.

6. They have a separate and independent power to punish those who offend them, without any need of an appeal to Jupiter, or to the Olympian Court.

7. They are admitted, exclusively, or in common with Juno only, to a share in certain peculiar mythological functions of Jupiter himself.

8. They have a power of making revelations to men, through signs or portents significant of the future.

9. They have a general power of extraordinary or miraculous action upon nature, to which scarcely any other deity approaches.

10. The peculiar and mysterious relation of Apollo, with his sister Diana, to death, cannot be understood or accounted for from mythological data.

11. In the exercise of their power over nature, Minerva and Apollo are, more than other deities, exempt from the need of resort to symbolic actions by way of cooperative means.

III. Points of distinction with regard to their personal characters.

1. Their moral tone is far superior to that of the Olympian Court in general.

2. They are both peculiarly associated with Jupiter in the original administration of Providential functions, and are particularly concerned with the highest, most ethical, and most inward parts of them.

[137]

3. Their relation to their mythological attributes is different in kind from that of the ordinary Olympian divinities.

4. They have a number and range of attributes quite without parallel in the Olympian system: and yet with this a capacity of receiving new ones.

5. Both in themselves, and in reference to that system, the whole conception of Apollo and Minerva, if it be viewed mythologically, is full of inexplicable anomaly: and the only solution to be found is in the recognition of the traditional basis, on which the Homeric representations of them must be founded.

Although what I have built upon this evidence may be termed an hypothesis, the whole of the evidence itself is circumstantial: and I feel that the effect of it is not only to draw a broad line, but almost to place an impassable gulf, between such divinities as the Homeric Minerva and Apollo, on the one hand, and the Homeric Mars, Venus, Vulcan, and Mercury on the other. The differences between them are, however, graduated and shaded off by the interposition, first, of the minor traditive deities, such as Latona and Diana; and, secondly, of the greatest among the Olympian personages chiefly or wholly mythological, such as Neptune and Juno: and it is probably this graduation, running through the Olympian body, which has prevented our duly appreciating the immense interval that lies between its extremes.

It is to the indefatigable students of Germany that we, the less laborious English, are, along with the rest of the world, indebted for what may be called the systematic treatment of the Homeric poems with respect to the facts they contain. To amass evidence is one thing; to penetrate into its heart and spirit, is[138] another. The former without the latter is insufficient; but the former is to the latter an indispensable preliminary. The works of Homer should be viewed, and their testimony registered, like the phenomena of a geological period: so unencumbered is he with speculation or the bias of opinion; so true, clear, direct, and unmixed is his exhibition of historical and moral fact. This method of investigation, honestly pursued, carries with it an adequate and a self-acting provision for the correction of its own errors.

Since I commenced the examination of the question now before us, there has appeared the second edition of a work, which I believe to be the latest compendium of what may be called the facts of the Homeric poems, by J. B. Friedreich. I find that this writer has been struck by the overpowering evidence of the vestiges of an early revelation in the characters of the Homeric Minerva and Apollo[246]. He observes the separate character of their relations both to Jupiter and to mankind; assigns to them an unbounded power over all events and the whole of human life; and says, ‘This Triad of Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, bears an unmistakeable analogy to the Christian Trinity, of Father, Holy Ghost, and Son: Jupiter answering to God the Father, Athene to the Holy Ghost, and Apollo to the Son of God, the Declarer of the will of His Heavenly Father: like as, furthermore, the early Christians have largely compared Christ with Apollo.’

In this representation I find a fundamental agreement with the views expressed in the present work.[139] But I venture to think that the particular mode of the relation between the Homeric and the primitive tradition, which has been set forth in this work, is more natural and probable than that asserted by Friedreich. As it has been here represented, we are to consider the primitive tradition as disintegrated and subdivided. First, that of the Redeemer is severed from that of the Holy Trinity. Next, its two aspects of the Wisdom and the Messiah, become two impersonations. And then the impersonation which represents the tradition properly Messianic, is itself again subjected to duplication. As the result of this threefold operation, we have—

1. The trine Kronid brotherhood.

2. Minerva and Apollo.

3. Apollo and Diana.

The principle of the severance always being, to get rid of some difficulty, encountered by the human apprehension in embracing the integral tradition.

The difficulty at the first step was to reconcile equality, or what the Christian dogma more profoundly terms consubstantiality, with a ministerial manifestation.

The difficulty at the second step probably was to combine in one impersonation two groups of images, the one (the Wisdom), relating to function that dwells purely in the Godhead; the other, to function containing the element of humanity; it was, in short, to grasp the doctrine, ‘One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.’

The difficulty at the third step apparently was, as has been stated, to associate the ideal of a strict and severe chastity with any but a female nature.

There is no question now before us as to Apollo: the point at issue is, whether we are to regard the[140] Athene, or Minerva, of Homer as derived from traditions of the Logos, or from traditions of the Holy Spirit.

I urge the former, for the following reasons:

1. Setting aside what was involved in the doctrine of a Trinity (which is otherwise represented), we have no evidence that there was any such substantive body of primitive tradition respecting the Holy Spirit, as would be likely to form the nucleus of a separate mythological impersonation, and especially of one endowed with such comprehensiveness, solidity, and activity of function as Minerva. Whereas it appears that there was that kind of substantive tradition with respect to the Λόγος, the Word or Wisdom of God.

2. In the order of primitive tradition, the Son of God would precede the Holy Spirit, as is the case in the order of the Christian dogma; and the fragments of such tradition, when carried into mythology, would preserve and probably exaggerate, at any rate would not invert, the relation. But in the Homeric mythology, Minerva has a decided practical precedence over Apollo, and above all, when they come into collision, it is Apollo that yields, as in the incidents of the Seventh and Tenth Iliads, and in the general issue of the Trojan war.

3. But this difference is just what might be expected to follow, upon the natural divergence of the two traditions of the Word and the Incarnate Messiah respectively. The latter, as more human, would take rank after the former as more Divine.

4. We have also found a greater tendency on the part of Minerva to act independently of Jupiter. This is no unnatural diversion from the tradition of the Λόγος, but it would be hard to connect ideally with[141] the Holy Spirit, who has not, in the ancient tradition, the same amount or kind of separate development as the Messiah.

The functions of Apollo, and the nature, extent, and history of his worship have been investigated at great length by Müller, in the Second Book of his learned and able History and Antiquities of the Doric race. He has shown the immense importance of this deity in Greek history and religion, reaching every where, and embracing every object and purpose. He recognises the apparent antagonism subsisting among his infinitely varied functions; which he makes elaborate and ingenious, but I think necessarily insufficient, efforts to trace ideally to an union of origin within the mythological system. His hypothesis, that the worship of Apollo was wholly due to Dorian influence, requires the support of the most violently strained assumptions; as for example, that its prevalence, apparently at all points, in Troas is to be accounted for by Cretan influences there, which, at the most, tradition would only warrant us in believing to have existed in a very contracted form, and with influence altogether secondary. Altogether, this sheer Dorianism of Apollo is at variance with the whole spirit and effect of the Homeric testimony; for in Homer the Dorians are insignificant and undeveloped, while the power and worship of Apollo had attained, as we have seen, to an extraordinary height, and to the very broadest range. Again, Müller[247] acknowledges the great difficulty of the dualism presented to us by the figures, concurring as they do in such remarkable functions, of Apollo and Diana: a difficulty, which he seems to think incapable of full[142] explanation. While attaching great value to his treatise, I have the less hesitation in adopting conclusions that he does not authorize, because his work is based in some degree upon that (as I presume to think) defective mode of appreciation of the Homeric as compared with the later traditions, against which I have ventured to protest, and from the consequences of which it is one of my main objects to effect at least a partial escape.

It will have appeared from this general account of the traditive characters of Apollo and Minerva, that the former represented the tradition of a person, and the latter of an idea. Accordingly, the original character of Apollo, which he bore during the infancy of the mythical system, is in many points the more significantly marked; as for example, by his share in the War with the Giants, and by his mysterious relation to Death.

But it was natural that, in the course of time, as tradition in general grew weaker with the increasing distance from its source, and as the inventive system enlarged its development, those particular traditions, which were self-explained by having their root in an intelligible idea, should hold their ground much better than such as had become mythical and arbitrary by having lost their key. The traditional Minerva had an anchorage in the great function of Wisdom; the traditional Apollo had no support equal to this in breadth and depth; and his attributes, the band of revelation being removed, lost their harmony and could ill be held together.

Accordingly we find that in the later ages of the mythology Apollo had lost much of what was transcendant in his importance, but that Minerva retained her full rank. One and the same Ode of Horace supplies[143] the proof of both. He places Apollo on a level not only with Diana, but with Bacchus[248]:

But, after having described the supreme and transcendant dignity of Jupiter, he at once proceeds to place Pallas before every other deity without exception[249]:

I will now pass on to consider the remaining vestiges of original tradition perceivable in Homer.

Like the Moon to the Sun, an analogy maintained by their respective assumption of the two characters in the later mythology, Diana is a reflection, and in most respects a faint reflection, of Apollo.

She was worshipped, says Müller[250], in the character of ‘as it were a part of the same deity.’ He collects and reviews, from the whole circle of Greek history and mythology, the points of coincidence between them: and notices particularly, that like him she is both λυκεία and οὐλία, both the destroyer and the preserver; that she administers her office as angel of Death, sometimes in wrath and sometimes without it; and that her name Artemis, meaning, as he conceives, healthy and uninjured, is in close correspondence with those of Phœbus Apollo.

[144]

All this is in conformity with what we gather from the poems of Homer: but those poems have spared us many of the confused and perplexing phenomena, which are presented by the later mythology.

One side of the divided Messianic tradition, its purity, is best represented in Diana, through her severe and spotless chastity. Its force and scope are much more largely developed in Apollo. But this high purity, and the double aspect of the ministry of Death, appear to be of themselves sufficient to stamp her beyond mistake with a traditionary origin. Small resemblances, too, as well as great ones, are traceable in Homer between her and Apollo, such as her golden throne and golden distaff, which may be compared to his golden sword, the sword of primeval light: and even these minor correspondences may in their own degree bear witness to the original and integral shape of the tradition.

If she is thus clothed in a sort of lunar light, and is in the main a reflection of Apollo upon earth, such we may probably consider Persephone in the Shades[251].

Let us, however, consider what can be gathered from Homer as to the attributes of Diana.

This deity would appear to have been, according to him, a deity of universal worship. We may perhaps safely infer thus much from the single fact of her ministry of Death. She is also represented as extending her agency to Troy, where she taught Scamandrius to hunt[252]; probably to Crete, in the case of the daughters of Pandareos; she is invoked in Ithaca by Penelope, puts Ariadne to death in Dia, exercises a similar function for the women in Συρίη, sends the Calydonian boar for a defect of homage in Ætolia, and is fami[145]liarly mentioned in connection with the Greeks generally, while her place in the Theomachy may suffice to mark her as also a Pelasgian goddess. In most points, however, she partakes largely, as might be expected, of the characteristics of the ordinary deities of invention. Had she repeated all the chief notes of Apollo, and with any thing like an equal force, the question of traditional origin would perhaps have been more doubtful than it now is.

When she is invoked by Penelope, it is in connection with her share of the special ministry of death[253]. She is nowhere else made the object of prayer.

It is her deep resentment at the omission of sacrifice which provokes her to send the Calydonian boar[254]. In the Fifth Iliad, she and her mother Latona appear as deities purely subsidiary to Apollo. He deposits Æneas in his temple: there, not in a temple of their own, Latona and Diana attend upon and heal him[255].

In the Theomachy, she is treated with the same ignominy as Mars and Venus, but by Juno instead of Minerva. Her railing address to Apollo is conceived in the lower and not in the higher spirit (Il. xxi. 472–7).

She never assumes a general power, either over man in mind or body, or over outward nature.

She has no share in the general movement of either poem, and is introduced in the great majority of instances by way of allusion only.

Her near relation to Apollo gives a certain grandeur to her position: but the inventive elements of the representation greatly obscure and even partially overbear the traditional.

Her side in the Trojan war is to be explained by[146] her relation to Apollo. In all other points she seems to be a goddess of associations more properly Greek, perhaps in consequence of their greater addiction to hunting.

In treating the Homeric Diana as a personage principally ancillary to Apollo, and equipped with reflections, or stray fragments, of prerogatives chiefly belonging to him, I do not attempt to foreclose the question what may have been the origin of her name, or whether she may be connected with any mythological original in the religions of the East or of Egypt.

Döllinger conceives that the union of Diana with Apollo was Greek, and that they were not originally in relation with one another; while he justly observes, that this deity, like Apollo, has a great and inexplicable diversity of function. She, like other deities of Greece, has been thought to represent the Astarte of the Syrians. Again, Herodotus[256] has given us most curious information respecting the gods of the Scythians, whom we have found to be related to the Pelasgi. They worship, he states, the Celestial Venus under the name of Artimpasa. This name, it has been ingeniously conjectured[257], is composed (1) of the name Mitra, which the Persians gave to Venus[258], and which reversed becomes Artim, and (2) of the Sanscrit Bhas, meaning shine, and thus corresponding with the Φοῖβος of Apollo, and the Γλαυκῶπις of Pallas: all of them being, as it were, shreds of the tradition fully represented in the Shechinah of the Jews, and the ‘Light’ of Saint John. This also corresponds with the cluster of golden epithets, the χρυσηλάκατος, χρυσήνιος,[147] and χρυσόθρονος, which Homer applies to Diana: and the very feebleness of Diana in the Theomachy suggests that the Eastern prototype of Venus, the Mitra of the Persians, was originally no more than a degenerate derivation from a higher tradition, which found a more natural, but still only a partial, expression in the majestic and chaste, as well as beautiful, Artemis.

We have next to consider the Homeric delineation of Latona, the mother of Apollo and of Diana.

It is scarcely possible to avoid being struck, on turning to this portraiture, with the contrast between the slightness of the outline and the real dignity of the features and position. This contrast, like the greater one relating to Apollo, seems to have its key in the traditional origin of the representation: and there is no one Homeric deity, whose case, when fully considered, can afford a more marked testimony to the hypothesis of a strong element of traditive theology in the religious system of the Poems.

Why has she a position so different from that of any other wife or concubine of Jupiter: such, for example, as Dione or Demeter?

Why is it so much elevated above that of any among them, except only Juno?

How comes she to have a son so incomparably superior in rank, in power, and in the affections of his father, to any child of Juno herself, the πρεσβὰ θεά?

Why, being thus great, is she wholly unfurnished with attributes or functions, either general or specific?

Why, on the other hand, does so much obscurity hang about her origin, and what are we to say as to her divinity, in answer to the question, whether it was original or acquired?

The name of Latona appears to have been a per[148]petual puzzle to the expounders of Greek mythology. It is taken to mean Night, which, combined with Day, produces the Sun[259]; or ‘obscure,’ or ‘concealed,’ as that from which issues the visible deity, the Sun in heaven. But surely these explanations can have no bearing upon the Homeric mythology, where it is matter of question even whether Apollo and the Sun have any mutual relations at all, and where it is quite clear that the personality of Apollo is far older and riper, as well as far higher and more comprehensive; which implies of necessity, that Latona must have been known, and must have held her place, quite apart from any relation to the Sun. An explanation of this kind is simply an indication, that the problem has not yet been solved.

But now, if we presume Apollo to be the representative of the Messianic tradition, that the Seed of the woman should crush the serpent’s head, the state of the case is entirely changed. And the explanation of the name in particular, instead of being hopeless, becomes easy, and even auxiliary to the general hypothesis. For now Latona stands in the tradition as a person anterior to the whole Olympian mythology: a person for whose extraction that mythology does not and ought not to account. Its Jupiter and Juno are referred to a parentage, that of Κρόνος and Ῥέα, and through these perhaps afresh to Oceanus and Tethys as their ultimate source. Everything, again, that is connected with the genesis of the Olympian system, properly so called, is made to conform to anthropomorphous ideas: but here are two of its deities, one of them among its very greatest, who have a mother that forms part of the earliest known tradition respecting them, while[149] that mother is herself without an origin. What could be more natural, than that a name should fasten itself upon her, simply importing that, illustrious as was her motherhood, the fountain-head of her own life and destiny was lost in oblivion? For it lay beyond the point from which all mythical knowledge was held to spring. A certain motherhood was known of her, and that was all.

Again, the mother of the Deliverer was to be a woman. But in the Greek mythology it could not be, that a woman should stand as the giver of life to one of its most august divinities. Yet the woman of the tradition could not be transferred from the tradition as a great substantive personage into the Greek mythology, because in the tradition she stood an unembellished figure, wholly without attributes. Hence invention would, on taking over the tradition, be at fault; and could not but present to us an ambiguous and inconsistent picture, such as now stands before us in the Latona of Homer.

Let us next set forth the facts regarding Latona, as they stand in the poems.

In the first place, then, her divinity is beyond all doubt; for she is one of those deities who take part in the war[260], and this although, almost alone among them, she has no office whatever to associate her with it, and no part to play in the conduct of it. She ranges herself on the side of the Trojans; apparently, like Diana, drawn in that direction by Apollo, the central and really important figure of the group. While Venus, who appears in the first enumeration, is omitted in the array[261] of deities for action, Latona has Mercury assigned to her for an antagonist. And, when the crisis[150] comes, we observe in her case a marked instance of that care, with which Homer preserves her, like the greater traditive deities, from anything like discredit. Mercury declines the combat, on the ground that it is hard to fight against the wives of Jupiter; and tells her she is at liberty to announce that she has vanquished him. Whence has this pale and colourless figure such very high honour so jealously asserted for her[262]?

When Niobe, proud of her numerous offspring, taunts Latona as the mother of only two children, summary and awful punishment follows: the children are slain, the unhappy mother is turned to stone. Yet she herself takes no part in the vengeance, a fact remarkably in harmony with her place as defined by the primitive tradition of Holy Scripture. Of the three or four suffering figures in the Shades, only one has the cause of his punishment stated, and it is much the severest of all. It is Tityus, whose entrails are continually devoured by vultures, because he offered violence to Latona as she was going to the Pythian temple of her son.

When, in the Fourteenth Iliad, Jupiter recites the mothers of certain of his offspring, beginning with women and ending with goddesses, Latona appears in the latter category, after Ceres and before Juno: and, as the scale is an ascending one, she must clearly rank before the first and next to the last named deity.

There are, however, various indications that this had not always been so: but that, according to original tradition, she had been of the human order, and had undergone a sort of translation into the ranks of the Immortals.

The first of these is the taunt of Niobe. The boast[151] of richer fecundity is natural in a human mother’s mouth, as against another mother reputed to be human[263]; but entirely strange and absurd, if we suppose it directed against a deity. Dione and Demeter have but one child each. Nor is there a marked difference in this respect between the Latona and the Juno of Homer; for Juno’s children are but two, or at most three[264].

Next, we can account for the origin and parentage of all the great Olympian deities of Homer, with the single exception of Latona. She is no one’s daughter, no one’s sister: but is a wife (that also equivocally), and a mother only. When, indeed, we part company with Homer, the scene changes, and a father is found for her in the Hymns: she is the daughter, according to one reading, of Saturn,

In Hesiod she is the daughter of a Titan: but even here she retains this mark of a most ancient tradition, that she is said to have been married to Jupiter before the great Juno[266]: though she comes after Metis, or Wisdom, the oldest of all his consorts; an order not at variance with the traditional ideas.

But there must have been some cause or process that brought her into the Homeric Olympus, an anomaly alike among mortals and Immortals. What could it have been, except an illustrious maternity, to account for her elevation, and at the same time her original womanhood to account for the blank in the[152] descent and consanguinity, and for her total want of attributes?

It must be granted that there is a certain degree of resemblance between Latona and Dione: turning mainly upon this, that Dione seems to be in Olympus without either dignity or power, and simply as the vehicle, through which her daughter Venus was brought into existence. But then the want of basis is in her case immediately made evident by results. Even in Homer she is not among the gods of the Theomachy; nor is she named among the mothers in the Fourteenth Book; and Hesiod, though she is invoked in the suspected Proem of his Theogony, entirely passes her over in the body of it, and furnishes Venus with another origin. She remains all but a cipher ever after.

Again, the epithets attached to Latona are such as to leave her, and her alone among all deities of such dignity, wholly functionless, and also wholly inactive. I distinguish the two, because Juno has only a limited function, but she has power, and an immense activity. Latona has beauty and majesty, qualities which appertain to every goddess as such: she is καλλιπάρῃος, εὐπλόκαμος, καλλιπλόκαμος, χρυσοπλόκαμος, ἠΰκομος, κυδρὴ, πότνια, and ἐρικύδης: and we may observe in the more personal portion of these epithets how Homer, with his usual skill, has avoided placing her in any kind of rivalry with Juno, who is usually praised for her eyes and arms, not her cheeks and hair. But they all leave her void of purpose; and she must stand as a sheer anomaly, unless there is some better explanation of her being and place in mythology, than mythology itself can supply.

Even in the later tradition, Latona never gains a definite office: she remains all along without any[153] meaning or purpose intrinsic to herself: she shines only in the reflected glory of her offspring, and is commonly worshipped only in union with them[267]. If therefore it has been shown, that the mythological character of Apollo is clearly the vehicle of the ancient tradition, known to us in the Book of Genesis, respecting the Seed of the woman, it seems plain that in Latona is represented the woman from whom that Seed was to spring.

I do not presume to enter into the question whether we ought to consider that the Latona of Homer represents the Blessed Virgin, who was divinely elected to be the actual mother of our Lord; or rather our ancient mother Eve, whose seed He was also in a peculiar sense to be.

So far as personal application is concerned, the same arguments might be used upon the subject, as upon the interpretation of the original promise recorded in Scripture: and the question is one rather of the interpretation of Scripture, than of Homer. The relation which appears to me to be proved from the text of the poems, is between the deity called Latona and the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis. As to all beyond this, I should suppose it perhaps more just to regard her as a typical person, exhibiting through womanhood the truth of our Blessed Lord’s humanity, than as the mere representative of any individual personage.

Backward as is the position of Latona in the practical religion of Homer, the universal recognition of the deity is sufficiently established: on the one hand by her place among the deities of the Trojan party; on the other, by the punishment of Niobe for an offence against her either in Greece, or at the least in a re[154]cognised Greek legend; by the punishment of Tityus; and by her inclusion in the Catalogue of the Fourteenth Iliad.

To this very remarkable deity no utterance of any kind is ever ascribed by Homer, and with, I think, three small exceptions, nothing of personal and individual action. Even when she takes her place among the deities in the array of battle, it is not said that she stood up against Mercury, but simply that Mercury stood up against her[268].

The three cases are as follows. First, when he makes over to her the victory in waiving the fight, she offers no reply; but simply picks up her daughter Diana’s bow and arrows, and goes after her, apparently with the intention of offering her comfort. The next action[269] attributed to her is this: that when Apollo[270] has carried the bruised and stunned Æneas into his temple on Pergamus, Latona and Diana tend him there. Thus both of these actions exhibit her in strict ideal subordination, so to speak, to one of her children, as though by tradition she existed only for them. But the second is especially remarkable, and alike illustrative of the traditional basis of the Mother and of the Son.

In the first place, as it appears to me, there can hardly be a circumstance more singular, according to the principles of the Greek mythology, than that any one deity should be introduced as acting, not in her own temple, but in the temple of another. Such however is here the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo.

Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him.[155] They do not enter into the fray: it is he who has been there, and who, having deposited Æneas, immediately prosecutes the affairs of the battle-field, while they, as his satellites, give effect to his purpose in setting about the restoration of the disabled warrior.

Lastly, the significance of this action is raised to the highest point, when we recollect that this is a mother executing the design of her son. Latona’s action in the Twenty-first Book, like that of Dione with Venus, can be accounted for by her maternal character. But there is no case in the Homeric poems besides this, where we see a parent-god thus acting ministerially in the execution of the plans of his or her offspring. The primeval tradition, once admitted as the basis of the mythological group, furnishes us with the key to what would otherwise be another great anomaly.

The third case is in entire harmony with the other two. Tityus, the son of Earth, is tortured in the nether world for having offered violence to Latona, and the crime was committed when she was on her way through Panopeus to Delphi. This was probably the route from Delos to that place: so that again the poet seems to represent Latona in close but subordinate connection with her son, by making her travel between the seats of his two already famous oracles.

Apollo, then, with Latona and Diana, forms a group; and the origin of the combination is to be sought in primitive tradition. It is not necessary to show that the personages thus associated maintained their association in all the religions of the East. I admit that we are not to suppose, that the idea of this combination passed direct from the patriarchs into Greece. The most natural place in which to seek for traces of it would be, in the religion of the Persians, anterior to the[156] time of Homer. Unfortunately we have no accounts of it at any such date. But our failing to find these three deities in a company, or to find any germ which might have been developed into that company, in accounts later by probably five or six centuries at least, raises no presumption whatever against the hypothesis that we may owe the representation, as it stands in Homer, to historical derivation through the forefathers of the Hellic tribes, from some such period as that when, for example, Abraham dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees[271].

Iris, the messenger goddess, the last, and also by much the least important of the personages to whom I ascribe a traditive origin, is perhaps not the least clear in her title to it.

Her title to rank as one of the deities of the ordinary Olympian assemblage is not subject to doubt. It depends partly on the fact that she is always at hand there. But it is established more distinctly still by the passage, which represents her as carrying to the palace of Zephyr the prayer of Achilles. She finds the Winds engaged in a banquet, and they eagerly solicit her to sit and feast with them. She answers them, like one desirous to escape from second-rate into first-rate company, to the effect that she has not time: the Ethiopians are just about supplying the greater gods with a banquet from their hecatombs; and she must repair to that quarter accordingly, as otherwise she will lose her share of the offerings[272].

With respect to her position generally, we have no mark of her being foreign; and all the traditive deities, it may be observed, are sufficiently, though not exclusively national. Again, we have no mark of her being[157] recent; on the contrary, she is without parents, and this, though not conclusive, is a sign to the opposite effect.

Iris has no original action whatever, but is simply a willing servant of other deities; nor does she disdain spontaneously to officiate on behalf of a distinguished human object of their favour, like Achilles[273]. Only once have we an account of her bringing an order without the name of the sender: it is when she appears to Helen, and exhorts her to repair to the Wall[274]. She is not, however, said even in this place to act on her own account; and we ought probably to understand that, according to the general rule, she comes from Jupiter. It is added, that she inspired Helen with a longing sentiment towards her former husband and country, but this, as is most likely, is meant simply to describe the effect of her words in the ordinary manner of their operation on the understanding. This ancillary character of Iris is exactly what she would bear, if her origin really lay in the primitive tradition of the rainbow.

But what seems decisively to establish her relation to that tradition is, that she is firmly connected in Homer with two things that have in themselves no connection whatever, and between which that ancient tradition is the only link.

In the first place, her identity of name is the witness to her original connection with the rainbow[275]: which, however, as a standing and ordinary phenomenon of nature, did not bear, apart from positive appointment, in any manner the character of a messenger: and hence we find that by disintegration the two ideas had been entirely separated before the time of Homer, and the[158] name itself is the only remaining witness in the poems to their having been at some former period associated. The function of the messenger was kept in action by the occasions of the Olympian family and polity. In this manner, as the stronger of the two ideas, it held its ground, and took possession of the personal Iris, while the rainbow, though still conceived of as a sign to mortals[276], appears to have been regarded as separate.

Of the character of the messenger we find that Iris had so completely become the model, that her name, only modified into Iros, is given to Arnæus, the ribald and burly beggar of the Odyssey, only because he was a go-between, or errand-carrier:

The hypothesis, then, of traditional origin is the key, and the only key, to the position of the Homeric Iris.

Before quitting the precinct of the primeval tradition discoverable in Homer, we have yet one very remarkable group of impersonations to consider, that in which the goddess Ἄτη is the leading figure. Commonly regarded as meaning Mischief, the word is not capable of being fully rendered in English: but Guile is its primary idea, in the train of which come the sister notions of Folly and Calamity.

Ἄτη both wishes and suggests all ill to mortals; but she does not seem in Homer to have any power of injuring them, except through channels, which have been wholly or partially opened to her by their own volition.

The Ἄτη of the later Greeks is Calamity simply, with a shadow of Destiny hanging in the distance; as in the magnificent figure of the lion’s cub in Æschylus[278].[159] But the word never bears in Homer the sense of calamity coming simply from without. This is evident even from the large and general description, where she appears in company with the Λιταί[279]. Vigorous and nimble, she ranges over the whole earth for mischief. After her, slowly lag the Prayers or Λιταὶ, honoured however in being, like her, daughters of Jupiter. These are limping, decrepit, and unable to see straight before them. The leading idea of Ἄτη is not force, but cunning. She is the power that tempts and misleads men to their own cost or ruin, as they afterwards find out. Nay, she tempts the deity also: for she beguiles even Jupiter himself[280] when Hercules is about to be born, and induces him thoughtlessly to promise what will, through Juno’s craft, overturn his own dearly cherished plans. For this excess of daring, however, she herself suffers. Jupiter seizes her by the hair, and hurls her from Olympus, apparently her native seat. Thenceforward she can only exercise her function among men; who, when they have yielded to the seduction, and tasted the ashes under the golden fruit, at length set about repentance or prayer:

Now though the impersonation of Atè in Homer is one of the indeterminate class, it is surely a mistake to treat it as representing the mere poetical incorporation of an abstract idea. On the contrary, we seem to find in it the old tradition of the Evil One as the Tempter; and it may be said that the word Temptress would best represent the Homeric idea of Ἄτη. In this sense it will supply a consistent meaning to the fine passage in the speech of Phœnix: for we are swift, so says the Poet, to[160] fall into temptation, and to offend, ingenious only in not seeing our fault, and covering it with excuses: but slow, and like the half-hearted, decrepit Λιταί, when we have to make our entreaties for pardon, and to think of restitution and amendment. Yet as even the gods listen to their entreaties, ‘so,’ says Phœnix, ‘shouldst thou, O Achilles: and if thou dost not, then mayest yet thyself fall.’ But if Ἄτη meant only misfortune, the passage loses all its harmony, and even becomes absurd; for surely none will say that men are slow to discern adversity, or to offer petitions, wherever they have a prospect of being heard, for relief from it.

There is no passage which appears to me more characteristic of the true distinctive character of the Homeric Ἄτη, than that in which Dolon confesses his folly[282]:

Here we have Hector, the tempter: ἄται, the temptation: νόος, the sound mind, from which temptation diverted the self-duped simpleton: ἤγαγεν, expressive of the medium, namely, through volition, and not by force.

The elements combined in the idea of the Homeric Ἄτη, and the conditions of her action, may be presented together as follows:

1. She takes the reins of the understanding and conduct of a man.

2. She effects this not by force from without, but through the medium of his own will and inward consent, whether unconscious or express.

3. Under her dominion he commits offences against the moral law, or the law of prudence.

[161]

4. These offences are followed by his retributive sufferings.

The function of the Tempter is here represented with great precision; but two essential variations have come to be perceptible in the idea taken as a whole.

The first, that this Ἄτη is herself sometimes prompted or sent by others, as by Ἐρίνυς, (Od. xv. 234,) or by her with Ζεὺς and Μοῖρα, as in Il. xix. 87. And accordingly she too is a daughter, nay, the eldest daughter, of Jupiter himself[283].

The second variation is this: that offences against the mere law of prudence find their way into precisely the same category with sins; or, in other words, the true idea of sin had been lost. Ἄτη the person, and ἄτη the effect, are, moreover, frequently blended by the Poet.

Among the principal Ἄται of Homer are those,

1. Of Jupiter, Il. xix. 91–129.

2. Of Dolon, Il. x. 391; leading him to accept the proposal of Hector.

3. Of Melampus, Od. xv. 233, 4, causing him to undertake an enterprise beyond his means on account of the daughter of Neleus.

All of which are against the law of prudence and forethought.

4. Of Agamemnon, Il. xix. 88, 134–8.

5. Of Paris, Il. vi. 356, xxiv. 28.

6. Of Helen, Od. iv. 261. xxiii. 223.

7. Of manslaughter, Il. xxiv. 480.

8. Of the drunken centaur Eurytion, who had his ears and nose cut off for his excesses, Od. xxi. 296–302.

In one place only of Homer, ἄτη seems to mean[162] calamity not imputable to the sufferer’s fault, further than by some slight want of vigilance. This is the ἄτη charged upon Ulysses, when his companions destroy the oxen of the Sun, Od. xii. 372. At least he had no further share in that matter than that, by going to sleep, he left his comrades to act for themselves.

The long continued misconduct of the Suitors is never described as their ἄτη: probably because the word properly signifies a particular temptation followed by a particular act, rather than a continued course of action.

This, again, serves the more closely to associate Ἄτη with the primitive tradition of the Fall of Man.

The higher form of human wickedness, which is attended with deliberate and obstinate persistence in wrong, is not ἄτη but ἀτασθαλίη. Such is the wickedness of Ægisthus and of the Suitors; such also that of the Giants. The same phrase is applied to the crew of Ulysses, who devoured the oxen of the Sun[284]: and this appears to conform to the view taken of their offence in the poems, however anomalous that view itself may be.

I will now gather into one view the dispersed fragments of tradition concerning the Evil One which seem to be discernible in Homer.

1. Ἄτη is the first, and the one which comes nearest to presenting a general outline.

2. A second is found in Κρόνος[285], who aims at the destruction of Godhead in its supreme representatives, and is thrust down to Tartarus by Jupiter. And we may here observe an important distinction.

Some persons, like Tityus, offend against a particular person who had taken a place in the Olympian Court;[163] or else, apparently like Orion, offend the gods in general by their presumption. They are punished in the Shades. But those who have aimed at the dethronement or destruction of Godhead itself are in the far deeper darkness of Tartarus[286]. I suggest this as a possible explanation of the double place of punishment; which is otherwise apparently a gross solecism in the Homeric system.

3. To the latter class of offenders belong the Titans, who most pointedly represent the element of Force in the ancient traditions, while Ἄτη embodies that of Guile.

These are the θεοὶ ὑποταρτάρεοι, or the ἐνέρτεροι, or ἔνερθε θεοὶ, who form the infernal court of Κρόνος; Κρόνον ἄμφις ἐόντες (Il. xiv. 274, 9. xv. 225). They are evidently themselves in a state of penal suffering; but they must also have the power of inflicting the severest punishment on some other offenders; for they, and not Aides or Persephone, seem to be the persons called to be witnesses of the solemn oath for the avoidance of perjury, taken by Juno in the Fourteenth Book[287].

4. Of these Titans two are apparently named in the persons of Otus and Ephialtes, children of Neptune.

5. To the same class, in all probability, belong the Giants, led by Eurymedon, and born of the same mythological father. Od. vii. 58.

6. It is likely that Typhoeus may have been of the same company; for although he is not stated to be in Tartarus, yet his position corresponds with it in the essential feature of being under the earth. (Il. ii. 782. viii. 14). Homer does not indeed expressly say, that Otus and Ephialtes were Titans, nor that Eurymedon was of the same band; nor yet that the Titans were rebels against heaven. But his images are so com[164]bined round certain points as to make this matter of safe and clear inference.

For the Titans are in Tartarus, and are with and attached to Κρόνος, whom Jupiter thrust down thither. And the giants under Eurymedon, for their mad audacity, are driven to perdition[288]. Lastly, Otus and Ephialtes, who made war upon heaven, and whom Apollo quelled, not appearing, like their mother Iphimedea, in the Shades of the Eleventh Odyssey, can only be in Tartarus[289].

From the scattered traditions we may collect and combine the essential points. In Otus and Ephialtes the rebellion is clearly stated, and in Eurymedon it is manifestly implied. In the Titans, who are called θεοὶ, and in their association with Κρόνος, as also in the high parentage of the others, we have the celestial origin of the rebels. In the hurling down of Κρόνος to Tartarus, we have the punishment which they all are enduring, immediately associated with an act of supreme retribution.

7. Elsewhere will be found a notice of the singular relation, which may be traced between Neptune and the tradition of the Evil One. This relation is mythological in its basis: but it seems to proceed upon the tradition, that the Evil One was next to the Highest.

8. A more recent form of the tradition concerning the great war in heaven seems to be found in the revolt of the Immortals of Olympus, headed by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, against Jupiter, which was put down by Briareus or Ægæon of the hundred hands.

Who this Ægæon was, we can only conjecture: he is nowhere else named in Homer. From his having a double name, one in use among gods, and the other[165] among mortals, it might be conjectured that the immediate source of this tradition was either Egypt, or some other country having like Egypt an hieratic and also a demotic tongue. In its substance, it can hardly be other than a separate and dislocated form of the same idea, according to which we see Apollo handed down as the deliverer of Olympus from rebellion. The expression that all men (Il. i. 403.) call him Ægæon, tends to universalize him, and thus to connect him with Apollo. He is also (v. 403.) a son of Jupiter, avowedly superior to him in strength:

It is perhaps worth while to notice the coincidence between the language of Homer as to the Giants, and that of the Books of the Ancient Scriptures. Homer says of Eurymedon[290],

Either the rebellion, or the punishment in hell, of a wicked gang under the name of Giants is referred to in the following passages of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. The allusion is not made evident, as to the former set of passages, in the Authorized Version; I therefore quote from the Septuagint or the Vulgate.

1. Job xxvi. 5. Ecce gigantes gemunt sub aquis, et qui habitant cum eis. Vulgate. μὴ γίγαντες μαιωθήσονται ὑποκάτωθεν ὕδατος καὶ τῶν γειτόνων αὐτοῦ; LXX.

2. Prov. ii. 18. ἔθετο γὰρ παρὰ τῷ θανάτῳ τὸν οἶκον αὐτῆς, καὶ παρὰ τῷ ἅδῃ μετὰ τῶν γηγένων τοὺς ἄξονας αὐτῆς. LXX.

3. Prov. xxi. 16. Vir, qui erraverit a viâ doctrinæ, in cœtu gigantum commorabitur. Vulg. [166]ἀνὴρ πλανώμενος ἐξ ὅδου δικαιοσύνης ἐν συναγωγῇ γιγάντων ἀναπαύσεται. LXX.

See Gen. vi. 4, 5: in which we perhaps see the original link between the Giants, and the rebellion of the fallen angels described by St. Jude, ver. 6: ‘And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.’

We have also the corresponding declaration of St. Peter: ‘God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world[291].’

Again, in the Apocryphal Books.

1. Wisdom xiv. 6. ‘In the old time also, when the proud giants perished, the hope of the world, governed by thy hand, escaped in a weak vessel.’ Auth. Version.

2. Ecclus. xvi. 7. ‘He was not pacified toward the old giants, who fell away in the strength of their foolishness.’ Auth. Version.

3. Baruch iii. 26, 8. ‘There were giants famous from the beginning.... But they were destroyed, because they had no wisdom, and perished through their own foolishness.’ Auth. Version.

We thus appear to find in Homer many displaced fragments of the old traditions of the Bible with respect to the Evil One. In the later Greek and the Roman literature, the traditions on the same subject had almost entirely lost their likeness to their original. The figure of Ἄτη, and the idea of spiritual danger to man through guile tempting him extrinsically but in[167]wardly, entirely disappears. There remains only the recollection of a contest waged by brute force, and a solitary remnant of forgotten truth in the fame still adhering to Apollo, that he had been the deliverer and conqueror, who in the critical hour vindicated the supremacy of heaven. In the time of Horace even this recollection had become darkened and confused.

From the Homeric traditions of the Evil One and the fallen angels, we may properly pass to those of a future state, which involves, partially at least, the idea of retribution.

The representations of the future state in Homer are perhaps the more interesting, because it may be doubted whether they are, logically, quite consistent with one another. For this want of consistency becomes of itself a negative argument in support of the belief that, as they are not capable of being referred to any one generative idea or system, they may be distorted copies or misunderstood portions of primitive truth.

Another reason for referring them to this origin appears to be found in their gradual deterioration after the time of Homer. In his theology, future retribution appears as a real sanction of the moral law. In the later history, and generally in the philosophy of Paganism, it has lost this place: practically, a phantasmagoria was substituted for what had been at least a subjective reality: and the most sincere and penetrating minds thought it absurd to associate anything of substance with the condition of the dead[292]. The moral ideas connected with it appear before us in[168] descending series; and thus they point backwards to the remotest period for their origin and their integrity.

Lastly, it would appear that the traditions themselves present to us features of the unseen world, such, in a certain degree, as Divine Revelation describes.

That world appears to us, in Homer, in three divisions.

First there is the Elysian plain, apparently under the government of Rhadamanthus, at which Menelaus, as the favoured son-in-law of Jupiter, is to arrive. It is, physically at least, furnished with all the conditions of repose and happiness.

Next there is the region of Aides or Aidoneus, the ordinary receptacle even of the illustrious dead, such as Achilles, Agamemnon, and the older Greek heroes of divine extraction. Hither, if we may trust the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, are carried the Suitors; and here is found the insignificant Elpenor (Od. xi. 51).

Thirdly, there is the region of Tartarus, where Κρόνος and Ἰάπετος reign. This is as far below Aides, as the heaven is upwards from the earth[293].

There appears to be some want of clearness in the division between the second region and the third as to their respective offices, and between the second and the first as to their respective tenants.

The realm of Aides is, in general, not a place of punishment, but of desolation and of gloom[294]. The shade of Agamemnon weeps aloud with emotion and desire to clasp Ulysses: and Ulysses in vain attempts to console Achilles, for having quitted ‘the warm precincts of the cheerful day.’ But though their state is one of sadness, neither they nor the dead who are named[169] there are in general under any judicial infliction. It is stated, indeed, that Minos[295] administers justice among them; but we are not told whether, as seems most probable, this is in determining decisively the fate of each, or whether he merely disposes, as he might have done on earth, of such cases as chanced to arise between any of them for adjudication.

The only cases of decided penal infliction in the realm of Aides are those of Tityus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus. Castor and Pollux, who appear here, are evident objects of the favour of the gods[296]. Hercules, like Helen of the later tradition, is curiously disintegrated.

His εἴδωλον meets Ulysses, and speaks as if possessed of his identity: but he himself (αὐτὸς) is enjoying reward among the Immortals. The latter of these images represents the laborious and philanthropic side of the character attributed to him, the former the reckless and brutal one. Again it might be thought that the reason for the advancement of Menelaus to Elysium, while Castor and Pollux belong to the under-world, was the very virtuous character of that prince. He is, however, not promoted thither for his virtues, but for being the son-in-law of Jupiter by his marriage with Helen. And thus again, the son-in-law of Jupiter is, as such, placed higher than his sons.

The proper and main business of Tartarus is to serve as a place of punishment for deposed and condemned Immortals. There were Iapetos and Κρόνος, there the Titans[297]: there probably Otus and Ephialtes, who not only wounded Mars but assaulted Olympus[298]: there too, were Eurymedon and the Giants, who perished by their ἀτασθάλιαι. Thither it is that Jupiter threatens[170] to hurl down offensive and refractory divinities[299]. Direct rebellion against heaven seems to be the specific offence which draws down the sentence of relegation to Tartarus. Still in the Third Iliad Agamemnon invokes certain deities, as the avengers of perjury upon man[300];

It is not clear whether this passage implies that all perjurors are punished in Tartarus; or whether Aidoneus, Persephone, and the Erinues are the subterraneous deities here intended: but as the Titans are elsewhere only mentioned in express connection with Tartarus, and from the description of the Erinues in Il. xix. 259, I incline to the latter opinion.

On the whole, then, there is some confusion between these compartments, so to speak, of the invisible world. The realm of Aidoneus seems to partake, in part, of the character both of Tartarus and of the Elysian plain. In common with the former, it includes persons who were objects of especial divine favour. In common with Tartarus, it is for some few, at least, a scene of positive punishment.

Still, if we take the three according to their leading idea, they are in substantial correspondence with divine revelation. There is the place of bliss, the final destination of the good. There is the place of torment, occupied by the Evil One and his rebellious companions: and there is an intermediate state, the receptacle of the dead. Here, as might be expected, the resemblance terminates; for as there is no selection for entrance into the kingdom of Aides, so there is no passage onwards from it. We need the less wonder at the too comprehensive place it occupies, relatively[171] to the places of reward and punishment proper, in the Homeric scheme, when we remember what a tendency to develop itself beyond all bounds, the simple primitive doctrine of the intermediate state has been made to exhibit, in a portion of the Christian Church.

A further element of indistinctness attaches to the invisible world of Homer, if we take into view the admission of favoured mortals to Olympus; a process of which he gives us instances, as in Ganymedes and Hercules. In a work of pure invention it is unlikely that Heaven, Elysium, and the under-world would all have been represented as receptacles of souls in favour with the Deity. But some primitive tradition of the translation of Enoch may account for what would otherwise stand as an additional anomaly.

Upon the whole, the Homeric pictures of the prolongation of our individual existence beyond the grave; the continuance in the nether world of the habits and propensities acquired or confirmed in this; and the administration in the infernal regions of penalties for sin; all these things, though vaguely conceived, stand in marked contrast with the far more shadowy, impersonal, and, above all, morally neutral pictures of the invisible and future world, which alone were admitted into the practical belief of the best among the Greek philosophers. We are left to presume that the superior picture owed its superiority to the fact that it was not of man’s devising, as it thus so far exceeded what his best efforts could produce.

The nature, prevalence, and uniformity of sacrifice, should be regarded as another portion of the primeval inheritance, which, from various causes, was perhaps the best preserved of all its parts among nations that had broken the link of connection with the source.

[172]

Of the sabbatical institution, which the Holy Scripture appears to fix at the creation of man, we find no trace in Homer. But it is easy to perceive that this highly spiritual ordinance was one little likely to survive the rude shocks and necessities of earthly life, while it could not, like sacrifice, derive a sustaining force from appearing to confer upon the gods an absolute gift, profitable to them, and likely to draw down their favour in return.

Those who feel inclined to wonder at this disappearance of the sabbath from the record may do well to remember, that on the shield of Achilles, which represents the standing occasions of life in all its departments, there is no one scene which represents any observances simply religious. The religious element, though corrupted, was far from being expelled out of common life; on the contrary, the whole tissue of it was pervaded by that element; but it was in a combined, not in a separate, and therefore not in a sabbatical form.

And again, in order to appreciate the unlikelihood that such a tradition as that of the sabbath would long survive the severance from Divine Revelation in this wintry world, we have only to consider how rapidly it is forgotten, in our own time, by Christians in heathen lands, or by those Christian settlers who are severed for the time at least from civilization, and whose energies are absorbed in a ceaseless conflict with the yet untamed powers of nature.

[173]

I come now to that mass of Homeric deities, who are either wholly mythological, or so loaded with mythological features, that their traditive character is depressed, and of secondary importance.

Jupiter.

The character of Jupiter, which commonly occupies the first place in discussions of the Greek mythology, has been in some degree forestalled by our prior examination of the position of other figures in the system, which are both more interesting and more important, from their bearing more significant resemblances to and traces of the truth of Divine Revelation.

Nevertheless, this character will well repay attention. To be understood and appreciated, it must be viewed in a great variety of aspects. When so viewed, it will be found to range from the sublime down to the brutal, and almost even down to the ridiculous. Upon the whole, when we consider that the image which we thus bring before us was during so many ages, for such multitudes of the most remarkable portion of mankind, the chief representative of Godhead, it must leave a deep impression of pain and melancholy on the mind.

[174]

The Jupiter of Homer is to be regarded in these four distinct capacities:

1. As the depository of the principal remnants of monotheistic and providential ideas.

2. As the sovereign lord of meteorological phenomena.

3. As the head of the Olympian community.

4. As the receptacle and butt of the principal part of such earthly, sensual, and appetitive elements, as, at the time of Homer, anthropophuism had obtruded into the sphere of deity.

There are three modes in which Homer connects Jupiter with the functions of Providence.

1. He procures or presides over the settlement, by deliberation in the Olympian Court, of great questions connected with the course of human affairs. In the Court of the Fourth Iliad, and in the Assembly of the Eighth, he himself takes the initiative; in the Seventh and Twentieth Books he listens to the proposals of Neptune; in the Twenty-fourth, Apollo introduces the subject; in the First and Fifth Odyssey, Minerva does the like.

2. He is a kind of synonym for Providence with reference to its common operations, to the duties and rights of man, and to the whole order of the world. Perhaps there are an hundred, or more, passages of the poems, where he appears in this manner. But they are all open to this observation, that his name seems, in most of them, to be used as a mere formula, and to be a sort of a caput mortuum without the enlivening force of the idea that he is really acting in the manner or upon the principle described.

3. On certain occasions, however, he appears as a supreme God, though single-handed, and not acting either for or with the Olympian assembly. The grandest[175] of these occasions is at the close of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, where Minerva, stimulated by her own sympathizing keenness, seems to have winked at the passionate inclination of Ulysses to make havock among his ungrateful and rebellious subjects. Jupiter, who had previously counselled moderation, launches his thunderbolt, and significantly causes it to fall at the feet of Minerva, who thereupon gives at once the required caution to the exasperated sovereign. Peace immediately follows[301].

Jupiter, with some of the substantial, has all the titular appendages of a high supremacy. He is habitually denominated the Father of gods and men. He is much more frequently identified with the general government of the world, than is any other deity. He is universally the ταμίης πολέμοιο. He governs the issue of all human toil, and gives or withholds success. It is on his floor that the caskets rest, which contain the varying, but, in the main, sorrowful incidents of human destiny[302]. He has also this one marked and paramount distinction, that he does not descend to earth to execute his own behests, but in general either sends other deities as his organs, to give effect to his will, or else himself operates from afar, by his power as god of air. If however he is more identified with the general idea of Providence than are Apollo and Minerva, it is plain, on the other hand, that his agency is more external, abstract, and remote; theirs more inward and personal: especially, the function of moral discipline seems, as we have already found, to belong to Minerva.

Nägelsbach[303] considers that Jupiter alone can act from a distance: but the prayer of Glaucus to Apollo,[176] followed immediately by the healing of his wounds, seems to prove the reverse conclusively. Again, Minerva reminds Telemachus that the deity can save even when at a distance (Od. iii. 231): we have no authority for absolutely confining this to Jupiter, and none for affixing a limit to the space within which Apollo or Minerva can act. That Jupiter always acts from far, may be due in part to his representing the tradition of the one God; but the argument is also in some degree incidental to the nature of his special and mythological gifts, as god of the atmosphere and its phenomena.

Upon the whole, the marks of affinity to ancient tradition are stronger in the Homeric Minerva and Apollo than in Jupiter. He is the ordinary Providence, but this is an external Providence. He undoubtedly excels them in force, and in the majesty which accompanies it. But the highest of the divine prerogatives, of which we have but glimpses indeed in any of them, are hung more abundantly around these his favoured children, than around himself. The secret government of the minds of men, the invisible supremacy over natural laws, the power of unravelling the future (except perhaps as to the destinies of states), the faculty of controlling death, are scarcely to be discovered in Jupiter, but are oftener made clearly legible in Apollo or Minerva. Indeed Minerva appears always to have latent claims, which Homer himself could not fully understand or describe, to the very first place. It is only by supposing the existence of vague traditions to this effect, that we can explain such passages as that in which she delights, that Menelaus had prayed to her in preference to any other deity[304];

[177]

This sentiment may be accounted for in two ways. It may be due to the vulgar vanity of a merely mythological divinity scuffling for precedence. It may be a remnant of the tradition of a wisdom that knew no superior. The former cause would be scarcely suitable even to the deities of invention in Homer. The latter seems wholly in keeping with the character and position of his Minerva.

It may be asked, in which of the two capacities does Jupiter chiefly influence the government of the world? is it as the Supreme Deity, acting in the main by his own will and power? or is it as the head of the Olympian community, to whose deliberate decisions he, in a species of executive capacity, gives effect?

I think there can be no doubt that the activity of Jupiter is principally made available in the latter capacity. Not that the Poet had defined for himself the distinction. But there were two processes, each of which had been actively advancing: the breaking up of Godhead into fragments, which diminished the relative distance between Jupiter and the other Immortals: and the reflection of human ideas of polity upon Olympus, which gave a growing prominence to the element of aristocracy.

Upon the whole, then, I should say that the traditive ideas of monotheism, and of a personal Providence represented in the Homeric Jupiter, are on almost all occasions things of the past. They are like the old jewels of a family, beautiful and imposing for occasions of state: but they scarcely enter into his everyday life. Indeed, their chief effect is the negative one of withdrawing him, on the score of dignity, from immediate contact with mortals and with their concerns; and,[178] were it not for his atmospheric prerogatives, this isolated supremacy would carry him into insignificance as compared with a deity like Minerva, who is ever in the view of man, and ever making herself felt both in his mind and in his affairs.

There are occasions, but they are not very numerous, when, under the influence of an unwonted zeal, we find Jupiter himself taking a part in the detailed action of the Iliad; his interferences being usually confined to the greater crises or indications, such as the one mentioned in Il. ii. 353, and such as the occasions when the τάλαντα are produced. As examples of minor interposition, I may cite his inspiring Ajax with fear, his launching a thunderbolt in the path of Diomed, his breaking the bow-string of Teucer, and his advising Hector to avoid an encounter with Agamemnon[305].

But the position assigned to him in the mythology of Olympus, which provides him with the second of his characters, is chosen with great skill. Although at first sight Sea may appear a more substantive and awful power than Air, and Earth a more solid and worthy foundation of dominion than either, yet consideration must readily show, that as the king of the atmosphere, Jupiter is possessed of far more prompt, effective, and above all, universal means of acting upon mankind, than he would have been had the lottery been so arranged as to give him either of those other provinces.

The tradition of a Trinity in the Godhead evidently leaves its traces on the Greek mythology in the curious fable of the three Kronid brothers. For the lottery of the universe, in which they draw on equal terms, is not founded upon, but is at variance with, Greek ideas. Those ideas embodied the system, more or less defined,[179] of primogeniture: and therefore, had the Olympian system been wholly inventive, the very least it could have assigned to Jupiter would have been a priority of choice among the different portions of the universe. This lottery is evidently founded upon the idea of an essential equality in those who draw. Happily the result is such as to coincide with the order of natural precedence: and the value and weight of the three charges is graduated according to the standing of the brothers, though their abstract equality is so rigidly asserted by Neptune, who declares himself ἰσόμορον καὶ ὁμῇ πεπρωμένον αἴσῃ (Il. xv. 209).

The exclusion of Earth from the lottery is singular: but it appears to have a double justification. In the first place, we must bear in mind the regularity of its operations, combined with the fact that it sensibly acts on nothing, but is passive under other agencies, such as those of Sun, Wind, and Sea. This would have rendered the conception of it as a deity comparatively feeble in the Greek mind. In the second place, it is probable that when the Olympian mythology took its shape, that province was preoccupied: that the Eastern religions, observing its jointly passive and productive character, had personified it as feminine. But even this did not content the Greek imagination. The conception of the bride of the chief deity was disengaged from brute matter, and uplifted into a divinity having for its office the care and government of a civilized and associated people. The Homeric Juno may almost be defined as the goddess of Greece. There rose up in her place, like a low mist of evening, from the ground, the comparatively obscure Homeric Γαῖα, who has no life or function, except in connection with the idea of vengeance to be executed upon the wicked; and this she[180] probably derives from the belief, that the rebel spirits were punished in the subterranean prisons, of which she was as it were, by physical laws, the necessary keeper.

As Lord of the air, Jupiter came to be endowed with a multitude of active powers the most palpable, and the most replete with at least outward influence for man. The years are his years, the thunder and lightning his thunder and lightning, the rain his rain; the rivers, or the most illustrious among them, the Διϊπετεῖς ποταμοὶ, are his: the clouds and tempests obey his compelling, the winds blow at his command. The hail and snow come from him[306]: he impels the falling star[307], and, when he desires a more effective weapon or a more solemn lesson than usual, he launches the scathing thunderbolt[308]. All signs and portents whatever, that appear in air, belong primarily to him; as does the genial sign of the rainbow,

And when these or any of them are used by other deities, it is only by such as have a peculiar relationship, either traditive or mythological, to him.

But as the tradition of the lottery adorns and strengthens, so in another view it circumscribes him. His sway is unknown in the regions of the dead, where his brother holds the sceptre, as the Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος[310]. Accordingly, when Hercules is sent to fetch Cerberus, Jupiter obtains for him the aid of Minerva. The more traditive deity escapes the circumscriptions of the less; the daughter eclipses the sire.

Much of the higher power exerted by Juno is in fact her use of the atmospheric prerogatives of her husband.

[181]

But the most considerable and characteristic manifestation of the Homeric Jupiter is that, in which he appears as Head of the Olympian Family and Polity. Of this let us now consider so much, as is not more immediately connected with the subject of the divine Polity.

He is carefully marked out as supreme in the mythological prerogatives, which are for Olympus as the Crown and Sword of State on Earth. He is the original owner of the Ægis. To him the gods rise up at their meetings[311]. He is not tied to swear by Styx[312], and invokes no infernal power to be the sanction of his word, but condescends only to use the symbol of a nod.

Of omnipotence, as we understand the word, it would not appear that Homer had any idea. He had however the idea of a being superior in force to all other gods separately, or perhaps even when combined. This being was Jupiter. But the conception in his mind was a wavering one, so that, though it was present to him, we cannot say that he embraced it as a truth. If by some parts of the poems it is supported, by others it is brought into question or overthrown. As respects Briareus, who was not a god, his superiority in mere force to Jupiter is expressly declared (Il. i. 404).

In the Assembly of the Eighth Book, Jupiter loudly proclaims his personal superiority in strength to all the other gods and goddesses combined; and boasts that, while by a golden chain they could not unitedly drag him down to earth, he could drag them all, with earth and sea to boot behind them.

Again, when in the same Book Juno[313] suggests to Neptune the plan of a combination among all the Hellenizing gods to restrain Jupiter, and to assist the[182] Greeks in despite of him, Neptune replies that he at least will have nothing to say to such a proceeding, for Jupiter is far too strong[314].

But in the First Book we learn that a rebellion headed by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, was too much for him. It is, however, clear that he had not actually been put in chains by these deities; but they were about to do it, when Briareus came to the rescue, and by his mere appearance reestablished Jupiter in secure supremacy. This legend has a mark of antiquity in the fact that Briareus has two names; he is known as Briareus among the gods, and as Ægæon among all mankind[315].

When, in the Fifteenth Book, Jupiter apprehends a stubborn resistance from Neptune, and the necessity of his personally undertaking the execution of his own commands, he is far from easy. With the aid of Juno, his brother can, he thinks, easily be managed[316]. When he finds Neptune has retired, he frankly owns it is much better for them both; as to have put him down by force[317] would have been a tough business (οὔ κεν ἀνιδρωτί γ’ ἐτελέσθη).

Juno and Minerva, single or combined, he threatens freely, and the first of these he had once severely punished: but Neptune was stronger, though in mind inferior; and we have no direct evidence that he was present in the Assembly of the Eighth Book, when Jupiter bragged of his being stronger than them all together. Neither he nor Juno obeyed the command of Jupiter, to observe neutrality until his purpose of glorifying Hector should have been accomplished.

On the whole, the superiority of Jupiter to any one god is clear, though not immeasurable. His superiority[183] to the whole is doubtful. The point in his favour is, that he never was actually coerced. The point against him is, that his will seems to give place, and this too on very great occasions, to the sentiments of the weightiest part of the Olympian Court.

In his government of the other gods, the moral element disappears. He does not appeal to their sense of right, nor profess to be ruled in his own proceedings towards them by impartial justice. On the contrary, he desires the wounded Mars not to sit whining by his side; and, before ordering Paieon to heal his hurts, makes a distinct declaration, that had he been the son of any deity other than himself, he should have been ejected from heaven into a lower place, apparently meaning the dark and dismal Tartarus, on account of his love of quarrels. A profound attachment to ease and self-enjoyment lies at the root of his character. He never disturbs the established order; and he is averse to movement and innovation, come from whence it may. The spirit of Juno[318], so restless on behalf of Greece, is vexatious to him in the highest degree: and his love of Troy, if it has reference to any thing beyond liberality in sacrifices and the descent of Dardanus, may perhaps be referred to its representing the stereotyped form of society. It is probably on account of this indolence of temperament that, when he has brought Hector and the Trojans as far as the Ships, he feels he has had enough for the moment of the spectacle of blood; and accordingly he turns his eyes over Thrace and the country of the Mysians, the Hippemolgians, and the righteous and therefore presumably peaceful Abii[319]. Wearied with the perpetual din, he finds satisfaction in a change of prospect; but at another time,[184] refreshed as we may suppose, he coolly states that he shall enjoy a sight of the battle:

The political element of Jupiter’s character, reflected more narrowly and turbulently in Juno, is, however, that which deserves the greatest attention.

It was so deeply implanted in him, that it entered into his personal conduct even when he was not in immediate contact with the Olympian body. For example, in the Sixteenth Iliad, Jupiter debates with himself whether he shall save Sarpedon from death by the hand of Patroclus. Juno, to whom he had made a sort of appeal for approval, protests according to the Olympian formula,

She suggests in preference a prompt rescue and disposal of the dead body. Jupiter is not here in actual contact with any one but Juno. She, however, menaces him with the spleen of the Immortals, and he, averse to trouble, and fearful of shaking his own seat, acquiesces, though at the cost of the utmost pain[321].

Over and above the mere insignia of sovereignty, Jupiter holds some of his best prerogatives, both terrestrial and Olympian, in the capacity of head of the community of Immortals.

Hence it is that he is the steward of sovereignty, and the champion of social rights. All princes and rulers hold from him, and administer justice under his authority. He gave their sceptre to the family of Pelops: even the heralds are his agents, Διὸς ἄγγελοι, and act in his name.

On Olympus it falls to him in this capacity, not only to conduct and superintend the proceedings of the[185] whole body of Immortals, as a body, but to exercise a very large influence over their relations individually with men, and with one another. The Sun carries to Jupiter in full court, as head of the body, his complaint against the crew of Ulysses, and Jupiter at once undertakes to avenge it[322]. Juno, again, appeals to him on the conduct of Mars[323], and he permits her to let loose Minerva on him. Mars, when wounded, goes to Jupiter with his complaint[324], and Diana also, when requested, makes him privy to hers, after she has taken her seat upon his knee[325]. When any two deities are in any manner at issue or in collision, or when any of the more dependent gods have a quarrel with men, then Jupiter finds his place as the natural arbiter, and from this source he obtains great support for his power. The surest of all its guarantees is indeed found in the skill with which, by making the will of Olympus his own, he makes his own will irresistible.

Thus then the Jupiter of Homer has varied elements of grandeur, traditional, physical, and political. Something also accrues to him by the sheer necessity of the metaphysical order. Wherever the mind demands a personal origin or cause, he alone can offer to supply its want. He still continues to represent, in a certain degree, the principle of unity; and he derives strength from that principle. Nor does the solid might of Destiny interfere with his claims to the same extent in Homer, as it does in the later Greek poetry.

Thus equipped with august prerogatives, the Jupiter of Homer is evidently, to the popular view, the most sublime object in the Olympian mythology. His breadth and grandeur of dimension commended him to the ad[186]miring favour of the Greek artist, who made it his supreme effort to embody the conception of the Sovereign of Olympus: and we may judge of his elevation in the public apprehension over all other deities, by the greater sublimity of the material forms, in which the idea of his divinity has been enshrined.

But the figure of Jupiter, as it is the principal, so it is also the most anomalous, in the whole Homeric assemblage. Although he is, and even because he is, the depository of so many among the most primitive and venerable ideas, he becomes also the butt alike of the infirmity, and the wantonness, and insolence of human thought, in the alterative operations which it continually prosecutes upon the ancient and pure idea of Godhead. Hence not only in his character, as in other cases, does the inventive power everywhere sap, corrode, invade, and curtail the ancient traditionary conception of divine truths, but it is in him that we find both systems culminating at once, both exhibiting in him, raised to the highest power, their separate and discordant characteristics.

From one point of view Jupiter is the most sublime of all the deities of Homer, because he is the first personal source and origin of life, the father of gods and men, the supreme manifestation of Power and knowledge, the principal, though imperfect living representation of a Providence and Governor of the world.

Regarded from another point of view, as we see disclosed the large intrusion of the human and carnal element into the ethereal sphere, the character of Jupiter becomes the most repulsive in the whole circle of Olympian life[326]. The emancipation from truth, the[187] self-abandonment to gross passion, the constant breach of the laws he administers, are more conspicuous in the chief god than in any of the subordinate gods, and are more offensive in proportion to the majesty with which they are unnaturally associated.

The ungovernable self-indulgence, which even so early as in the time of Homer has begun to taint through and through the whole human conception of the Immortals, rises to its climax, as was to be expected, in Jupiter. The idea of the Supreme, or at least by far the First being of the universe, had not yet, indeed, descended so low as it did in after-times, when it was even associated with lusts contrary to nature. Of these there is no trace in Homer. But the law which governs the relation of sex, as it exists among men, was utterly relaxed and disorganized for him. In the first place, monogamy, established for all Greeks, for the chief god of Greece became polygamy; and in the second, marriage was no bar against incessant adultery.

A certain distinction between the wives, and the mere paramours, of Jupiter is clearly traceable in Homer. Latona, for instance, is a wife, an ἄλοχος of Jupiter. Mercury says of her[327]—

But the intrigues with the wife of Ixion, or with the daughter of Phœnix, who bore to him the great Minos, mark mere adultery, and involve no kind of permanent relation between Jupiter and this class of the mothers of his children. Hence we do not find any such person possessed of an interest in him, like that which led him to take part in the vengeance inflicted on Niobe and[188] her family by the children of Latona[328]. Again, as he is not a personal providence, and does not take charge of the destiny or guide the conduct of individuals, nor ever touches the depths of human nature, so he has at once the largest share of the passions and the smallest stock of the sympathies of man.

From an intermediate point between the grandeur and the vileness of Jupiter, we may observe how unequal the human mind had already proved to sustain its own idea. He ought to be supreme in knowledge; but he is thrice deluded by the cunning of Juno[329], who not only outwits him, but sends Iris down to earth without his knowledge, just as Neptune moves (λάθρη) on the plain of Troy unseen by him[330]. He ought to be supreme in force, and he boasts that he could drag with ease all the deities of Olympus, whom he addressed, but he is, notwithstanding, on the point of being overpowered by a combination of inferior deities, when he is saved by the timely arrival of Briareus with the hundred hands. His faculty of vision does not seem to be limited by space when he chooses to employ it[331], but it is subject to interruption, both voluntary and involuntary, from sleep[332].

Although there is great scenic grandeur in the part which he plays in the Iliad, in the Odyssey he is until nearly the close practically a mute, and does little more than assent to the plans and representations of Minerva.

In the action, however, of the Iliad, the only glimpse of a personal attachment is to Hector; and this is founded simply on the abundance of his sacrifices. Jupiter is the great propounder of the animal view of that subject: and accordingly in the Odyssey[333], Minerva[189] pleads the case of Ulysses very much on this ground before Jupiter, though, in all her intercourse with that chief, there is no sign of her valuing the offerings on her own account. In every point of sensual susceptibility, Jupiter leads the way for the Immortals.

In Jupiter, as in the almost brutal Mars, we find remaining that relic of personal virtue which depends least upon reflection, and flows most from instinct, namely, parental affection. Mars is wrought up to fury by learning the death of his son Ascalaphus; and Jupiter, after much painful rumination on consenting to the fall of Sarpedon, sheds gouts of blood over the dearest of his children[334]. This is singularly grand as poetry, and far superior to the sheer mania of Mars. Indeed it is evident that Homer exerted himself to the utmost in adorning this majestic figure, as a mere figure, with the richest treasures of his imagination.

When, in the Twenty-First Iliad, the great battle of the gods begins, Jupiter has no part to take. He sits aloft in his independent security, while they contend together, even as he was afterwards supposed to keep aloof from trouble and responsibility for human affairs. The same sentiment appears in the determination of Neptune and Apollo not to quarrel on account of mortals. But in the case of Jupiter, the selfish principle comes out with greater force: he is not merely indifferent, but he absolutely rejoices in the strife of the Immortals:

Upon the whole it is certainly the Jupiter of Homer in whom, of all his greater gods, notwithstanding his abstract attributes, we see, first, the most complete[190] surrender of personal morality and self-government to mere appetite; secondly, the most thoroughly selfish groundwork of character: the germ, and in no small degree the development, of what was afterwards to afford to speculation the materials for the Epicurean theory respecting the divine nature, as it is set forth in the verse of Lucretius, or in the arguments of the Ciceronian Cotta.

Juno.

The Juno of the Iliad is by far the most conspicuous and splendid, as she is also the most evidently national, product of the inventive power to be found in the entire circle of the theo-mythology.

Not that Greek invention created her out of nothing. On the contrary, she represented abundant prototypes in the mythologies of the East. Her Greek name, Ἥρη, is, I apprehend, a form of ἔρα, the earth[335]; and in her first form she probably represented one of its oriental impersonations. But they all had to pass through the crucible, and they came out in a form as purely Hellenic as if it had been absolutely original.

It is plain from the nature of the case, that she can have had no place in primitive tradition. But it may be well before discussing her mythological origin, her dignity and positive functions, to refer to certain indications from which we may make sure that Homer has handled the character in the mode observed by him for deities of invention only.

There is, then, about Juno a liability to passion, and a want of moral elevation, which are among the certain marks of mythological origin. Jupiter declares his belief that, if she could, she would eat the Trojans; nor[191] does she resent the imputation[336]. When Vulcan is born, angry at the mean appearance and lameness of the infant, she pitches him down into the sea[337]. These representations are entirely at variance with the constant dignity and self-command, which mark the deportment of the great traditive deities. Her whole activity in the Iliad is not merely energetic, but in the highest degree passionate and ardent.

So again, taking into consideration the comparative purity attaching to her sex, which we see so fully maintained in Diana, her resort to the use of sensual passion, in Il. xiv., even though only as an instrument for an end, is a mark that the character is, in its basis, mythological.

Nor do we anywhere find ascribed to her ethical, or what may be called theistic sentiments: pure power and policy are her delight; and she nowhere enters individually within the line of the moral and Providential order at all, nor takes any share in superintending it[338].

In the Iliad, of which the martial movement is appropriate to her, and where the Greek nationality is placed in sharp contrast with a foreign one, she plays a great part, is ever alert and at work, and contributes mainly to the progress of the action. But in the Odyssey, a poem more simply theistic and ethical, and without any opposition of nationalities, she has no share in the action, and may be said practically to disappear from view. To appreciate the force of this circumstance, we must contrast it with Homer’s treatment of another deity, inferior to her in the Olympian[192] community. The three greatest deities, among those who embody much of primitive tradition, are Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo. Of these, Jupiter, in the character of Providence, has everywhere a place ready made for him; Minerva, as the guide and protectress of Ulysses, has ample opportunities for her activity; but it is not so with Apollo: and in consequence Homer has been careful to supply in the poem points of contact with him, by the introduction of Theoclymenus, and of the grand imagery of the second sight, which is his gift; by fixing the critical day at the new moon, which was sacred to him, and by causing the crisis to turn upon the bow, his famous weapon: as though these three, Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo, were the universal, permanent, and indispensable deities; but the others occasional, and to be used according to circumstances. Juno has no such place or office provided for her in the Odyssey, as they have.

There is yet another mark adhering to Juno, which clearly separates between her and the Homeric deities of strongly marked traditional character: namely, that she was not exempt from the touch of defeat and dishonour. For, in the course of her long feud with Hercules, that hero wounded her with an arrow in the left breast, and caused her to suffer desperate pain[339]. Again, she was ignominiously punished by Jupiter; who suspended her with her hands in chains, and with anvils hanging from her feet[340].

Her strong and profound Greek nationality has obtained for her the name of Argeian Juno. The fervour of this nationality is most signally exemplified in the passage where Jupiter tells her, that she regards the Greeks as her children[341]; and again, where she lets[193] us know that it was she[342] who collected the armament against Troy. She conducts Agamemnon the head of the Greek nation safely on the sea[343]; and carries Jason through the Πλαγκταί[344]. This is the vivifying idea of her whole character, and fills it with energy, vigilance, determination, and perseverance. Her hatred of Hercules cannot have been owing to conjugal jealousy, with which she is not troubled in Homer, for Jupiter recites his conquests in addressing her on Ida; indeed, had she been liable to this emotion, it must, from the frequent recurrence of its occasions, have supplied the main thread of her feeling and action. It was her identification in soul with the Perseid dynasty, the legitimate representative, in its own day, of the Hellenic race, and in occupation of its sovereign seat, that made her filch, on behalf of Eurystheus, the effect of the promise intended by Jupiter for Hercules, and that engaged her afterwards in a constant struggle to bear down that elastic hero, whose high personal gifts still threatened to eclipse his royal relative and competitor. So again, unlike Minerva[345], even while seeking to operate through Trojans, she studiously avoids contact with them. Minerva is sent as agent to Pandarus[346]; but this is on the suggestion of Juno. In truth, this intensely national stamp localizes the divinity of Juno, and, being counteracted by no other sign, fixes on her the note both of invention, and of Greek invention.

With respect now to her dignity and positive functions, these are of a very high order.

The Olympian gods rise from their seats to greet her (as they do to Jupiter) when she comes among them[347].

[194]

She acts immediately upon the thoughts of men: as when, at the outset of the Iliad, she prompts Achilles to call the first Greek assembly; τῷ γὰρ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη[348]. On various occasions, she suggests action to Minerva, and it follows[349]: in the First Book, Juno is even said to send her, though by another arrangement the Poet has provided against attaching inferiority to that goddess[350]. It may be that in her seeming to employ Minerva, as in so many of her highest functions, she is reflecting one of the high prerogatives of Jupiter. Certain it is that by the side of her ceaseless and passionate activity, even Minerva appears, except on the battle-field, to play, in the Iliad, a part secondary to hers. She was so powerful[351], not only as to form one of the great trine rebellion against Jupiter, which so nearly dethroned him, but as to make him feel greatly relieved and rejoiced, in his differences with Neptune, when she promises to side with him[352]: ‘with your aid,’ so thinks Jupiter, ‘he will easily be kept in order, and will have to act as we could wish.’ She is certainly the most bold, untiring, zealous, and effective assistant to the Greeks: while she never bates a hair of her wrath, in compassion or otherwise, towards any Trojan.

Like Neptune and others, she assumes the human form[353], and evokes a cloud of vapour this way or that: but she does much more. Her power displays itself in various forms, both over deities, and over animate and inanimate nature. In some of these particularly, her proceedings seem to be a reflected image of her hus[195]band’s. Iris[354] is not only his messenger, but her’s. She not only orders the Winds, but she sends the Sun to his setting[355], in spite of his reluctance. When, in her indignation at the boast of Hector, she rocks on her throne, she shakes Olympus[356]. She endows the deathless horses of Achilles with a voice[357]. And conjoined with Minerva, she thunders in honour of Agamemnon when just armed. Except the case of the horse, all these appear to be the reflected uses of the power of Jupiter as god of air.

We find from the speech of Phœnix, that with Minerva she can confer valour[358]. In a curious passage of the Odyssey, Homer tells us how the daughters of Pandarus were supplied by various goddesses with various qualities and gifts. Diana gave them size, Juno gave them εἶδος καὶ πινυτήν. We should rather have expected the last to come from Minerva: but she endowed them with ἔργα or industrial skill, so that her dignity has been in another way provided for. But if the lines are genuine, then in the capacity of Juno to confer the gift of πινυτὴ or prudence, we see a point of contact between her powerful but more limited, and Minerva’s larger character[359].

The full idea of her mind is in fact contained in the union of great astuteness with her self-command, force, and courage: which, in effect, makes it the reflection of the genius of the Greeks when deprived of its moral element: and places it in very near correspondence with that of the Phœnicians, who are like Greeks, somewhat seriously maimed in that one great department. This full idea is exhibited on two great[196] occasions. Once when she outwits Jupiter, by fastening him with an oath to his promise, and then, hastening one birth, and by her command over the Eilithuiæ retarding another, proceeds to make Eurystheus the recipient of what Jupiter had intended for another less remote descendant of his own. Again, in the Fourteenth Iliad, by a daring combination, she hoaxes Venus to obtain her capital charm, induces Sleep by a bribe to undertake an almost desperate enterprise, and then, though on account of his sentiments towards Troy she felt disgust (Il. xiv. 158) as she looked upon Jupiter, enslaves him for the time through a passion of which she is not herself the slave, but which she uses as her instrument for a great end of policy. She is, in short, a great, fervid, unscrupulous, and most able Greek patriot, exhibiting little of divine ingredients, but gifted with a marked and powerful human individuality.

It may be worth while to observe in passing, an indication as to the limited powers of locomotion which Homer ascribed to his deities. The horses of Juno, when she drives, cover at each step a space as great as the human eye can command looking along the sea. But when she has the two operations to perform on the same day, one upon the mother of Eurystheus, and the other on the mother of Hercules, she attends to the first in her own person, and apparently manages the other by command given to the Eilithuiæ (Il. xix. 119). If so, then she was evidently in the Poet’s mind subject to the laws of space and corporal presence: and his figure of the horse’s spring was one on which he would not rely for the management of an important piece of business.

There are three places, and three only, in the poems, which could connect Juno with the Trojans. One is the Judgment of Paris (Il. xxiv. 29). The others are no more[197] than verbal only. Hector swears by Jupiter “the loud thundering husband of Here[360].” And again, he wishes he had as certainly Jupiter for his father, and Juno for his mother[361], as he is certain that the day will bring disaster to the Greeks. We cannot, then, say that she was absolutely unknown to the Trojans in her Hellenic form, while they may have been more familiar with her eastern prototypes[362]. It does not, however, follow, that she was a deity of established worship among them. There is no notice of any institution or act of religion on the one side, or of care on the other, between her and any member of their race. In the mention of her among the Trojans, we may perhaps have an instance of the very common tendency of the heathen nations to adopt, by sympathy as it were, deities from one another; independently of all positive causes, such as migration, or ethnical or political connection.

The origin of Juno, which would thus on many grounds appear to have been Hellenic, appears to be referable to the principle, which I have called œconomy, and under which the relations of deities were thrown into the known forms of the human family. This process, according to the symmetrical and logical turn of the Greek mind, began when it was needed for its purpose, and stopped when it had done its work. Gods, that were to generate or rear other gods, were coupled; and partners were supplied by simple reflection of the character of the male, where there was no Idea or Power ready for impersonation that would serve the turn. Thus, Ῥέα, Earth or Matter, found a suitable mate for Κρόνος, or Time. But to make a match for Oceanus, his own mere reflected image, or feminine, was called into being under the name of Tethys. Such was,[198] but only after the time of Homer, Amphitrite for Neptune, and Proserpine for Hades. In Homer the latter is more, and the former less than this. It was by nothing less than an entire metamorphosis, that the Greek Juno was educed from, or substituted for, some old deification of the Earth. She is much more a creation than an adaptation. What she really represents in Olympus, is supernatural wifehood; of which the common mark is, the want of positive and distinct attributes in the goddess. With this may be combined a negative sign not less pregnant with evidence; namely, the derivation and secondary handling of the prerogatives of the husband. The case of Juno is clear and strong under both heads. Her grandeur arises from her being clothed in the reflected rays of her husband’s supremacy, like Achilles in the flash of the Ægis. But positive divine function she has none whatever, except the slender one of presiding over maternity by her own agency, and by that of her figurative daughters, the Eilithuiæ. She is, when we contemplate her critically, the goddess of motherhood and of nothing else. And in truth, as the fire made Vulcan, and war made Mars, her mythological children, so motherhood made Juno, and is her type in actual nature. She became a goddess, to give effect to the principle of œconomy, to bring the children of Jupiter into the world, to enable man, in short, to construct that Olympian order, which he was to worship. Having been thus conceived, she assumed high powers and dignities in right of her husband, whose sister she was fabled to be, upon becoming also his wife, because either logical instinct, or the ancient traditions of our race rendered it a necessity for the Greeks to derive the divine, as well as the human, family from a single pair.

[199]

However strictly Hellenic may have been the position of Juno, we must reckon her as the sister of Jupiter to have been worshipped, in Homer’s time, from beyond the memory of man. For she carries upon her no token, which can entitle us to assign to her a recent origin. Recent, I mean, in her Hellenic form: apart from the fact that she was not conceived by the Greeks, so to speak, out of nothing; and that she, in common with many other deities, represents the Greek remodelling, in this case peculiarly searching and complete, of eastern traditions. The representation in theology of the female principle was eastern, and, as we have seen, even Jewish. Had Juno been simply adopted, she would probably have been an elemental power, corresponding with Earth in the visible creation. In lieu of this she became Queen of Olympus, and, in relation to men, goddess of Greece. Earth remains, in Homer, almost unvivified in consequence. But it may have been on account of this affinity, as well as of her relation to Jupiter, that she has been so liberally endowed with power over nature.

Neptune.

Neptune is one of three sons of Κρόνος and Ῥέα, and comes next to Jupiter in order of birth. In the Fifteenth Iliad he claims an equality of rank, and avers that the distribution of sovereignties among the three brothers was made by lot. The Sea is his, the Shades are subject to Aides, Jupiter has the Heaven and Air; Earth and Olympus are common to them all. Wherefore, says Neptune, I am no mere satellite of Jupiter: great as he is, let him rest content with his own share; and if he wants somebody to command, let him command his own sons and daughters. Perhaps there may here be conveyed a taunt at Jupiter with respect to[200] the independent and adverse policy of Minerva. This very curious speech is delivered by Neptune in reply to the command of Jupiter, that he should leave the field of battle before Troy, which was backed by threats. Iris, the messenger, who hears him, in her reply founds the superiority of Jupiter on his seniority only. To this Neptune yields: but reserves his right of resentment if Jupiter should spare Troy[363]. Nor does Jupiter send down Apollo to encourage the Trojans, until Neptune has actually retired: he then expresses great satisfaction at the withdrawal of Neptune without a battle between them, which would have been heard and felt in Tartarus; possibly implying that Neptune would have been hurled into it[364], but referring distinctly to the certain difficulty of the affair;

We have now clearly enough before us the very singular combination of ideas that entered into the conception of the Homeric Neptune, and we may pronounce, with tolerable confidence, upon the manner in which each one of them acquired its place there. They are these:

1. As one of the trine brotherhood, who are jointly possessed of the highest power over the regions of creation, he is part-representative of the primeval tradition respecting the Divine Nature and Persons.

2. As god of the Sea, he provides an impersonation to take charge of one of the great domains of external nature.

3. As the eldest and strongest, next to Jupiter, of the Immortal family, he represents the nucleus of rivalry and material, or main-force, opposition to the head of the Olympian family.

[201]

With respect to the first, the proposition itself seems to contain nearly all that can be said to belong to Neptune in right of primitive tradition, except indeed as to certain stray relics. One of these seems to hang about him, in the form of an extraordinary respect paid to him by the children of Jupiter. Apollo is restrained by this feeling (αἰδὼς) from coming to blows with him[366]: a similar sentiment restrains Minerva, not only from appearing to Ulysses in her own Phæacian ἄλσος[367], but even, as she says, from assisting him at all during his previous adventures[368]. But this is all. The prerogatives which are so conspicuous in Apollo and Minerva, and which establish their origin as something set higher than the lust of pure human invention, are but rarely and slightly discernible in Neptune. In simple strength he stands with Homer next to Jupiter, for to no other deity would Jupiter have paid the compliment of declaring it a serious matter to coerce him. But there is no sign of intellectual or moral elevation about him. Of the former we may judge from his speeches; for the speeches of gods are in Homer nearly as characteristic as those of heroes. As to the latter, his numerous human children show that he did not rise above the mythological standard; and his implacable resentment against Ulysses was occasioned by a retribution that the monster Polyphemus had received, not only just in itself, but even relatively slight.

It does not appear that prayer is addressed to him except in connection with particular places, or in virtue of special titles; as when the Neleids, his descendants, offer sacrifice to him on the Pylian shore[369], or the Phæacians[370] seek to avert threatened disaster, or when[202] Polyphemus his son roars to him for help[371]. The sacrifices to him have apparently a local character: at Onchestus is his ἄλσος[372], and Juno appeals to him in the name of the offerings made to him by the Greeks at Helice and Ægæ[373]. The Envoys of the Ninth Iliad pray to him for the success of their enterprise; but it is while their mission is leading them along the sea-beach[374]. He can assume the form of a man; can carry off his friends in vapour, or lift them through the air[375]; can inspire fire and vigour into heroes, yet this is done only through a sensible medium, namely, by a stroke of his staff[376]. He blunts, too, the point of an hostile spear[377]. But none of these operations are of the highest order of power. And when Polyphemus faintly expresses the idea that Neptune can restore his eye, (which however he does not ask in prayer,) Ulysses taunts him in reply with it as an undoubted certainty, that the god can do no such thing. With this we may contrast the remarkable bodily changes operated by Minerva upon Ulysses: they do not indeed involve the precise point of restoring a destroyed member; but they are far beyond anything which Homer has ascribed to his Neptune. Nor does the Poet ever speak of any operation of this kind as exceeding the power of Minerva; who enjoyed in a larger form, and by a general title, something like that power of transformation, which was the special gift and function of Circe and the Sirens. The discussion of the prerogatives of that half-sorceress, half-goddess, will throw some further light upon the rank of Neptune.

[203]

Except, then, in his position as brother and copartner, Neptune is very feebly marked with the traditional character. Again, in no deity is the mere animal delight in sacrifice more strongly developed. By offerings, his menaced destruction of the Phæacian city seems to be averted. His pleasure in the sacrifice of bulls is specially recorded[378]: and his remarkable fondness for the Solyman mountains, and the Ethiopian quarter, is perhaps connected with the eminent liberality of that people at their altars.

One traditive note, however, we find upon him, when we regard him as god of the sea: and it is this, that he is provided with a Secondary. It seems as though it was felt, that he did not wholly satisfy the demands of the mere element: and accordingly a god simply elemental has been provided in the person of Nereus, who is the centre of the submarine court, and who appears never to quit the depths. Nereus is the element impersonated: Neptune is its sovereign, has not his origin in it, but comes to it from without.

Neither is his command over the waters quite exclusive. He can of course raise a storm at sea. He can break off fragments, as the sea does, from rocks upon the coast[379]: and he threatens to overwhelm the Phæacian city by this means[380]. In conjunction with his power over the sea, he can let loose the winds, and darken the sky. On the other hand, not Jupiter only, but Juno and Minerva, can use the sea independently of him, as an instrument of their designs.

Again, while not fully developed as the mere elemental sea-god, he has clinging to him certain traditions which it is very difficult to attach to any portion whatever of his general character. I do not find any key to his interest in Æneas, whom he rescues from[204] Achilles: unless it may possibly be, that the gods, in the absence of any particular motive the other way, took a common interest in the descendants of their race, or of Jupiter as its head. Still less is it feasible to explain the legend of his service under Laomedon in company with Apollo, so as to place it in any clear relation to the other traditions respecting him. He has, again, a peculiar relation to the horse, for though a sea-god, he employs the animal to transport him to Troas; and it was he, who presented Xanthus and Balius to Peleus[381]. Again, he, in conjunction with Jupiter[382], conferred the gift of managing the horse on his descendant Antilochus.

In the legend of the Eighth Odyssey, he does not share the unbecoming laughter of the other deities at the ridiculous predicament and disgrace of Mars, but earnestly labours for his release, and actually becomes his security for the damages due[383]. What was the cause of this peculiar interest? It is difficult to conceive the aim of the Poet in this place. Some have suggested the comic effect[384] which he has produced by putting the petition in the mouth of Neptune, whose mere opinion that Mars would pay was valueless, inasmuch as he was far too powerful to be called to account by Vulcan for any thing which he might have said. It seems to me more likely that, as being, in the possible absence of Jupiter as well as the goddesses, the senior and gravest of the deities, he becomes the official guardian of Olympian decorum; and that he acts here as the proper person to find an escape from a dilemma which, while ludicrous, is also embarrassing, and requires poetically a solution.

Amphitrite, the wife of Neptune in the later my[205]thology, is not so named in Homer, by whom she is but doubtfully personified. Yet there is, as it were, an anticipation of the union, in the passage where he tells us that she rears monster-fishes to do the will of Neptune. Or it may be meant here, that she is the wife of Nereus.

The connection of Neptune with the sea naturally raises the question, whether the introduction of his worship into Greece can have been owed to the Phœnicians. For an auxiliary mark, we have the fact that Ino, of Phœnician extraction, is a strictly maritime deity[385],

The very frequent intrigues of Neptune with women may be the mythical dress of the adventures of Phœnician sailors in this kind: such as that which is recounted[386] in the story of Eumæus. We may notice, too, that in the Iliad, he does not particularly love the Greeks, but simply hates the Trojans. He, with Jupiter, we are told, loved Antilochus[387]. Jupiter, no doubt, because he had a regard for him as a Greek: Neptune, plainly, because he was his descendant. And in this way perhaps we may best explain the connection between Neptune and some abode in the East, far away from his own domain. He is absent from the Assembly of the First Odyssey[388], among the Ethiopians: and he sees Ulysses, on his voyage homewards, from afar, namely off the Solyman mountains; with which we must suppose he had some permanent tie, as no special cause is stated for his having been there. It little accords with his character as a marine god: but it is in harmony with the view of him as belonging to the[206] circle of the Phœnician traditions, that he should visit a nation, of which Homer, I believe, conceived as being but a little beyond Phœnicia.

But we have still to consider the fragments of information which concern Neptune, under the third of the heads above given.

No ancient tradition appears to have been split and shivered into so many fragments in the time of Homer, as that which related to the Evil Principle. This was the natural prelude to its becoming, as it shortly afterwards did, indiscernible to the human eye[389]. Among these rivulets of tradition, some of the most curious connect themselves with the name of Neptune, who was, in his mythological character, prepared to be its recipient: for in that character he was near to Jupiter in strength, while his brotherly relation by no means implied any corresponding tie of affection.

With Juno and Minerva, he took part in the dangerous rebellion recorded in the First Iliad. He refuses to join in a combination of Hellenizing gods against him, on the ground of its hopelessness: but afterwards, when all others acquiesce in the prohibition, he alone comes down to aid and excite the Greeks. The Juno of the Iliad is the active and astute intriguer against her husband: but it is Neptune, on whom in effect the burden and responsibility of action chiefly fall. Still, his principal points of contact with the traditions of resistance to the Supreme Will are mediate; and the connection is through his offspring.

In his favourite son, the Cyclops, we have the great atheist of the poems. It is Providence, and not idols only, that he rejects, when saying[390],

[207]

The whole of this dangerous class, the kindred of the gods, seem to have sprung from Neptune[391]. The Læstrygones, indeed, are not expressly said to be his children. But they are called οὐκ ἄνδρεσσιν ἐοικότες, ἀλλὰ Γίγασιν: and the Giants are expressly declared to be divinely descended in a speech of Alcinous[392]:

Neptune was the father of Nausithous and the royal house of Scheria, through Peribœa: but she was daughter of Eurymedon, and Eurymedon was king of the Giants, and was the king who led them, with himself, evidently by rebellion, into ruin[393];

Thus we have Neptune placed in the relation of ancestor to the rebellious race, whom it is scarcely possible to consider as other than identical with the Titans condemned to Tartarus[394].

But we have one yet more pointed passage for the establishment of this strange relationship. In the νεκυΐα of the Eleventh Odyssey, Ulysses sees, among other Shades, Iphimedea, the wife of Aloeus, who bore to Neptune two children[395], Otus and Ephialtes; hugest of all creatures upon earth, and also most beautiful, after Orion. They, the sons of Neptune, while yet children, threatened war against Olympus, and planned the piling of the mountains: but Apollo slew them. Thus this, the most characteristic of all the traditions in[208] Homer relating to the Evil One, hangs upon the person of Neptune, doubtless because his mythological place best fitted him for the point of junction. It must be observed, that Homer has, in bringing these young giants before us, used a somewhat artificial arrangement. He does not place them in the realm of Aides and Persephone, though he describes them to us, in connection with the figures in that gloomy scene, as the children of Iphimedea, who appears there in the first or feminine division. That he does not bring them before us in conjunction with Tityus and the other sufferers of that region, can only be because he did not intend them to be understood as belonging to it: and it is clear, therefore, that he means us to conceive of them as having their abode in Tartarus, among the Titans, doubtless by the side of Eurymedon and his followers.

We may perceive with peculiar clearness, in the case of Neptune, the distinction between the elevated prerogatives of such a deity within his own province, and his comparative insignificance beyond it. When he traverses the sea, it exults to open a path for him, and the huge creatures from its depths sport along his wake. Such is its sympathy with him, that when he is exciting the Greeks to war, it too boils and foams upon the shore of the Hellespont. And not only is maritime nature thus at his feet, but he has the gift of vision almost without limit of space, and of knowledge of coming events, so long as they are maritime. He who knows nothing of the woes of his son Polyphemus till he is invoked from the sea-shore, yet can discern Ulysses on his raft from the far Solyman mountains, and even is aware that he will escape from his present danger (ὀϊζὺς ἥ μιν ἱκάνει) by reaching the shore of Scheria. This knowledge is[209] shared by the minor goddess Leucothee: and doubtless on the same principle, namely, that it is marine knowledge. So he can predict to Tyro that there will be more than one child born to her: here, too, he speaks of what is personal to himself. When we take Neptune out of his province, we find none of these extraordinary gifts, no sign of a peculiar subjugation of nature or of man to him. He shares in the government of the world only as a vast force, which it will cost Jupiter trouble to subdue. Even within his own domain some stubborn phenomena of nature impose limits on his power: for we are told he would not be able, even were he willing, to save Ulysses from Charybdis[396].

Thus it was that the sublime idea of one Governor of the universe, omnipotent over all its parts, was shivered into many fragments, and these high prerogatives, distributed and held in severalty, are the fragments of a conception too weighty and too comprehensive for the unassisted human mind to carry in its entireness.

Upon the whole, the intellectual spark in Neptune is feeble, and the conception is much materialized. Ideally he has the relation to Jupiter, which the statue of the Nile bears to one of Jupiter’s statues. Within these limits, his position is grand. The ceaseless motion, the unconquerable might, the wide extent, of the θάλασσα, compose for him a noble monarchy. At first sight, when we read of the lottery of the universe, we are startled at finding the earth left without an owner. It was not so in the Asiatic religions. But mark here the influence of external circumstances. The nations of Asia inhabited a vast continent; for them land was[210] greater by far than sea. The Greeks knew of nothing but islands and peninsulas of limited extent, whereas the Sea for them was infinite; since, except round the Ægean, they knew little or nothing of its farther shores. Thus the sceptre of Neptune reaches over the whole of the Outer Geography; while Earth, as commonly understood, had long been left behind upon the course of the adventurous Ulysses.

Aidoneus.

There is a marked contrast between the mere rank of Aides or Aidoneus, and his want of substance and of activity, in the poems. He is one of the three Kronid Brothers, of whom Neptune asserts—and we are nowhere told that it is an unwarrantable boast—that they are of equal dignity and honour. He bears the lofty title of Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος: and he is the husband of Persephone the Awful. It is plain that he belonged of right to the order of Olympian deities, because Dione states that he repaired to the divine abode, to have the wounds healed there by Paieon, which he had received from Hercules: but it is very doubtful whether we ought to understand him to have attended even the great Chapter, or Assembly, of the Twentieth Iliad. His ordinary residence is exclusively in the nether world. At the same time there is, in his position, and in that of Persephone, a remarkable independence. This the very title of subterranean Jupiter is enough to indicate. Neptune is never called the Jupiter of the sea. And it is quite plain that the power of Jupiter over the dead was limited. We cannot say it was null: for Castor and Pollux after death are still τιμὴν πρὸς Ζῆνος ἔχοντες, and they live accordingly on alternate days. But it was Minerva who interfered to[211] carry Hercules safely through the Shades, and bring him back; and it appears that but for her Jupiter would not have been able to give effect to his design[397].

But the share of action ascribed to this divinity in any part of the poems is a very small one. In the Twentieth Iliad, the tramp of the Immortals, when engaged in fight, and the quaking of the earth under the might of Neptune, cause him to tremble. And his having received wounds from Hercules, though he shared this indignity with Juno, detracts from his mythological greatness.

Love of symmetry has sometimes led writers on the Greek mythology to find matrimonial arrangements for Jupiter’s brothers similar to his own, by giving to Neptune Amphitrite, and to Aidoneus Persephone, for their respective wives. The former of these two unions has no foundation in Homer; and the latter bears little analogy to that of Jupiter and Juno. For Proserpine is the real Queen of the Shades below: all the higher traditions and active duties of the place centre around her, while he appears there as a sort of King-Consort. There is no sign whatever of his exercising any influence over her, far less of her acting in the capacity of his organ. And while she has a cult or worship on earth, he apparently has none.

Under these circumstances, we do not expect to find her exhibiting any tokens of derivation from, or ideal dependance on him. They would appear to be respectively derived from traditions of independent origin.

Homer has not attached marks to Aidoneus which would enable us to trace him to any particular source beyond the limits of the Olympian system. It would be natural to seek his prototype among the darkest[212] and earthiest of the elemental powers. But he appears before us in the poems rather as an independent and Hellenic creation, metaphysical in kind, and representing little beyond (1), a place in the trine number of the Kronid Brothers, which appears to be the Hellenic form of a great primitive tradition of a Trinity in the Godhead; and (2), the consciousness that there was a city and a government of the dead, and that a ruler must be provided for them, while the idea of the Supreme Deity had not retained enough of force and comprehensiveness to seem sufficient for the purpose.

As the representative of inexorable death, Aidoneus was the opposite of the bright and life-giving Apollo: and was naturally the most hateful to mortals of all the Olympian deities[398]. But the place in which the idea of punishment centres is the domain of Κρόνος rather than that of Aides: and he is the ruler over a state of the dead which is generally neither bliss nor acute suffering, but which is deeply overspread with chillness and gloom.

I shall refer hereafter[399] to the peculiar relation which appears to subsist between Aidoneus, together with Persephone, and the mysterious Ἐρινύες.

Demeter, or Ceres.

The goddess Demeter, the Ceres of the Latins, though afterwards of considerable dignity and importance, is but a feeble luminary in the Homeric heavens. That there are in the Iliad[400] only two distinct notices of her personality, might of itself be compatible with a contrary supposition: for in the Troica he introduces his divine personages on account of their relation to the subject, rather than for their general[213] importance; and corn, which feeds man, has little affinity with war, which destroys him. But her weight is, if possible, even smaller in the Odyssey, where she is noticed but once[401], and that incidentally.

The use of the phrase Δημήτερος ἀκτὴ for corn, like the φλὸξ Ἡφαίστοιο for Vulcan, and Ἄρης for the spear, or for the battle, tends to indicate imperfect personality; to show that the deity was indistinctly realized; that the personal name was either recent or at least unfamiliar; and that it was used, not so much to designate a being, as to give life to an idea.

Homer has not asserted any connection between Demeter and Persephone: and the idea of it in later times may have arisen simply from the observation that in the poems Demeter stands as a mother without a child, and Persephone as a daughter without a mother.

Possibly, however, the connection may have been suggested by the name; which seems manifestly to be equivalent to Γῆ μήτηρ or Mother-Earth. And though the original reference was to the production of food by which man lives, the word might be susceptible of another sense, connecting it with the nether world, which had a material relation to Earth, and which, even in Homer, Tityus the son of Γαῖα, and in the later tradition the earth-born race generally, were reputed to inhabit.

The name in its proper sense indicates first the idea, and then the goddess of agriculture: and points to a Pelasgian, and perhaps farther back an Egyptian, rather than an Hellenic or a Phœnician connection. In Egypt, according to the reports collected by Diodorus[402], Isis was held nearly to correspond with her.

With this supposition agree the only notices con[214]tained in the poems that tend to attach the goddess Demeter to a particular locality. Her connection with Iasion was probably in Crete or Cyprus, or at any rate (from the name) in some country occupied, and ruled too, by Pelasgians. Her τέμενος[403] or dedicated lands in Thessaly, the Pelasgic Argos, suggest a similar presumption. In Middle Greece and Peloponnesus we never hear of her. The very solemn and ancient observance of her worship in Attica, which was so eminently a Pelasgian state in the time of Homer, entirely accords with the indications of the Homeric text.

The slight notice she obtains from Homer, compared with the dignity to which other tokens would tend to show that she was entitled, may have been owing to the incomplete amalgamation in his time of Hellenic and Pelasgian institutions.

Upon this goddess, as upon so many others, sensual passion had laid hold. This is decidedly confirmatory of her Pelasgian or eastern, as opposed to properly Hellic associations. We see Venus coming from the east and worshipped in Pelasgian countries: of the three persons whom Aurora appropriates, Orion is pretty evidently the subject of a naturalized eastern tradition, and Tithonus is Asiatic: Calypso and Circe belong to the east by Phœnicia: it is in Troas and Asia that no less than three Nymphs appear as the bearers of children, fighting on the Trojan side, to human fathers[404]. Whereas among the more Hellenic deities, we have Minerva and Proserpine wholly exempt; and Juno using sensual passion it is true, but only for a political end. This assemblage of facts further confirms the supposition, that Ceres ought to be set down as a Pelasgian deity. Orion and Ino, shining in the[215] heavens, seem to belong to the more astronomical form of eastern religion: Ceres to that which was probably transmitted through fertile and well-cultivated Egypt.

The title of Demeter to rank with the Olympian deities of Homer is not so absolutely clear, as that of many among them: but it may on the whole be sufficiently inferred from the arrangement of the passage in the Fourteenth Odyssey, where Jupiter recites a list of the various partners to whom he owed his offspring. The three first are women, who bore sons never deified, Pirithous, Perseus, and Minos: the two next are women, of whom one gave birth to Dionysus a god, the other to the substantially deified Hercules. The sixth and seventh are Demeter, or Ceres, and Latona; the children of neither are mentioned. Besides that Demeter is called καλλιπλόκαμος ἄνασσα, the two seem to be coupled together as goddesses. The structure of the passage is not chronological, but depends upon dignity advancing regularly towards a climax; so purposely indeed, that Dionysus, always an immortal, is mentioned after Hercules, a mortal born, though Semele had been named before Alcmene. All this appears to require the adoption of the conclusion, that Demeter was reckoned as an Olympian goddess in the Homeric system.

There is, however, another and more comprehensive solution of the question which arises out of the faint notices of Δημήτηρ in Homer. We ought, perhaps, to consider her as the Pelasgian, and Juno as the Hellenic, reproduction of those eastern traditions, which gave mythological impersonation to the female principle. They naturally centred upon the Earth as the recipient of productive influences, and as the great nurse and feeder of man, the τραφερὴ, the πολύφορβος, the πουλυβότειρα, the ζείδωρος. The Pelasgic Demeter may be a[216] very fair and close copy, in all probability, from these traditions as they existed in Egypt. But when the same materials were presented to the Hellenic mind, they could not satisfy its active and idealizing fancy. For the Hellene, man was greater than nature: so that the great office of Jupiter as king of air was subordinated to his yet more august function as the supreme superintendent and controller of human affairs. As the political idea thus predominated in the chief of the Hellenic Immortals, it was requisite that a similar predominance of the intellectual and organizing element should be obtained in his divine Mate. Traditions, however, that had their root in earth, were of necessity wholly intractable for such a purpose, although the lighter and more spirit-like fabric of air was less unsuited to it. Earth was heavy, inactive; and was the prime representative of matter as opposed to mind. Hence the personality of the tradition was severed by the Greeks from its material groundwork; and Earth, the Nature-power, remained beneath, while the figure of Juno, relieved from this incumbrance, and invested with majestic and vigorous attributes, soared aloft and took the place of eldest sister and first wife of Jupiter. Hence doubtless it is that the Γαῖα of Homer is so inanimate and weakling: because she was but the exhausted residue of a tradition, from which the higher life had escaped. But the Ἥρη and the Γαῖα, according to this hypothesis, made up between them a full representation of the traditions from the East, relating to the chief female form of deity. This being so, no legitimate place was left in the mythology of Homer for Ceres; as she had nothing to represent but the same tradition in a form far less adapted to the Hellenic mind, a form indeed which it had probably repudiated. Hence[217] while the Olympian system was young, and Juno not wholly severed from her Oriental origin, the Γῆ μήτηρ could not but remain a mere outlier. But as the poetry of the system was developed, and its philosophy submerged and forgotten, this difficulty diminished, and the later mythology found an ample space for Ceres as a great elemental power.

I may, then, observe, in conclusion, that the whole of this hypothesis is eminently agreeable to the Homeric representation of Ceres in its four main branches, (1) as Pelasgian, (2) as subject to lustful passion, (3) as a secondary wife of Jupiter, and (4) as immediately associated with productive Earth.

Persephone.

Although the Persephone of Homer is rarely brought before us, and our information respecting her is therefore slight, there seems to be sufficient ground for asserting that she is not the mere female reflection of Hades or Aidoneus.

It is only for those deities from whom other deities are drawn by descent, that we find in Homer a regular conjugal connection provided. Thus Neptune, as we have seen, cannot be said to have a wife in Homer. Amphitrite appears in the poems with a faint and indeed altogether doubtful personality, though she afterwards grew into his spouse. Now Neptune was a deity much more in view than Aides: and it is not likely that we should have found Persephone more fully developed than Amphitrite, had she not represented some older and more independent tradition.

Again, in cases where the female deity is the mere reflection of the male, we do not find her invested with a share in his dominion, although, as in the case[218] of Juno, she may occasionally and derivatively exercise some of the prerogatives, which in him have a higher and more unquestionable activity. Thus Tartarus is the region of Κρόνος, not of Ῥέα; air is the realm of Jupiter, not of Jupiter and Juno. But Persephone appears by the side of Hades as a substantive person; she is invoked with him by Althea to slay Meleager, in the Legend of the Ninth Iliad[405]: and the region in which she dwells is not less hers than his[406],

Indeed her personality is the better developed of the two: for no personal act is ascribed in the poems to Aides, except the indeterminate one of trembling, at the battle of the gods, lest the crust of earth should be broken through: and the name given him in the Iliad of Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος, subterranean Jupiter, may possibly suggest that he was sometimes viewed as hardly more than a form or function of the highest god: whereas, in the under-world of the Eleventh Odyssey, all the active functions of sovereignty are placed in her hands. It is she who gathers the women-shades for Ulysses: and it is she who disperses them when they have been passed in review. It is by her that Ulysses apprehends the head of Gorgo may be sent forth to drive him off, should he linger too long; it is by her that he apprehends he may have been deluded with an εἴδωλον or shade, instead of a substance; most of all, it is she who endows Tiresias, alone among the dead, with the character of the Seer[407]. In fine, the whole of the active duties of the nether kingdom appear to be in her hands.

That she was generally worshipped by the Hellenic tribes we must infer from the cases mentioned in the[219] Ninth Iliad, the one in Ætolia, the other farther North[408]; as well as from her office in regard to the thoroughly national region of the Shades.

She has her own strongly marked set of epithets. Of these, one is ἁγνὴ, the severely pure; for with Homer ἁγνὸς is exclusively applicable to divine womanhood, and is given only to Diana and Persephone: then she is ἀγαυὴ, the dread: and lastly, she is ἐπαινὴ, an epithet appropriated to her exclusively, which appears to be Homer’s favourite method for sharply marking out individuality of character. Buttmann has also well observed, that she has this epithet only when mentioned along with Hades, that is, when shown very strictly in her official character; and that ἀγαυὴ is used when she appears alone. Upon this he observes; ‘this way of joining the name of Proserpine with that of Pluto was an old epic formula, handed down even to Homer and our oldest Greek poets from still earlier times, and which they used unchanged[409].’ He would read ἐπ’ αἰνὴ, instead of ἐπαινὴ, but this neither affects the sense (awful, terrible) nor the force of the exclusive appropriation.

There is another sign confirmatory of the belief that the origin of this mythical person must be sought, not in the necessity of finding a queen for Aidoneus, but in an anterior and distinct tradition. Namely, this; that, though she is a daughter of Jupiter[410], she is not provided with a mother. Thus she seems as if she were older than the Olympian œconomy. Venus, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are all equipped with a full parentage. The later tradition, which made Persephone the daughter of Ceres, has no other support from Homer than[220] this, that we are left to suppose that Ceres had some offspring by Jupiter, while none is named[411].

The chain of presumptions appears to me to become complete, when we take into view two other pieces of evidence supplied by the poems. In the far East[412], beyond the couch of the morning Sun, some distance up the stream of the great river Ocean, but to the south of the point where it is entered, and at a spot where the shore narrows very much—immediately, in short, before the point of descent—are the groves of Persephone. According to the general rules of interpretation applicable to Homer, this appears to convey to us that the seat of her worship was in the far Southern East, and that her office, as there understood, was that of the goddess or queen of Death. And if she is indeed the reflection, in the mirror of the lower world, of any other known deity, then, both from this great office, and from the peculiar epithet ἁγνὴ, it is most likely to be of Diana, with whom, in the later mythology, she was identified; and, again, through Diana, of Apollo, from whom the light of Diana herself was derived. Or, in other words, she may be for the lower world that reflection of Apollo, which the Homeric Diana was for this earth: and it is worth observation, that the gift of second sight, which she allows to Tiresias, and which therefore is at her disposal beneath ground[413], is the peculiar and exclusive property of Apollo.

Let us now lastly consider, what light the etymology of her remarkable name may afford us. Its meaning appears to be, either destruction by slaughter; from two roots, one that represented in ἔπερσα, from the verb πέρθω, and the other φόνη; or else, that of the destruc[221]tion or slaughter of Persians. In the former view, the evidence leaves us where we were, or brings us a point nearer to Diana, whose function was not that of all death whatever, but of such death as might be called slaughter, because not due to disease, but brought about at the moment by a sudden process, though often the mildest of all ways of dying[414]. But the other etymology may be worth some further attention.

Besides that cluster of traditions, relating to remote places, which the Greeks derived from the Phœnician navigators, and which cannot but have included some eastward wanderings in the Black Sea, as well as westward experience in the Mediterranean, they must in all likelihood have had oriental traditions properly their own, brought by their Hellic forefathers with them from their cradle. We have already seen that that cradle was probably Persia; and we have found traces of the connection in the name of the great pre-Achæan hero, Perseus, and in the continuing use of that name in the high Achæan family of Nestor, as well as at much later historic dates. Another link, connecting the Homeric traditions with this name, and both with the East, is found in the name of Perse, who was the mother of Circe, an Eastern goddess; and who was the daughter of Ocean, and the wife of the Sun[415].

We must take these circumstances into view along with the force of the name Persephone, and with the evidence we have already had of the antiquity of the traditions relating to her. To this we have to add the absence of any Homeric evidence connecting her with any other local source. There is no sign of any institution, that belonged to her worship, except in those groves planted in the far East; and no sign of any other[222] particular locality marked as her peculiar abode, which we have found to be a mark of such invented deities generally as had a well developed personality. There is no note of her whatever in Troas; and nothing to connect her with Egypt, or with the Pelasgians in any quarter. It is not likely that she came in with the Phœnicians, as she would then have had signs of a recent origin, and would not have attained to so august and mysterious a position as she actually holds. The two distinct notices of her worship are both in the Homeric Hellas; not in Southern Greece, nor in the islands.

It seems, therefore, on every ground reasonable to suppose, that the tradition of Proserpine was an original Hellic tradition brought into the country from the East, probably by the Hellic tribes, and from among their Persian forefathers; and that the name of the deity, as we find it in Homer, affords a new indication of the extraction of the race.

Accordingly, the unusually substantive aspect of her position in the nether world, which makes her relation to Aidoneus so different from that of the other mythological wives, or feminines, to their respective husbands, is such, that it seems most reasonable, instead of deriving her from him, as Juno was derived from Jupiter, or Tethys from Ocean, to consider them as representing the union of two independent impersonations, associated together primarily by their common subject matter. For there does not seem to be any thing improbable in the hypothesis, that Persephone may, in the belief of some country and age, have served alone for the ruler of the region of the dead. Just as so many subordinate ministers of Doom, the Fates, the Erinues, and the Harpies, assumed the female form in the process of im[223]personation, so it may have been with their sovereign. And if we are to look farther for the metaphysical groundwork of such a tradition, we may perhaps find it as follows. There is a relation of analogy between each function and its converse: and as in the pure mythology, all that gave life was feminine, so conversely, all that represented the destroying agency might assume a similar form.

In her case, as in that of one or two others, it is difficult to discover whether Homer meant a particular deity to be included, or not, among the Olympian gods of the ordinary or smaller assembly. There is no indication in the poems, which directly connects Persephone with Olympus; and that celestial palace may seem to belong to the government of the living world, and to be almost incapable of relations with that of the departed. Nor is she connected specially with the Olympian system, like Aidoneus, by the position which birth confers. The ἄλσος, and the worship paid her there, can hardly belong to the departed spirits on their way to their abode, and more probably indicate an ancient tradition deriving her worship from the far East. On the other hand, her dignity and majesty in the poems are unquestionable, and indeed superior to those of any Olympian deity, after some five or six. I do not find materials for a confident judgment on the Homeric view of her place in his theo-mythology, with reference to this particular point of connection with Olympus.

Founding conjecture upon the facts before us, I venture, however, on a further extension of these hypotheses with respect to Persephone. We perceive in Persephone and Diana that kind of likeness which may be due to their common origin; if, as we suppose, both were images of Apollo. But it is not likely that two such images should have been formed by the same[224] race for itself. Can we then, probably refer Diana and Persephone to different sources ethnically?

It is plain that Diana was worshipped in Troy and Greece. Persephone, so far as we know, in Greece only. This would agree with the supposition that Diana was originally Pelasgian, Persephone only Hellic.

Again, Diana was an earthly, Persephone a subterraneous reflection of Apollo. Now the Hellic tribes were lively believers in a future state: as we see from the communion of Achilles with the soul of Patroclus, and from many places in the Odyssey. But we have nowhere in Homer the slightest allusion among the Trojans to the belief in a future state, beyond the mere formula of entering the region of Aïdes. Neither the succinct account of the funeral rites of Hector, nor any one of the three addresses over his remains, contain the slightest allusion to his separate existence as a spirit. There is, indeed, mention of wine used to extinguish the flame of the funeral pile, but none of invocation along with it, as there is in the case of Patroclus[416]. And as we have no less than an hundred lines spoken over or otherwise bestowed upon the dead Hector, the omission is singular. It becomes still more significant, when we recollect that the Greeks, and their goddess Juno, invoke the deities of the under-world, and the powers connected with a future state, in their solemn oaths and imprecations[417]; but when Hector swears to Dolon, (our only example of a Trojan oath,) he adjures Jupiter alone[418]. Now it may be that the religion of Troy did not include so distinct a reference to a future state, as that of Greece, and that the Trojans knew nothing of Persephone, or of any deity holding her place. This hypothesis would at once[225] accord with the features of the Homeric portrait, and with the striking absence among the Trojans of all pointed reference to a future life, or to the disembodied spirit. Nor need we consider it to be at all shaken by slight and formal allusions, or by the words in which Homer on his own part dismisses to Hades the spirit of the slain Hector[419]. The hypothesis which the circumstances appear to suggest is, not that the Trojans disbelieved a future existence, but that they neither felt keenly respecting it, nor gave a mythological development to the doctrine.

Mars.

Even in Homer, Mars is externally the most imposing figure among the masculine deities of pure invention. The greatest of war-bards could not but find him a fine subject for poetical amplification. But in the Roman period he had far outgrown the limits of his Homeric position. With the lapse of time, the forces and passions, which gave to this impersonation its hold upon human nature, were sure to prevail in a considerable degree over the finer elements from which Apollo was moulded. It requires an effort of mind to liberate ourselves from the associations of the later mythology, and contract our vision for the purpose of estimating the Mars of Homer as he really is.

Notwithstanding his stature, beauty, hand and voice, which constitute, taken together, a proud appearance, it seems as if Mars had stood lower in the mind of Homer than any Olympian deity who takes part in the Trojan war, except Venus only.

The Odyssey never once brings Mars before us, even by way of allusion, except in the licentious lay of De[226]modocus; and the spirit of that lay certainly seems to aim at making him ridiculous, especially in the manner of his release and withdrawal. In the Iliad his part is, of course, more considerable; but on no occasion whatever does Homer apparently seek to set him off, or give him a commanding attitude in comparison with other deities.

We have nowhere any account of any act of reverence or worship done to him, either in or out of Greece. For instance, he is never, even in the contingencies of war, the object of prayer. He never shows command over the powers of nature, or the mind of man; which he nowhere attempts to influence by suggestion. It is said, indeed, that he entered into Hector, as that warrior was putting on the armour of Achilles;

But no words could more conclusively fix his place in the Homeric system as the mere impersonation of a Passion. For with Homer no greater deity, indeed, no other of the Olympian gods, is ever said to enter into the mind of a mortal man. In the Fifth Book he stirs up the warlike passion of Menelaus; having, like Venus, a limited hold upon a particular propensity. His climax of honour in this department is his giving θάρσος to the Pseudo-Ulysses; but this he does only in conjunction with Minerva[421].

His possession of the attributes of deity appears to have been most limited. The use of the word Ἄρης not only for the passion of war, but even for its weapons, shows us that the impersonation was in this case as yet very partially disengaged from the metaphysical[227] ideas, or the material objects, in which it took its rise.

His function as god of war was confined to the merely material side of war, and had nothing to do with that aspect, in which war enlists and exhausts all the higher faculties of the human mind; so much so, indeed, that to be a great general is almost necessary in order to enter the first rank of greatness at all. Even of war in the lower sense he had not, as a god, exclusive possession, but he administered his office in partnership with a superior, Minerva. Besides being every thing else that she was, she presided, along with him, over war. On the shield of Achilles, he and Minerva lead the opposing hosts[422]. Over the body of Patroclus the struggle was one of which, says the Poet, neither Mars nor Minerva could think lightly[423]. Achilles, when pursuing the Trojans, calls for assistance; for, says he, neither Mars nor Minerva could undertake to dispose of such a multitude[424]. Mars and Minerva, says Jupiter, will take charge of the concerns of war[425].

But that in this partnership he was an inferior, and not an equal, is clear from the manner in which he is habitually handled by Minerva. She wounds him through the spear of Diomed, when, unless saved by flight, he himself apprehends he might have perished[426]. In the Theomachy, she twice over strikes him powerless to the ground. In the Olympian meeting of the Fifteenth Book, when his intended visit to the battlefield menaces the gods with trouble from the displeasure of Jupiter, Minerva strips his armour off his back, scolds him sharply, and replaces him in his seat[427]. And[228] she is pointed out by Jupiter as the person, whose habitual duty it was to keep him in order by the severest means[428];

In the Fifth Iliad, he stirs up the Trojans, and envelopes the fight in darkness: but here he is acting under ἐφετμαὶ, or injunctions from Apollo[429], who thus appears, like Minerva, in the light of a superior to him, even in his own department.

We learn, again, that he was overcome and imprisoned by the youths Otus and Ephialtes, whom Apollo subdued: he was in bondage for thirteen months, and would have perished, had not Mercury released him[430].

He is able to assume the human figure, and, as we have seen, to bring darkness over contending hosts: but, when in Olympus, he remains ignorant[431] of the death of his son Ascalaphus, until he receives the information from Juno; as it was only from his Nymphs that the Sun learned the slaughter of his oxen. Nay, Minerva even puts on a particular helmet, in order that it may secure her from being recognised by Mars when within his view[432].

Mars in the Olympian court bears some resemblance to Ajax among the Grecian heroes. But the intellectual element, which appears to be simply blunt in Ajax, in Mars seems to be wholly wanting: so that he represents an animal principle in its crudest form: and is not so much an Ajax, as a Caliban.

We are not told that he is greedy of sacrifices, for no cultus is assigned to him: but he is represented[229] as greedy of blood, and as capable of being satiated with it[433].

Except with Venus for his mere person, he has no favour with any other Olympian deities[434]. Juno describes him as lawless and as a fool: and Jupiter tells him that, were he the son of any other deity but himself, he would long ago have been ejected from his place in heaven[435].

On one occasion, his name is associated with those of Agamemnon and Neptune: but the due relation between them is still preserved. Agamemnon is compared with Jupiter as to his face and head; with Neptune as to his chest; and with Mars as to his waist. The eyes of Hector on the field of battle were like the Gorgon, and like Mars[436].

From the repeated allusions to contingencies in which he would have perished, there seems to be something more or less equivocal even about his title to immortality. If more, he is also much less, than man. He is perhaps the least human of the Olympian family; and is a compound between deity and brute.

The exhibitions of Mars, as wounded by Diomed for the Iliad, and in the lay of Demodocus for the Odyssey, seem to imply that this deity could not, in the time of Homer, have become an object of general or established religious worship in Greece.

He is a local deity, and his abode is in Thrace. From thence he issues forth with his mythical son Terror to make war upon the Ephyri: a race whose name has a strong Greek savour, and whose hostile relation to Mars thus exhibited, tends, with other evidence, to place him in the category of foreign deities, not yet[230] naturalized in the country, though made available by Homer for his Olympian Court. After the detection in the palace of Vulcan, it is to Thrace that he again repairs.

We are not to consider this paramount Thracian relation as absolutely separating him from Greece: Thracians, like Pelasgi, had links with both parties in the war, though the stronger ones are apparently those which connect them with Troy.

He has among the deities the nickname of ἀλλοπρόσαλλος, or turncoat, because of his vacillation between the two parties. This singular epithet, applied to the Thracian god, conveys the idea that Homer, knowing of the sympathies of the name with both sides, was puzzled as to placing him decisively on either. Now the Thracians of Homer were ἀκρόκομοι[437], while the Achæans were καρηκομόωντες. And it is worth notice that the Germans of Tacitus, among whom we find marked signs of resemblance to the Hellenic tribes, wore in general flowing hair, but the Suevi, one particular tribe of them, on the contrary, gathered it into a knot[438].

Mars, however, incurs the particular wrath of Juno by abandoning the party of the Greeks, and siding with the Trojans. But in the Fifteenth Book, where Juno acquaints him of the death of his son, who had fought in the Greek ranks, she evidently does it in the expectation that grief and resentment will once more make him a foe to the Trojans. And her calculation is well founded: for he is setting out with that intention, when Minerva follows, and roughly brings him back.

He only appears once in a pre-Troic legend. This appearance, too, is beyond the borders of Greece. In[231] Lycia he, or, it may be, simply warlike passion which he represents, slays Isander, the son of Bellerophon and uncle of Glaucus, in battle with the Solymi. Still he is the father by Astyoche, of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Minyeian Orchomenus, or else farther towards the north of Greece.

The Homeric indications, on the whole, as well as the general conceptions of the character, represent Mars as neither a deity indigenous to the country, nor one belonging to the Hellenic traditions: while the Poet perhaps intends us to understand that he had points of contact or affinity with Greece, which are represented in his wavering attitude between the two parties to the war. It is probable that the Poet himself may have been a principal agent in the introduction of Mars to Hellenic worship. The machinery of the Iliad required him to find an array of gods, who should be champions on each side respectively. It also required that these gods should be united round a centre, which he provided for them in Olympus and in its Court, under the presidency of Jupiter. Both Mars and Venus may thus have made good a title, which before was doubtful and imperfect, through the place to which they were promoted in the Iliad, combined with the place which the Iliad itself won for itself in the national understanding and affections.

Mercury.

The Homeric signs respecting Mercury are sufficient to fix his character and origin. The small part, which this deity plays in the poems, is indeed in remarkable contrast with the extended popularity to which at a later period he attained: but his character in Homer is[232] one which accounts in a natural manner for the subsequent increase in his importance.

He is the son of Maias, Od. xiv. 435; and of Jupiter, Od. viii. 335.

He is the man of business for the Olympian deities, διάκτορος. Od. viii. 335. v. 28[439].

He is the giver of increase, δῶτορ ἐάων. Od. viii. 335. Il. xiv. 490.

He is the most sociable of deities, Il. xxiv. 334. σοὶ γάρ τε μάλιστά γε φίλτατόν ἐστιν ἀνδρὶ ἑταίρισσαι.

The extraction of Mercury stands somewhat obscurely in Homer: his mother Maias is but once mentioned, and then without any clue. But, in the ancient hymn to Mercury, she is declared to be the daughter of Atlas: and if this be so, we shall be justified in considering him as the child of a Phœnician tradition[440]. This is also clear on Homeric grounds. Although Homer does not expressly connect him with Atlas, he makes Calypso, the daughter of that personage, address him as αἰδοῖός τε φίλος τε. These expressions are usually applied by him where there is some special relation of consanguinity, affinity, or guestship: as between Jupiter and his adopted child[441] and particular friend Thetis. It is therefore probable that Homer took Mercury’s mother Maias to be, as the after-tradition made her, the sister of Calypso, and the daughter of Atlas. All the other Homeric signs of him are in complete harmony with this hypothesis of a Phœnician origin for Mercury.

We thus understand how he becomes the general agent for the gods: because the Phœnicians supplied the first and principal means of communication between[233] the several nations in the heroic age: they were the men-of-business for the world[442].

It thus becomes plain, again, how he can with propriety be called the giver of comforts or blessings; because the basis of commerce is this, that each person engaged in it parts with something which he does not want, and receives what he does want in return.

The apparent anomaly, which makes the god of increase also the god of thievery, is thus explained: because, from its nature, commerce is ever apt to degenerate partially into fraud; and because, in days of the strong hand, force as well as intelligence would often make it easy for the maritime merchants to change their vocation, for the occasion, into that of plunder[443].

His proper office in regard to the ἔργα of men seems not to be industry, nor skill in production or manufacture; but handiness and tidiness in the performance of services. He, says Ulysses, gives to the ἔργα, which may mean both the deeds and the industrial productions of men, their χάρις and κῦδος, their grace and credit or popularity[444].

This idea of increase forms the common or central element of the various attributes assigned to Mercury. It takes two principal forms, one that of increase in material goods, the other that of the propagation of the race. This latter, which was elsewhere grossly exhibited, is veiled by Homer with his almost unfailing sense of delicacy, and may not, indeed, have been fully developed in his time. It is perhaps however traceable in two passages of the poems: first, that of the Sixteenth Iliad, where we are told that he corrupted the virgin Polymele[445], though she belonged to the[234] train of Diana. The other is in the episode of Venus and Mars, where Apollo selects him as the deity to whom to put the question, whether he would like to take the place of the adulterer, and he replies in the affirmative[446]. Each of these incidents seems to appertain to something distinctive in his character.

That character, again, imports the extended intercourse with mankind, and the knowledge of the world, which causes him to be chosen, in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad, for the difficult office of conducting Priam to the abode of Ulysses. Moreover, the great balance of material benefit which commerce brings gives him, its patron, as a general rule, a genial and philanthropic aspect. In Homer we have nowhere any sign of his vengeance, anger, or severity. He neither punishes, hates, nor is incensed with any one. A passionless and prudent deity, he not only declines actual fighting with Latona, as she is a wife of Jupiter, but spontaneously gives her leave to boast among the gods that she has engaged and worsted him.

The Phœnician origin of Mercury will also account for his position in the poems, in relation to the Trojans and Greeks respectively. Not simply is he one of the five Hellenizing deities: for his talents would naturally with Homer tend to place him on that side. But he appears almost wholly unknown to the Trojans. The abundance of the flocks of Phorbas is indeed referred to his love (Il. xiv. 490): and he reveals himself to Priam by his name (Il. xxiv. 460): but it is remarkable, and contrary to the general rule of the poems, that Priam, notwithstanding his great obligations, takes no notice whatever of his deity, either upon his[235] first revelation and departure, or when a second time he appears, and afterwards quits him anew (682–94).

On the other hand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the Greeks. He conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: he carries the warning of the gods to Ægisthus: sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca: and he is liberally treated with sacrifices by Autolycus in Parnesus, where he repays his worshipper by bestowing on him the arts of perjury and purloining[447].

Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had much intercourse with the Phœnicians. On the other hand, the Trojans, wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little or nothing of maritime commerce. Their intercourse with Thrace, the fertile Thrace that furnished a contingent of allies, required no more than that they should have the means of crossing the Straits of Gallipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or harbour. A Phœnician deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achæan side during the war.

Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of agent, have been with perfect propriety sent to Calypso: but his mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection with Phœnician traditions, give a peculiar propriety to his employment on this errand.

Another passage of the Odyssey seems, however, to place this relationship beyond doubt. Ulysses, in the Twelfth Book, recounts to Alcinous the transaction that occurred in the Olympian Assembly after his crew had slain the oxen of the Sun. On that occasion, the offended deity declared that, unless he got compensation, he would go down and shine in the realm of Aides; upon[236] which Jupiter at once promised to destroy the ship of Ulysses. ‘This,’ adds Ulysses, ‘I heard from Calypso, and she told me that she had herself heard it from Mercury[448].’

Now this was no affair of Calypso’s; none, that is, on which the gods could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses: but it was one in which, from her passion for the hero, she would take a natural interest, and on which she might well obtain information from a deity who was her relative. Nor does it appear on what other ground Mercury should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official report.

Again, it is probably on account of his Phœnician connection, that the intervention of Mercury is employed in the Tenth Odyssey[449], to supply Ulysses with the instructions that were necessary, in order to enable him to cope with Circe.

For we are here in the midst of a cluster of traditions, which we have every reason to presume to be wholly Phœnician[450]. It is the cluster, which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey: and it is severed from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a geographical line, but by an entire change in mythological relations. From the time when Ulysses enters that circle in the beginning of the Ninth Book, until his appearance near Scheria, on the outskirt of the known familiar sphere, his ancient friend Minerva nowhere attends him: and there are four whole books without even a mention of the goddess, who, except for this interval, stands prominently forth in almost every page of the Odyssey. The divine aid is given to him, during this period, through Circe and Calypso; while[237] Mercury is appointed to command the latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both the company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phœnician importation into Greece.

There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark that he had somewhat recently become known to the Greeks, agrees with other indications of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures, indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops[451]; and we do not receive any account of his infancy, as we do of the infancy of Dionysus and of Vulcan. But we may observe that, whenever he assumes human form, it is the form of one scarcely emerging from boyhood. In the last Iliad, he is a πρῶτον ὑπηνήτης, in the fairest flower of youth[452]. And in the Tenth Odyssey, where he makes his second and only other appearance to a mortal, the same line is repeated in order to describe his appearance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and not merely adapted to a particular occasion. Indeed it may reasonably be questioned, whether such adaptation exists at all. A very young person was not the most appropriate conductor for Priam, on such an errand as that which he had undertaken: nor the best instructor in the mode of coping with the formidable Circe. Therefore, without laying too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful appearance seems to be, that he was young in the Greek Olympus.

There is yet another sign by which I think we may identify Mercury as, in the estimation of Homer, a deity known to be of foreign introduction. The list given by Jupiter in the Fourteenth Iliad of his intrigues, includes no reference to Maias, the mother of Mercury, or to Diana the mother of Venus. Yet it is a large[238] and elaborately constructed list, ending with Juno herself: and the question arises, on what principle was it constructed? I think the answer must be that, as it was addressed to Juno, the most Hellenic of all the Olympian deities, with whom he wished to be on good terms at the moment, so also it was intended, if not to give a full account of his Greek intrigues, yet at any rate that no tradition should appear in it, except such as Homer considered to be either native, or fully naturalized. It contains no reference, for example, to the mother of Sarpedon, the mother of Dardanus, the mother of Amphion and Zethus, the mother of Tantalus, (whom we have however only presumptions for reckoning as by Homeric tradition a son of Jupiter,) or even the mother of Æolus; whom it is possible that Homer may have regarded as Hellic, rather than properly Greek, though the father of illustrious Greek houses. If this be the rule, under which the Poet has framed the list, then the exclusion of Maias and her son remarkably coincides with the other evidence that tends to define his position as a deity of known and remembered foreign origin.

It may be convenient to notice in this place the statement which is commonly made, that Iris is the messenger of the gods in the Iliad, but that Mercury, except only in the Twenty-fourth Book of that Poem, is confined in this capacity to the Odyssey: a statement, on which has been founded a standing popular argument against the unity of authorship in the two poems, and also against the genuineness of the Twenty-fourth Iliad itself.

The statement, however, appears to rest upon a pure misapprehension; for it assumes the identity of the character of Iris and Mercury respectively as messengers. Whereas there is really a difference, corresponding with the difference in dignity between the two deities: and[239] Homer is in regard to them perfectly consistent with himself.

Mercury is sometimes a messenger in the proper sense, and sometimes an agent, or an agent and messenger combined. It is not true that, so far as the Iliad is concerned, he only appears in the last Book in one of these capacities. For in the Second Book[453] we find, that he carried the Pelopid sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: which may mean either simply, that he was the bearer of it, or that by a commission he assisted Pelops in acquiring, or rather in founding, the Achæan throne in the Peloponnesus. In the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Mercury is not really a messenger at all[454]; but he is an agent, intrusted by Jupiter on the ground of special fitness with the despatch of a delicate and important business, the bringing Priam in safety to the presence of Achilles, and afterwards the withdrawing him securely from a position of the utmost danger. This is an office like that undertaken by Minerva in the Fourth Book, when, as she was commissioned to bring about a breach of the Pact by the Trojans, she repaired to Pandarus for the purpose. But the function of Iris is simply to carry messages, and chiefly from one deity to another; she is not only ἄγγελος, but μετάγγελος[455]; she is not intrusted in any case with the conduct of transactions among men, or responsible for their issue, although in the Fifteenth Book she spontaneously advises the god Neptune in the sense of the message she has brought. It is not for Jupiter only that she acts: she also conveys a message, and a clandestine one, for Juno[456]. Nay, on one occasion, without any divine charge, hearing the prayer of Achilles to[240] two of the Winds, she spontaneously carries it to the palace, where they were all feasting together[457].

Only in the Odyssey do we find Mercury unquestionably and simply discharging the duty of a messenger; and this on two occasions: the first, when he brought to Ægisthus the warning that his crimes, if committed, would be followed by retribution from the hand of Orestes; the second, when he communicated to Calypso the command to release Ulysses.

But there is in reality no discrepancy whatever between the two poems: inasmuch as Mercury and Iris, though both messengers, act in different characters. Iris is in one case the spontaneous messenger, who carries a hero’s wish to subordinate deities; but she uniformly has this mark, that she never rises higher than to be the personal messenger of Jupiter. On the other hand, Mercury in the Odyssey is the official messenger, not of Jupiter individually, but in both cases of the Assembly of the gods: and the care, with which the distinction seems to be drawn, is very remarkable. It is true, the message to Calypso is called Ζηνὸς ἀγγελίη: but it became the message of Jupiter, because it was a proposal made by Minerva in the Olympian Assembly, and made on the part of all in the plural number, which was then duly adopted by Jupiter as the executive head of the body[458]:

The message in the case of Ægisthus is equally well defined[459]:

It would have been out of keeping, therefore, with[241] the character and rank of the Homeric Iris, to give her the charge of the messages carried by Mercury. The only case at all analogous in the Iliad is that of the decision in the Fourth Book: and there not Iris, but Minerva is employed. It is not, however, true that we have in the Odyssey no recognition of the character of Iris as a messenger. We find one, and that the plainest of all, in the etymology of the name of Ἶρος the beggar. His proper name was Arnæus[460]; and he was called Irus, because he was a messenger:

There is yet another illustration of the view which has here been given. In the Assembly of the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Jupiter, in order to give effect to the general desire of the gods, has occasion to wish for the presence of Thetis: and it has at first sight an odd appearance that he does not, as in other cases where he is acting singly, call Iris and bid her go: but he says, with a mode of expression not found elsewhere,

And Iris, hearing him, sets forth without being personally designated. The peculiar language seems as if it had been employed for the especial purpose of keeping Iris within her own province, and of preventing the possibility of the confusion between her office and that of deities superior in rank, which might have arisen if she had regularly received an errand in the midst of the Olympian Court.

Thus, then, it would appear, that the apparent discrepancy between the various parts of the poems, when closely examined, really yields to us fresh evidence of[242] their harmony. Nor let it be thought unworthy of Homer thus minutely to preserve the precedence and relative dignity of his deities. With our views of the Olympian scheme, it may require an effort to assume his standing-ground: but when he was dealing with the actual religion of his country, it was just as natural and needful for him to maintain the ranks and distinctions of the gods, as of men in their various classes. Mythology might, indeed, afford ample scope to his fancy for free embellishment and enlargement of the established traditions; but these processes must always be in the sense of harmonious development, not of discord.

Another question may indeed be asked: whence came this idea of twofold messengership, higher and lower? and would it not have been more natural if the whole of this function had been intrusted to one deity? This question is, I believe, just, and requires that a special account should be given of an arrangement apparently anomalous. Such an account I have endeavoured to supply in treating of Iris, by shewing that she owes her place to a primeval tradition, while Mercury owes his to an ideal conformity with the laws of the Olympian system.

And in truth there is no single deity, on whom the stamp of that system has been more legibly impressed. It might be said of the Homeric Mercury, that he exceeds in humanism (to coin a word for the purpose) the other Olympian gods, as much as they excel the divinities of any other system. His type is wholly and purely inventive, without a trace of what is traditional. He represents, so to speak, the utilitarian side of the human mind, which was of small account in the age of Homer, but has since been more esteemed. In the limitation of his faculties and powers, in the low standard of[243] his moral habits, in the abundant activity of his appetites, in his indifference, his ease, his good nature, in the full-blown exhibition of what Christian Theology would call conformity to the world, he is, as strictly as the nature of the case admits, a product of the invention of man. He is the god of intercourse on earth; and thus he holds in heaven by mythological title, what came to Iris by primitive tradition. The proof must, I think, be sufficiently evident, from what has been and will be adduced piecemeal and by way of contrast, in the accounts of other and, for that period at least, more important divinities.

Venus.

There is no deity, except perhaps Dionysus, of whom the position and estimation in Homer are so vividly contrasted with those, to which he or she attained in later paganism, as Venus. The Venus of Virgil, the Venus of Lucretius, are separated by an immeasurable interval from the Aphrodite of Homer. And the manner in which she is treated throughout the Iliad and Odyssey is not only curious, as indicating the nature and origin of her divinity, but is of very high interest as illustrative of the great Poet’s tone of mind and feeling.

There is no act of worship or reverence, no sign of awe or deference, shown to her in any part of either of the poems. Yet her rank is indisputably elevated. It is beyond doubt that she belongs to the Olympian family. She appears in Olympus, not as specially sent for, but as entitled ordinarily to be there: she takes a side in the war: she makes the birth of Æneas more glorious on the mother’s side than that of Achilles, who was sprung from Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, and a deity of inferior dignity to hers. Not only is Jupiter her[244] father, but her mother Dione is an Olympian goddess. Yet her Olympian rank is ill sustained by powers and prerogatives: and she probably owed it to the poetical necessity, which obliged Homer to have an array of divinities on each side in the war, with some semblance of equality at least between the rival divisions.

The indications of the poem may lead us to believe that her name and worship were of recent origin. That a worship of her had begun is obvious: for in Paphos, a town of Cyprus, and the only one named by Homer, she had both an altar, and a τέμενος, or dedicated estate; and she bears the name of Cypris[461]. But we have only the very slightest mention of her, or of any thing connected with her, in Greece proper. We have seen much reason to assume that Cyprus was essentially Pelasgian, and ethnically more akin to Troy than to Greece. In Troy we find various signs of her influence. She sent to Andromache the marriage gift of her κρήδεμνον[462]. She made to Paris the fatal present of his lust[463]. She fell in love with Anchises, and became the mother of Æneas[464]. She led Helen away from the roof of Menelaus[465], and was an object of dread to her when in Troy[466]. Minerva, in taunting her bitterly about her wound, supposes she may have got it by a scratch from a golden buckle, in undressing some Greek woman that she had persuaded to elope with one of the Trojans whom she so signally loves[467]. Again, it appears from a speech of Helen, that she was worshipped in Phrygia and Mæonia[468]. The only token of her influence in Greece is, that she is twice in the[245] Odyssey called Κυθέρεια. Thus we see her not strictly within Greece, but rather advanced some steps on her way to it. And it is easy to suppose that, in the race of corruption, her worship would run among the fastest.

The negative evidence, then, thus far tends to the belief that Venus was not yet established among the regular deities of the Poet’s countrymen: and it is supported by positive testimony. For some of the functions, that must in the post-Homeric view of her office have belonged to her, Homer studiously makes other provision. Of this there is a most remarkable case in the Odyssey. He designs that the Suitors, before they are put to death, shall be made to yield of their substance to the house of Ulysses, in the form of gifts to Penelope. For this purpose he arrays her in all her charms, and brings her forth in appearance like Diana, or golden Venus[469]. It is not a common practice with Homer to compare a beautiful Greek woman to Venus; especially when it is one so matronlike as Penelope. On the other hand, the comparison of Cassandra to Venus[470] is entirely in keeping with the Asiatic character of the deity. But the intention of the allusion here is manifest: for when the Suitors see her, it is passion which prompts them to vie with one another in courting her favour through the medium of costly gifts. How, then, came the sad Penelope thus to deck herself? It was not her own thought: it was the suggestion of a deity, and if Venus had been recognised by Homer as an established object of worship in Greece, Venus would most properly have made the suggestion: for she, says Achilles, is supreme in beauty, as Minerva is in industry and skill[471]. But it is Minerva who instils this suggestion[246] into the mind of Penelope; though in a form which conveys no taint to her mind[472]. She goes, however, beyond this: for she sends Penelope to sleep, and then, to enhance her beauty, applies to her face a wash, of the kind that Venus herself uses when she goes among the Graces. Yet this is not procured from Venus, as Juno in the Iliad procures the cestus from her on Mount Olympus; nor is her agency or aid in any manner employed. Thus she is not allowed, as it were, to have to do in any manner with Penelope; a clear indication, I think, that though known, she was not yet worshipped in Greece proper.

She appears, indeed, in the legend of the daughters of Pandareus[473]: but the scene of this legend is not stated by Homer to be in Greece, and by general tradition it is placed in Crete or in Asia Minor.

Again, the predicaments in which she is exhibited in the poems are of a kind hardly reconcilable with the supposition, that she was an acknowledged Greek deity at the time. In the lay of Demodocus, the Poet seems to intend to make the guilty pair ridiculous, from his sending them off, when released, so rapidly and in silence. It is true that he exhibits to us in the Iliad the sensual passion of Jupiter: but he has wreathed the passage where it is described in imagery, both of wonderful beauty, and rather more elaborate than is his wont[474]. But whatever may be thought of the Eighth Odyssey, the Fifth and Twenty-first Iliad seem, so far as Venus is concerned, only to permit one construction. In the former, she is, after being wounded, both menaced and ridiculed by Diomed[475]. In the latter, for no other offence than leading the[247] battered Mars off the field, she is followed by Minerva, and struck to the ground by a blow upon the breast. As in the case of Mars, so and more decidedly in the case of Venus, it appears as if the ignominious treatment in the Theomachy was difficult, and the wounding and treatment by Diomed quite impossible, to reconcile with the idea that it could have been devised by a Poet, and recited to audiences, for whom the personages so handled formed a part of the established objects of religious veneration. Even Helen is permitted to taunt her bitterly: to recommend her becoming the wife, or even the slave, of Paris, and her ceasing to make pretensions to play the part of a deity:

In entire harmony with these suppositions is, first, the side taken by her in the war; and secondly, the geographical indications of her worship. It appears to have moved from the East along that double line, by which we have found it probable that the Pelasgians flowed into Europe: one the way of the islands at the base of the Ægean, the other by the Hellespont. We know, from other sources, that the East engendered at a very early date creations of this kind. Under the names of Astarte, Mylitta, Mitra, and the like, we seem to encounter so many separate forms or versions of the Greek Venus. We may indeed observe that Astarte was commonly associated with the Moon, and it would be a matter of interest to know the original relation between the popular or promiscuous Venus (πάνδημος), and the celestial one. In Homer we find them completely severed: we perceive Artemis with many traces of the older, and Aphrodite fully representing the more recent and carnal conception. There still remains one[248] sign of correspondence; it is the standing epithet of χρυσέη for Aphrodite, compared with the cluster of golden epithets[477] applied to Diana. We may not unreasonably, I think, take Artemis as the probable prototype; and Aphrodite as the sensual image, into which the old and pure conception had already degenerated, before the time when the two fell, as poetic material, each for its own purpose, into the moulding hand of Homer. While such a source is every way probable, our reference to it is the more natural, because it is not very easy to attribute to the Greeks of the heroic age the original conception of such a divinity as Venus. For though they were of social and therefore somewhat jovial habits, and though they were a race of ready hand, given to crimes of violence, yet they were not, on the whole, by any means a sensual race, in relation to the standard which seems to have governed the Asiatic nations, whether we estimate these latter the Trojans, the Assyrians, or the Jews.

The marriage with Vulcan, and the relation to a mother Dione, invented apparently for the purpose of maternity, are marks of recency. If I have rightly referred Vulcan to the Phœnician order, this marriage may be an indication that Venus likewise had a place in it: and again, considering her station in Troas, it seems not impossible that the worship of Vulcan may have been introduced there the more readily, because of his being reputed to be her husband.

Like Maias the mother of Mercury, Dione, the mother of Venus, is excluded from the list of Jupiter’s amorous or matrimonial connections in the Fourteenth Iliad (312–28). This leads to the conclusion, either[249] that the tradition respecting her was known only as a foreign one, or else that it was recent, slight, and as yet unauthenticated in popular belief. In either view it coincides with the other indications as to Venus.

The primary function of Venus, apart from Asia, appears to lie among the Olympian deities. That she was, as a member of that family, in actual exercise of her prerogatives, we see plainly from the application made by Juno to her in order to obtain the grace and attractiveness, by which she hoped to act upon the mind of Jupiter. As a mythological conception, she exhibits to us on the page of Homer the union of the most finished material beauty with strong sensuality, and the entire absence of all traces of the ethical element. She represents two things, form and passion; the former refined, the latter not so. In her character, as conceived by Homer, we see how that which is divine, when it has ceased to be divine, becomes, not human, but something much worse and baser: as he that falls from a height cannot stop half-way down the precipice at his will, but must reach the ground. Even feminine tenderness does not cling to the character of Venus. She is effeminate, indeed, for when wounded she lets her son Æneas fall: but gentle she is not, for in the scene of the Third Iliad with Helen her conduct is harsh even to brutality, and she drives the reluctant princess into sensuality only by the cruel threat of violence and death[478].

In Venus we see the power of an Immortal reduced to its minimum. Even the faculty of self-transformation seems to have been in her case but imperfectly exercised[479]. She does not pretend to give strength or[250] courage to her son Æneas, but is represented simply as carrying him off in her arms. It is here worthy of remark, that she has not even the ability, like the greater deities, to envelop him in cloud: she has no command over nature, only over the corrupt and rebellious impulses of man: she has power to carry Æneas away, but he is folded in her mantle[480]. In fact, her privileges in general appear to be like those of the inferior orders of deity, held and used for her own enjoyment; but they do not carry the power of acting upon man or nature, except in a particular and prescribed function. Her capacity of locomotion is limited in a peculiar degree. Mars, though no great deity, went, when wounded, up to heaven on the clouds. But Venus required to borrow the disengaged chariot of Mars for the purpose, when in the same predicament[481].

It is no wonder that the ancient, probably the earliest Greek, account of her origin which is given by Hesiod[482], should mark her as of entirely animal extraction.

Another peculiarity in the case of Venus is, that she already takes her name, and not only receives mere epithets, from two particular spots where she is worshipped. Cyprus makes her Κύπρις in the Iliad, and from Cythera she is also Cytherea in the Odyssey. She thus stands distinct from Juno: to whom the Argeian name is simply an appendage, though one of a most characteristic force, and one involving important inferences as to her origin. Nor is she less distinct from Minerva, whose name is not derivative in form when she is called Ἀθήνη, and whom we must consider as the eponymist of Athens, and not its namesake. No[251] indication could be of greater force, than this marked localism, in stamping the ideas about Venus as purely human in their origin.

It would be an error to consider the Venus of Homer as even the goddess of beauty. She was endowed with it personally, and she possessed the cestus of fascination and desire: but she had no capacity to make mortals beautiful, such as Minerva exercised upon Penelope and Ulysses, and Juno upon the virgin daughters of Pandareus. She is there passed by in such a manner as to make it plain that she did not possess any power of imparting this gift. Her δῶρα, in Il. iii. 65, do not appear to include it; or Paris would not say, ‘no one would spontaneously seek them.’ For beauty of person was among the recognised and highly valued gifts of heaven[483].

We are told, in the Twentieth Odyssey, that Venus fed the orphan girls of Pandareus with cheese, honey, and wine; and, continues the passage, Juno gave them extraordinary beauty and prudence, Diana lofty stature, Minerva industrial skill. Afterwards, they being thus equipped, Venus went up to Olympus to pray Jupiter that he would make arrangements for their marriage[484]. Thus her operations in a work of good are wholly ministerial and inferior: and not only does she not confer beauty herself, but she sees it conferred by Juno. This again shows that the Venus of Homer, except for evil, has no power to work upon the body or mind of man.

But we must not omit to mark that sign of the real chastity of Homer’s mind which he has given us by his method of handling the character of Venus; a deity whom the nature of his subject in the Iliad would have led almost any other heathen, and many Christian, poets to magnify.

[252]

In not a single instance does Homer exhibit this divinity to us in an amiable or engaging light, or invest her with the attractions of power, glory, and success.

When Minerva advises Diomed in the Fifth Iliad[485], she says, Do not attack any of the immortals; but if you happen to see Venus, her you may wound. We seem to have a clear indication, that Homer introduced this passage simply in order to throw contempt on Venus; because afterwards, when Mars is in the field, and Diomed pleads the inhibition he had received as a reason for his inaction, Minerva at once removes it, and bids the warrior assail that god without scruple[486].

Again, when Diomed wounds Mars, it is because Minerva invisibly directs and impels his lance[487]: but he wounds Venus without any aid. In the Theomachy, she appears upon the list of deities enumerated as taking the Greek and Trojan side respectively; but when the Poet comes to match the others for fight, she disappears from his mind; as though it would have been an insult to any other member of the Olympian family to be pitted against her effeminacy. Accordingly, no antagonist is named for her.

She is sometimes made contemptible, as in the foregoing instances. She is at other times silly and childish, as under the bitter taunt of Minerva and the admonition of Jupiter[488], and again, when she falls into the trap cunningly laid by Juno[489]. Odious in the interview with Helen in the Third Book, she is never better than neutral, and never once so handled by the Poet as to attract our sympathies.

Again, there is not, throughout the Odyssey or Iliad, a single description of the beauty of Venus, such as Homer has given us of the dress of Juno, or the arms[253] of Minerva. It is never, either directly or indirectly, set off for the purpose of creating interest and favour. One exception may perhaps be alleged: but, if it is such, at least it affords the most marked illustration of the rule. Once he does praise the exceeding beauteous neck, the lovely breast, the sparkling eyes of Venus; but it is when he has clothed her in the withered form of the aged spinstress that had attended upon Helen from Sparta, and through whose uninviting exterior such glimpses of the latent shape of Venus are caught by Helen as to enable her, but no one else, to recognise the deity.

How different is this from the case of Virgil, who has introduced a most beautiful and winning description of her in the Second Æneid[490], just when he brings her into action that she may acquit both Helen and Paris of all responsibility for the fall of Troy. It would have been not only natural for Homer, but, unless he was restrained by some strong reason, we may almost say it would have been inevitable, that he should have done for Venus what has been done in our own day, with very high classical effect, by Tennyson in his Œnone:

Upon the whole, I should confidently cite the treatment of Venus in the poems as being among the most[254] satisfactory indications of the state of heroic Greece, and one of the most honourable tokens of the disposition of her Poet.

Vulcan.

Besides Juno and Bacchus, Hephæstus or Vulcan is the only Homeric deity who bears upon him this unequivocal, or at least significant, mark of novelty, that we are supplied with a distinct tradition of his childhood[491]. In his youth he was rickety and lame. His mother Juno wished to conceal him, and she let him fall into the sea. Here Thetis and Eurynome received him, and reared him in a submarine cave, not, however, under the Mediterranean, but the Ocean; and in that cave for nine years the boy-smith employed himself in making ornaments for women.

He is thus associated by his traditions with the two opposing elements of water and fire; with water by the history of his childhood, and with fire as the grand instrument and condition of his art. The latter was by much the stronger association, for it was continually fed by the history and progress of the art itself; so that he became the impersonation of that element itself, and in the phrase φλὸξ Ἡφαίστοιο it is his name which gives the distinctive force; for φλὸξ in Homer seems to mean the flame or light of fire[492], and is not used to signify fire proper, except with some other word in conjunction to it or near it. But the explanation of the seeming contrariety is probably to be found[255] in the hypothesis, that his worship was of Phœnician introduction; as the Phœnicians seem to have made the Greeks acquainted with the use of fire in working metals. If they made the deity known to the Greeks, this will account for his association with the idea of fire: and as accounts and traditions, which they had supplied, were evidently the source of all the more remote maritime delineations of Homer, (since they alone frequented Ocean and the distant seas,) this is the natural and easy explanation for the tradition of his childish arts in the oceanic cave. That he is thus, like the Phœnicians, for Homer, the meeting point of fire and water, appears clearly to stamp him as Phœnician or oriental in his origin, relatively to Greece.

Accordingly, true to the association between Phœnician and Hellenic elements, he is one of the five Hellenizing deities in the Trojan war; in which, as the element of fire, he opposes and subdues the river Xanthus. He was not, however, unknown to the Trojans; for Dares, his priest, had two sons in their army. His introduction to Troas may have been due to his conjugal connection with Venus; or it may have been due to the neighbourhood of Lemnos, the island on which, when hurled from Olympus by Jupiter, he fell, and which thenceforward formed his favourite earthly habitation. With Lemnos and other isles Troy was in communication, at least from the time of Laomedon, for that prince threatened to seize Apollo and to sell him, νήσων ἔπι τηλεδαπάων[493]. A regular commerce was established between Lemnos and the camp during the Trojan war[494].

Among the deities of Vulcan’s generation we find[256] but one married couple, and they are a strangely assorted pair, Vulcan himself and Venus. Neither character nor occupation will account for this singular union: on the contrary, there is no case in which the extremes of repugnance must so decidedly be supposed. It is questionable whether the hypothesis, that Venus represents the beauty which gives perfection to works of art, is in entire keeping with the tone of the Homeric system. Indeed Venus with Homer represents absolutely nothing, except sensual passion in a fine exterior form which can hardly be severed from it. One explanation, and one only, may suggest itself as more natural. It is this: that the worship of Vulcan and that of Venus came in, not distinctly connected with those of any other deity, at about the same time, and from the same quarter. We have already seen upon Venus those marks of comparative modernism, and of an eastern extraction, which we now find in Vulcan; and here probably is to be found, either wholly or in part, the actuating suggestion of their ill-starred wedlock.

Though we find the works of Vulcan scattered promiscuously abroad, there is no notice of his worship, or of any site or endowment belonging to him in the Greece of Homer. He was available to the Poet for embellishment, but he probably had not become for the Greek nation a regular object of adoration.

I think we may trace the tokens of his eastern origin in the legend of his infancy. It was into the sea that he was thrown: but, as we have seen, the cave in which he was reared was a cave of Ocean[495].

[257]

Also, by a rather singular arrangement, there are two deities, not one only, employed in taking him up and watching over his childhood. Nor are the two naturally associated together: for Thetis is a daughter of Nereus, and belongs to the Thalassian family; Eurynome is a child of Ocean. The connection with Thetis and the sea is appropriate enough in the case of any child of Juno, for the wife of Peleus, as his nurse, seems to give him an Hellenic character: but it seems hard to explain the appointment of a colleague belonging to the race of Ocean, and for the situation of the cave in its bed, except as having been due to the eastern origin of the divinity, of which the mark had not yet been effaced.

The marriage of Venus and Vulcan, metaphysically interpreted, represents the union of strength and skill in the production of works of art: but though this may have been a Greek application of eastern traditions originally independent, there is no distinct trace of it in Homer; while it may seem strange that, if the Poet had had such an idea before his mind, his only picture of their conjugal relation should have been the one given in the Eighth Odyssey. Still, he may have had that idea.

Vulcan’s other wife, Charis, represents an exactly similar conception; and here there is a more obvious probability that the combination was Greek, and was one intended, or even devised, by Homer.

It is common to treat the handling of this subject in the Iliad as in contradiction with that of the Odyssey; and to use the assumption of discrepancy either in support of the doctrine of the Chorizontes, or in proof that the Olympian lay of Demodocus is spurious.

Without entering into that controversy, I venture to urge that the proof is insufficient. Why should the Vulcan of Homer be limited to a single spouse?[258] Jupiter has three, probably four; namely, Juno, Latona, Dione, and Ceres. No other Olympian deity, until we come down to Vulcan, has any. The question then arises, Why should the poets, or even the religion of the day, be limited in this case to monogamy, which has no place elsewhere in the Olympian family? Why should the reasons, which induced the framers of the religion to give him a wife at all, forbid them absolutely from giving him more than one? Nay more; why, if the original object of the Greek mind in this marriage was to symbolize the union of manual skill and beauty, and if the materials of the received mythology were in a state of growth and progress, might it not happen that in the youth of Homer Charis was, all things considered, suited to afford the most appropriate means of representing the idea, and yet that in his later age he might amend his own plan, and make Venus the wife of Vulcan, without at all troubling himself to consider what was to become of the slightly sketched image that he had previously presented in the Iliad? I say this, because the assumed contradiction of these legends appears to me to proceed upon another assumption of a false principle; namely, that, though the mythology was continually changing with the progress of the country, yet each poet was bound, even in its secondary and in its most poetical parts, to a rigid uniformity of statement. No one, I think, who considers how the current of the really theistic and religious ideas runs upon a very few of the greater gods, can fail to see that with Homer the religious meaning of his Vulcan, and of the other gods of the second order, was very slight. A sufficient proof of this may be found in the fact, that of no one of them, excepting Mercury alone, does he mention the actual worship in his own country.

[259]

Moreover, two things may deserve remark with reference to the variation which makes Charis the wife of Vulcan in the Iliad, and Venus in the Odyssey.

First, from the plan of the Iliad, which placed Venus and Vulcan in the sharpest opposition, the conjugal relation between them would have been, for that poem, inadmissible. The Poet could not have introduced Venus, where he has introduced Charis: and he must thus have given up a strikingly poetical picture, and one most descriptive of the works of high art in metal.

Secondly, it may not be certain, but it is by no means improbable, that the worship of Venus may have attained to much wider vogue in Greece when Homer composed the Odyssey, than at the period when he gave birth to the Iliad. We have seen already the signs that it was a recent worship. We have seen it in Cyprus and then more advanced in Cythera, not in continental Greece. Now it was in the Iliad that Venus had the name of Cypris; in the Odyssey this is exchanged for Cytherea: that is to say, she was known sometime before as a goddess worshipped in Cyprus and not properly Greek; but she was now, such is the probable construction, known also as a goddess worshipped in Cythera, and therefore become Greek. On this account, as well as because the opposition between them had disappeared, she might with poetical propriety be made to bear a character in the Odyssey, which could not attach to her during the continuance of the great Trojan quarrel.

Beyond his own function as god of fire, and of metallic art in connection with it, Vulcan is nobody. But within it he is supreme, and no deity can rival him in his own kind. His animated works of metal are among the boldest figures of poetry. Even his lame[260]ness is propped by bronze damsels of his own manufacture. And the lock, which he puts for Juno on her chamber-door, is one that not even any other deity can open[496]. But this is not so much an exemplification of the power and elevation of mythological godhead, as of the skill and exclusive capacity of a professional person in his own art.

Finally, the Vulcan of Homer conforms in all respects to the inventive, as opposed to the traditional type of deity.

Ἠέλιος, or the Sun.

In the case of Ἠέλιος, or the Sun, as in various others, we appear to see the curious process by which the Greek mythology was constructed, not only in its finished result, but even during the several stages of its progress. It lies before us like the honeycomb in the glass beehive; and it tends strongly to the conclusion that the Poet is himself the queen bee. The Philosopher did not then exist. The Priest, we know, was not a religious teacher. The Seer or Prophet interpreted the Divine will only for the particular case, and did not rise to generalization. Who was it, then, that gathered up the thoughts and arrested the feelings of the general mind, and that, reducing the crude material to form and beauty, made it a mythology? The answer can only be, that for the heroic age it was the Bard.

In some of the varying statements of the poems, where others have seen the proof of varying authorship, either for the whole or for particular parts, I cannot but rather see the formative mind exercising its discretion over a subject-matter where it was as yet supreme:[261] namely, over that large class of objects which afforded fitting clay for the hand of the artist, but which had not yet become a stamped and recognised image for popular veneration. In the Charis, who is the wife of Hellenizing Vulcan, so long as Venus is at war with the Greeks; in the Winds, who, according to the Odyssey, inhabit a bag under the custody of a living person, possibly a mortal, but who in the Iliad beget children, enjoy banquets, and receive a cultus; we find Homer, as I conceive, following the genial flow of his thought, according as his subject prompted him, and awarding honour and preferment, or withholding it, as occasion served. Perhaps Mercury or Vulcan, perhaps even Juno or Neptune, may owe him some advancement: but, at any rate, he seems almost as distinctly to show us Ἠέλιος in two different stages of manufacture, as a sculptor shows a bust in his studio this month in the clay, and next month in the marble.

In the Iliad we find the Sun personified, though in the faintest manner, and by inference only. His office of vision, which he enjoys habitually in the Odyssey, and once in the Iliad[497], is inseparably wedded to a living intelligence by its combination with the function of hearing. He is addressed as the

Now poetry may, under the shield of custom, make the Sun see, by a figure which shall not carry the full consequence of impersonation; but the representation, that he also hears, seems necessarily to involve it.

Again, Jupiter has decreed, that Hector and the Trojans shall prevail until the setting sun. After that, there was to be no more of light or hope for them. Juno desires on this account to close the day,[262] and dismisses the Sun prematurely to his rest. But this, as the Poet adds, was done against his own will[498]:

Upon the two words, ἀέκοντα and ἐπακούεις, rests, I think, the whole case in the Iliad for the Sun’s personality.

But in the Odyssey it is more advanced and developed. In the matter of the intrigue of Mars with Venus, he acts as informer to the husband, and subsequently assumes the part of spy[499]. Although thus able, however, to discern what is passing even in the secret chambers of Olympus, when set on guard for the purpose, he cannot see so far as to Thrinacia, any more than he can penetrate the cloud which envelopes Jupiter and Juno[500].

It is from the Nymphs, Phaethusa and Lampetie, whom he had set to watch, that he receives the intelligence of the slaughter of his oxen by the companions of Ulysses in their hunger. He immediately addresses Jupiter and the assembled gods, in a passage which proves that Homer meant to represent him as having a place in Olympus, for only if there could he speak to them without undertaking a journey for the purpose[501]. He makes his appeal to them for retribution; and he backs his application with the threat that, unless it is granted, he will go down to the Shades, and shine there. A menace which to our ears may sound ludicrous enough; but it is perhaps well conceived in the case of a chrysalis deity, not yet really worshipped by the Greeks: and there is a certain propriety in it, when we recollect that on the way to the descent into the Shades lay his place of rest. He is the father of the Nymphs, who[263] watch on his behalf in Thrinacia; he is also the father of Circe and Æetes, and his couch is at Ææa[502].

During the time when the slaughter of the oxen is effected, Ulysses is asleep: and it seems just possible that Homer may by this circumstance have meant to signify that it was night when the catastrophe occurred, which would save the dignity of this deity in respect to vision.

The Olympian rank of the Sun is clear; but there seem to be ascriptions made to him, which can only be reconciled by the supposition, in itself far from improbable, that he was separately known of, as an object of worship, through two different sets of traditions; one of them referable to Pelasgian sources, and entailing Trojan sympathies, the other of an Hellenic, or very probably a Phœnician, cast, and tending to rank him with the Hellenes. For in the Iliad his unwillingness to set, when his setting was to bring the glories of the Trojans to an end, seems very strongly to imply that he had a Pelasgian origin. In the Odyssey, his siding with Vulcan against Mars and Venus would show, so far as it goes, a Hellenizing turn; but what is more important is this, that, as the father of Circe and Æetes, of whom the latter bears the exclusively Phœnician epithet ὀλοόφρων, and the former has her abode close by his ἀντολαὶ, or point of rising, he is at once thrown into the Phœnician or the Persian connection. As the Sun-worship was so general in the East, it seems quite possible that it might come into Greece by more channels than one: and as the process of personification might in one set of traditions be more, and in another less complete, we may here find a possible clue to Homer’s reason for treating it differently in the two[264] poems. Particularly as the poem where he is least personal, the Iliad, is also that where he is most Pelasgian: for we have found reason to ascribe to the Pelasgians less of lively and creative power in the realms of the imagination, than to the Hellenes, and to such races as had stronger affinities with them.

So distinct is the Sun from Apollo in the Odyssey, that they appear as separate dramatis personæ in the Lay of Demodocus. Yet there are some latent signs of sympathy between them. Apollo tends the oxen of Laomedon: the Sun delights, morning and evening, in his own oxen in Thrinacie. It is difficult to avoid supposing some kind of relation to be conveyed by Homer between the rays of the sun, and the arrows of Apollo in the Plague. The extension of his sympathies to both races is another sign of resemblance. Again, we have a promise from Eurylochus, one of the crew of Ulysses, to build a temple to the Sun upon his safe return to Ithaca[503]. Now we have seen that the only instances of temples, which we can certainly declare to be named in the poems, are temples either of Minerva or of Apollo. Thus this vow of Eurylochus looks like another anticipation of the subsequent absorption of the Sun into the person and deity of Apollo: and on the whole, we are left to infer that beginnings of that process may have been already visible. Homer, perhaps, did not care to advance it. At least, it does not appear to me that either he or his nation were friendly to the conception of mere elemental gods. Gods who preside over external nature he presents to us in abundance; but gods, who are the mere organs of external nature, are alien to the Greek genius as candidates for the higher posts, and are relegated to subordinate places[265] in the system. Only Vulcan and Ceres really appear with him to bear decisively the stamp of this character: and both of them seem as if they were already in part detached from it, and developing in another direction. For in Vulcan the human faculty of skill already predominates over fire, and Ceres impersonates the vegetable product of Earth, and not the mere dead mass.

The connection of the Sun with Pelasgian traditions according to the Egyptian type is, I think, strongly signified by the legend of the oxen and sheep, in which he takes so much delight.

In the time of Homer he was, as it were, a probationer in the ἄγων of the Grecian gods. The main facts before us are simply these: first, his unformed separate state at that epoch; secondly, his absorption in Apollo. The lesson taught by both is the repugnance of the Greeks to mere Nature-worship. The signification of the second, in particular, appears to be this, that as Ἠέλιος could not stand alone, and needed to be absorbed, so he could find no place for his absorption so fitting as in that deity, of whom, as well as of the more venerable traditions that he represented, brightness was an inseparable and original characteristic.

In this view, the mythological absorption of the Sun in Apollo is a most striking trait of the ancient mythology: and it even recalls to mind that sublime representation of the Prophet, ‘The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory[504].’

Dionysus or Bacchus.

The Dionysus of Homer, or Bacchus, has all the[266] marks of a deity, whose name and worship were of recent introduction into Greece, and were not yet fully established there; while in connection with the Trojans we have no notice of him whatever.

The eastern origin of this god seems in an unusual degree to have been remembered in the later popular tradition: and from the slight Homeric notices we may find confirmation for the common idea; inasmuch as the poems appear both to mark him as not originally Greek nor Pelasgian, and likewise rather faintly to connect him with the Phœnicians.

His father was Jupiter, and his mother Semele. Her name occurs in a Catalogue, of which the first part is composed of women, the second of goddesses; she appears among the women. The lines, in which she is mentioned may be rendered, ‘nor when (I was enamoured) of Semele, nor (when) of Alcmene, in Thebes; and Alcmene had stout-hearted Hercules for her son, but Semele bore Dionysus, joy of men.’ These words appear probably to mean that Semele, as well as Alcmene, was in Thebes: and this supports the post-Homeric, but ancient, tradition of the hymn to Bacchus[505], which makes Semele the daughter of Cadmus. Now, Cadmus, according to every reasonable presumption, was Phœnician. We have thus a fixed chronological epoch, to which the god was junior. That is, we have a period fixed, which may be called historical, when his name and worship had not yet been brought into Greece.

The only note that we possess of the worship of Dionysus, as one established in Homer’s time among the Greeks, is in the obscure allusion of the Eleventh Odyssey to Ariadne[506], who was put to death by Diana[267] in the island of Dia, on her way from Crete to Athens, at the instance of Dionysus, Διονύσου μαρτυρίῃσιν. The most probable interpretation of this passage seems to be, that Theseus, when on his voyage, landed with Ariadne in Dia to consummate the marriage, just as Paris[507], on his way from Sparta, landed in Cranae with Helen: but that, since the island was dedicated to Dionysus, this was punished as a desecration.

We thus see Dionysus taking root for the first time upon the natural line of communication, namely that by the islands, between Phœnicia and Greece: and his possession of this island is in harmony with the tradition of the Hymn, which represents him as having first been seen upon the sea-shore[508].

In the Twenty-fourth Odyssey we are told that Thetis supplied the Greeks with a gilded urn, in which to store the ashes of Achilles, together with wine and some unguent, probably fat. The passage to which these verses belong is perhaps the least trustworthy in the poems: nor is it in complete agreement with the Iliad, which mentions fat only as used on the occasion. But I refer to it because it is stated there, that this urn was reported by Thetis to be the work of Vulcan, and also to be the gift of Dionysus[509]. Her possession of a gift from him is in harmony with Il. v. 136, which represents her as having sheltered him, when, through fear, he plunged into the sea: while his possession of a work of art in metal is best explained by the supposition that Homer regarded him as a Phœnician deity, since it was from that race that such productions were commonly, though we cannot say exclusively, derived.

It is not difficult to understand why, as the god of wine and inebriety, Dionysus does not appear in the[268] theotechny of the Iliad; but it would seem that the feasts of the dissolute Suitors in the Odyssey afforded a series of occasions, upon any of which the mention of his name would have been highly suitable. We may perhaps even say that it could hardly have been omitted, if his worship had been general and familiar in the country. Again, Dionysus is nowhere mentioned in connection with Olympus.

The remaining Homeric notice of this deity which is also the most curious, sustains what has already been advanced. The Arcadian king, Lycoorgus, scourged, and pursued over the hill Nyseion, the μαινομένοιο Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας, the nurses of the frantic Bacchus; they in dismay cast down their vine branches (θυσθλὰ), while he plunged into the sea, and Thetis gave him refuge[510]. Jupiter, in retribution, struck Lycoorgus blind, and cut short his days. Whatever explanation may be adopted of its details, this legend seems to signify, beyond all doubt, that some forty or fifty years before the Troica (for Lycoorgus was contemporary with the youth of Nestor[511]), the introduction of the drunken worship of Bacchus was resisted by the Pelasgians of Arcadia, and was for a time, at least, expelled by them. The mention of Dionysus as a child probably imports a further reference to the recency of his worship: and there is something remarkable and significant in this apparent commencement of violent opposition to it at the point when women were beginning to be corrupted by excess of liquor.

Even the later tradition of Hesiod, which makes Dionysus the husband of Ariadne, by thus giving him a Phœnician connection, so far sustains his Phœnician origin[512].

[269]

As Dionysus is one of the most recent of the Homeric deities, so likewise is he one of the most purely heathenish[513]. He has not, even in Homer, a divine maternity assigned to him, and he is the only one of the Homeric deities who stands in this predicament[514]. The anomaly was felt and provided for, in the later traditions at least, by the deification of Semele after death. But perhaps another mode of statement may be adopted. As it is evident that the original tradition made him the son of a woman, and as all those with whom he is classed in Homer are probably historical personages, it seems possible that he may have been one of our own race, whose discovery or extension of the use of wine may, by its rapid and powerful effect upon the countries which it had reached, have led to his adoption into the order of the Immortals, by a process more rapid than took place in the case of Hercules or any other person. Upon this supposition, he stands altogether alone among the gods of Homer. But, be this as it may, he is, when considered in the capacity of a deity, the representation of an animal instinct in its state of gross excess, and of nothing more. He is the god of drunkenness, as Mars is the god of violence, and Venus the goddess of lust: and there are no three other deities, from whom Homer has so remarkably withheld all signs of his reverence.

Though I state this as an historical possibility, I think it is certain that, according to the Poet, Dionysus was from his birth one of the Immortals: but it is also very doubtful whether he was one, to whom a place belonged in the smaller Olympian Assembly. Even in later times, he was not one of the Dii Majores: and[270] his being the son of a mortal in Homer would tend to make it probable that he was not invested by the Poet with Olympian dignity. Again, he is only four times mentioned in the whole of the poems; nor is a single act of his manhood recorded, except his information against Ariadne. That information seems to imply, that a known Greek island was sacred to him; and it was followed by the death of Ariadne under the darts of Diana. These circumstances may perhaps raise a presumption of his Olympian rank, equal to the adverse one which has been stated above. So far as this inquiry is concerned, the question must remain unsolved. But little of interest can attach to these, the shameful parts of the Greek mythology, which boast, as if it were our strength, of what can scarcely be excused as our weakness, and which treat our shame as our joy. The real point of interest is to learn whether there was a time when man, even though he had lost the clear view of the guiding hand from above, yet revolted against, or had not become familiar with, the deification of vicious passion. And we seem to find the note of such a time in Homer. Only one laudatory phrase is applied throughout the poems to Dionysus; it is the χάρμα βροτοῖσιν, and these words are not the sentiment of the Poet, or of any character that represents his mind; they are put into the mouth of Jupiter, when he is speaking under a paroxysm of sensual passion.

I have not adverted to the tradition which places the Lycoorgus of Il. vi. in Thrace, but have simply followed what appears to be the suggestion of the Homeric text.

[271]

In the full Olympian Assembly, or Great Chapter of the Immortals, we find a collection of deities, who are respectively the representatives, in the main, of Elemental Powers, of Human Passions or Ideas, and of Historical Traditions, either single or intermixed. Among the simple examples, we may cite the Rivers and Nymphs for the first, Mars and Venus for the second, the goddess Themis for the third, Latona and Iris for the last. In Jupiter, the chief of all, these elements are blended together.

But we must also consider those who do not appear in Olympus, and why they are excluded. If, as is perhaps the case, Aidoneus and Persephone are not there, it is because of the separateness of their work, and the remoteness of their kingdom. They had servants, guards, and a judge, in short, a sort of polity of their own. Atlas, Proteus, Calypso, Circe, and the other purely local deities, so far as we know, are not there; probably because they do not enter into the national religion, but are little more than convenient symbols[515] of[272] geographical points known or conceived through maritime, that is, without doubt, through Phœnician report. Again, we do not hear in Olympus of Destiny, Sleep, Night, Dream, Terror, Panic, Uproar, and the rest; probably because these had not attained to practical impersonation in the religion of the people, but were merely objects of the poetical faculty. So likewise with respect to the Winds, who stand as receivers of worship and sacrifice in Il. xxiii. 195. The different treatment which they receive in the Iliad and Odyssey, like their non-appearance in the Great Chapter[516] of Olympus, unless referable to the peculiarities of the Outer Geography, shows that they had not a developed and established godhead, but might be dealt with by the Poet at his will. In these imperfect impersonations, it has been well observed, sometimes the mere elemental power, sometimes the superinduced personality prevails. Again, Ἄτη the temptress, and Ἐρινύες the avengers, might stand excluded, both on the same ground of inadequate impersonation, and on other grounds. Nereus and the purely elemental deities of the sea are not summoned to the Assembly, apparently because he too had his own submarine palace. It answered to Olympus; and here he sat in state amidst his numerous Court of Nymphs. Even Thetis was fetched from thence to attend the last Assembly of the gods in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad. Κρόνος and Ῥέα are not in the divine meetings, firstly, because he, probably with her as his reflected image, is penally confined in Tartarus; but secondly, because, the first representing Time, and the second Matter, they are the primary ideas in the metaphysical order, which comprehended all others, and from which all[273] others were derivative. And as they stood in the metaphysical nexus of ideas, so stood Oceanus and his feminine, Tethys, in the terrestrial order; where Oceanus was the all-inclosing, all-containing; the Form, within which every terrestrial existence was cast, and beyond which even Thought could not pass. Hence the curious and marked exception of him from the summons of Themis to the Great Assembly of the Twentieth Book[517].

He is the father of the rivers, and the feeder of the Sea. Even of the gods he is the ‘Genesis,’ perhaps as their physical source, or as affording material for their formation; perhaps as the outer band of that world to which they belong, as much as we do, and outside of which there was no attempt to conceive them as existing. Lastly, it is perhaps because Homer meant to assign to Oceanus and Tethys the actual first parentage of the gods. This supposition is favoured by the fact that Juno applies the name μήτηρ[518] to Tethys, in a connection which may make it equivalent to ‘our Mother Tethys.’

It is clearly on a principle that Oceanus is not summoned to Olympus, and not from mere defect or immaturity of personality. For in conjunction with his wife Tethys, he took over the infant Juno from Rhea, at the time when there was trouble between Jupiter and his father; and afterwards he reared the child in his own domain. He can be lulled into slumber by Ὕπνος like any other deity: he has a daughter, Eurynome[519]: and he is capable of conjugal quarrels[520].

[274]

Again, Ocean is water, and Oceanus is the father of all the Rivers: but yet he was not included in the great lottery which divided the world between the Kronid brothers. This shows us afresh, that he is outside and independent of their rule: he forms the framework of the visible creation, while they are parts of the picture that is within the framework.

The same thing is true of Κρόνος and Ῥέα in the metaphysical order. They represent anterior conditions of thought and of existence to all other Beings, human and divine. Their personality is established; but it is, even more than that of Oceanus, in abeyance: for Oceanus is at least ever-flowing, while Time, and Space, or Matter, are with Homer wholly passionless, mute, and still. When once the Kronid family has been brought into existence, and the attempt of Time to impose the law of death on Deity has been put down by Jupiter, then the impersonations are virtually withdrawn from him and his partner, and they relapse into the torpid state of purely abstract ideas.

The Elemental Powers have nowhere what may be called a strong position in Homer, except in the invocations of solemn swearing; where they give force to the Oath, because they are the avengers of perjury. Thus their connection is not with deity in general, but with that nether world, which the ideas of mankind have always associated with the lower parts of the Earth[521].

Even on grounds larger than those derived from a particular phrase, it may be probable, that we ought to consider Oceanus as the Homeric parent of all the deities, Κρόνος and Ῥέα included. To a state of the[275] human mind not yet familiar with abstractions, Time and Place, imperfectly conceived, might be more limited, less comprehensive, than the great all-infolding Ocean, which encircled and wrapped in the world. And in this conception there may lie hid the embryo of what afterwards grew into the aquarian cosmogony, a system which appears not to be without support from other passages of the poem, especially from the very curious verse (Il. vii. 99),

If, however, this idea was really in the mind of the Poet, still we should consider it as having been with him an instinct rather than a theory.

The Olympian deities of Pagan antiquity are commonly represented as twelve in number; and the names are

• 1. Jupiter.
• 2. Juno.
• 3. Neptune.
• 4. Minerva, or Pallas Athene.
• 5. Phœbus Apollo.
• 6. Diana.
• 7. Mercury.
• 8. Histie, or Vesta.
• 9. Mars.
• 10. Venus.
• 11. Vulcan.
• 12. Ceres.

But Homer knows nothing of this number or arrangement of the gods; or of the distinction between Dii majores and Dii minores. Nor does he enable us with precision to substitute any other number for it. He gives us, however, his idea, at least by approximation, of the number of the Olympian gods. For when Thetis visits Vulcan, to obtain new armour for Achilles, she finds the deity at work upon twenty τρίποδες[522], to stand round the wall of the well-built hall, which he is carefully fitting with wheels, in order that they may[276] automatically take their places in the assembly of the gods. Whatever these τρίποδες be, the number is probably meant to correspond with that of the ordinary Olympian meeting for festivity or deliberation. They are commonly supposed to be bowls or vessels for wine set on three-legged stands; but there are two reasons, suggested by the language of the passage, which seem to recommend our understanding the word to mean seats, such as that of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi: one is, their being intended to stand around the apartment, along the wall: and the other is, that they were to place themselves for the divine assembly[523];

This idea of the great bowls placing themselves, one apparently for each deity to draw from, does not correspond with the classical representation of the cupbearer filling the cup of each, as he moves from the left towards the right. Nor does the word ἄγων seem to be suitable for a merely convivial meeting: and we ought, I presume, to consider the meetings on Olympus as in theory political councils for the government of the world, only relieved by meat and drink. If we take τρίποδες as signifying the seats, it has of course a reference to the number of gods who constituted the ordinary Olympian family; a reference which indeed it may probably have, even if the other signification be preferred.

And the text of the poems affords sufficient evidence, that twenty was about the number of the Olympian gods of Jupiter.

Of the Olympian twelve recognised in later times,[277] all, except Vesta and Ceres, must at once and indubitably be pronounced Olympian in Homer. For all take part in the Trojan war, and likewise make their appearance in Olympus. Thus we have ten Olympian deities of Homer already ascertained. And there are several others whom we can have no doubt in adding to the list. These we will proceed to consider:

1. Latona is clearly Olympian; from her great dignity as an unquestioned wife of Jupiter (ἄλοχος Διὸς, Il. xxi. 499); and from the fact that her position entitled her to take a side in the Trojan war, where none but Olympian deities were engaged, with the single exception of the formidable local power, Xanthus or Scamander. Another reason is, because the title of Dione, as we shall see, is clear; who is a deity in some respects similar, but decidedly inferior, to Latona.

2. Dione the mother of Venus is in the same order. For she receives her child, when she repairs wounded to Olympus, and in her speech of consolation distinctly describes herself as one of the Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες, Il. v. 383. She is called in this passage δῖα θεάων: a title twice given to Minerva, but also, sometimes, to very secondary deities, such as Calypso and Circe. Either as insignificant, or possibly as being foreign and not sufficiently naturalized, she finds no place in the Catalogue of Mothers in the Fourteenth Iliad.

3. Iris, the messenger-goddess. The grounds of her title may be found among the remarks upon this deity[524].

4. Themis, although not a party in the war, has the office of Pursuivant or Summoner to the Olympian Assembly: and her ordinary presence there is distinctly[278] proved by the Fifteenth Iliad, where she is the first to welcome Juno on her entrance into the circle.

5. It will be seen from a brief statement elsewhere relating to Aidoneus or Aides, that he is clearly of Olympian rank and character.

6. Next to Aidoneus, we may take the claim of Hebe. She is not indeed an important, nor a very prominent, person in the poems: but there is no room for doubt as to her Olympian dignity. We find her officiating as cupbearer in the Olympian Court of the Fourth Iliad. Her connection with Olympus is further established by her assisting Juno in the preparation of her chariot: and by her assisting Mars in the bath, when that deity has betaken himself into the presence of Jupiter, to complain of his wound. Again, her personality is quite clear. Nor can her divinity be questioned. She is pronounced in the Eleventh Odyssey to be the daughter of Jupiter and Here. The verse is suspected; but the suspicion itself may be suspected in its turn. Further, the case rests not on the particular account given of her parentage, but, in connection with the context, on her appearing as the wife of Hercules at all. Nor is she anywhere connected with the idea of a mortal origin[525].

7. A second divinity of somewhat similar rank is Paieon. On two occasions, he heals in Olympus the wounds of deities; first of Aidoneus, then of Mars. He is summoned to the exercise of his function as a person within call, and habitually present there. After the rebuke of Jupiter to Mars, the line that follows is[526],

There is no doubt therefore either of his personal, or of[279] his Olympian character; and none but divine persons are capable of bearing the Olympian offices. Ganymede, for instance, though carried up to dwell among the Immortals in order to pour out wine, has no function assigned to him in the poems. The Egyptians, indeed, are stated to be of the race of Paieon[527]; but we must probably understand this with respect to their royal family, just as the same thing is said of the Phæacians with respect to Neptune, because their kingly house had sprung from him[528]. In the later mythology he appears to be absorbed, like the Sun, in Apollo; but in the Homeric poems there is no confusion, or approach to confusion, of the persons. Paieon has the relation to Apollo with respect to surgery or medicine, which Vulcan has to Minerva with respect to manual art: and, apparently by a mixture of distinct traditions, he is also connected with Apollo, by being the synonyme for the hymn of victory, of which Apollo is doubtless supposed to be in a peculiar manner the giver.

To all these deities the poems appear to give a title to seats in Olympus, unquestionable as well as direct. By a somewhat less clear and simple process, we may, I think, arrive at a similar conclusion as to the views of Homer regarding two other deities.

8. The first of these is Demeter, or Ceres, whose Olympian rank is considered, and I think established, in the remarks elsewhere upon her individual divinity[529].

9. The second is Ἠέλιος, the Sun. His share in the episode of Mars and Venus[530] does not indeed absolutely imply his residing on Olympus. But this is clearly involved in the account of his receiving the[280] intelligence, that his oxen had been consumed by the companions of Ulysses. For, upon hearing it, he instantly proceeds to address the company of the Immortals assembled there[531], and is answered by Jupiter. He must therefore unquestionably stand as one of the Olympian gods of Homer.

There are but three other personages named in Homer, with respect to whom there is room for the supposition, that he may have intended them to rank as Olympian deities. They are Dionysus, Persephone, and Eris. For Histie, or Vesta, is so entirely wanting in personality, that she cannot possibly belong to that order. She is invoked indeed in company with Jupiter; but with these two is likewise combined the ξενίη τράπεζα, the table of hospitality. In the hymn to Venus[532] she has become fully personified, and is celebrated as the eldest of the daughters of Κρόνος. But this imagery probably belongs to a different stage of Greek society and Greek poetry.

1. 2. The case of Dionysus and that of Persephone, very different, but both on this point doubtful, have been stated elsewhere[533].

3. The case of Eris is different. She is the sister and also the mistress of Mars[534]. And in the fierce battle of the Eleventh Book, Eris alone is present to enjoy it, while all the other deities, inhibited from action by Jupiter, have betaken themselves to their several abodes on Olympus.

Again, Jupiter sends her down to the camp at the beginning of the Eleventh Iliad, where she stands on the ship of Ulysses, and raises a mighty shout to stir up[281] the Greeks for the contest[535]. The word is, indeed, the common and established word for strife in Homer, and it is applied even to the conflict of the gods[536], θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνιόντων. But this use of it is probably to be compared with that of Ἄρης for a spear, and of Ἀφροδίτη (in later Greek) for the sensual function of that deity. She is, on the whole, less a figure than a person, though standing upon the border between the two respectively; and though, as she never actually performs what may be called a personal action, she is only by a few degrees removed from the family of Terror, Din, Panic, and the rest. The first of these, Φόβος, as he is the son of Mars[537], and attends him in fight against the Ephyri, is as distinctly personified as Eris in one passage; but the effect of it is neutralized by others, where he passes into sheer figure. She rejoices in seeing the slaughter[538] wrought in battle: and an intense eagerness is imputed to her[539], of course meaning an eagerness for blood.

But another form of this deity is probably exhibited to us under another name, that of the πτολίπορθος Ἐνύω. Enuo is mentioned together with Pallas as being a warlike deity, in contrast with the effeminate Venus[540]: and she leads the Trojans to the fight in concert with Mars: but while he has a huge spear in his hands, she holds or leads, instead, another form more shadowy than her own, that of Κύδοιμος or Tumult. Yet the mode in which she is joined with Pallas proves her impersonation. The fundamental identity of her name with Ἐνυάλιος, the second name of Mars, and her joining him in leading on the Trojans, place her in some very close relation to him: and that close relation[282] cannot well be other than the twofold one of sister and mistress, which had been assigned to Ἔρις.

When it is said, that ‘she alone of the gods was present, as the others had retired to their respective mansions on Olympus,’ the most natural inference certainly is, that she too is meant to be described as belonging to the Olympian Court.

Upon the whole, it seems pretty clear, that if the Poet intended to limit absolutely the number of the Olympian Court or Minor Assembly to the exact figure twenty, then the choice for the twentieth place will more justly fall on his Eris, than either his Dionysus, or even his Persephone. It appears to me, however, that so strict a numerical precision is not in the manner of Homer; that he intended the twenty tripods to be a general indication of the number of the Court, and that with this indication the facts of the poems substantially, though indeterminately, agree.

Such is the composition of the Olympian Court, or smaller Assembly.

The Deities who, in virtue of belonging to that Court, may be most properly called Olympian, may be divided into the following classes:

Those three names, which are marked with an asterisk, appear to have only a more or less disputable title to a seat in Olympus.

Outside, so to speak, of Olympus and its Court, we may classify the superhuman intelligences of Homer as follows: observing, however, that the minor deities who represent natural powers, if thoroughly personified, give their attendance in Olympus on high occasions, and help to form its great Chapter or Parliament.

They may be thrown into the six following classes:

1. The greater impersonations of natural powers, and of ideas; with their reflections, where such have been formed, in the feminine. These are

Oceanus and Tethys.

Κρόνος and Ῥέα.

Ouranos and Gaia (not Earth, but rather Land).

Nereus and Amphitrite.

We are not authorized by Homer to associate either of these last couples as husband and wife. We have to add:

The process of impersonation is with some of these fully developed, with others scarcely begun, and wholly poetical; therefore as yet in no degree mythological. In one place, Il. xiii. 299, Φόβος is the son of Mars, in another Φόβος and Δεῖμος are his horses (xiii. 119.); and[284] in a third they appear along with Ἔρις, in a shape hovering between personality and allegory. Ἔρις herself, at times fully personified, in one passage is simply a figure on the Ægis of Minerva, perhaps, however, as an animated work of art, Il. v. 740. In all these cases we see the work of poetical fabrication actually going on.

Perhaps the best example of a merely poetical, as distinguished from a religious or practical impersonation, is to be found in Æschylus, who makes Dust the brother of Mud[541].

This class was greatly augmented in the later Theogonies, beginning with Hesiod.

2. The minor impersonations of natural powers, such as

• (1) The Winds.
• (2) The Rivers.
• (3) The Nymphs of meadows.
• (4) The Nymphs of fountains.
• (5) The Nymphs of groves.
• (6) The Nymphs of hills.
• (7) The Sea Nymphs.

3. I place in a different class all those deities, who appear in Homer as the subjects of foreign fable not fully naturalized. These are they who dwell in the Outer sphere of the marvellous Geography in the Odyssey, and with whom Menelaus and Ulysses are brought into contact. They are wholly exterior to the system of Homer, and we cannot safely give them a position implying any defined relation to it. But there are certain links supplied by the Poet himself, as when he makes Circe child of the Sun, and Mercury presumptively nephew of Calypso: by these he shows us the connection of the Greek mythology with Eastern sources, and the partial assimilation of the materials they supplied.

[285]

These deities are:

• 1. Proteus.
• 2. Leucothee.
• 3. Æolus (perhaps).
• 4. The Sirens.
• 5. Calypso.
• 6. Atlas.
• 7. Circe.
• 8. Œetes.
• 9. Maias.
• 10. Perse.
• 11. Eidothee.
• And several Nymphs[542].

4. Those impersonations which represent, each in its several part, or its peculiar aspect, the tradition of the Evil One, have been considered along with the deities of tradition.

5. Of ministers of doom or justice, real or reputed, and less than divine, yet belonging to the metaphysical or moral order, we have in Homer:

6. Besides all these, we have yet another class with subdivisions of its own, composed of beings who stand within the interval between Deity and Humanity.

There are some observations to be made on several of these classes.

It is much easier to obtain a just perception of the manner in which Homer handles the subject of Destiny or Fate, than to represent it in a system. The conflict which it involves, either of ideas, or at least of the words denoting them, was certain to give occasion to argument and difference of opinion in a case where a poet is of necessity called to take his trial at the bar of philosophy[543].

Besides the θέσφατον, on which I shall make a[286] remark hereafter, there are five forms of speech which are employed by Homer to express the idea of Destiny; they are, Κατακλῶθες, Κήρ, Μοῖρα, Μόρος, and Αἶσα: the two last in the singular number only, the two preceding it in the singular or plural, and the Κατακλῶθες only in the plural.

Of these, the Κῆρες and the Κατακλῶθες have undergone the most effective process of personification; but, brought more distinctly into the sphere of life and action, these phrases have a much less profound root in the order of ideas, and scarcely touch the great questions, whether destiny is a power separate from the human will, separate from the Divine will, and superior to either or to both.

The fundamental idea both of Μοῖρα and Αἶσα, traced from their original source, is not a part merely, but rather a portion or share allotted according to some rule or law. But, though of similar origin, some distinctions obtain between the uses of the two words. And first as to Αἶσα.

We have in Il. xviii. 327, ληΐδος αἶσα; in Od. xix. 24, ἐλπίδος αἶσα; in Il. ix. 378, τίω δέ μιν ἐν καρὸς αἴσῃ. In all these cases it is plain, that the word means not a mere part, but a part assigned upon some given principle. Hence it comes to mean either the whole share or lot assigned to a man, or the law according to which it is assigned, that is, the law under which the moral government of human life, and the distribution of good and evil, are conducted. Accordingly, we have these several senses in which it is employed.

1. The αἶσα, as the entire destiny, of an individual man, Il. i. 416. Ἐπεί νύ τοι αἶσα μίνυνθά περ, οὔτι μάλα δήν.

2. A notable part of that destiny, as his death: Τῷ οἱ ἀπεμνήσαντο καὶ ἐν θανάτοιό περ αἴσῃ. Il. xxiv. 428.

[287]

3. The moral law for the government of conduct, as in Ἕκτορ, ἐπεί με κατ’ αἶσαν ἐνίπαπες, οὐδ’ ὑπὲρ αἶσαν. Il. iii. 59.

4. That moral law as it is supposed to proceed from Jupiter; the Διὸς αἶσα, or dispensation of Jupiter; the δαίμονος αἶσα, or dispensation of Providence.

5. That same law, as it is supposed to proceed from some other source, or to speak more correctly, for Homer, as the power which administers it is separately personified. This we have in the passage ἅσσα οἱ Αἶσα γεινομένῳ ἐπένησε λίνῳ, ὅτε μιν τέκε Μήτηρ, Il. xx. 127; or, again, as in Od. vii. 197; where Αἶσα is assisted in the spinning process by the Κατακλῶθες βαρεῖαι, as if it was felt that she was not strong enough to make a Destiny.

Upon the whole it appears to me that there is in the word Αἶσα only the minutest savour of the proper idea of Fate. For Fate involves these things: 1. a power dominant over man: 2. a power independent of the divinity: and 3. a power standing ideally apart from right.

Now αἶσα does not fully answer even to the first of these conceptions, since αἶσα, even when it is backed by the gods, may be overcome by the energies of man. Jupiter in the Iliad[544] ordained glory to Hector and success to the Trojans until the sunset of the day when the battle of the ships was fought: yet just before the death of Patroclus the Greeks prevailed, Il. xvi. 780.

The only instances in which we find αἶσα endowed with any thing in the nature of an inexorable force are such as that quoted from Il. xx. 127. In this passage it is said by Juno, ‘We will give Achilles glory; thereafter let him suffer what αἶσα has appointed for him.’ Now[288] this refers not to a course of life that he was to pass through, but simply to the crisis of his death. In Od. vii, the speaker is Alcinous; and his sentiment is, ‘Let us carry our guest safe home and then leave him to whatever αἶσα and the κατακλῶθες have ordained for him.’ Probably this is only an euphemism, and means death, as Juno meant it; but, in any case, proceeding from another mortal, it is a mere form of speech perfectly compatible in itself with the idea that the gods are superior to αἶσα, nay, that man may upon occasion surmount it. In the other case it is not so; we must understand Juno to recognise the αἶσα or dispensation as absolute; but then it is the dispensation of death; and it is, I think, the clear doctrine of the poems that that dispensation cannot be cancelled or averted from mortals, though there are various modes in which it may be escaped or baffled: one of them, that of postponement, which is temporary: another, that of translation out of the mortal state, as in the case of Ganymede: and a third, that of revival, as in the cases of Castor and Pollux. To Minerva alone is ascribed a power over death: and this seems to be a power of subsequent rescue, and not one of absolute exemption. Euryclea comforts Penelope with the exhortation to pray to Minerva about Ulysses[545], as she can afterwards deliver him;

The stress is evidently to be laid upon the word ἔπειτα.

Another passage, which may at first sight present a different appearance, will, I think, on examination, be found to harmonize completely with what has been said. When in the Sixteenth Iliad, Jupiter perceives that his cherished son Sarpedon is about to meet his death[289] by encountering Patroclus, he laments that it should be the destiny of one to him the dearest of men, to be slain by that warrior. Then he proceeds to consider whether he shall remove him from the scene of danger, though he was fated to die, or whether he shall subdue him by the hands of Patroclus[546],

Thus, in the space of a few lines, 1. he seems to recognise destiny as a power superior to his own will; then, 2. he debates whether he shall overrule this superior power; and lastly, 3. he treats the execution of its decree as the act of that very will of his. And on this course, advised by Juno, he finally decides.

He desists from executing this plan, not because it is impossible, but apparently for two reasons: the first, that it may cause discontent and spleen among the gods; the second, that by similar interferences, on behalf each of his own child, they too may trouble the order of nature. His power, therefore, to execute the scheme is clearly implied. But what scheme? Not one for repealing the law of death, so far as Sarpedon is concerned[547]; but simply for adjourning the evil by removing him to his home, and so putting him far beyond the reach of the chances of the war.

When Vulcan is asked by Thetis to provide arms for Achilles, he replies, Would that I could hide him from his fated hour, even as I can and will provide him with arms! Here, indeed, the expression is not to save, but to hide him; yet even this is beyond his power:

Vulcan indeed is a deity of limited powers; but in this case he seems to express a general law.

[290]

The death, therefore, at some time within a given space, of every person remaining in the state of a mortal man, was a point settled and immovable, and so was accordingly the αἶσα of death: but it was that the αἶσα was fixed, because death was fixed, and not that death was fixed, because αἶσα ordained it. We must distinguish between a single incident of a mortal career, an order which nothing can infringe, unchangeable but uncaused, and the supposition of a power, which causes that, and likewise all other parts of it, irrespective of personal will, whether in the gods or in men.

It appears, I think, on the whole, that αἶσα has but a limited and equivocal connection with the idea of fate; it seems never to mean more than the fate of a single individual, never to signify the large-handed destiny that grasps nations and the world. It may be overridden, as by the Greeks, after the battle of the ships. And the reason of this seems to be that its meaning has so strong a bias to the side of a moral law, as opposed to a mere force. This comes out clearly in the sense of the word αἴσιμος: αἴσιμα εἴδειν is little less or more, than to be a good man. Its predominating sense is the ordained law of right; and as such, it is a law very liable to be broken.

It is in the Μοῖρα, if anywhere, that we must seek for destiny, in the sense which approximates to fatalistic ideas. Here, far differently from αἶσα, the moral idea is subordinate in nearly all cases, and in some it is wholly suppressed.

Like αἶσα, μοῖρα, properly means a portion or share, a part accruing to some one under a law. Thus we have οὐδ’ αἰδοῦς μοῖραν ἔχουσιν Od. xx. 171; and παρώχηκεν δὲ πλέων νὺξ τῶν δύο μοιράων, τριτάτη δ’ ἔτι μοῖρα λέλειπται (Il. x. 252). Thus it appears to pass into the[291] following senses, which may be usefully compared with those of αἶσα.

The scope of its meaning is far wider: it hardly stoops to signify the destiny of a single man; Homer could not well have said (see Il. i. 416.) ἐπεί νύ τοι μοῖρα μίνυνθά περ: although he can make μοῖρα as a power, appoint a destiny for a man, (Il. xxiv. 209.) it is not the μοῖρα of a man. But it is

1. The appointing power as separate from any thing else. It hovers between the state of an abstraction and of a person: and it comes nearer to the latter than αἶσα. Not only have we μοῖρα κραταιὴ γεινομένῳ ἐπένησε λίνῳ, (Il. xxiv. 209.) but especially,

A passage by which, unless its effect were modified from elsewhere, the μοῖραι seem in principle to take the whole administration of moral government into their hands, by fixing dispositions as well as outward actions.

2. Besides being thus personal, μοῖρα reaches to mankind at large, and expresses a general law, in the passage last quoted.

This may be a law of good fortune, as in Od. xx. 76[550]:

3. Or, with an epithet, it may mean ill fortune; as in μοῖρα δυσώνυμος, Il. xii. 116.

4. It seems very strongly to signify death, when used simply, and without addition, as τεῒν δ’ ἐπὶ μοῖραν ἔθηκε, in Od. xi. 560.

5. Or when in apposition, as μοῖρα θανάτοιο, Od. ii. 100, or again as in Il. iii. 101, θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα.

6. Or any thing ordained for mankind at large, as Od. xix. 592, the μοῖρα ὕπνου. You must sleep, says[292] Penelope; for the gods have so ordained it, (ἐπὶ γάρ τοι ἑκάστῳ μοῖραν ἔθηκαν ἀθάνατοι θνητοῖσιν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν).

7. Μοῖρα, like αἶσα, may be the embodied will, decree, or dispensation of the gods. Thus we have μοῖρα θεοῦ, Od. xi. 292, where θεὸς is either Jupiter or possibly Apollo: and μοῖρα θεῶν, Od. iii. 269, and xxii. 413. Now the names θεὸς and θεοὶ seem to be higher with Homer than any mythological name. They are his most solemn forms for the expression of the idea of deity. Thus it is remarkable that he never attaches μοῖρα directly to any Olympian person. This testifies to its signifying something larger than is conveyed by αἶσα. But it also seems to indicate that, even if it were capable of being placed in antagonism to the will of one of the mythological persons, into whose forms theistic ideas had passed by degeneracy, yet it was not conceived as opposite to or separate from the divine principle, but rather as a power associated with it.

8. Though in general μοῖρα means the thing ordained without reference to moral ideas, yet it is not always so. Μόρσιμος ordinarily means destined, while αἴσιμος means right. But the ideas of right and might were not yet wholly parted. In Od. xxii. 413 it is plain that μοῖρα θεῶν, pronounced by Ulysses over the Suitors, contains a moral element: for he goes on to say, οὔτινα γὰρ τίεσκον κ.τ.λ.: and so Eurymachus, when he means to acknowledge that the death of Antinous was morally just, says,

The presence of the moral element in this word is entirely adverse to the theory, that it was used in the sense of fatalism. Power apart from a personal deity[293] has been conceived by the human mind: but moral power, I think, in such a state of severalty, has never been made the subject of serious speculation.

9. Μοῖρα has yet another sense, that of κοσμὸς, order. The force of the term κατὰ μοῖραν is generally ‘with propriety,’ while κατ’ αἶσαν is ‘with right.’

Thus in Il. xix. 256 the Greeks sit still, κατὰ μοῖραν, in order to hear Agamemnon: and we have an instance of κατὰ μοῖραν meaning ‘with propriety’ in Il. x. 169. Here Nestor has been chidden by Diomed, not for a moral offence, but for over-activity: and he replies,

He could not here have said κατ’ αἶσαν.

Lastly, we come to the word μόρος. There are several shades of distinction between it and μοῖρα.

1. It is never personified in Homer, nor even approaches to impersonation.

2. It draws peculiarly to the dispensation of death, in conformity with the law by which in Latin it became mors. See Il. xviii. 465. xxi. 133: and, except in this connection, it does not seem to be used to express individual destiny.

3. Accordingly it is never associated with deity; in conformity with the fixed character of the dispensation of death. We have no μόρος θεῶν, μόρος Διός.

4. Yet this is not because μόρος is stronger than μοῖρα. On the contrary, we have no case in Homer of a thing done ὑπὲρ μοῖραν, though it is sometimes apprehended. Thus in Il. xx. 335 Neptune warns Æneas to retire from before Achilles,

But μόρος receives the sense of αἶσα as the law of right: a relationship curiously maintained in mos, moris, compared with mors, mortis. Men bring woe upon[294] themselves ὑπέρμορον, by obstinate wickedness: and the crimes of Ægisthus (Od. i. 35.) have been committed ὑπέρμορον.

We thus see that, on the whole, the force of destiny, as it appears in Homer, although it commonly prevails, is not uniformly irresistible. We never find the deities actually fighting against it, or it against them. So full and large were Homer’s conceptions of the freedom of the human will, that fate is sometimes on the point of giving way before the energy of his heroes, and this even when the strength of some god is brought in aid of it. Thus Jupiter fears, lest ὑπὲρ μόρον Achilles should dash the Trojan walls[552] to the ground. Apollo enters the city[553], lest the Greeks should take it ὑπὲρ μόρον on the day of the battle with Hector. In the Second Book, after the rush from the assembly, the Greeks would ὑπέρμορα have returned home, unless Juno had urged Minerva to bestir herself by influence among them. Many things are done contrary to αἶσα, or the ordained law of right; whereas, although μοῖρα is not in the abstract insurmountable, yet in fact it rarely is surmounted. But then the Fate of Homer, the thing spoken, is not in conflict with him that speaks it.

We do not find in Homer the curious distinction which the speculative mind of the Greeks afterwards worked out, between a fate representing the mere will of the gods, and a fixed fate higher and stronger than they:

And again in Herodotus[555]: τὴν πεπρωμένην μοίρην ἀδύνατά ἐστιν ἀποφυγέειν καὶ θεῷ.

[295]

While this, on the one side, was the course of speculation, the course of poetic thought was towards a complete impersonation of Destiny in the three Fates, representing an image so congenial, as a poetic image only, to the human mind, that it found its way into the romance poetry of Christian Italy.

Upon the whole, it appears at any rate most probable, that Homer had not formed the conception of a law extrinsic to all volition human and divine, and so powerful as to override it.

It is hardly to be conceived that Homer would have treated a successful resistance to the laws of Destiny as lying within the possible reach of mankind, had he deemed it to be a power independent of, and superior to, the Divine Will; because he always represents the latter as decisive and supreme over human fortunes.

I think that the primary ideas conveyed in the terms μοῖρα and Fatum will not be found, when examined, to agree. Fatum is the decree without reason; the sic volo sic jubeo; and the idea of it is the result of the long, wearisome, despairing experience of bewildered man, after the world has lost the freshness and the joy of its childhood. The μοῖρα, or share, is a distribution made according to a law or moral purpose: it cannot, without parting from its nature, be blind: its tendency in Homer rather is, as we see in Il. xxiv. 49, to grow into a sort of rival Providence.

The arguments to an opposite effect are surely inconclusive[556]. The question raised by the Scales of Jupiter is, not what the springs may be which determine the movement of the world, but simply what is his foreknowledge of the direction it will take. These[296] representations would be perfectly consistent with belief in the supremacy (so to speak) of Chance: and while we may admit that, inasmuch as they are not produced for the information of men, they must indicate a limitation in Jupiter, we should not mistake the nature of that limitation.

Again, we must not suppose that because some particular deity deplores the course of destiny, therefore that course is in opposition to the general deliberation and decision of Olympus.

And when, as is commonly the case, we find the deities cooperating with μοῖρα, the assumption that they are its servants, seems to be wholly unwarranted. It seems much more natural to suppose that the μοῖρα, to which they are giving effect, is simply the divine will: especially as, though we find single gods, Neptune or Apollo, for example, cooperating with μοῖρα, I doubt whether this is ever represented of the gods at large and their supreme decrees.

In order to solve the general question, what after all can be more reasonable than to look to the main action of the poems, and inquire what power or what counsel it is which takes effect through the medium of their machinery as a whole? If this be the test, there is no room for doubt upon the issue. In the Iliad it is the Διὸς βουλὴ (Il. i. 5): the determination of Olympus, into which Jupiter had wisely allowed his own opposite inclinations to merge. In the Odyssey[557], it is the decision of the same tribunal, at the instance of Minerva, and with Neptune alone dissentient. Upon the whole, for the poems and the day of Homer, I cannot but think that both the supremacy of godhead as a whole,[297] and the freedom of man remain, if somewhat darkened, yet certainly unsubverted. The μοῖρα of Homer may, it is probable, be no more and no less in the main than that θέσφατον, or divinely uttered decree, which he sometimes uses in such a manner as to admit of the supposition that they were really synonymous.

At the same time we do not find, nor could we expect to find, in Homer any clear assertion of the majesty of the true Divine Will, as the mainspring that moves the universe. That is emphatically a Christian sentiment, which is conveyed in the lofty formula of Dante:

The Fate of Homer may indeed logically embrace a germ, which will afterwards expand into the idea of a power extrinsic to Deity, and able to overrule it. We may argue to show that the representation, perseveringly developed, means as much as this. But then such representations in Homer are not perseveringly, much less are they unilaterally, developed. They have not been thought through even to their legitimate consequences, and far less to those which appear to arise from the following out, not of a full truth, but of some particular and severed aspect of it. Taken at the worst, Destiny in Homer broods like a cloud in a distant quarter of the sky, silently gathering the might which, when ripe, is to engage in obstinate and unending conflict with deity. But for this work the material is not yet prepared; and practically neither μοῖρα nor αἶσα much crosses the work of Divine government, such as it is conceived and exhibited in Homer. I pass on to the second Class.

[298]

Among the Greeks, and even in Homer, every tree, every fountain, all things inanimate, that either vegetated or moved, had their indwelling deity. Homer, however, represents the infancy of that system, and though he impersonates many other local agencies, he gives to none so active a personality as to Rivers. Ulysses in his distress addresses the god of the Scherian river[558]; and is answered by the staying of the current. Simois is addressed personally by Xanthus[559]; and Xanthus himself, by virtue of his local power, is promoted to the honour of contending with Vulcan, the god of fire, a member of the Olympian Court, and a son of Jupiter and Juno. So the Spercheus[560] is invoked, and, what is more, invoked so far off as in Troas, by Achilles.

The perpetual movement which inheres in the essence of a river, combined with the visibility which separates it from mere atmospherical currents, seems to connect it more closely than any other natural object with the idea of life. It is most interesting to observe how the sentiment here expressed seems to have worked in ages widely distant, upon great poets of differing nations, temperaments, and circumstances, after their differing manners. Homer does not impute feelings to a River; but he impersonates it with a treatment different to that which he applies to groves, fountain, or meadow. Now these personifications though not yet disused (especially in the English poetry of the last century), have become far less real and effective for the human mind, since the Gospel opened to us the unseen world with its crowd of ethereal inhabitants. Observe, accordingly, how a feeling identical with that of Homer, a tendency to invest outward[299] nature with vitality and action, in these more recent times takes a different form. The great Dante, more than two thousand years later in the line of human descent, without personifying, yet ascribes feeling to a river; he imagines the Po, after its tumultuous headlong descent with all its feeders from the mountains, longing for peace, and seeking it by repairing to the sea. Francesca da Rimini thus describes her birth-place;

And one of lesser indeed, (for who is not less than such as these?) but yet of both high and honoured poetic name, our own Wordsworth, in his Sonnet[561] on the River Thames, seen from London Bridge at sunrise, has the well known line,

He may also be claimed as a witness to what has been said of the truth and power of these personifications to the ancients. For in another noble Sonnet, where he complains of the deadening power and weight of worldly life, and intends to show that a system of shadows, when men really appropriate and digest the truth it has, is better for them than to have a system of substances around them, and yet to remain unpenetrated by it, he describes that system of shadows by recalling two of its vivid personifications[562].

But while Homer brings into action no personifications of this class, except those of Rivers, he peoples[300] each with its appropriate Genius, the fountains, the grassy meadows, and the groves. In the Great Parliament of the supernal world at the beginning of the Twentieth Iliad, all are represented. Even here, however, the distinction is preserved: the Rivers attend as it were in person; but the rest by deputy, that is, by their proper indwelling and presiding Spirits;

Thus the first are impersonations: the second only residences for persons to dwell in.

The Harpies, Ἁρπυῖαι, of Homer have been, I think, truly described as ‘nothing but personified storm-winds[564].’ They have no connection, when jointly viewed, with the moral order, except that they may, as mere carriers, take a subordinate part in the fulfilment of a moral purpose, which is quite as true of the Winds, personified or unpersonified. The Harpy Ποδάργη is personified individually, as the mother who bears to Zephyr the two deathless horses of Achilles, Xanthus and Balius[565]; but apparently for no other purpose than one purely relative. The classical passage respecting the Harpies is that in Od. xx. 61–79, which forms a part of the prayer of Penelope to Diana. The object of the matron’s petition is that, wearied out with her sorrows, she may die, and this in one of two modes: either by the arrows of the goddess; or else, that a hurricane may seize her, and, driving her along the paths[301] of air, deposit her in the channels of Ocean, that is to say, the place of the dead. Then she proceeds to illustrate this last mode of death, of which she has named θύελλα as the instrument, by the tale of the daughters of Pandareus, who, having lost their parents, were in an extraordinary manner petted by the goddesses. Aphrodite fed them, Here gave them sense and beauty, Artemis stature, Pallas endowed them with skill. And, lastly, Aphrodite went to Olympus to induce Jupiter to provide for their marriage. But while she was away on this errand, the Harpies carried off these maidens, and gave them to the Ἐρινύες, ἀμφιπολεύειν, to be their servants, as it is sometimes rendered, but, as I should venture to construe it, ‘for them, i. e. the Ἐρινύες, to deal with.’ It is evident that, in this curious legend, the Harpies are introduced to exemplify nothing more than the part which Penelope had previously referred to the θύελλα; and these powers, who represent Hurricane or Squall, and in whose agency lies the gist of the story, appear to have been in this matter the ministers of the Ἐρινύες, beings of a very different order. These beings are evidently introduced, though entirely beyond the parallel of the θύελλα, in order to complete the moral. The only other case in which Homer introduces the Harpies is in a line, twice repeated, where Penelope supposes that they may have carried Ulysses off (ἀκλειῶς) ingloriously[566], i. e. so as to rob him in death of his due meed of fame. And this Friedreich well compares with part of a passage in the Book of Job, which is as follows, chap. xxvii. 20, 21. ‘A tempest stealeth him away in the night: the east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.’

[302]

The Ἐρινύες are of much greater importance; and their position deserves the more careful inquiry, because it has, I think, been often misunderstood, perhaps from being appreciated only through the delusive medium of the later tradition, which appears to me to have let drop all the finer elements of the conception, by a process similar to that which it effected upon the great Homeric characters of Achilles, Helen, and Ulysses.

It is quite insufficient to say of these personages, by way of description, that they are the avengers of crime[567], or that they grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of parents[568]: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them as ‘originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon a guilty criminal[569].’

Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer.

1. In the narrative of Phœnix we find that when, at the instigation of his mother, he had sought the embraces of a παλλακὶς, for whom his father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked the Ἐρινύες to make him childless. ‘This curse,’ he says, ‘the gods (θεοὶ) accomplished, and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,’ Il. ix. 449–57.

2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her brother, invoked Aïdes and Persephone, beseeching them to slay that hero: whereupon the Erinūs, here called ἠεροφοῖτις, ‘that walketh in darkness,’ heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here the Erinūs appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet against his mother.[303] The city is assaulted, forced, and set on fire. The family, including the mother who had cursed him, entreat Meleager to deliver them, and attempt to attract his favour by splendid promises of a demesne, to be conferred on him by the public. Only when the palace itself is assailed does he consent. He repels the enemy; the demesne is not given him: and, on account of his thus relenting only at the last moment, Phœnix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles to avoid. (Il. ix. 565–603.)

3. In Il. xv. 204, when Neptune seems inclined to be refractory, Iris reminds him that the Erinūs will act with Jupiter, because he is the elder brother:

And upon this hint Neptune at once alters his tone, allows that she has spoken κατὰ μοῖραν, and complies with the command that she has brought.

4. In Il. xix. Agamemnon, while he admits his ἄτη, (v. 87), throws, we might say shuffles off, the blame of it upon Jupiter, Destiny, and Erinūs:

5. In vv. 258–60 of the same Book, the same personage invokes as witnesses to his asseveration concerning Briseis, 1. Jupiter, 2. the Earth, 3. the Sun, 4. the Ἐρινύες, ‘who dwell beneath the earth, and punish the perjured.’

6. In v. 418 of the same Book, after the horse Xanthus, receiving a voice by the gift of Juno, has given to Achilles a dark indication of his coming fate, the Erinues interfere to prevent any further disclosures:

7. When, in the Theomachy, Minerva has laid Mars[304] prostrate by a blow, she taunts him by telling him he may in his overthrow recognise the Ἐρινύες of his mother Juno, invoked upon him for having changed sides in the contest (Il. xxi. 410–14).

8. In the Odyssey (ii. 135), Telemachus apprehends that, if he dismisses his mother, he will have to encounter, among other evils, the Erinuës whom she will invoke upon him.

9. Epicaste, the mother of Œdipus, is speedily removed from the face of earth for her hapless incest. Œdipus himself lives and reigns: but suffers many sorrows, which the Erinuës of Epicaste (μητρὸς Ἐρινύες, as in Il. xx. 412) bring upon him.

10. Melampus, a rich subject of Neleus in Pylos, is imprisoned for a whole year in the house of Phylacus, and has his property seized or confiscated, on account of the daughter of Neleus, and of his grievous ἄτη, which the goddess, the hard-striking[570] Erinūs, brought into his mind (Od. xv. 233):

But he escaped from death, and paid, i.e. accomplished, the strange act that Neleus had imposed as the condition of obtaining the command over his daughter’s hand. He thus procured it for his brother, termed in the post-Homeric tradition Bias. This condition was, that he should bring off to Pylos the cows which were the property of Iphicles (and apparently of Phylacus). He was caught at Phylace in the attempt: but after a year Iphicles released him, apparently in consideration[305] of benefit derived from his prophetic knowledge, Od. xv. 228–38, and xi. 287–97.

11. In Od. xvii. 475, 6, Ulysses, when Antinous had hurled the stool at him, invokes upon that Suitor in return the anger of the gods and Erinuës (εἴ πού γε εἰσὶν, if such there be) of the poor.

12. Lastly, in Od. xx. 78, as we have seen, the Harpies deliver the daughter of Pandareus into the hands of the Erinuës.

We have thus a very copious supply of information from Homer, in no less than twelve passages, every one of which represents the action of these singular beings in a fresh and varied light: and the question is, what is the one common idea, which is sufficiently comprehensive to include them all, and is also in harmony with the purport of each?

I answer, that the Erinuës are, in the Homeric system, the never-failing champions, because they are the practical avengers, of the natural and moral order, at all times, under all circumstances, and against all persons whatsoever. They have nothing to do with the prevention of crime: but they appear to be the principal instruments for its punishment, especially here, but likewise hereafter. This, however, is only a part of their function. They are the sworn servants of a fixed order of the universe, apart from, anterior to, and independent of, all volition, divine or human: and they avenge the infraction of that order, not merely as a law of right opposed to wrong, but as a law of order opposed to disorder; they are goddesses themselves, but they are wholly apart from the Olympian dispensation, sometimes put in conjunction with deities of the mythology, sometimes apart from, sometimes in opposition to them. They are, in short, an early and poetical ex[306]pression of that philosophy, which even in Christian times has seemed to seek a foundation for the supreme laws more or less dissociated from, and wholly exterior to, the Divine Will: the philosophy, not of Destiny, but of the ‘Immutable Morality’ of Cudworth and his school: the philosophy harmonizing with the Ideas of the Platonists: the philosophy of which we have a distant glimpse in the words of St. Bernard, incommutabile est, quod ne ipsi quidem Deo mutare liberum est[571]: and which Butler has presented to us in the mild forms of his admirably balanced wisdom.

I will take first, as the criteria of this proposition, the remarkable cases in which we find the Erinuës of Homer in qualified conflict with Deity. It is commonly held, that in the Nineteenth Iliad the Erinuës interfere to prevent Xanthus from telling too much to Achilles. No doubt Homer effects this purpose by their means: but they never interfere with the aim of prevention. It is the natural order which had been broken by the act of Juno in conferring the gift of speech upon a horse, and which they by their interposition mean to vindicate and reestablish.

They play the same part in the case of the daughters of Pandareus. It is plain that the goddesses of Olympus had vied with one another, after an unprecedented and abnormal manner, in loading these damsels with an extraordinary accumulation of gifts. Everything, even food, came to them by the direct and immediate agency of their Immortal handmaids: and at last Jupiter was actually besought to find them husbands. All this lay far beyond, and was therefore in derogation of the ordinary laws for the government of the world: it left no space for human volition, effort, or discipline: it thus[307] struck at the root of the moral order; and on this ground the Erinuës interfere, apparently employing the Hurricanes as their agents, to remove these maidens from the earth, and to deposit them upon the Ocean stream, by the place of the dead.

I do not know whether, over and above the infraction of natural order which I have mentioned, there may not have been another cause for their intervention in the special manner in which the endowments had been conveyed: for where we find Juno granting to them ‘beauty and sense beyond all other women[572],’ it appears as if she had travelled into the province not only of Venus, but of the great Minerva, with whose prerogatives I doubt whether we ever find any similar interference allowed by Homer. It is therefore just possible that the Erinuës may here interpose on behalf of the laws and arrangements of Olympus, as well as of those belonging to Earth.

The explanation which I have proposed will entirely fit the warning of Iris to Neptune. The natural order, which assigns the prerogatives of government to the elder, in other words, the right of primogeniture, is a rule for the Immortals, as well as for mankind, since it is taken to be founded upon a basis more profound than will, which was not, and could hardly be for Homer, even when divine, either the source or the master of creation. But while the Erinuës are thus on the side of Jupiter, and while the recollection of them at once induces Neptune to succumb, they are not on that account in any sense or degree his ministers.

On the same side with him we find them, where they are invoked by Ulysses, as the Erinuës, together with[308] the gods, of the poor: or as when Agamemnon lays upon Erinūs, along with Jupiter and Destiny, the blame of errors, for which notwithstanding the Greeks rightly held him[573], and even he could not deny himself to be, responsible. Yet we are never told that the Erinuës move at the bidding of Jupiter, or of any other Olympian deity. Here we seem to have a glimpse into the deeper truths of the heroic age. Theology had already wandered from its orbit: it was fast losing all the severity and majesty of truth; but the deep roots which God had given to the sense of responsibility, and the expectation of retribution, in the human mind, had not yet been wholly plucked up; and Homer’s fine sense of truth forbade him to connect the most practical, and at the same time, the sternest parts of his religious system, with the gorgeous glare of his Olympus, and with the moral delinquencies of many among its inhabitants.

As the seniority of Jupiter is upheld by the Erinuës, so in like manner are the parental rights of Juno, which had been infringed by Mars, when he changed sides in the war. Here again, however, it appears as if more than the mere wish or influence of Juno had been set aside: for Mars had given a positive promise to fight for the Greeks, and it is probable that the breach of this engagement constituted the chief part of the offence that they were to punish[574].

Where the Erinuës touch upon the province of other deities at all, it is upon that of Persephone and of Aïdes. If Homer associated Persephone, as I believe he did, with the Eastern nursery of his race, it was natural enough that, as has been the case, this part of his theo-mythology should remain comparatively un[309]tainted. And certainly the Homeric relation between the Erinuës and the sovereigns of the nether world is a close one. When, in the Ninth Iliad, Althea, grasping the earth in her vehemence, as if to lay the strong hand upon the object of her prayer, invoked Aidoneus and Persephone to put her son to death, the Poet proceeds to say that the Erinūs heard her: the Erinūs who stalks in the darkness heard her, and heard her out of Erebus[575]. In the case of Phœnix and Amyntor we have exactly the converse. Here the Erinūs was invoked, and it was Aides with Persephone that answered the prayer. In both these instances it must moreover be remembered, that the question is about present and even immediate, not about posthumous retribution. We cannot, then, refuse to admit, that in this manner Persephone with Aidoneus is placed in an intimate relation with the administration of retributive justice on earth, and during the course of human life there: and if the Erinuës are to be considered as abstractions, having their basis only in some ulterior impersonation, Persephone and Aidoneus offer the only objects on whom we can suppose them to depend. It seems to me, however, that they are not reciprocally identified, although they are profoundly connected, and although we read in the connection a very ancient testimony to a primitive conviction in mankind, that they must look to the powers of the other world to redress the deranged balances of this.

Conformably to these ideas, we find that, in the Nineteenth Iliad, the abode of the Erinuës is fixed ὑπὸ γαῖαν: and it is made clear from the passage (259, 60,) that their avenging office, which is so commonly exercised in this world, reaches also to the other.

[310]

From the character of the Erinuës, as vindicators of an order having deeper foundations than those which any volition could either lay or shake, there arises that natural association of them with Destiny, which we see expressed in the speech of Agamemnon[576]. Both have in common this idea, that they are not dependent on mere volition. They differ in these points; that Destiny prescribes and effectuates action, while the Erinuës only punish transgression; and that Destiny is but feebly moral, whereas the Erinuës are profoundly charged with ethical colouring. They represent that side of the idea of Destiny which alone can, after being resolutely scrutinized, retain a hold upon our interest.

All the residue of the threads will, I think, run out easily. It follows from what has been said, that in their aspect towards man, the Erinuës are not indeed administrators of the moral laws themselves, but administrators of their sanctions. So they punish the infraction of the rights inhering in all natural relations: the rights of the poor, as Ulysses protests to Antinous; of a father, as in the case of Amyntor; of a mother, as in the case of Penelope. But they do much more than punish the infraction of the rights of persons; it is the infraction of right as right, which they resent as a substantive offence. Let us accordingly notice the function of the Erinūs in those cases where there has been fault on both sides. An offender is not therefore secure, because the person who invokes the Erinūs upon him is an offender too. The father of Phœnix gave the original occasion to his offence, by an offence of his own: but Phœnix is punished at his instance notwithstanding, because the thing which he implores is not a per[311]sonal favour, but is a vindication of the ὑψίποδες νόμοι[577], violated by the incest of his son; a thing right to be done, whether asked or not. The case of Althea and Meleager illustrates this truth in a manner still more lively. When she obtained the intervention of the Erinūs, she at once suffered by it. The city of Œneus was all but subjected to the horrors of capture: she was brought, in bitter humiliation, to supplicate the aid of the son, on whose head she had just invoked the stroke of doom. From this we must conclude, which indeed is not difficult, that the Poet regarded her prayer as in itself unnatural and cruel; so that the fulfilment of it involved immediate suffering to herself. But, on the other hand, Meleager had offended too, in the slaughter of a near relative. Therefore, although his pride might well be gratified when he saw king, priest, and people, with his humbled mother, at his feet, and proffering their choicest gift in order to appease him, yet for that original offence, and for his obstinately refusing to arm until fire was in the city, he must receive his punishment likewise, in vindication of the moral laws; accordingly, after he had repulsed the enemy, he never received the demesne[578].

The case of Meleager assists to illustrate that of Œdipus and Epicaste. Both of these unhappy persons had offended against the moral laws, though it was unwittingly (ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο); one, the mother-bride, was immediately put out of the way: the survivor was still pursued by the μητρὸς Ἐρινύες. We see here how insufficient the idea of a curse, invoked at will, is to explain the action of these remarkable Powers; for it does not appear that there was any mother’s curse in[312] the case: but, because the natural laws were broken in a matter where the mother was the occasion, therefore, while both suffer, the sufferings of the son are attributed to the Erinuës of the mother; the defenders, because the avengers, of the sanctity of a mother’s place in relation to her son.

In the case of Melampus, it appears that his undertaking to obtain the cows of Iphicles or Phylacus was an ἄτη βαρεῖα, a grave error, beginning in a temptation suggested to him by the Erinūs, and ending in calamity. The seizure of these animals would probably be regarded as no moral offence: and if so, any error that could lie in the engagement to seize them would be, according to Homeric estimate, in the nature of folly rather than of crime. We seem to see, then, in this place, that the range of Erinūs, like that of Atè, embraced at a certain point the prudential as well as the strictly moral laws: nor is there involved in this idea any violent departure from the true standard, for great imprudences are most commonly, and almost invariably, in near connection with some form of moral defect.

It is however also to be observed, that in this place the Erinūs suggests the ἄτη. The idea lying at the root of this representation appears to be the profound one, that the exercise of an evil will is in itself penal: and that when the mind is already disposed to offend, retributive justice may take the form of a permission, encouragement, or incitement, to commit the offence. We have already seen a very remarkable development of this idea in the hardening agency of Minerva upon the Suitors[579].

According to the view of them which has here been given, though I could not class the Erinuës with the[313] traditive deities, it is clear that they must represent, under metamorphosis, an important association of ideas belonging to primitive tradition.

Let us now turn to the Sixth Class.

Those for whom it was a mental necessity to animate with deity even the mute powers of nature, could not but find modes of associating man, who stood nearer to the Immortals, with them and their conditions of existence.

These modes were chiefly three:

The first, that of translation during life.

The second, that of deification after death.

The third, the conception of races intermediate between deity and humanity.

And it was perhaps not the simple working of a fervid imagination, but also an offshoot from this profound and powerful tendency, which has filled the pages of Homer with continual efforts to deify what was most excellent, or most conspicuous, in the mind or in the person of living man.

The mode of translation during life was early in date, and was rarely used, for not only are the Homeric examples of it few, but he records no contemporary instance.

Ganymede[580], the son of Tros, was taken up to heaven by the Immortals on account of his beauty, that he might live among them. Tithonus, his grand-nephew, son of Laomedon, was, as we are left to infer, similarly translated during life, to be the husband of Aurora (in Homer Eos), or the morning: for Homer makes him known to us in that capacity, though he does not mention the translation. In like manner, she carried up, and placed among the Immortals for his beauty,[314] Cleitus, one of the descendants of Melampus[581]. A similar operation to that which was performed upon Tithonus may have been designed in the case of Orion, who was the choice of Aurora, and whose career, in consequence of the jealousy of the Immortals, was cut short by the arrows of Diana[582]. The course of these legends seems to stop suddenly in the Greek mythology at the point where they are replaced by deification: and the connection of Aurora, as the principal agent, with three out of the four, (the other, too, is Asiatic, as being in the family of Dardanus,) seems to be an unequivocal sign of their eastern character. Homer places the dwelling of Ἤως at a distant point of the East, near the place where θάλασσα communicates with Ocean.

In the age of Homer the very first names have hardly been entered in the class of deified heroes. Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, may be said to stand at the head of the list, from the distinct assertion of her translation, and from her being placed, as the ally of Ulysses, in continued relations with mortal men[583]. Of her also it is said that she had obtained divine honours; and nearly the same assertion is made of Castor and Pollux. But they perform no offices towards man while yet in this life. Of this Ino is the only instance. She appears to be Phœnician rather than Greek, and thus to belong perhaps to an older, clearly to a distinct mythology. Hercules, the only one of these persons who entirely fulfils the conditions of a hero, is admitted to the banquets of the gods, and united with Hebe[584]: yet he is not all in Olympus, for his εἴδωλον, endowed with voice and feeling, and bearing martial accoutre[315]ments, is the terror of the Dead. It is not easy to explain fully this divided state. I cannot but think, however, that we see here at work that principle of disintegration, which solved all riddles of character by making one individual into more than one: beginning, at least for earth, with that Helen in Egypt, who was made the depository of the better qualities that post-Homeric times could not recognise in Helen of Troy. Although the son of Jupiter, Hercules had on earth, through a sheer mistake, been subject to a destiny of grinding toil. His original extraction and personality stand in sharp contrast with the restless and painful destiny of his life. Death severs these one from the other, but Homer, contemplating each as a whole, endows the last also with personality, and gives it a reflection in the lower world of its earthly course and aspect: while the Jove-born Hercules, as it were by a natural spring, mounts up to heaven[585]. At the same time there is no more conspicuous example than Hercules, of that counter-principle of accumulation, by which legendary tradition heaps upon favourite heroes all acts not distinctly otherwise appropriated, which appear to harmonize with their characters; and thus often makes an historical personage into one both fabulous and impossible.

It must not be forgotten that this passage respecting Hercules was sharply challenged by the Alexandrian critics. This challenge is discussed, and its justice affirmed by Nitzsch[586]. Such authorities must not be defrauded of their weight. But for my own part, I do not find a proof of spuriousness even in the real inconsistencies of Homer, where he is dealing with subjects[316] beyond the range of common life and experience. Still less can it be universally admitted, that what are called his inconsistencies are really such. They will often be found to require nothing but the application of a more comprehensive rule for their adjustment.

It is more difficult still to understand the case of Orion, who is at once a noted star in heaven, and a sufferer below in the Shades. There he appears not wholly unlike the shade of Hercules, a dreamy image of the sufferings of earth, and at the same time he ranks among the splendours at least of the material heaven.

Minos, who is placed in the Shades to exercise royal functions there, and Rhadamanthus, who has his happy dwelling on the Elysian plain, are approximative examples of deification.

It would be hazardous to build any opinion exclusively on the two verses Il. ii. 550, 551, relating to the worship of Erechtheus: but they are not altogether at variance with what we see elsewhere.

Such is the rather slender list of personages in Homer, who approximate in any degree to what was afterwards the order of deified Heroes. There are, however, some other indications, that belong immediately to the living, and that point the same way. Such is the promise to Menelaus[587], that instead of dying he should be translated to Elysium, because he was the son-in-law of Jupiter. And this suggests other notes of preparation already found in Homer. Ulysses[588] promises Nausicaa that, when he has reached his own country, he will continue to invoke her all his life long, like a god. The invocation of the Dead was common. It was not practised only in illustrious[317] cases like that of Patroclus. After their battle with the Cicones, Ulysses[589] and his crews thrice invoked their slaughtered comrades. A system of divine parentage was the fit, one might almost say the certain preparation for a scheme of divine honours after death; and of such parentage many of Homer’s heroes could boast. Again, Peleus was married to a goddess, and the gods in mass attended the wedding. By thus bringing the inhabitants of Olympus down to the earth, Homer laid the ground for bringing the denizens of earth into Olympus.

There is yet a further sign, which, though perhaps the least palpable, is, when well considered, the most striking of all. It is this; that sacrifice is offered, in the Odyssey, to the Shades of the departed. It is not indeed animal sacrifice that is actually offered. The gift consists of honey and milk, with wine, water, and flour[590]: but Ulysses distinctly promises that, on his return to Ithaca, he will supply this defect by offering a heifer in their honour, and a sheep all black to Tiresias in particular. Moreover, he distinctly recognises the idea of worshipping them[591];

It does not destroy the force of this proceeding, that they were supposed to need or to enjoy the thing sacrificed; for the Immortals of Olympus did the latter at least, and there are even traces of the former. Together with the mixed offering above described, and the promise of a regular sacrifice on his return home, Ulysses permitted the Shades to drink of the blood of the sheep which he immolated on the spot to Aidoneus and Persephone, after he had fulfilled the main purpose of his visit by consulting Tiresias[592].

[318]

The dead then have consciousness and activity. They are invoked by man. They can appear to him. They are capable of having sacrifices offered to them. They can confer benefit on the living. Here, gathered out of different cases, were the materials of full deification. All that was yet wanting was, that they should be put together according to rule.

We have now, lastly, to consider the kindred of the gods, or races intermediate between deity and humanity, which Homer has introduced in the Odyssey exclusively.

These are certainly three, perhaps four;

• 1. The Cyclopes.
• 2. The Læstrygonians.
• 3. The Phæacians.

It may also be probable that we should add

4. Æolus Hippotades and his family.

Among them all, the Cyclopes, children of Neptune, offer, as a work of art, by far the most successful and satisfactory result. In every point they are placed at the greatest possible distance from human society and its conventions. Man is small, the Cyclops huge. Man is weak, the Cyclops powerful. Man is gregarious, the Cyclops is isolated. Man, for Homer, is refined; the Cyclops is a cannibal. Man inquires, searches, designs, constructs, advances, in a word, is progressive: the Cyclops simply uses the shelter and the food that nature finds for him, and is thoroughly stationary. Yet, while man is subject to death, the Cyclops lives on, or vegetates at least, and transmits the privileges of his race by virtue of its high original. The relaxed morality of the divine seed, as compared with man, is traceable even in their slight customs. They are polygamous:

[319]

From their personal characters the moral element has been entirely dismissed. Polyphemus is a huge mass of force, seasoned perhaps with cunning, certainly with falseness. This union of a superhuman life with the brutal, that dwells in solitude, and has none of its angles rubbed down by the mutual contact between members of a race, produces a mixed result of extreme ferocity, childishness, and a kind of horrible glee, which as a work of art is most striking and successful. We may justly think much of Caliban: but Caliban cannot for a moment be compared to Polyphemus. It is equitable, however, to remember that contrast with Ariel, which must have been a governing condition in the creation of Shakespeare, required a nature which should be fatuous and grovelling, as well as coarse.

To feed Polyphemus, what lies nearest him, namely, the Læstrygonian adventure, has, perhaps, been starved. Again we are introduced to cruel Giants and to cannibalism, but with a great scantiness of detail. Their individuality is scarcely established. Their only marked qualities they hold in common with the Cyclopes, except as to a single point, namely, that they live gregariously. We see their city, and are introduced to their king, their queen, and their princess[594]. But a too great likeness to the Cyclops still suggests itself; and it is probable that in both the one and the other Homer set before him, among the materials of his work, that old tradition of powerful beings, allied to the deity, and yet rebellious against him, which meets us in so many forms, dispersed about the Homeric poems, and which[320] the later tradition, by further multiplication and variety, resolved into a living chaos.

The Phæacians appear to stand quite in another category. While the Cyclops has no trace of deity but in superhuman force, the Phæacians have no pretensions of this kind. They are not even immortal, nor are they wholly removed from man, for they are accustomed to carry passengers by sea; they seem really to be meant in a measure to represent the θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες. We must not look too rigidly in them for notes of the divine character, but rather for the abundance, opulence, ease, and refinement of the divine condition. Hence Homer lavishes all the simple wealth of his imagination upon the palace and garden of Alcinous, which far exceeds any possessions he has assigned to ordinary men. This additional splendour of itself proves, if proof were wanted, that the picture is ideal. The same amount of ornament assigned to the palace of Menelaus would, from the contrast with fact, probably have been frigid to his hearers.

From the games and athletic exercises of this people all the ruder and more violent sports are excluded. Navigation, to others so formidable, for them is conducted by a spontaneous force and intelligence residing in their ships; which annihilates distance, and at last excites even the jealousy of Neptune (Od. viii. 555–69). We find in the island and in its history no poverty, no grief, no care, no want; all is fair to see and to enjoy. But we feel thankful to Homer that he has not here, as in the case of the Cyclops, made kin with the gods entail a marked moral or intellectual inferiority upon the sons of men; no purer or more graceful piece of humanity is to be found among the creations of the human brain, than his picture of Nausicaa. She combines in herself[321] all that earth could suggest of bright, and pure, and fair. Still it cannot be denied that levity and vanity are rather conspicuous in the Phæacian men. They shew off, among other sports, their boxing and wrestling, before they know what Ulysses is made of. When they know it, Alcinous informs him in an off-hand way that they do not pretend to excellence in that class of sports[595]. After the dancers have performed, Ulysses with great tact at once passes a high compliment upon them. Alcinous, delighted with the praise, cries aloud, ‘Phæacian chiefs! this stranger appears to me to be an extremely sensible man[596].’

It appears, however, most likely that, besides the mythical element in two of them, Homer may have had some basis of maritime report, and thus of presumed fact, for his delineations of all these three races; that, with an unlimited license of embellishment, he, nevertheless, may have intended in each case to keep unbroken the tie between his own tale, and the voyages of Ulysses, founded upon Phœnician geography, as reported in his time. I form this opinion partly from some singularities in the Phæacian character, which, as they are not in keeping with any poetic idea, may probably have had an historic aim, though I cannot be persuaded that they afford a foundation broad enough for the full theory of Mure[597], if he conceives the Phæacians of the Odyssey to be strictly a portrait of the Phœnicians. Partly I draw the inference from the want of clear severance in the ideals, on which the characters of the Cyclops and the Læstrygones are severally founded. The remarkable natural characteristic of Læstrygonia which he has given us, its perpetual day, supports the same hypothesis. What would otherwise amount to[322] poverty in the imagery is sufficiently accounted for, if we assume that he meant to describe two savage tribes, that inhabited the latitudes with which he was dealing; and that, feeling himself bound to brutality in each case, he has, under these unfavourable circumstances, varied it as much as he could. Unless it had been to preserve an historical or mythological tradition, the Læstrygonian adventure might hardly have deserved introduction into the Odyssey. Plainly, on the other hand, he is not to be held responsible for all that he has put down while he believed himself to be conforming to narratives of fact, in the same manner and degree as if he had been presenting us with a picture in which his fancy had only to work at will.

The remaining case is slight, and may speedily be dismissed. Æolus is φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, and is intrusted with the charge of the winds; and his six sons are married to his six daughters, as αἰδοίαι ἄλοχοι[598]. The word φίλος may bear the sense of relationship: immortality seems to be of necessity involved in the charge over the winds, who are themselves in the Iliad (in this point varying poetically from the Odyssey) invested with deity[599]: and the marriage of the sons to the daughters affords another absolute proof: for this, which would have been incest, μέγα ἔργον, among men, is evidently set down as in their case a legitimate connection. The great example in the Kronid family would give it full sanction for the Immortals.

The character of Æolus, if he be human, is one kindly to his fellow-men; and he inquires carefully respecting the fate of the Greeks and their chieftains. But it is very difficult to understand his place in the poem,[323] and the reasons of it. The gift of Zephyr, and the folly of the crew in letting out the whole pack of winds, end only in the return of Ulysses to Æolia, and in his being dismissed from thence as one hateful to the gods, which he was not. This Æolus neither seems to be required for, nor to contribute to, the general purpose of the poem: nor to represent any ancient tradition: nor can we in any manner connect him with Æolus, the great national personage whose descendants were so illustrious, for that Æolus was clearly taken to be the son or immediate descendant of Jupiter; so that he could not have been called the son of Hippotas. Perhaps the origin of his place in the Odyssey was to be found in some Phœnician report about storms in the northern seas, where Æolia is evidently placed in complete isolation, figured by the sheer and steep rock of the coast, and by the metal wall which runs round it. It may have a partial prototype in Stromboli misplaced, the appearance of which from a distance entirely accords with this particular of inaccessibility. The whole picture, representing as it does, first, the ferocity of the winds, and, secondly, the existence of an efficient control over them, evidently embodies two features which could not but enter variously and prominently into the tales of Phœnician mariners; first, the fierceness of the gales prevailing in those outer latitudes, to deter others from attempting them; and secondly, their successful contest with the difficulty thus created in order to glorify themselves.

[324]

The substitution of polytheism for the monotheistic principle not only brought down deity in the measure of its attributes or faculties towards man, but created a necessity for a divine economy or polity, which should regulate the relations of the Immortals. This polity could be no other than human, and no other, as it seems, than a somewhat deteriorated copy from its earthly original.

Accordingly, the Olympian Immortals of Homer are combined in a society. They are not a mere aggregate of beings, classed together by the mind in virtue of the possession of common properties, but they live in twofold relations: first, those of the family, or at least of descent and consanguinity; secondly, those established by a political organization, which is modelled according to the forms of the Greek polities subsisting in the Homeric age.

The government of Olympus is, though the use of the word may at first excite a smile, in principle constitutional. Jupiter is its head. Its ordinary council or aristocracy is represented by the body of such deities as have palaces there, constructed for them by Vulcan,[325] who exercises in the community the double function at once of architect and artificer[600].

The immediate relationship of nearly all these divinities to Jupiter is recorded.

As his brothers, we have Neptune, and Aidoneus, or Pluto.

As his wives, we have Juno, the chief; Latona, Dione, and probably Demeter, secondary.

As his children, we have Minerva, Apollo and Diana, Mars and Vulcan, Venus, Mercury, Hebe.

Of the Nineteen Deities who appear to be certainly Olympian, there are only four that do not fall at once into the family order: they are Themis, Ἠέλιος, Iris, and Paieon. There may have been a relationship credited in these cases also, though it is not recorded. It should be observed, that Jupiter is expressly invested with the title of Father of the gods. And perhaps the idea intended to be conveyed is that of a family which has grown into a sept or clan, having this for its distinctive character, that all the members of it, great and small, have either a nearer or a more remote relationship to the head. Of the minor deities, in various cases it is recorded, that they are daughters of Jupiter; such as the Muses, the Prayers, and the Nymphs of most orders. But these have the appearance of belonging to Homer’s poetry, more than to his mythology. Among male deities, the sons of Jupiter are all in Olympus: those of Neptune take lower rank.

Whatever be its relation to the family nucleus, the community of Olympus is fully formed. Besides Jupiter the head, and the ordinary assembly, its Council or Court, which answers to the βουλὴ of the Greeks, it has its Agorè, a greater Assembly or Parliament called[326] together upon crises of extraordinary solemnity, such as the decision by main force of the fate of Troy.

But as we have no example, except the factious and utterly odious Thersites, of any one of the commonalty who takes an actual part in debate among men, so the minor deities, too, are mute in heaven.

Nay, the resemblance is even closer than this. The Greek βουλὴ, and also the ἀγορὴ, have their speaking or leading personages, and they likewise have each their silent members. The leaders are Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, and Diomed; the last-named chieftain always with modesty, as a person lately come to full age. Achilles doubtless would have had to be added, if the action of the poem had permitted him to appear throughout its debates. But we never hear of the Ajaxes, Idomeneus, or chiefs like Eurypylus, as taking any active share in the proceedings. Even so the discussions of Olympus appear to be conducted commonly by Jupiter, Juno, Neptune[601], Minerva, and Apollo[602]. Once Vulcan interposes, in his mother’s interest: possibly he may have been suggested to the Poet by Thersites[603] as a terrestrial counterpart. The Sun appeals to the Assembly in the Odyssey, as a party in his own cause: but neither he nor Venus, nor Mars, nor Mercury, nor any other subordinate deity, ever appears as taking part in a discussion.

The term ἀγορὴ, or assembly, is used in Homer for the meetings of the deities only on certain occasions: namely, at the openings of the Eighth and Twentieth Books[604]. The other, or ordinary meetings, have no distinctive name. We may know them by their not depending on any summons or introduction, and by the[327] frequent mention, either of the banquet as proceeding, or of the cup as in the hands of the deities. They were standing assemblages of the deities, the law of whose life was leisure, with prolonged though not intemperate feasting; and its ordinary scene Olympus. Their correspondence with the βουλὴ must not be pressed too far, for they do not, like the Greek βουλὴ, commonly precede an Assembly. It is to be remembered, that the βουλὴ was an Hellenic institution, and that the gods were not exclusively Hellenic, though Olympus was essentially national.

The analogy between the divine and the human ἀγοραὶ is established in a pointed form by the Poet himself; who makes Themis the pursuivant or Summoner[605] for the former; and also says of her, with respect to the latter,

The acknowledgment of a rule of right, extrinsic and superior to ourselves, is general in the Assemblies of men in Homer, when meeting for business. This there could not be in the Assemblies of the Olympian gods. Neither does respect for authority and for tradition well harmonize with the idea of beings, who are possessed of unbounded, or at the least of greatly extended intelligence. Thus, like the individual deities, the divine Assemblies, and the entire Polity, are deprived of the greatest moral safeguards of their counterparts on earth. The consequence is, that their ethical tone is much lower. Force is the only effective sanction of authority among the Immortals. This is curiously exhibited in the Theomachy: for that battle takes place when the fate of Troy, which formed the matter in dispute, has already been long ago decided.[328] Whenever a difficulty arises, which will bear that mode of treatment, Jupiter resorts to the threat of using it, even against divinities so dignified and powerful as Minerva, Neptune, and Juno. Sometimes, indeed, he parades it by anticipation, even when no symptom of disaffection has yet been exhibited.[607] So, on the other hand, fraud is the resource of the weak, as violence is of the strong. Juno, unable to organize a combination against her husband, devises a trick.

The deities, then, are not under any effective ethical restraint; and the only instances in which the highly moral sentiment of αἰδὼς is mentioned as governing them in their reciprocal conduct are cases of the two great traditive divinities, Minerva and Apollo, with reference to their uncle Neptune, and of Jupiter, in whose case it is a sentiment of politeness rather than of duty, with reference to Thetis[608].

But, although moral principle and religious reverence are absent, two principles of considerable value and utility remain. One of them is a certain courtesy or comity, which prevails in the absence of strong countervailing causes. Secondly, the power of intelligence is very visible in the working of their polity. It is not the mere wish of Jupiter, it is his counsel, which is fulfilled in the Trojan war. And again, it is not his individual counsel, but it is the decision which he adopts in compliance with the general sentiment of the gods[609]. He could be well content to let Troy stand, because of the abundance of its offerings; but he sees that if he attempts to give effect to such a plan as he would personally prefer, he must encounter the stubborn resistance of the three strongest deities, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva. Perhaps this difference of opinion might[329] issue in the shape of a war in heaven, and that war might follow the same course as the one happily arrested by Briareus: therefore he avoids the issue, makes the concession without letting himself seem to make it, and thus preserves his general position at the head of the Olympian body.

Speaking of mythological deity as such, the difference of celestial from human intelligence is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The process of deliberation in the mind of a mortal, and the state of suspense before decision, are frequent subjects of Homeric description. And he sometimes places individual deities before us with the same, or nearly the same, detail, as in cases occurring among men, of doubt preceding determination. The essence and foundation of the process are similar, as we see in the case of Juno, and again in the instance of Jupiter himself. She ponders the question how she shall delude Jupiter[610]:

And then she decides;

So he[611], in his turn, considers long, before determining that Patroclus shall carry the war from the ships to the walls. Again, for the great decrees which are to have an extensive influence on human destiny, to argue and consider seem to be a moral necessity among the gods, as much as important subjects require public debate among men.

The method of reflecting Earth in the Olympian life is sometimes carried by the Poet down to the details of social intercourse. Thus it is a terrestrial custom of[330] the heroic age, that strangers are entertained before they are called upon to give an account of their business[612]. And this hospitable practice extends even to the treatment of those who are charged with important communications; so that Bellerophon is entertained for nine full days by the king of Lycia, while he has in his pocket the roll containing a request for him to be put to death[613]. In exact conformity with this manner of proceeding, Mercury[614] is feasted by Calypso in Ogygia, before he delivers the weighty message, with which he had been intrusted by Jupiter in the name of the whole Olympian court.

Although we have found it difficult in one or two cases to pronounce with respect to certain divine personages, whether they are Olympian or not, yet in principle the line is clearly drawn, which marks off the superiority of the members of the Olympian Court. We find it in the express declaration of Calypso[615]. We find it perhaps yet more clearly noted in the comparison between Venus and Thetis: for we have seen, as to the former of these deities, her extreme feebleness and incapacity in everything, except as regards the particular impulse that she represents. Thetis, on the other hand, is full of activity and intelligence; and is gifted with bodily powers sufficient to fly like a hawk from Olympus, when carrying the celestial arms (whose inherent buoyancy, however, must not be forgotten[616]). Yet, doubtless because not Olympian, she yields the palm to Venus: for Apollo says to Æneas of Achilles[617];

Though the body of θεοὶ serve as an unity to point a[331] moral in the abstract, there is practically a wonderful want of unity and of common or corporate feeling among them. This is figured in the Judgment of Paris: in the love of Neptune for the Cyclops, who renounce the authority of Jupiter: again in his aversion to the Phæacians, who are so beloved by the gods in general, that they appear in their proper shape at the religious festivals of those favoured islanders[618].

But notwithstanding this want of the genuine corporate spirit, and notwithstanding the prevalence of essentially selfish appetite as the rule of life with the greater part, at any rate, of the Immortals, it would not be just to say that the principle of unity in the Divine Government is wholly destroyed by the Homeric polytheism. The superiority of Jupiter, though it does not amount to supremacy in the stricter sense[619], is yet sufficiently decided to place him far above any other single deity in sheer power. Therefore, when considered as the executive of the Olympian system, he is upon the whole equal to his work. He may be deceived, and so baffled for a moment, as by Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad; but it is for a moment only. Or the insubordination of some particular divinity may approach to resistance, like that of Neptune in the Fifteenth: but, upon admonition, conscious inferiority soon brings the matter to a close. So much for the execution of divine behests. As to the legislative process, however, heaven strictly follows earth, with only such exceptions as are accounted for by the difference in the constituent elements.

The influence or even the menaces of a powerful leader, the moral force of persuasion, the comparison of the means of coercive action on this side and on that,[332] and again the composition of wills and opinions to obtain a joint result, all these, the leading processes by which free institutions work on earth, with substantial identity, though with more awkwardness of form and less of genial freedom, as might be expected in transplanted ideas, are also the processes by which supreme and providential decrees are arrived at. Of the degree to which this principle of free polity prevails, we can have no better criterion than in the fate of Troy. It fell, not merely from the personal prudence of Jupiter, but because acting as a βασιλεὺς in heaven, like Agamemnon upon earth, he yielded to the preponderating influence of that section in Olympus, which was indeed apparently less numerous, but of commanding strength, influence, and activity.

Nor would it be just to Homer and his Olympus to forget, that in yielding to the powerful party led by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, Jupiter was also yielding up the vicious, and sealing the triumph of the virtuous cause.

Thus, then, while we see the spirit of anthropophuism breaking down the principle of the Unity of God, from its being too feeble and too blind to maintain the pure traditions in which it was conveyed, it is still curious to the last degree to observe the order and symmetry of the Greek mind, even in its destructive processes. For, as we have found, it arranges its groups of deities around a centre, by the principle that creates a Family: and then gives them community of counsel, and unity of action, by the principle that maintains a State. What is this, but to bring in the resources and expedients, which our human state supplied, to repair, after a sort, the havock which it had made in the Divine Idea?

But although symmetry was thus far, if not studied,[333] yet spontaneously produced, we have ample proof that Homer neither inherited nor invented for his gods any uniform and consistent code of rules, intellectual, moral, or political. Neither, again, in the region of sense did he make any general provision to determine the conditions of divine being and action for his gods as an order, or even for particular classes of them. The want of such consistency is, indeed, among the striking proofs of the profound dualism of origin in his Theo-mythology. All that we can do is to observe his prevailing modes of treatment, and collect a general meaning from them. Proceeding thus, we shall find that the class of Immortals enjoys in various ways a marked superiority to man; but the degrees of this superiority, as they are nowhere precisely defined, so they vary greatly in the cases of the different deities: and when, striking off all the particular characteristics of individual members of the system, we attempt to embody what is common to them all, we leave but a slight and jejune residuum.

Nor is the classification of the differences a regular one. If we compare his delineations of some lower with some higher deities, we must be struck with finding considerable appearances of want of analogy between them. Some inferior persons of the same order, as we shall see, may excel in particular gifts, even those who are on the whole their superiors. Thus Circe, and even the Sirens, have powers greater apparently than, in the same subject-matter, Mercury or Vulcan. Heterogeneous origin, and imperfect assimilation, afford the true explanation of these phenomena.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that the divine life of Olympus, wherever it reproduces the human, reproduces it in a degraded form. Enjoyment and indulgence, when carried from earth to heaven,[334] lose that limit of honourable relation to labour as necessary restoratives, which alone makes them respectable on earth.

In general, the chief note of deity with Homer is emancipation from the restraints of the moral law. Though the Homeric gods have not yet ceased to be the vindicators of morality upon earth, they have personally ceased to observe its rules either for or among themselves.

As compared with men in conduct, they are generally characterised by superior force and intellect, but by inferior morality.

They do not appear to have been governed in their relations towards one another by any motives drawn either from the law of right and justice, or from that of affection: unless—an exception which confirms the rule—where the attachment belonging to the human relation of parent and child is faintly reflected among the Immortals, as when Jupiter calls Minerva or Diana φίλον τέκος[620], and Venus τέκνον ἐμόν[621]: again, in the care taken of Venus after she is wounded by her mother Dione[622], and, more slightly indicated, in that of Diana by Latona[623]. In the conduct of Mars on the death of Ascalaphus, the impulse is momentary, and it has a strong animal tinge which seems to overpower, like a fit of drunkenness, the little reason that he possesses. The grief of Jupiter for Sarpedon is the only case of an intense affection among the Immortals. And it is remarkable, that this is felt towards, not a brother or sister divinity, but a mortal; towards one of those Lycians, whom Homer regards with such extraordinary and unvarying favour.

[335]

The general principles of government, then, among the Immortals themselves are simply those of force and terror, on the one hand, or fraud and wheedling on the other. For example, Terror subdues the adverse will of Juno[624] in the First Book, of Juno and Minerva in the Eighth[625], and of Neptune, not without much reluctance on his part, in the Fifteenth. Thetis wheedles Jupiter in the First Book[626]; Juno entirely beguiles him, besides outwitting Venus, in the Fourteenth; Minerva entraps Apollo in the Seventh into the plan of a single combat, which saves the Greeks from an impending defeat. And the difference of opinion respecting Troy in the divine Assembly does not at the last come to effect without a contest of main strength, although the virtual decision of the Olympian body had long ago been taken. Nay, these principles of force and fraud are the real principles of action, even when not altogether on the surface. When Mercury declines battle with Latona, it is because he fears the consequences of a contest with a wife of Jupiter[627]. In a manner still more curious, when Apollo has declined battle with Neptune, professedly on the ground that it is not worth the while of deities to fight about the affairs of wretched mortals, the Poet explains his conduct by a sentiment partly of deference arising out of a relationship recognised among men:

But here there may possibly have been some mixture of fear, because, as he withdraws, he is reproached bitterly by Diana, called a baby for his cowardice, and[336] reminded, that he had himself volunteered the boast in heaven, that he was ready to fight against Neptune.

As these moral elements had been almost wholly eliminated from the general principles which govern the Homeric gods in their relations to one another, so likewise we look almost in vain for the traces of them in their individual conduct. They observe, when acting for themselves, neither courage, justice, nor prudence; but it is in regard to moral temperance or self-control, that they fall furthest below the standard even of human virtue. The Mahometan heaven of men was the heaven of the Homeric gods. Their standing employment, except when troubled by human affairs, is simply in perpetual, though not drunken or brutal, feasting; sometimes in grosser indulgences. If, says Vulcan to his mother, you quarrel about mortals, it will be a pestilent business, for there will be no pleasure in our banquets[629]. If Neptune in the Odyssey is gone among the Ethiopians[630], it is for a hecatomb of bulls and lambs. If Jupiter and all the gods make a journey to the same quarter in the Iliad, it is for a feast[631], which apparently was to last for eleven days. If Hercules has earned the reward of his labours by being taken up to heaven, his life there is described as a life entitling him to enjoy banquets among the Immortals[632]. If Ganymede is received into their company, it is that he may discharge for Jupiter the duty of cup-bearer[633], in which it would appear that both Vulcan and Hebe were likewise employed. Of all the phrases characteristic of the Homeric gods and their life, there is none that sits better than the θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες.

[337]

Deeper, even than their collective devotion to mere enjoyment, lies their intense and profound selfishness. We cannot fail to note the absence of those sentiments of justice and self-sacrifice, and those high enthusiastic emotions, which do so much to ennoble the human life of the heroic age. There is truth in the assertion that they establish and administer a one-sided law:

But beyond this, there lies a deep meaning in the sentiment of an Italian poet, Guarini[635]:

The Greek mythology, departing from the very basis of the Divine idea in the conception of its gods, converts them, by a moral necessity, not into man, but into something which is morally beneath man. There is not among all the deities what we can call one full unbroken development of noble character. They are, as a general rule, except so far as they are modified by the traditive element, Titanic creations of intellect or power, or both, without virtue. Even where, as in the cases of Minerva and Diana, they are pure, their purity does not inspire or impress the Poet with half the force and fire which he must have felt when he drew the matron Andromache, or the maid Nausicaa. But this is not the common case. With great reservation indeed as to the traditional, in comparison with the mythical divinities, and likewise as to the female deities, in comparison with the gods, we must admit that, as a general rule, the Immortals of Homer, when brought to[338] the bar of a cool inquiry, are in their own personal conduct impure voluptuaries, and that the laws, which formed the basis of family life, and which in Homer’s time still kept human society from total corruption, for them had no restraining power, indeed no recognised existence.

There is no sense of shame accompanying the excesses of the gods, such as Homer has marked, not without tenderness, in regard to the trespass of Astyoche[636];

On the contrary, Jupiter refers with marked self-satisfaction to his affairs of this kind in the Fourteenth Iliad; and shows the very temper, described by Saint Paul as that of the most advanced depravity, which not only yields to temptation, but seals its own offence with habitual and deliberate approval[637]: Οὐ μόνον αὐτὰ ποιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνευδοκοῦσι τοῖς πράσσουσιν.

We may take Calypso as no unfair specimen of the ethics of the Immortals. In the hope of sensual pleasure, she keeps Ulysses a prisoner in her far island. She sees him pining in wretchedness for his home and family from day to day; and well knows the distress that his absence must cause to a virtuous wife and son, as well as the public evils, sure to arise from the prolonged absence of a wise and able sovereign. Yet she never relents, but still in her odorous cavern she sings to the movement of her golden distaff. (Od. v. 59.) When Hermes makes known to her the decree that she cannot resist for his return, she complains of the cruelty of the upper gods, but adds, ‘as I cannot help myself, let him perish if Zeus will.’ She promises, however,[339] to send him off in safety, and keeps her word; but it is when she has been well warned by Mercury of the consequences of disobedience, and firmly bound by Ulysses with the oath which was terrible even to the Immortals. (Od. v. 146, 184.)

The sentiment of envy, which they had begun to entertain towards men, appears also to have been felt towards members of the divine order. It was envy with which the gods viewed the happiness enjoyed by Aurora in her union with Orion, till it ended with his death; and that moved Jupiter to destroy Iasion, the object of the choice of Demeter[638]. But this (so says Calypso) was envy of the male towards the female deities. There is no reciprocal sentiment: and it is curious here to observe the inequality of the sexes, together with so many other signs and beginnings of corruption, established among the Immortals in a manner unknown to human society at the time.

Calypso may or may not be justified in the charge she makes against the gods; but, at least, it seems clear that, though they have some regard to the prevalence of moral laws as between one man and another, they by no means impute any moral guilt to her in her cruel detention of Ulysses, even while they rectify a wrong by their decree.

The inferiority of the moral standard, which marks the order of gods, is likewise traceable in the various races which are described by Homer as claiming a special relationship to them; the Cyclopes, the Læstrygonians, and even perhaps the Phæacians. Against the last of these we can certainly charge no more than an epicurean and inglorious ease: but the two former not[340] only do not forfeit, they even prove, their relationship to the gods by being at once more strong and more vicious than common men.

And, as it affects the kindred of the Immortals in common with themselves, so also does it extend from the sphere of morals into that of manners. While Hephæstus was ministering to them the festal cup, they laughed ungovernably at his personal deformity[639]. Now, the Greeks laugh at Thersites[640] when he has been beaten, but it is in immediate connection with his misconduct, and it has nothing whatever to do with his ugliness. Laughter at mere deformity is nowhere found in Homer: and would entirely jar with the tone of feeling that pervades Homeric manners. The action that offers the nearest approach to it confirms the spirit of this observation. It is the hurling of the stool by the Suitor Antinous[641] at the apparently decrepit Ulysses; which is sternly registered, along with the other outrages of that depraved company, for the coming day of retribution.

In a word, still setting aside in some considerable degree the deities of traditive origin, who enter little into the general picture, but have their own portraiture apart, there are to be found in Olympus, as well as in the lower earth, the relations of degree in power and intelligence; and the gods with whom it is peopled, on the whole, possess it in large measure; but the law and purpose of their life is summed up in self-will and self-indulgence. They do not debate their own duties, or even those of men, to one another: rarely, if ever, those of men even towards themselves, except with reference to the quantity of libation poured out, of flesh[341] offered, and of steam reeking from the altars. There is a mixture in their enjoyments: some are refined, others sensual, but both are alike selfish, and the latter are wholly unrestrained. It is said by Heyne, and with much of literal truth, that the description of the day’s employment in Olympus, which the first Iliad supplies, is a transcript of hero-life[642]; but it is of one part of hero-life only; it is of hero-life in its moments of indulgence and relaxation, which exhibit to us its lower and less noble side, without any view of its great sentiments and great duties, its sense of honour, its fine feeling, its reciprocal affections as developed in the relations of consanguinity and affinity, of friendship, of guestship, of sovereign and subject, and even of master and serf. What a wretched spectacle would Hector, Achilles, Diomed, Nestor, Ulysses, and the rest present to us, were their existence devoted simply to quaffing goblets and scenting or devouring the flesh of slain animals, even though with this there were present the mitigating refinement of perpetual harp and song. And yet such is the picture offered by the Homeric mythology.

Upon the whole, while it remains true that the deification of heroes, or their promotion to a happy immortality, in Homer’s time, depended upon virtue and merit; those who thus obtained admission to Olympus really found themselves introduced to a new and far lower law of life, upon taking their places there, than that to which they had been accustomed upon earth. Thus, for example, it is with Hercules; he has indeed a reward beyond the grave; but it consists simply in a life divested of the virtues of patience, obedi[342]ence, valour, and struggle by which it had itself been earned.

The superiority, however, of the intellectual over the material element, except in the matter of self-indulgence, is, as we might have expected, decisively maintained in the Grecian mythology. It is exhibited most clearly, perhaps, in the triumph of Jupiter and Olympus over the brute might of the Titans. It is also palpable, when we find that the strength of Mars, who represents nothing except fighting force, does not always insure his victory, even in contests of mere strength, but that he is overthrown by Minerva in the battle of the gods, corrected at will by her on all other occasions[643], and wounded, with her aid, by the hero Diomed beneath the walls of Troy. But when we speak of intellect as opposed to matter, the case stands so differently with respect to different deities, that it is necessary to attempt a stricter appreciation than we have yet aimed at obtaining, of their common character.

The great and perhaps only essential property by which the Homeric gods are distinguished, is that expressed in their very common appellation of ἀθάνατος: they are immortal.

There is something curious in the question, why it is that they are endowed uniformly and absolutely with this gift, but not with others; why the limitation of Death is removed from them, and yet other limitations are allowed in so many respects to remain.

It seems as if we had here an independent and impartial testimony to the truth of the representation conveyed in Holy Writ, that death has been the spe[343]cific punishment ordained for sin: and that therefore in passing beyond the human order we, as a matter of course, pass beyond its range.

Had the preternatural system of the Poet exhibited to us only such divinities as are the representatives of primeval tradition, it would have been easy to account for the attribute of immortality. But here are a multitude of deities, the creatures of human invention; why was this gift bestowed on them, when others were withheld? It may be, again, because that which came last into man’s condition should, in the logical and moral order, go first out of it: that in framing the conception of an existence higher than that of man, the first step properly was, before dealing with the more positive faults or imperfections inherent in his nature, to set aside that which did not belong to it, but had been set upon it as a note of shame for a special cause, like letters branded on a deserter or a slave.

In Homer it appears that every deity, great and small alike, is exempt from death. A Fragment of Hesiod[644] proceeds on a basis abstractedly different, and by an ingenious multiplication, from the term assigned to man upwards, ascribes to the Nymphs a life of 291,600 years. In all likelihood the meaning of this passage may be not to curtail immortality, but to enlarge the practical conception of it, by carrying life up to a number which would impress the minds of a generation rude in arithmetic far more, than a merely abstract assertion of immortality: just as to us the sand of the sea, or even the hairs of the head, may more impressively convey the idea of unlimited num[344]bers than does the phrase innumerable, although in reality the effect of either figure is to limit them.

Calypso is of the lower and of the most earthy order of the Homeric divinities. She recognises in plain terms her inferiority to the Olympian gods, by stating that she will send with Ulysses a favourable breeze, which will carry him safely home, provided they permit it, who are so far her superiors, both in planning, and in executing what they plan[645]:

Yet she distinctly contrasts herself with Penelope, in the very point that she is immortal: and the reply of Ulysses recognises this as the essential difference[646];

The only cases, perhaps, in which Homer glances at the possibility of putting a period to the existence of a god, are two, in which the semi-brutal Mars is concerned. When Otus and Ephialtes put him in chains, it seems that, but for Eeriboia, he would have perished[647]: the expressions are,

And again, under the assault of Diomed, though the Poet does not bring this last extremity into view, he might, had he not fled, perhaps have been as good as dead (ζὼς ἀμένηνος, Il. v. 887). This is not death, but it is at any rate the suspension of life, apparently without limit. A third alternative is opened in the severe reply of Jupiter, who observes to him, that he might have been thrust down into Tartarus, but for the fortu[345]nate accident of his high parentage; veiling the idea under the modest words[648],

Thus then the divine life, which, however, certainly with Ares is lodged in one of its least godlike receptacles, is liable to degradation, and to abeyance, even possibly to a lingering, though probably in no case to a rapid, process of extinction. But this last is rather the limit of calamity only, in the mathematical sense; that is to say, a limit which is never actually reached, though there is nothing short of it which may not be reached and even passed.

So much for the great gift of immortality. With reference to all the other limitations imposed upon finite being, the position of the Immortals, infinitely diversified according to the two great classes, and to individual cases, has this one feature applying to it as a whole, that it is a position of preference, not of independence.

Every deity has some extension of personal liberties and powers beyond what men enjoy. But it is in general such as we should conceive to be rather characteristic of intermediate orders of creation, than properly attaching to the divine nature. We must however distinguish between these three things: 1. The personal exemptions of a divinity from the restraints of time and place, and other limiting conditions; 2. The general powers capable of being exercised over other gods, over man, over animal or inanimate nature; 3. The powers enjoyed within the particular province over which a divinity presides.

Thus for example Calypso, though, as we have seen[346] she is of inferior rank, yet exercises very high prerogatives. She sends with Ulysses a favourable breeze: and she predicts calamity, which is to smite him before he reaches his home. Circe transforms men into beasts, and then restores them to forms of greater beauty and stature[649]. She is cognizant of events in the world beneath, and of what will occur on the arrival of Ulysses there. She then sends a favourable breeze to impel his vessel[650]; and on his return predicts to him the circumstances of his homeward voyage[651]. And Proteus delivers a similar prediction to Menelaus, to which he adds a declaration of his destiny after death[652]: he also converts himself into a multitude of forms.

Now no Homeric deities order winds to blow, except Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and Minerva; none issue predictions to men except Minerva and Apollo, the latter mediately, through Seers or through Oracles; of absolute transformation we have no example; but Minerva, and she alone, transforms Ulysses from one human form to another. I mean absolute transformation effected upon others: all the deities, apparently, can transform themselves at will; for even Venus appears to Helen disguised, though it would seem imperfectly, in the form of an aged attendant[653].

This gift of knowledge of the future is the more remarkable, when we consider that some of the Olympian deities were without knowledge even of what had just happened; as Mars, on the occasion of the death of his son Ascalaphus[654]. Even Jupiter, with the rest of the gods, was wholly unaware of the clandestine mission of Iris by Juno to Achilles[655].

[347]

The great powers of these secondary deities may be accounted for, I think, by two considerations:

1. These divinities belong to the circle of outer or Phœnician traditions, and the Poet is not therefore, in treating them, subject to the same laws as those by which he regulates the Olympian order. They are brought upon the stage with reference to Ulysses or Menelaus, and in the Wanderings only; thus they are adopted by Homer for this special purpose, and endowed with whatever gifts they require for it, just as strangers, while they remain, are treated more liberally in a house than the children of the family, for the very reason that they are strangers, and have no concern with the regular organization and continuing life of the household.

2. Another principle of the mythology conducts us by another road to the same end. Every deity is liberally endowed within his own province. Now the province of Proteus, Calypso, and Circe, is the Outer sphere of Geography. Within the range of that sphere, the ordinary agency of the Olympian deities individually is suspended. Homer prefers to leave it to be governed by the divinities, whom he can frame out of his Phœnician materials for the purpose. In this way he is enabled to enlarge the circle of variety, and to draw new and salient lines of distinction between the two worlds. Neptune indeed is there perforce; for navigation is the staple of its theme, and the θάλασσα pervades it, from no portion of which can he possibly be excluded. The Olympian Court, too, oversee it, and their orders are conveyed thither by Mercury their agent. But, except Neptune for the reason given, the ordinary action of the deities individually is suspended[656], not on[348] account of any limitation of power, for instance in Minerva, but for a poetical purpose, and with the excuse, that the whole sphere is removed beyond common life and experience. Hence, just as Vulcan works professionally the most extraordinary miracles, though he is but a secondary deity, because they are in the domain of metallic art, so Circe and the rest are empowered to do the like within a domain of which they are the rooted zoophytes and exclusive occupants.

It may be well, before passing to the general limitations upon divine capacity in Homer, to illustrate a little farther this law of special endowment.

Venus is among gods what Nireus was among men: ἄναλκις ἔην θεός[657]. Yet she overcomes the resistance of Helen[658]: and we have also the express record of her girdle as invincible in its operation[659]. The case of Mars is peculiar: for he is brought upon the stage to be beaten in his own province, as the exigencies of the poem require it: but inferior, nay pitiful, as he is in every point of mind and character, yet as to imposing personal appearance, he is made to take rank in a comparison with Jupiter and Neptune, between whose names his is placed[660]. Neptune exhibits vast power, and on his own domain, the sea, appears even to have an inkling of providential foreknowledge[661]: he is conscious that Ulysses will reach Scheria. Except upon the sea, he exhibits no such attributes of intelligence, though he always remains possessed of huge force. Mercury, again, shows in locomotion a greater independence of the laws of place, than some deities who are of a rank higher than his own: and doubtless it is[349] because he is professionally an agent or messenger. Even so the journeys of Iris are no sooner begun than they are accomplished.

But the general rule is, that the divine faculties represent, in regard to all the conditions of existence, no more than an improvement and extension of the human[662]. Man is the point of origin: and from this pattern invention strives to work upward and outward. The great traditive deities indeed are on a different footing, and appear rather to be the reductions and depravations of an ideal modelled upon the infinite. But the general rule holds good, in regard both to bodily and mental laws, for the mass of the Olympian Court.

Thus deities are subject to sleep, both ordinarily, and under the special influences of Ὕπνος, the god of sleep. We are furnished with a reason for Jupiter’s not being asleep at a given moment[663]; it is the special anxiety which presses on him. He had been asleep just before. Their bodies are not ethereal, but are capable of constraint by manacles. They are capable also of wounds; and they suffer pain even so as to scream under it: but their blood is ichor, and their hurts heal with great rapidity[664]. They eat ambrosia, and drink nectar. They also receive a sensible pleasure from the savour of sacrifices and libations[665]. Nor is this pleasure alone, it is also nourishment and strength, for Mercury speaks of it as highly desirable for support on any long journey. He, too, practises according to his precept, for he seems greatly to relish the meal of ambrosia and nectar, which is afforded him by the hospitality of Calypso[666].

[350]

As regards the percipient organs, the Olympian gods appear to depend practically on the eye. Minerva alone has a perfect and unfailing acquaintance with whatever it concerns her to know. For even Jupiter, as we have seen, is not exempt from limitation in this point[667]. Juno sends Iris to Achilles in the Eighteenth Iliad without his knowledge, κρυβδὰ Διὸς ἄλλων τε θεῶν. Apollo does not immediately perceive the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia. Being here opposed to Minerva, he could not but be worsted. Generally, even these great traditive deities perceive not by a gift of universal vision, but by attention[668]:

Juno, keenly alive with anxiety, perceives from Olympus the slaughter that Hector and Mars are making on the plain of Troy; and likewise from the same spot watches Jupiter sitting upon Ida[669]. These four deities, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Apollo, appear to be endowed with by far the largest range of vision. Even to Neptune no such powers are assigned, as to them; for we are never given to understand that any amount of mere distance is too great for their ken. But Neptune only sees the state of the battle before Troy by coming to Samothrace, apparently to bring it within view, and by looking from thence: nor is the Poet content without adding the reason;

a passage which seems to imply, that his vision was much the same as that of mankind even in degree.

In the Odyssey, Ulysses pursues his voyage on the[351] raft without the knowledge of Neptune, although on the proper domain of the god, until the eighteenth day. Then he discovers him, but it is only because, coming up from the Ethiopian country, on reaching the Solyman mountains, he is supposed to have got within view of the hero. Being here, without special directions, in the zone of the Outer Geography, we have no means of measuring the terrestrial distance with precision, and the Poet has not informed us what interval of space he intended us to suppose.

The inventive deities of the second order in Olympus are very slightly gifted in this matter. So much we perceive from the ignorance of Mars about the death of his son Ascalaphus. When Venus observes, that Æneas has been wounded, Homer does not name the spot from which she looked; but the general range of the powers of this divinity is so narrow, that we must suppose he means to place her immediately over the field of battle before Troy.

Of the powers of Apollo or Minerva, as hearers of prayer irrespectively of distance, I have already spoken; but the local idea enters more freely into the anomalous character of the head of Olympus. In the First Iliad, Thetis explains to her son that she cannot introduce to Jupiter the matter of his wrongs, until he returns from the country of the Ethiopians, whither he has repaired with the other Immortals to a banquet[671]. This may mean either that he is too far off to attend to the business, or that he must not be disturbed while inhaling the odours of a hecatomb.

Very great diversity in individual cases, but at the same time a general and pervading law of restraint,[352] are evident in the descriptions of the deities with respect to their powers of locomotion. Facility of movement accrues to them variously according to 1. their peculiar work and office; 2. their general dignity and freedom from merely mythological traits; 3. the exigencies of the particular situation. As to the first, I have noticed that Mercury and Iris have a rapidity as messenger-gods, which in their simple capacity as gods they could scarcely possess. Yet even Mercury follows a route: from Olympus he strikes across Pieria, and next descending skims the surface of the sea; then at length passes to the beach of the island, and so onwards to the cave of the Nymph[672]. Minerva, on the other hand, in virtue not of any special function, but of her general power and grandeur, is conceived as swifter still. The journeys of Apollo, in like manner, are conceived of as instantaneous: the rule in both cases being subject to poetical exceptions only. The chariots of Juno and of Neptune[673], again, proceed with measured pace. Each step of Juno’s horses covers the distance over which a man can see[674]. Neptune himself passes in four steps from Samothrace to Ægæ[675]. The driving of Jupiter from Olympus to Ida is described in terms before used for Juno’s journey[676]. Juno travels at another time from Olympus to Lemnos by Pieria, Emathia, and the tops of the Thracian mountains. Here Homer seems to supply her with a sort of made road on which to tread: for the route is a little circuitous[677]. Mars, when wounded, takes wing to Olympus: but Venus, though only hurt in the wrist, cannot get thither until she obtains the aid of his chariot, which happily for her was then waiting on the field[678].

[353]

But poetical utility, so to speak, enters very largely into the whole subject of Olympian locomotion, and makes it difficult to draw with rigour the proper mythological conclusions. This may be sufficiently illustrated by the following cases. We have seen the majestic march of Juno from one hill top to another, and the measured though speedy course of her chariot. Yet, under the pressure of urgent considerations, she flies from Ida to Olympus, as the bearer of Jupiter’s message, with a rapidity that Homer illustrates by the remarkable simile of the travelling of Thought[679]. Again, where an imposing magnificence is the object, measure is introduced into the movement of Apollo himself by the clang of the darts upon his shoulder as he goes[680]. And, even more, Venus, whom we have seen so impotent on the field of Troy, after her exposure in the Eighth Odyssey, flies at once all the way to Paphos; as does Mars to Thrace[681]. This in both cases is probably because the occasion did not admit of ornamental enlargements, such as befitted the journey of a god. And when Vulcan is represented as actually engaged in falling during the whole day from Olympus down into Lemnus[682], a poetical allusion to his lameness may probably be intended.

Thus we see not the mental only, but also the corporeal existence of the mythological god hemmed in on every side. A great force of appetite, and a disposition to give it unbridled indulgence, can hardly be reckoned among elevating gifts. But if it be asked, wherein does Homer enlarge and improve for his mythical gods the human conditions of being, besides,

(1.) The one grand point of immortality, I should answer, in

[354]

(2.) An unlimited abundance of the means of corporal enjoyment, and a general freedom from the interruptions of care.

(3.) A liberal dispensation of the somewhat vulgar commodities of physical strength and stature; and of the higher gift of absolute beauty, into which the idea of stature, however, materially enters.

The former of these two we learn from the fact, that the banquet is the habitual and normal occupation of the Olympian Court. In the First Book, the fray between Jupiter and Juno passes off naturally, and as a matter of course, into a feast that lasts all day[683]. And when Juno, in the Fifteenth Book, reaches Olympus with a message from Jupiter, Thetis, whom she meets first, salutes her by offering the cup[684].

There is also among the gods a kind of ‘high life below stairs.’ When Iris repairs on behalf of Achilles to the Winds, she finds them too banqueting in the palace of Zephyr, probably their chief[685]; but she hastes away, when her message is delivered, to feast in preference among divinities of her own rank upon an Ethiopian sacrifice.

As regards size and stature, these gifts are so freely bestowed as to be almost without measure: nor does the Poet even care in such cases to be at strict unity with himself. Mars, who in the Fifth Book, draws no very peculiar notice on the battle field from his size, in the Theomachy, when laid prostrate, covers seven acres. Eris, treading on the earth, strikes heaven with her head. The helmet of Minerva would suffice for the soldiery of a hundred cities; the golden tassels of her ægis, a hundred in number, and each worth a hundred[355] oxen, after every allowance for mere laxity in the use of numbers, would imply vast weight and bulk. Accordingly, the axle of Juno’s chariot may well groan beneath the weight of Pallas[686]. Apollo, without the smallest seeming effort, stops Diomed and Patroclus in mid-career; and overthrows the Greek wall as easily as a child overthrows his plaything heap of sand[687]. Other signs might be quoted, such as the tread that shakes the earth, and the voices of Mars and Neptune, equal to those of nine or ten thousand[688] mortals.

With the one marked exception of Vulcan, beauty is generally indicated as the characteristic of the Olympian deities. Among the gods, it extends even to Mars[689]. It is sufficiently indicated for the goddesses by their habitual epithets. Even Minerva, in whom personal charms are as it were eclipsed by the sublime gifts of the mind, is sometimes called ἠΰκομος and ἐϋπλόκαμος (Il. vi. 92. Od. vii. 40): and Calypso declares the superiority of goddesses to women in beauty, as a general proposition[690],

The mythological or invented deities generally, but none of the strictly traditive deities, appear to be tainted with libertinism. Among the former we may, however, observe degrees. Jupiter and Venus stand at the head. Neptune, Mars, Mercury, Ceres, Aurora, follow. Juno evidently treats the passion simply as an instrument for political ends. Of this Homer has given us a very remarkable indication. For when she sees Jupiter on Ida, though she is just then conceiving her[356] design, she views him with disgust: στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ[691]. So careful is the Poet that we shall not imagine her to have been under the gross influence of a merely sensual passion. Thetis suggests a remedy of that nature to her son for his grief[692]. In mere impersonations, not yet endowed with the strong human individuality of the Greek Olympus, such as Themis and Helios, we do not expect to find this trait. But of all the fully personified deities of invention, Vulcan alone, privileged by Labour and Ugliness, appears in Homer to be exempt. The Hellenic goddesses generally do not, however, like the more Pelasgian Venus, Ceres, and probably Aurora, debase themselves by intrigues with mortal men.

The chastity of the traditive deities, Minerva, Diana, Latona, and probably Apollo, I take for one of the noblest and most significant proofs of the high origin of the materials which they respectively embody.

There is also in the deities of Homer not merely a dependance upon physical nourishment, but even a passion of gluttony connected with it. The basis of this idea is laid in the conception which made feasting the normal occupation of Olympus. It followed that they were not only bound by something in the nature of necessity to food, but also enslaved to it by greediness as a rooted habit.

Of this we find traces all through the poems, in the course which divine favour usually takes. When Homer speaks of the gods in the sense of Providential governors, it is the just man that they regard, and the unjust that they visit with wrath. But when he carries us into Olympus, and we behold them in the living[357] energy of their individualities, it is sacrifice which they want, and which forms their share in the fruits of earth and of human labour, as we learn from the emphatic words of Jupiter himself;

It was the bounty of Autolycus in lambs and kids which induced Mercury to bestow on him in return the gifts of thievery and perjury[694].

Moral retribution in Homer lags and limps at a great distance behind the offence, but the omission to sacrifice is visited condignly and at once. Again, in the case of Troy, liberality in this particular even seems to create a party in Olympus on behalf of an offending race. On the erection of the rampart by the Greeks, Neptune immediately urges the omission of the regular hecatombs against them. It is punished by Diana in Ætolia, by the gods generally on the departure from Troas; and Menelaus in like manner is for this offence wind-bound in Pharos[695].

The reason of this preeminence of sacrifices, both as to punishment and as to reward, may lie partly in the tendency of man (though, as we shall presently see, the practice had its moral side also) to substitute positive observances for moral obedience; but partly, likewise, in the importance of sacrifices to the anthropophuism of the Olympian deities themselves.

Putting out of view what each deity can do in his particular domain, we shall find that but little of power over nature—whether human, animal, or inanimate—attaches to the Homeric gods as such. Juno conveys a suggestion to the mind of Agamemnon[696], and gives, with Minerva, courage to a warrior; but this[358] is the whole of her immediate action, I mean action without a mean, in this department, exhibited by any passage in the Poems. Indeed, no other mythological deity ascends to agency of this kind at all.

Upon animal and inanimate nature Juno exercises the highest powers. When she thunders with Minerva, sends cloud to impede the flying Trojans, retards the sunset, and assists the voyage of Jason, we may consider her as in the reflex use of the atmospheric powers of her husband: but the gift of a voice to the horse Xanthus, apparently can lie within her reach only by derivation from the higher or traditive element in his character, as representing the idea of supreme deity.

Among the deities of invention, the general rule is, with respect to the exercise of power over nature or the human mind, that it is confined to matters in immediate connection with their several specialties. Two extraordinary acts of power over nature appear, however, to be within the competency of them all. One is the production of a patch of cloud or vapour at will; the other is that of assuming the human form for themselves, either generally or in the likeness of some particular person. I do not, however, recollect any instance in which this power is exercised by a deity of invention in the manner in which Minerva employs it in the First Iliad[697], that is, under the condition of being visible only to one person out of many who are present. In that image we seem to find a figure, perhaps a traditionary remnant, of that inward and personal communication between the Almighty and the individual soul, which constitutes a high distinguishing note of the true religion.

[359]

There would appear to have been certain visible marks which went to distinguish a god, up to a certain point, from men. Hector in the Fifteenth Iliad knows Apollo to be a god[698], but does not know what god. Minerva clears the vision of Diomed, that he may be able to discriminate between gods and men[699]. Pandarus, eyeing Diomed, is uncertain whether he is a mortal or a god[700]. The recognition of Venus by Helen may, indeed, have been due to the imperfectness of her power of self-transformation[701]; but it may also have been owing to these general traces of resemblance to the divine order, which subsisted even under the human disguise.

Homer represents Minerva as weighing down the chariot of Diomed, and making the axle creak[702];

This passage may be taken as a proof, since it applies to the most spiritual of the Homeric divinities, how far the Poet was from considering that they were endowed with the properties of pure spirit.

Of this he has given us farther proof by his free and constant reference, wherever occasion serves, to the parts and organs of the body as appertaining to the gods.

I think that references of this kind in Holy Scripture usually bear a mark, which yields decisive witness to the fact that their use is wholly relative and analogical: as, for example, the eye of God, namely, the instrument by which He watches us, the mouth of God, by which He instructs us, the hand and the arm of God, by[360] which He sustains, or delivers, or corrects, or crushes us. It does not therefore appear that we could justly and fully draw our conclusions as to the corporeal constitution of an Olympic deity from the mere circumstance that we are told of the knees or lap of the gods, by which it might be figuratively expressed, that the disposal of human affairs rests with them[703]; or because of that gorgeous description, which the Poet has given us, of the head and nod, meaning the decree of Jupiter. For all these allusions are capable of explanation on the same principle with those of Holy Scripture, namely, as being relative and explanatory to man.

But he has a multitude of other references to parts of the body, which do not at all belong to the use of them as organs for communication with the imperfect apprehensions of mankind. Thus:

1. Thetis takes hold of the chin of Jupiter, Il. i. 501.

2. Diomed wounds Venus on the wrist, Il. v. 336.

3. And Mars in the abdomen, Il. v. 857; whom Minerva likewise overthrows by a blow on the neck, Il. xxi. 406.

4. Hercules wounds Juno in the right breast, Il. v. 393; and we have her hair, flesh, chest, and feet, in the toilette of Il. xiv. 170–86.

5. Helen discovers the neck and breast as well as eyes of Venus, Il. iii. 396. See Il. xxi. 424.

6. The legs of Vulcan are weak, his neck strong, and his chest shaggy, Il. xviii. 411–15.

7. Mercury attaches wings to his feet, Od. v.

8. Juno seizes the wrists of Diana, takes the bow and arrows from her back, and beats her about the ears, Il. xxi. 489–91.

[361]

9. The arrows rattle on the shoulder of Apollo, Il. i. 46.

10. The arming of Minerva introduces her shoulders, head, and feet, Il. v. 738–45.

We need not, however, be surprised at failing to find in Homer any conception approaching to that of pure spirit, or any thing resembling that refined discernment, which has led Christian Art to represent the figure of our Lord alone as self-poised and self-supported in the air, while all other human forms, even when transfigured, have a ground beneath their feet, though it be but made of cloud. Even in some of the very highest among Christian writers, such as Dante and St. Bernard, the human being, after the soul has gone through dismissal from the flesh, still appears to be invested with a lighter form and species of body, apparently on the assumption that the two elements of matter and spirit are not only essentially, but inseparably wedded in our nature.

Full as they are of preternatural signs and operations, the poems of Homer do not, nevertheless, deal much with miracle, with the specific purpose of which he had no concern.

By miracle I understand, speaking generally, not the mere use of the common natural powers, accumulated or enlarged, but an operation involving what, I suppose, would be called medically an organic departure from her customary laws: an operation too, which must absolutely be performed, upon man himself or some other object, after some manner which shall be appreciable in its results by his faculties, and calculated to satisfy them, when in their greatest vigilance, that it is a real experience, and not a mere delusion of the senses.

Thus understood, the miracles of Homer are, I think,[362] scarcely more numerous than the following: for, under this definition, the ambrosia of Simois and the flowers of Ida are not miracles[704].

1. The crawling and lowing of the oxen of the Sun after their death, Od. xii. 395, 6.

2. The acceleration of the Sunset, Il. xviii. 239.

3. The retardation of the dawn, Od. xxiii. 241.

4. The speaking horse, Il. xix. 407.

3. The εἴδωλον of Æneas, Il. v. 449.

6. The portents of the banquet night in Od. xx. 347–62. I feel some doubt, however, whether this is objective, or whether it is only an impression on the senses.

7. The transformation and re-transformation of Ulysses[705], Od. xiii. 398, 429, and xxiii. 156–63.

8. Perhaps, also, the εἴδωλον of Iphthime, Od. ix. 797.

9. The gouts of blood, shed down from the air by Jupiter, Il. xi. 53.

10. The transformation of the serpent into a stone in the sight of all the Greeks; ἡμεῖς δ’ ἑσταότες θαυμάζομεν οἷον ἐτύχθη, Il. ii. 320.

The first seems due to the divine power as a whole; the second and fourth to Juno; the third and seventh and eighth to Minerva; the fifth and sixth are the works of Apollo; the ninth and tenth of Jupiter. I do not add as an eleventh the conversion of the Phæacian ship into a rock, by Neptune, in the sight of the people; because this is rather of the class of marvels which appertained to other, even secondary gods, such as Vulcan, in their own particular domains, Od. xiii. 159–87.

The buoyant arms of Achilles (Il. xix. 386), and other works of Vulcan, might at first sight seem to belong[363] to the list, but it is doubtful whether they are not poetical rather than mythological representations, and in any case they would appear as gifts strictly professional, exercised in the ordinary administration of his peculiar function.

Telemachus appears to recognise the existence of miraculous powers in the passage[706],

But this is spoken of the Godhead rather than of any particular deity, and cannot by Homeric analogy be applied except to those of the highest natures.

It will however be observed, that several of these prodigies are not stated to have challenged human observation when performed: and unless they submit themselves to the test of the senses they are not properly miracles at all. Others of them entirely comply with the condition, as especially that of Il. ii. 320.

The retardation of sunset and sunrise, and the rain of blood, appear to pass wholly unobserved. Prodigies not setting out from a basis in nature, such as the tears of blood shed by Jupiter[707], are wholly beyond the scope of these observations.

On the whole, we find stringent limitation prevailing in this province, as regards the majority of the gods.

Indeed the forces of nature, which the mythological divinities in part represent, were sometimes too strong for them: for Homer tells us that Notus and Zephyr[708] sometimes shatter vessels at sea without or against the will of the gods:

Even man, and that without impiety, can occasion[364]ally think of resistance. When Menelaus, alone in the field, decides on retiring before Hector (who fights ἐκ θεόφιν), rather than contend πρὸς δαίμονα, he looks around for Ajax, and observes that, could he but see him, they two would fight καὶ πρὸς δαίμονά περ, even with the deity opposed to them, in order to recover the body of Patroclus[709].

There is, however, I think, another reason, besides feebleness in his conception of the gods, which prevents the Greek Poet from representing them as omnipotent in regard to the operations of the human mind; and that is, his profound sense of the free agency of man. This principle with him, as it were, confronts the deity on every side; who respects its dignity, and never really invades its sphere, but pursues his work by means compatible with its essential character. The idea of the deity pervading the poems is mainly that of a cooperative power, who helps us when and as we help ourselves. It is expressed with an unrivalled simplicity when Telemachus, coming as a young man into the presence of Nestor, feels oppressed with a nervous shyness; and Minerva encourages him by telling him that he can of himself find something to say, and that the divinity will prompt more to him[710],

Heavenly influence never overpowers or suppresses the will, but sometimes suggests thoughts to the mind, and sometimes diverts it, not perhaps from the thought of an object already perceived, but from the chance of perceiving it. Thus, when Euryclea, through surprise on beholding the scar, and so recognising Ulysses, oversets the foot-bath, Penelope, who is present, might[365] naturally have observed the miscarriage; but Minerva interposes to abstract her attention from what was passing, lest she should recognise her husband prematurely:

With the exception of Juno, who in some sense reflects the majesty of Jupiter, and becomes entitled as a wife to handle his prerogatives, it may be stated generally respecting the deities of invention properly so called, that, except within the limits of their particular domain or office, they scarcely at all modify the laws of nature, never set in motion or direct her greater forces, nor act in an extraordinary manner on the mind or body of man. Each in his own province can stimulate a particular animal propensity, or improve a particular gift of mind or body: and that is all.

While therefore the strength of the Olympian deities lies in knowledge and in power, we find upon the whole that even in these particularly they are subject to manifold limitation. They could translate mortals out of this world in which the rule of Death prevails, as we see in the cases of Ganymede, and of Tithonus; but it does not appear that, if we except the traditive ideas represented in Minerva and Apollo, they could either raise men from the grave, prevent their dying in the course of nature, heal their wounds or diseases, or set their broken limbs. When even Latona and Diana heal Æneas[712], they do it apparently with greater speed indeed, but in other respects much as it would have been done by Podaleirius or Machaon.

Nor, again, does it appear that even the most exalted of their number had the knowledge of inward thoughts, otherwise than as they may be discovered by[366] persons of particular sagacity. When Minerva detects the false accounts given of himself by Ulysses[713], no more is declared than the simple fact that she has a sufficient knowledge of his personal identity. Hence, with respect to the fraud of Laomedon upon Neptune and Apollo, Saint Augustine sarcastically wonders that even Apollo the diviner should not have known that Laomedon meant to cheat him[714]; and that one of such dignity as Neptune should have been in a like state of ignorance. With this we may compare the taunts of Elijah[715] against the priests of Baal.

While, then, the gift of anything like general foreknowledge appears to be withheld from all the deities of invention, that of the ‘discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,’ is nowhere found; nor was it believed of any member of the Olympian community, as it was said of One greater than they[716]: ‘He knew all men; and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man.’

Such, as far as I am able to present it, is the internal view of the Olympus of Homer: a scheme eminently national, and eminently poetical. Egypt, Persia, Phœnicia, the old Pelasgians, doubtless contributed materials towards its formation: but I have a lively conviction that Homer was (so to speak) the theo-mythologer who moulded these materials into system, the substitute for unity, invested them with the forms and colours of brilliant beauty, and gave them their hold in their historic shape upon the mind of his countrymen; with the sublime Olympus, so near the old Dodona, of which he probably contrived it as the rival, for their centre of life and power.

[367]

We have thus far considered the deities of Homer as they are, or are represented by him to be, in themselves individually, and in their mutual relations. We have now to consider the relation which subsisted between them and the race of man, especially on its human side; the state of religious sentiment and obligation, and of the moral law, both as towards heaven and likewise as between man and man, so far as it is immediately associated with the system of which they are the representatives. Another large part of morals, which was already in great part detached from visible relation to religion, will remain for separate consideration.

And here we may remark, that the Homeric Greeks apparently knew nothing of any periodical religious observance of commanding authority, such as to form a centre either for national union, or for the life of the individual. Had there been such an observance, we must, without doubt, have found a trace of it on the Shield of Achilles. The only festival, of which we have clear information, is that of Apollo in the Odyssey, on the first day of the month. More obscurely, one of Minerva appears to be indicated in Il. ii. 551. No religious worship, properly to be so called, accompanied[368] the funeral of Patroclus, or the games which followed it. The Winds[717] were called in aid for a special purpose. The invocation of Spercheus[718] is an apology for devoting to Patroclus the hair which Peleus had, on his son’s behalf, vowed to that River-god. Neither is there any notice whatever of religion in the brief summary of the proceedings in Troy after the ransom of the corpse of Hector[719].

But although not sustained or organized by the self-acting machinery of periodical celebrations, nor by the appropriation of the services of a particular class of society, the life, thoughts, and actions of the better Greeks were in a close and pervading proximity, so to speak, to their religion. I say of the better Greeks; for there is an almost total absence of reference to the gods in the language, as well as in the actions, of the profligate Suitors of the Odyssey. When it first appears, it is ironical[720]: and only in the last distress does it assume any other character.

In general terms, every thing was ascribed to the gods. They know all things, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα ἴσασιν[721]: They can do every thing, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται[722]; and δύναται γὰρ ἅπαντα[723] is said of Jupiter, in the character of Providence. They are the givers of all blessings, mental as well as corporal[724]; the disposers of events; the ordainers, or even authors of calamities. They are said also to do for us what we ourselves have done for ourselves; as where Ulysses tells Eumæus, that the gods broke his bonds, and the gods hid him[725]; acts[369] which he himself had performed. Also what they effect, they commonly effect with ease, as in both the last-mentioned cases.

However faulty, and however feeble, the religion of the Greeks had not yet ceased to be a religion; for it was believed in. Men might resent or fear the communications made to them on the part of the deity; but they did not venture to repudiate their authority.

In Homer, except with the dissolute Suitors, (Od. ii. 180, 201.) the Seer stands as the faithful exponent of the will of Heaven; and Agamemnon, even when smarting under the declarations of Calchas, and reviling him accordingly in his individual capacity (i. 106), does not presume to intimate any suspicion that what he has said is of his own invention. But time passed on: corruption accumulated, and festered more and more. Accordingly in Euripides, Agamemnon and Menelaus seem to speak of the whole class of prophets as if they deserved no belief. See the Iphigenia in Aulis, v. 10, 11. So in the same play, vv. 783–9, the Chorus speaks of the birth of Helen from Leda and Jupiter, with the proviso, ‘whether it were true or whether fabulous.’

Again, we have in the same play, vv. 945–7:

The mind of man had travelled far onward in its career, and great changes had passed upon his moral tone, before the place of the Prophet, in the estimation of the public, could be so strikingly reversed as we find from these quotations.

In the Homeric age, religion was a real power; and the veneration paid to deity extended so far, at least, to the[370] persons of its ministers, that scarce any human thought could conceive the possibility of their falsifying the awful communications of which they were the vehicles.

But it will be replied, if religion was a power, if whatever it covered with its mantle was accepted and held in honour, then what a deluge of corruption must have spread over Greece from a religion of which Jupiter was the head, and which had Venus for one of its recognised divinities!

Now the age of Homer shows us the religion of Olympus in a state, in which it had not yet become sufficiently the object of scrutiny to suggest, on a large scale, either the depraved imitation which was to be its too speedy result, or the unbelief which formed, in the moral chain of cause and effect, its necessary consummation.

In fact, we do not find that the corrupting influence of the Greek mythology on manners had been fully felt in the time of Homer. Though vices are in particular cases represented as the gifts of particular deities to particular individuals, it does not appear that these were yet regarded as examples for general imitation[726]. But the beginnings of mischief, so vigorous and abundant, did not fail in time to produce their fruit: and in the historic ages of Greece, the models supplied by the conduct of deities were freely pleaded in defence of debauchery and crime[727].

This is in conformity with ordinary experience. The vices of the great are first passed by, as if it were profane to suffer the eye to rest upon them; then they are[371] regarded for a time with depraved admiration; and when the last stage is reached, they are too faithfully copied by the small.

It was hardly possible that men could be effectually swayed for a length of time by the moral government of deities, themselves privileged by human invention for unbounded immorality: but it was naturally the first stage of the destructive process to vitiate the character of the gods, and the next and later one to break down the credit of their administration of human affairs, which only became incredible even to the enlightened part of the community after their moral worthlessness had been fully and long developed.

The Homeric poems expose to our view two standards not mutually accordant, the objective and the subjective. If we pay attention to the impressions current among men respecting the gods, they are the guardians of some moral and social principles of the highest order. But if we take their own word for it, the mere Olympian deities seem ordinarily to appreciate no quality or conduct, except the practice of offering up numerous and well fed animals in sacrifice, each with the accompanying tribute of the appointed portion; that so they may draw, not a moral but a physical, though a comparatively refined, gratification from the savour and the taste[728].

The protection, too, which the deities usually accord to man, is not only given on selfish principles, but is liable to be withdrawn for causes wholly independent of his deserts. Quarrels about men are settled, not by each foregoing his animosities, but by each surrendering and abandoning his clients. ‘I will give up Troy to[372] you,’ says Jupiter; ‘but mind that I shall be at liberty to destroy the cities which you love, when I may be so minded[729].’ ‘You are quite welcome,’ answers Juno, ‘and indeed I could not prevent you: but let me have Troy destroyed.’ Why, says even Apollo to Neptune, should we quarrel about miserable mortals? It is not worth our while: let us leave them to themselves[730]. No Homeric deity ever will be found to make a personal sacrifice on behalf of a human client.

In the next Section, I shall endeavour to show that the practice of sacrifice was not so entirely disconnected from morality, as we are perhaps too apt to suppose. I think we may, on the contrary, find in it at least a witness to the essential harmony between morality and divine worship, and to the difficulty of tearing them asunder.

We are here met, indeed, by the case of Autolycus, which proves to us that the better elements of this practice were already on their way to corruption, inasmuch as in that instance they had reached it. It was a case, let it be remembered, of sacrifices, not to the gods in general, nor to the higher or the better deities, but to Mercury, a purely mythical divinity; and therefore what we see in it is, a false religion in a state of ripeness at one particular point. Now the worship of Mercury, the god of gain, was perhaps the first point at which the morality of the system might be expected to give way: and it is therefore quite in the natural course that a case like that of Autolycus should be presented to us without any corresponding case for any other deity[731]. As it stands in Homer, it represents what was then the exception, though it was gradually to become the rule.

[373]

There are, however, in particular connection with one of the great traditive deities, glimpses of better things, even in Olympus. When urged by Minerva on behalf of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Jupiter half rebukes her for having insinuated a doubt, by replying, ‘How could I forget Ulysses, who excels others both in his intellect, and in the sacrifices which he offers to the gods?’[732]

It may indeed be said that in this passage, if it be construed strictly, it is mental power or intelligence, and not any moral quality, which, as second to liberality in sacrifice, is recognised as fit to be taken into account by the gods.

Still it is, I think, manifest that Homer, like the Holy Scripture, includes a moral element in the idea of wisdom, which is represented by the word νόος, commonly or always used of men in a good sense.

And in the second divine Council of the Odyssey, the moral tone rises higher. Minerva, grown more daring, pleads plainly the discouraging effect which the indifference of the gods, if continued, will have upon the moral conduct of sovereigns. ‘Let them,’ she says, ‘cast away all moral restraint: for the virtuous Ulysses is forgotten by his people, and is detained in great affliction by Calypso[733].’

For us, in the present inquiry, the main question evidently is, not what are the sentiments which the Poet has represented as proceeding from his divinities on Olympus, but what are those which the people at large believed them to entertain. There is a considerable difference between these two standards: and it is the latter one by which we have now to abide.

[374]

The deities of Homer, thus measured, are susceptible of various forms of sentiment in contemplating the fortunes and deeds of men.

1. In general, they regard virtue and obedience with approbation.

2. They regard crime with dissatisfaction and a disposition to punish it.

3. But they also observe any excess, or marked continuity, of good fortune in the virtuous man with a kind of envy: as if they could not permit the human race, on any conditions, to attain to a prosperity or abundance which should have any semblance of rivalling their own.

As respects the first, it is indeed a pale and feeble sentiment; but still it exists. They listen readily to those who obey them[734]. Prayer appeases them, as well as sacrifice[735]. They love not perverse deeds like those of the Suitors, but they honour justice and righteousness[736]. Upon the whole it may be observed, that much more just and elevated sentiments are predicated of the gods as a body, than when they appear as individuals. For it is as a body that they still retain a certain relation to true Godhead.

As respects the second proposition, they wander in disguise to examine the conduct of men[737]. A man who is hardly used may become to his oppressor a θεῶν μήνιμα, an occasion of divine vengeance. They view iniquity with a sentiment sometimes called by Homer ὄπις, an after-regard that remembers and avenges it. For this ὄπις the wicked do not care[738], and such[375] indifference is a chief sign of their depravity. Especially they watch, backed by the Ἐρινύες, over wrongs done to the poor[739]; and Jupiter interferes by storm and flood to testify his displeasure at unrighteous governors, who administer crooked judgments[740]. Ægisthus is warned and punished by them. It is Minerva who plans the vengeance upon the Suitors[741]. At the same time, revenge for affronts is a much more powerful and common motive with them, than zeal for the administration of justice. The latter is lazy and doubtful; but their sentiments in regard to the former are of keen edge, and have an irrepressible promptitude and activity.

As respects the third point, the gods grudged to Ulysses and Penelope an unbroken continuance of the blessings of their domestic life[742]. It is in like manner, as it would seem, that, after a long course of prosperity, the gallant and good Bellerophon became odious, on account of his good fortune only, to the gods[743]. And this same idea is perhaps the groundwork of the alternative destinies of Achilles, either a long life without great glory, or transcendent glory and a short career[744].

While in the later stages of heathen religion the former and nobler ideas gradually lost ground, this less worthy one became more and more pronounced; and Solon, in Herodotus, describes himself as knowing τὸ θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες[745].

In vague and general terms, the gods of Homer are represented as givers of blessings, particularly of ex[376]ternal goods. Sometimes they are rashly and wildly charged as the authors of calamities[746], which the folly of man himself has caused. But according to the more grave and serious teaching of the day, they were conceived to enforce, as against mortals, laws from which they were certainly themselves exempt; and allow to mankind no alternative, except that of mixed good or else unmixed evil. Two caskets stand upon the floor by Jupiter: one of them is filled with wretchedness and shame; the other is vicissitude, which oscillates incessantly between prosperity and sorrow. And there rankles in the mind of mankind a sentiment, which tells them that the gods, while they thus dispense afflictions upon earth which are neither sweetened by love, nor elevated by a distinct disciplinary purpose, take care to keep themselves beyond all touch of grief or care[747]:

The best thing that can be said for their fainthearted encouragement to virtue is, that the good man is certainly understood in most cases, though not always, to prosper in the end: let us take, for example, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Ajax and Agamemnon meet unhappy ends; but Ajax was stern and sullen, while Agamemnon cannot be acquitted of cupidity and selfishness. On the other hand, as punishers of wrong, the gods of Olympus do not visit all wrongs and all vices alike. Especially they take little notice, in their moral government as in their lives, of the law of purity: there is no express notice of their displeasure against[377] the crime of Paris; and Jupiter, the guardian of the judgment seat, the friend of the suppliant, the stranger, and the poor, makes no pretension to defend the marriage bed from the contamination he had himself so often wrought. However, in a very aggravated instance, namely, that of Ægisthus, his adulterous marriage with Clytemnestra[748] is noticed explicitly in the Olympian Council, as contributing to the enormity of his offence. But in such a case many other elements, besides that of purity, are involved: the whole social and political order of the world is at stake.

Thus upon the whole there was but little more in the sentiments than in the conduct of the Immortals, to maintain among men a sense of piety towards Heaven. Yet a good deal of authority and support were lent to important principles of relative duty, by the belief that the deities would or might avenge its infraction. We must in short fully embrace the fact that man, as represented in Homer, was inconsistent with respect to his religion, in the sense opposite to that in which inconsistency commonly affects that relation. He had more still remaining in him of ancient and natural morality, than his belief could either adequately account for in theory, or permanently sustain in action.

It should at the same time be borne in mind, that, while the vices of Olympus appertain to the individual deities, its obscure and qualified virtues, in the championship of duty, and the avenging of crime upon earth, are not the properties of this or that mythological impersonation, but either of the deities considered as a whole with one united will, or else of those among them in whose characters Homer still enables us to read the vestiges of primitive tradition.

[378]

Saint Augustine observes[749], that some defenders of the Pagan mythology in later times quoted the fall of Troy as an instance of Divine retribution coming upon the descendants of Laomedon for his perjury, and some, to the same effect, as a punishment of the adultery committed by Paris. To which he replies truly, that the heathen deities had no right to punish in Paris an act which had the sanction of Venus, as she bore Æneas to Anchises, and of Mars as the father of Romulus: Æneas and Romulus being the two great reputed fountain-heads of the highest Roman lineage.

Now, though Homer has practically represented the gods as avenging the pollution of the nuptial bed, it may be observed that he nowhere seems to put prominently forward the adultery of Paris as the main gist of his offence. In fact, the idea of adultery is very much absorbed, as we shall see, according to the poems, in the act of violent abduction. The Greeks on their side, with the single exception of Menelaus himself, treat Paris as a robber, or else a coward; not as one who had, like Ægisthus with Clytemnestra, corrupted the wife of one of their princes. And so Hector is, I think, not quite accurately criticized by Mure[750] for failing to find fault with Paris on the ground of adultery. Hector does reproach his brother for having abused the friendly intercourse of life to carry off another man’s wife, and then not having the courage to meet the husband in the field. This seems to me in perfect keeping with the ideas of the time, especially if I am right in the view, which I shall endeavour to sustain by argument, that Hector himself is not the elder, but the younger brother of the two. What did[379] the Greeks aim at avenging? Not, we shall find, the wrong done to Menelaus in his conjugal character, but the sorrows and sufferings of Helen were evidently the prominent and conspicuous idea in the mind of the Poet, and in the mind, as he represents it, of the Greeks. So that, while Menelaus himself is the only person who in the Iliad shows a resentment of his own conjugal wrongs, the Greeks appear to think partly of Helen, partly of their nation’s honour, partly of their allegiance to the Pelopids; and partly, perhaps chiefly, of the booty which, in requital of their arduous labours, they are to gain upon the sack of Troy[751].

The defence, therefore, of the heathen deities which St. Augustine notices as having been put forward, was a late afterthought. The Poet appears indeed to treat the lustful effeminacy of Paris in general with a grave and marked contempt; but this is rather his own personal sentiment, than a result directly connected with his religious belief or system. And, more at large, I do not find it clear that in any place of the Poems any deity appears, either as the guardian of purity, or as the avenger of its infraction. Under these circumstances we shall have the more cause to wonder, that that virtue could still have been held, as it was held, by Homer and the Greeks, in partial but evidently real admiration.

Although retribution was limited to public and social sins, and did not touch the inner and finer parts of human conduct, it is not difficult to trace the advantages which flowed from that sensible remainder of religion which still subsisted in the Heroic age; not from those parts of the system which were due to[380] human invention, but from the elements which it still contained of the ancient theism, and which invention had not yet wholly smothered.

Thus, for example, it was thought that the anger of the gods might be brought down upon a country by the misconduct of its governors[752];

and the fear of the temporal calamities thus to be incurred would, naturally, tend to the maintenance of integrity in the administration of justice.

As between governors and governed, so between rich and poor. We cannot doubt that the worthy Eumæus expresses the general sentiment of his age, when, having been reproached by the haughty Suitor Antinous with having invited a beggar into the palace of Ulysses, he answers, not by denial, but by showing that the idea is self-condemned by its absurdity. Those indeed, he replies, may be solicited to come to a house who exercise the agreeable or the useful professions; the Seer, the Doctor, the Artificer, the Bard, these are the people who get invited all over the world;

With this standard of sentiment, not peculiar to that age, except in the simple frankness with which it is avowed, it was surely of the utmost importance for the needy and afflicted, that they should be placed by the popular belief in the special charge of the deity;

So that, though none would invite them, yet few[381] would take the responsibility of rejecting their supplications for what was needful to supply their wants.

And the standing distinction in the Odyssey between a virtuous and a vicious people is, that the former is insolent, fierce, and unrighteous, while the latter is kind to strangers and of god-fearing mind[754];

It was thus a clear fact in the heroic age, that religious belief was a foundation and support to the exercise of charitable offices between man and man. I think we may further assert, that it is a fact of all time; that in all ages and countries the strength and liveliness of belief in God is a measure which determines the aggregate amount and activity of mutual love. Hence, as the Olympian religion became more and more hollow, public oppression increased, and private charity and hospitality declined. Yet, even in its most corrupt and decrepit period, it was on the steps of temples that the congregations of mendicants assembled; spontaneous and unconscious witnesses to the fact that, next to God their Friend in heaven, the reflection of God, however faint, in the mind of man, is their best friend on earth. And of the many great social results of Christianity, one standing in the very foremost rank has been, that it has for the first time made the rights of the poor a social axiom, which, though it may in practice be evaded, none are hardy enough to deny. Perhaps the very strongest of all the proofs of the connection between religious belief, and duties to the needy, is to be found in the instinctive horror which is created in the minds of men, when a prominent profession of the[382] first is accidentally and occasionally exhibited by persons, who show a palpable disregard of the second.

Side by side with the powerful obligation, of the indeterminate species, which binds man to man in the name of charity or brotherly kindness, stands the corresponding determinate principle of truth and justice, which aims at preserving entire to each individual the definite rights to which he is entitled.

An important part of these definite rights belongs immediately to the relations between the private person and the civil power. But the capacity of any human authority to do justice, even where the will cannot be found fault with, is of necessity defective: and no government can do its duties for a day, irrespective of the aid which each private person renders to it in reference to every other. Nor is this enough; it wants, and cannot dispense with, the assistance of an auxiliary within the breast, in order to guard itself against delusion, and to secure the requisite conformity between thought, word, and act. In other words, the state wants an instrument by which to induce men to speak the truth.

No such end can be reached by force. Force, in the shape of torture, will doubtless in the long run avail to make men asseverate that, be it what it may, by which they may obtain release from an intolerable suffering. But the first effect of torture is to make the sufferer indifferent to the truth or falsehood of his confessions, so he can but obtain relief by means of them. The second, and still more detrimental effect, must be to undermine the very basis of inward truthfulness, and to create a mental habit of indifference as between what is true and what is false.

Hence, the desideratum for the state can only be[383] found in some power which works in and with the will of the private person.

It has indeed been argued, and I believe with justice, that the atheist ought on his own principles to speak the truth; that is, if he does not shut his eyes to the testimony borne by the daily experience of life to the existence of a moral government in the world, even on this side of the grave. But this supposes, at any rate, some degree of mental culture; and it is essential to public order to find the means of operating upon those who have received no such training.

The question is how to obtain the voluntary disclosure of truth, in cases where neither interest or inclination are of themselves sufficient to secure it.

To this question the experience of the world, up to this time, renders one and but one answer. The requisite influence may be found, and can only be found, in an appeal to the Majesty on high, and to the sanctions of a future life.

Here, then, does the Venerable Oath stand forth in all its majesty. The act of calling the Deity in the most solemn of its various forms to witness, has been found at once to make the word of a man the stoutest bond of human society: for the perjurer strips himself of all divine aid[755];

and exposes himself to the most terrible penalties[756];

Under the operation of the oath, the chances, so to speak, are doubled in favour of the veracity of the witness: first, he may not be wicked enough to for[384]swear himself; and secondly, if he is wicked enough, yet he may not have the requisite amount of daring in his wickedness.

These views will, I think, receive material confirmation when we come to consider the relative positions of the oath in Greece and in Troy. For the present, I leave the subject with the observation, that four short words describe the props of human society: they are, γάμος, ὅρκος, θέμις, θεός.

All these sanctions, however partial and remote, thus given to human duty by belief in the gods, could not but be of great practical value.

And indeed it may with truth be said, that the mere idea of the presence of an overruling power in the world was of inestimable advantage in repressing human passion, in moderating desire, and in limiting the excesses of caprice, wilfulness, and violence.

But it is obvious that these beneficial results from belief in the gods belonged not to the particular development, but to the theistical principle which lay within and under it. The idea of a moral Governor of the universe was, and ever will be, an unfailing seed of good wherever it may exist. The Pagan mythology, at every step of its unfolding into detail, enfeebled and degraded that great idea, but it could not be destroyed all at once. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus; and a system, like a man, requires time to reach the extreme of depravation. As, among men, a judge is not supposed to lose all regard for justice, because it may be that in some particular of private life he has transgressed, so the Olympian divinities might have credit as administrators of moral government, even after they had begun to be charged with instances of immorality. But an unscrupulous order[385] and succession of judges, would in time put an end to the idea of public justice; and so the continuing and growing degradation of the Immortals, in time put an end to the sense of religion, and made even its fanes[757] smoky, and its pomps contemptible.

And certainly, when we look at the evils, of which the mythological system was the source, we cannot but be struck with their overwhelming magnitude, and with the highly instructive fact, that in every case they so manifestly belong, not to the original principle of belief and worship due from man to his Creator, but to the departure from a pure, and the lapse into an impure belief.

The credit for moral results, which has thus been allowed to the probable operation of the Homeric Theo-mythology in the world, must be steadily denied to its influence upon the poems, where it appears before us as in the main a lowering and corrupting agency. In fact, the religion and the morality of the Homeric poems appear to separate, and to run in opposite directions. The rights of the question at issue, in an ethical point of view, are plainly with the Greeks: they vindicate by arms not one only, but two principles, both of them vital to the order of society, and to individual happiness and virtue: the sanctity, first, of the family and of marriage ties; secondly, of the relation created by the rites of hospitality. And with the rights go the fortunes of the cause. The capture and fall of Troy constitute a great triumph of justice over wrong.

But the mythological elements of the question are cast in a mould entirely different. The royal family of Troy has been all along in singular favour with the deities,[386] notwithstanding the perjury of Laomedon; and that favour does not appear to be in any degree diminished by the gross and shameful crimes that stand against Paris in the poem, or by the unfailing and extraordinary obtuseness of his moral sense. Ganymede, Tithonus, Anchises, as well as Paris, have all been especial objects of divine regard. Not only did a full half of the other deities take part with the Trojans in the war, but Jupiter himself, apart from his concession to Thetis, was concerned for them, and says[758], ‘They interest me even while they perish’ (μέλουσί μοι ὀλλύμενοί περ).

Again, in the meeting of the gods, he describes Hector[759] as dear to them for his regular and abundant sacrifices, taking no note whatever of his personal virtues. Of the three deities who were actively hostile to Troy, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva, all had personal causes of offence: the first, the fraud of Laomedon, which, however, was also an offence against the moral law; both the others had the spretæ injuria formæ, and Juno had also special predilections to gratify. The fall of Ilios, and the death of Hector, are just: but the wonder is, with the favourable relations that subsisted between the Trojans and the father of gods, as well as men, which were in no respect impaired by crime, how Hector came to die, or Troy to fall. While the fall of Troy is justice, it does not seem to come about because it is agreeable to justice, but rather as the result of the balance of force among the gods, and of their remembrance of personal injuries. It appears all along, as though it were the right-mindedness of the Poet which keeps the wheels of the machine going, while those who should be the drivers are at fault.

[387]

Again, in the Odyssey, the Providence of the poem, if we may so speak, is on the side of Virtue; and a prosperous remainder of life, with a happy death, is promised to the hero. Of this providence Minerva, with the approval of Jupiter, is the wise and indefatigable organ. But while the general idea of providence moves in the right direction, the polytheistic formations work powerfully in a wrong one. David and his companions ate the show-bread in the temple, and were blameless, because it was to relieve a hunger that they had no other means of satisfying: but even impending famine does not excuse or palliate the offence of the companions of Ulysses, who use for food a portion of the oxen of the Sun. The jealousy and cruelty of Neptune, the gifts of Mercury to Autolycus, the savage crimes of Polyphemus, which do not detract from his relation to a deity of the highest rank, the disparagement of the highest human virtues in Calypso, the hostility to human peace and happiness in Circe and the Sirens, place the divine life of the Odyssey on a much lower level than the human and heroic, and to a certain extent depress by their admixture the sound ethical tone of the poem. All along, while Homer luxuriates, poetically, in the abundance and brilliancy of his materials, he has morally to repair their deficiencies, and to contend with and overrule their bias.

I cannot therefore but differ greatly from Nitzsch, who, in his Essay on the Anger of Neptune[760], seems to elevate it to the dignity of a providential resentment, and to conceive of the sufferings of Ulysses as a punishment for a moral offence in the treatment of Polyphemus. In this way I grant that a sort of[388] parallel is established between his case and the chastisements which Achilles receives in the Iliad, through the death of Patroclus, and the surrender of the body of Hector. Both heroes seem thus to stand upon a level: both favoured children of the gods, honoured in the main, but chastised for their faults. But even this seeming parallelism fails when we remember the respective sequels. The curtain of the Iliad falls on the eve of the premature death of Achilles: as that of the Odyssey is dropping over the head of Ulysses, we perceive, in perspective, the picture of his serene old age.

As regards the important question of purity, the impression made on my own mind in reading the poems of Homer is this: that, but for his mythology, they would have been unimpeachable, at least in one point of virtue; they would have been absolutely pure. Whatever is dissolute in their moral tendency as regards this particular subject, evidently and directly flows from that source. We rarely meet a sentiment that can arouse anything like revulsion: the worst by far that has struck me is the advice given to Achilles by his mother Thetis (Il. xxiv. 130), as a mode of solace for his grief. The narrative of the Net of Vulcan in the Odyssey is one, that Homer would have been far too modest to recite with reference to human beings: and the only other passage, which seems to be marked with a tinge of grossness, is that which relates to the stratagem of Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad.

We may, however, justly distinguish between the influence of mythology on the morality of the Poems, and its operation with regard to poetic effect. In this view the consequences of its introduction, though mixed, are upon the whole highly favourable. There is indeed more or less of descent from the usual gran[389]deur of Homer, when we find his deities mingling in actual conflict: because they never sustain in the field of battle a part at all corresponding to their celestial dignity and presumed power. Nor is the Theomachy proper, in the Twenty-first book of the Iliad, among the most successful parts of the poem. But the principal portion of their agency takes effect upon the elements or other material objects, or upon animals, or upon the human mind by way of influence and suggestion: and its tendency is in general to impart interest and variety, as well as poetic elevation, to the scenery and narrative. The plot of each epic is worked out simultaneously in two different forms upon two different arenas: in Olympus by divine counsel, and on earth by human effort and execution. Yet no confusion results from the double action, while the play and counterplay of the divine and human elements communicate a remarkable elasticity to the movement of the poems. Their value is particularly felt in the Iliad, which, from its limited scene and subject, lies in danger of the sameness which, by this means among others, it on the whole escapes. In particular, the relation between the assisting or patron deities, and the hero or protagonist of each poem, is conducted with great consistency and effect: but the most sublime uses of supernatural machinery to be found throughout the poems are those in which the traces of it are the most shadowy and faintly drawn. Take for example the manner in which Achilles is sent out unarmed to the field, and again, to the manner of his arming, in the Iliad: in the Odyssey, the wonderful picture of divine displeasure and incumbent malediction seeming to gather around and hem in the Suitors of Penelope, concurrently with the preparations for human vengeance: as if the scene[390] were too dark for eyes like theirs to catch the true meaning of these lowering signals, which give a gloomy but majestic sanction to the terrible swoop of retributive justice alighting upon crime.

It would be most interesting to pursue the comparison between the believing or credulous infancy of Paganism as we see it in Homer, and its cold and jealous decrepitude as we find it in the writers of its latest period, when the light of the lamp was fading before the already risen Sun.

In Homer we find the gods offering in their conduct every sort of example of weakness, passion, and fraud. But they take an active share in the government of the world, and men look up to them, collectively or individually, with more or less of confusion indeed, both intellectual and moral, but still truly and actually as exercising some sort of providential government over the world. The mythology of the time of Homer is a weak, faulty, and corrupt religion, I admit, but still it is a religion, a bond which associates man with the unseen world, and brings some, at least, of its influences to bear upon his conduct and character. And if the Greeks of Homer were not shocked by those immoralities of the Immortals which afterwards came to be thought intolerable, it was not because they were more impure than their posterity, for they were far purer: but the principle of belief in the invisible was in them alike lively and inconsequent; and it was not yet even conscious of a load which, in later times, with enfeebled force, and an augmented critical activity, it could not carry.

In the time of Plutarch, about one hundred years after our Lord’s nativity, we find the change complete. There was now no principle of belief in men’s minds which could endure either the good or the evil of the ancient[391] system: and a quickened intelligence, as well as the streaming in of rays from Revelation, had made the human intellect more painfully alive to its moral solecisms, without rendering it able to suggest a remedy. Accordingly, Plutarch relieves the Homeric deities from the faults imputed to them by saying, that the Poet has made use of these fictions to excite the fancy[761]: ἐκεῖνα πέπλασται πρὸς ἐκπλῆξιν ἀνθρώπων. Or, again, it was, he says[762], because the name of Τύχη, Fortune or Chance, was not yet in use, that men referred to the gods what they did not know how to account for in any other manner. Alas for mankind! sad is the state of those, who must reckon the invention of that name among their blessings. In the fact, however, that Homer and his age knew nothing of the word or the idea, he discloses to us one of the many points in which infancy is practically wiser than old age. Let us, Plutarch goes on to say, cure these errors by other passages of the Poet in which he gives us the truth, the ὑγιαίνουσαι περὶ θεῶν δόξαι καὶ ἀληθεῖς: but the passages, which he cites with this view, are not passages where the deities are represented as in any active relations of good towards the world: they are simply those which exhibit them as living in a repose undisturbed by care, while they leave for us a destiny of trouble: they are those which relate to the θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες, the αὐτοὶ δέ τ’ ἀκηδέες εἰσίν. Stripped of active vice, but yet not adorned with virtue, they become merely cold and selfish, hopeless and inaccessible abstractions.

There is in all this a certain logical sequence. The starting point is that of belief in a moral Governor of the universe, good himself, and enjoining goodness upon others. But his own goodness fails, and his[392] agency among men for the original purpose becomes more and more feeble and equivocal, while the human intellect, sharpened by discussion, and puffed up with knowledge, or with the supposition and phantasm of it, becomes more and more exacting: so that the abstract gods in Cicero are (without doubt) far more elevated than the personal gods of Homer. But they are mere works of art: and, after all, the personal gods of Homer were the only ones that had been really worshipped by men: and when their case becomes so bad that they can no longer be exhibited to the people as rulers of the world, a refuge is found in the Epicurean theory, which relegates them to a heaven of enjoyment and abundance, and on pretence of mental ease denies them any prerogative of intervention in human affairs[763]. The gain of more careful and comprehensive theory is much more than counterbalanced by the practical loss of the personal element, and therefore of the belief in a real Providence, overseeing the affairs of men. So the next onward step is to the doctrine of the Academicians. In the De Naturâ Deorum, where that sect is represented by Cotta in the discussion with the champions of the Epicureans and the Stoics, Cicero himself, and the ruling tendency, if not opinion, of his day, are evidently exhibited to us under Cotta’s name. The transition now made is from gods with a sinecure to no gods at all: and Paganism ends in nullity, just as a moving mass finds its final equilibrium in repose.

Even while heroic Greece and its great Poet existed, the deepest problems of our being were far too dark for man to penetrate. The picture which I have rudely[393] drawn, and which is not wholly a joyless picture, was liable to be blackened, even for this world, by many a storm of crime and of calamity; at the very best it was a picture for this world only, for the mortality and not the immortality of man. But that scene has its close: and most touching it is to see that, with all his creative power, with all his imaginative brightness, with all the advantage he derived from living in the youth of the world, before mankind had fully sounded the depth of their own fall, or had begun to accumulate the sad records of their miseries and crimes; even Homer could not solve the enigma of our condition, or disperse the clouds that gathered round our destiny. There are two profoundly memorable passages in the poems, which have set their double seal on this truth. One of them is in the Odyssey: it is a confession from the mouth of that Achilles, in whose mind and person, as they are delineated by Homer, our humanity has been carried perhaps to a higher point of grandeur, than it has ever since attained. ‘Do not, illustrious Ulysses, do not palter with me about death,’ says the mournful shade. ‘Rather would I serve for hire under a master, aye and a needy master, upon the face of earth, than be lord of the whole world of the departed[764]:’

A trail of heavenly light indeed so far played upon the heroic world, that we hear of those few who had already been translated to the skies; and of two more, one a son of Jupiter, already in the peaceful Elysian plains,[394] and the other Menelaus, who, as his daughter’s husband, was likewise to be carried thither on his decease. But it is the mouth of Achilles, the illustrious, the godlike Achilles, which here utters, in tones so deeply mournful, the common voice of the children of Adam.

It was the very same conclusion which, as we find in another place[765], this favoured mortal had formed on earth.

The second passage is one spoken by Jupiter himself. As the commonest epithets used by Homer for βροτοὶ, mortals, are δειλοὶ and οἰζυροὶ, so the highest god lays down the law of their condition, describing it as that than which there is nothing more wretched among all that live and move upon the earth[766]:

Such as we have seen, and so glorious, was the wisdom, and the valour, and the beauty, and the power, that dwelt in man; but only that through life he might, upon the whole, be paramount in woe above all meaner creatures, and then that he might die in a gloom unrelieved by hope. None have illustrated this piercing truth by contrasts so sharp as Homer, between the chill and dismal tone of the general destiny of man on the one hand, and on the other, the joy and cheerfulness which the effort of an elastic spirit can for a time create. But the woe which he could only exhibit, it was reserved for One greater than he, yet only by sorrow and suffering, to remove.

I have forborne in this Essay from entering at large into the often agitated question, whether Homer believed in the deities of whom he speaks so largely.[395] He may express his own childlike creed; and such a creed by no means requires for its support in the individual mind, that it should have been visibly represented by facts within its own experience. Or he may use as the material of poetry that which, without approving itself to his own heart, was, nevertheless, to his hearers in general, a real and substantial system of religion. Nay, he might even be dealing with what had ceased to be believed in his day, but had still a retrospective life, because it had been the hearty, and was still the conventional, worship of the people. The truth may lie in, or it may lie between, any of these suppositions. The one thing of which I feel most assured is, that he was not, as to his religion, a mere allegorist when speaking of his Jupiter and Minerva, any more than he was a mere hypocrite, when he ascribed occurrences in human life to Providence under the name of ‘the deity,’ or ‘the deities.’ He represents what either was or had been, for his people, a belief in the unseen under particular forms, and what still in some way represented a reality for them and for himself. It is this belief of which I have spoken throughout, and which, under any of the suppositions I have made, seems to me to warrant all the stress I have laid upon it.

To attempt a formal solution of the question, whether he believed or not in the dress of his religion, as well as in the religion itself, would, I fear, be frivolous. It is a case in some degree parallel to the disputes whether Shakspeare adhered, in the controversies of the sixteenth century, to the side of the Romish or the Reformed. Neither Shakspeare nor Homer ought to be judged as if they had been theologians ex professo. Both followed the law of their sublime art,[396] and represented in forms of beauty and delight, or of majesty and gloom, as the case required, such materials as they found ready to hand. Critical analysis, nice equipoises, strict definitions, were for neither the one nor the other. But in the works of neither do the cold tones of scepticism find an echo: and probably the mental frame of both with reference to the substance of their religion may have been not very different from that of the poor, the maidens, and the children of their day.

[397]

Let me now attempt to divide the principal deities of Homer with reference to their origin, or to the channel of their introduction into Greece; premising, however, that all such classification of them is admitted to be founded upon evidence, at best presumptive, and often also slight.

The classes will be as follows:

1. Of those who were worshipped by the Hellenic and Pelasgian races, and probably by all others known in the inner Homeric world.

These were,

• 1. Jupiter.
• 2. Minerva.
• 3. Apollo.
• 4. Latona.
• 5. Diana.
• 6. Neptune.

The three first of these may be considered as deities of immemorial and universal worship. Neptune was far more Hellenic than Pelasgian: and indeed his place in the list is doubtful.

2. Of immemorial Hellenic worship.

• 1. Juno.
• 2. Persephone.
• 3. Pluto or Aidoneus.

3. Of established Pelasgian worship.

• 1. Demeter or Ceres.
• 2. Venus, more recent than the former.

[398]4. Of worship introduced to the Greek races within the memory of man.

a. Brought in from Phœnicia, or through the channel of the Phœnicians.

• 1. Hermes, or Mercury.
• 2. Hephæstus, or Vulcan.
• 3. Dionysus, or Bacchus.

b. From Thrace.

• Mars.

c. Paieon has no note of country, except in so far as he may be connected with Egypt by the declaration that the Egyptians were of his race.

Ἠέλιος, the Sun, appears to be placed in connection, by the various notes he bears, both with Egypt and with the Persian name.

All these deities were, with some others, more or less naturalized among the Greeks within Homer’s lifetime. Themis was probably a pure Hellenic creation, as Vesta seems to have been Pelasgian: the latter exhibiting the genius of domestic order, the former, its fuller development in political society. But Vesta is, though an Homeric idea, not an Homeric goddess.

Now while Homer fails, or more probably avoids, to give us any direct information about the derivation of the Greek races or deities, he notwithstanding establishes by partial and incidental notices many traces of exterior affinity, not always the less secure and trustworthy because they are negative.

While going through the divinities in detail, I have remarked upon such traits of their character, history, or worship, as appeared to connect them with any particular origin; but the question remains, can we find, through however rude a resemblance, any general model abroad for the Olympian system, or, in the absence of[399] such a model, any presumptive evidence from Homer, which may serve to connect it with any national or local root or roots in particular?

It is well worthy of remark, that he has associated the body of the Greek deities, as a body, with one, and one only, point, exterior to the Greek nation. That point is the country of the Ethiopians.

Homer has shown a peculiar interest in these Ethiopians. They are ἀμύμονες: an epithet which he appears to connect especially with purity of blood. In the First Iliad, the whole body of the gods are absent from Olympus for eleven days, to enjoy the sacrifices offered by that people. In the Twenty-second Iliad, the statement is less express as to time; but again they are apparently enjoying themselves in the same quarter, during the funeral rites of Patroclus, and Iris is in haste to go thither, that she may not lose her share. In the First Odyssey, Neptune is among the same people for the same purpose, while the other deities are in Olympus. In the Fifth Odyssey, he is coming from among them, when he espies Ulysses on his raft. The time intervening is so considerable, that we must presume the two last-mentioned passages to refer to two separate visits.

The following points may be considered as established:

1. The Ethiopians, visited as above, must be supposed by Homer in the main to worship the same body of deities as the Greeks.

2. The Ethiopians extend from the rising to the setting sun; but those Ethiopians of whom Homer speaks particularly, are in connection with sacrifices in the East; for the Solyman mountains[767], as conceived by him, probably border upon Lycia, and they are on Nep[400]tune’s route[768], from the Ethiopian country back to the sea, which, as I hope to show elsewhere, runs along the double line of the Mediterranean and the Euxine.

3. They are further fixed in a southern country by their name, which indicates darkness or swarthiness of countenance, and by the visit of Menelaus to them in the course of his adventures, which lay exclusively to the southward.

4. They are evidently distinguished by great liberality or high favour in the sacrificial service of the gods.

5. They are defined to be by the Ocean, and thus in the farthest situation to the South-east that was conceived of by Homer and the Greeks.

6. At the same time, although they are the farthest men in that direction[769], they are nowhere described as lying at a very great absolute distance. They are simply τηλόθ’ ἐόντες.

Now it is not only possible, but on every ground likely, that in his conception of the South-eastern Ethiopians, Homer mixed up together various traditions, belonging to different places and nations. Even as, in his conception of the Mouth of Ocean, which is with him always one single mouth, he seems to have blended and amalgamated geographical reports founded upon more than one original, or prototype, in nature.

The Solyman name has suggested to some critics a connection with the Salem of the Hebrews. But the name is much more likely to be derived from the Soliman Koh, a ridge of mountains running to the south-west from Caubul, and sometimes defined as extending into Persia. The liberality in sacrifice ill accords with the early Persian religion, but finds a probable original in that of the Medes with their order of[401] Magians. But upon the whole, it would seem that Homer must have had a reason for the peculiar prominence he has given to these South-eastern Ethiopians, in connection with the gods of Olympus; for the association, unless suggested by a reason, is neither natural, nor in the manner of the Poet. Could it have been any other than this, that he regarded their country, however indeterminate its place in his imagination, as the original seat of the religion of his own, and that he therefore referred it thither bodily without notice of details? Now this would mean as the original seat, also, of the ancestors of the Hellenic tribes. We are not, in the event of accepting such a supposition, to imagine that he intended to make the assertion that the Olympian system had been derived from Persia and Media as it stood, but only to imply that there, according to national tradition, lay its root. The Trojans, it will be remembered, have their not Olympian but Idæan Jove: and the Ethiopians are the only foreign race, with whom he associates Olympus and its band of Immortals.

I have already stated elsewhere grounds for supposing that the Achæans, as they were immediately an Hellenic, were also primarily, as well as the other Hellenes, a Persian race. We have seen the existence of the Persian name in Greece, and its connection, according to Homer, with what Homer thought the remotest East, by the shore of Ocean. We have also seen its connection with the Sun, the prime deity of the Persians. This visible head of creation, standing next to the Supreme Being, we find that the Greeks speedily identify with their Apollo, who is so prominent as the son of Jupiter, in dignity, in obedience, and in his father’s favour, as to stand in a class entirely distinct from that of his other sons.

[402]

On the one hand, we seem to find here matter confirmatory of the Persian origin of the Hellenic tribes; and on the other, a general indication of the derivation of the earliest Greek religion from a certain part of the East. But still we must beware of any over-broad inference. The religion, it is likely, grew largely as it travelled, and was developed freely after it had reached its home in the Greek peninsula. And it would be contrary to all reason to suppose that Homer was in a condition to refer back to each of the Eastern races their proper contribution towards the aggregate, though we may justly suppose him able to draw some kind of line between the system as it was flourishing in Greece, with all its additions, elaborations and refinements, and the crude undigested materials as they had been imported from abroad; perhaps we might say, between the system as he found it, and the same system as he left it.

Considering, however, that Homer had a quasi-geographical knowledge of Egypt, I do not suppose that that country enters at all into his conception of the Ethiopians. If so, then the representation of an unity of religion with the Ethiopians, affords a presumption, conformable undoubtedly to such other presumptions as we have been able to gather from the poems, that Homer did not regard Egypt as the principal source of the religious system of Greece.

I do not pretend to find, in any ancient system handed down to us, even a skeleton of the Olympian scheme; and I conclude it to be most probable, that the Greeks had to form, or to reform, various members of it, as well as merely to clothe and embellish them. Yet it appears well worth while to refer to the account of the Scythian religion given by Herodotus,[403] whose works form the great depository of knowledge of this kind beyond the borders of Greece.

The ordinary Scythians, it will be remembered, seem to be of the same race with the Medes, and to form the stock from which the Pelasgians separated to turn towards the south of Europe for settlements. They lived in that pastoral state, anterior to tillage, which Mommsen observes, through the forms of the Latin language, to have marked the point before the severance[770]. From the sign of feeding on milk, the Glactophagi and Hippemolgi of Il. xiii. 5, 6, would appear to belong to them, and the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians are also represented in the character that Homer gives, in the same passage, to their neighbours the Abians.

The gods of the Scythians, according to Herodotus[771], were:

• 1. Vesta.
• 2. Jupiter.
• 3. Earth, the supposed wife of Jupiter.
• 4. Apollo.
• 5. Celestial Venus.
• 6. Hercules.
• 7. Mars.

Even in this very late picture, we find a strong resemblance to what, from the Homeric text, would appear to have been the primitive cluster of the Pelasgian divinities. Earth is represented in Demeter, (Γῆ μήτηρ,) who appears in Il. xiv. 326 as one of the wives of Jupiter. The Celestial Venus may include traditions of Minerva, and of Artemis,—for the Scythians called her Artimpasa,—along with those which came to be represented in the Greek Ἀφροδίτη. All the deities, which from Homer’s text have appeared to be especially Hellenic, are also, it will be observed, absent from this[404] list: Juno, Neptune, Aidoneus, Persephone, Vulcan, and Mercury.

But there were among these Scythians a tribe, called the Βασιλήϊοι Σκύθαι. It would seem plain from the name, that these must have held among the Scythians a position, in great measure analogous to that of the Hellenic tribes among the mass of the Pelasgian population. And certainly it is not a little curious, that these kingly Scythians added to the list of properly Pelasgian deities the worship of Thamimasidas, a god of the sea, apparently equivalent to the Hellenic Poseidon.

Again, let us take the account given by Herodotus of the information he obtained in Egypt about the Greek mythology. He states to us that, with certain exceptions, the names of the Greek deities had been known in Egypt from time immemorial. His exceptions are, Neptune and Juno, the Dioscuri, Vesta, Themis, the Graces and the Nereids. The statement may at least be accepted as good to this extent, that the deities here named were not drawn from Egypt. They include, as will be seen, only one personification of an idea which we have found cause to consider Pelasgian, namely, Ἱστίη or home; with this Neptune and Juno, who were Hellic deities; the Dioscouroi, representing in an early stage the deification of national heroes; the Graces, or the impersonations of ideas; and the Nereids, or the personification of natural objects. All of these persons and processes we have already referred to the influence of the Hellic tribes.

Upon the whole, we appear to have in these accounts a much clearer representation of the contribution made by the Pelasgian part of the nation to the Olympian system than we can find gathered elsewhere. The[405] Egyptian resemblances are chiefly isolated, though it may have been from that quarter that Pelasgian Attica learned the name and worship of the deity, which was afterwards developed into the Homeric Pallas-Athene: but among these Scythians we appear to find a group, who exhibit to us in combination nearly all that we have reason to believe specially Pelasgian, and, with the obscure exception of Hercules, nothing besides. While this group, as being Scythian, would have the Arian country for its point of origin, it may still be probable that other parts of the Olympian religion, besides the worship of Neptune, such as the Juno and the Persephone in particular, had come from the ‘Kingly’ Arians of the hills.

Thus far as to the relation between the Homeric theo-mythology and any religious system or combination to be found elsewhere. Let us now consider how it stands with reference to each of the principal elements, out of which the religions of the world were habitually formed.

There appear to be four leading forms in which, either single or combined, religion has attracted, and more or less commanded, the mind of man. It is scarcely needful to add that one alone of these is genuine, and that the three others are essentially depraved, and finally self-destructive.

The first is the worship of the Divine Being: of which the Holy Scriptures form, down to the period with which they close, the principal record.

The second is the worship of man; founded, of course, upon his deification. Of this the Greek mythology affords the most conspicuous and weighty instance.

The third is the worship of external and inanimate[406] nature, which I mention next, not because of its place in the order of ideas, but because of its great extension and influence over races of vast numerical strength, antiquity, and importance.

The fourth is the worship of the inferior creation, or of animate nature in its lower ranks.

We have considered, in a former section, how far the Greek mythology was indebted to the first of these sources, the true and pure one.

The second, or anthropophuism, appears to have formed its most proper and distinctive characteristic. Further, it was the intellectual rather than the carnal nature of man, which originally determined a law for the construction of the Olympian system. The great traditive deities were remodelled according to what Scripture calls the ‘lust of the mind,’ long before the ‘lust of the flesh’ had touched them. We see, too, that, of the deities of invention, those which were purely Hellenic, such as Juno and Themis in particular, represent either noble and commanding, or else pure, ideas, connected with the development of human life and society; while it is generally in deities that have not undergone a full Hellenic remodelling, that we see animal passion prevail; such as Mars, Venus, Ceres, and Aurora.

The third basis of religion is admirably described, together with its apology, and its condemnation, in the Book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon[772]:

And then the Wise Man proceeds to show, that far inferior, again, to this, is the worship of mere images as gods.

The worship of the elemental powers enters, I think, only as a very secondary ingredient into the Homeric or Olympian system: it is everywhere surmounted and circumscribed by developments drawn from tradition or from the principle of anthropophuism.

It is true that most of the great physical agents are either personified by him, or else are in immediate connection with some one of his deities: but there is every appearance that the Greeks sometimes expelled, sometimes reduced and depressed the principle of Nature-worship, in their adaptation of foreign materials to Hellenic uses.

1. Jupiter and Neptune, as we have seen, preside over elements, but they are not elemental. Their relations to air and sea are entirely different from those of Vulcan to fire, and yet even he very greatly transcends the dimensions of a merely elemental god. Their brotherhood with Aidoneus, who is not elemental at all, indicates, together with all other signs, that the air and[408] sea are their respective territories, and are not the basis of their divinity.

2. It seems quite impossible but that, if Nature-worship had been the basis of the system, the Sun, as the visible king of nature, must have had a prominent and commanding position in the system; whereas his place in Homer is even less than secondary. Looking at the realm of nature, to search out a varied organism, which would supply a powerful apparatus of instruments operative upon man to a presiding intelligence, the Greek naturally made Ζεὺς the king of Air. But had he merely wanted a symbol by which nature itself was to speak, how could he have forborne to choose the Sun?

3. There is, indeed, an extended use in Homer of the imagery of Nature-Powers. But however prominent as poetry, this is altogether subordinate as religion. His Nymphs and River-gods people the unseen, adorn his verse, and even supply a kind of drapery to the scheme of religious observances; but it is not by them that the world is governed. And with them may very well be classed, as far as the present argument is concerned, the crowd of Homer’s metaphysical impersonations.

4. That Neptune in particular is not properly an elemental power, seems to be made clear by three things at the least:

a. He can act by land as well as sea; witness his building the wall of Troy, and appearing as a warrior on the battle-field.

b. The θάλασσα, with which he is connected, is decidedly inferior, in its merely elemental character, to Oceanus; yet Oceanus has no share in the government of the world, and no moral personality, while Neptune has equal dignity with Jupiter, and is not far behind him in strength.

[409]

c. The true elemental gods of the θάλασσα, it is plain, according to Homer, are Nereus and Amphitrite; of whom the first is locally confined to the depths of the sea, and the other is scarcely a person, and cannot ideally be disengaged from the curly-headed billows.

5. In the Olympian Court, which is the real centre, according to Homer, of the government of the world, there is scarcely to be found a pure example of a Nature-power; there is no one leading deity, in whom that idea is not wholly subordinate; and in many of the leading deities, such as Minerva, Apollo, and even Juno, it is hardly to be perceived at all.

6. As to Juno in particular. When we compare the Greek with the Eastern religions, it appears that, if the former had been conceived in the same spirit as the latter, Juno ought to have been the earth, continually impregnated by the heaven, and yielding those fruits which would then stand as the proper results of her maternity.

But instead of this, in the great lottery of the universe, earth is actually left out, and remains undisposed of. It never appears in Homer, except in a formula of adjuration, in which we may naturally enough look to find antique ideas; and this seems like a stray vestige of another system, really founded on Nature-worship. But there Γαῖα remains, so far as the Greeks are concerned, isolated and undeveloped.

Meantime, for the vegetative life of Earth, wedded to the Heavens, and bearing herbs and fruits, the Greek mind substitutes the intelligent life of a Queen-divinity, who with her husband becomes the nucleus of the Olympian order, and marks the transition from elemental religion to anthropophuism.

There is then a greatly qualified sense, in which[410] assent may be given to the proposition, that the Olympian dynasty of Homer sits enthroned upon the ruins of a more ancient Nature-worship, and the sense is this: that, before Hellenism had an historical existence, there were systems founded on Nature-worship in the east; that these systems were tributary to the religion of Olympus, and that its framers made such use of them as they found convenient.

But from Homer we are not authorized to believe that such a system of Nature-worship ever preceded in Greece the Olympian system. On the contrary, the Κρόνος and Ῥέα, the Oceanus and Tethys of Homer, appear to be younger and not older than his chief Olympian gods; that is, they appear to be metaphysical creations, called into being to supply an ideal basis, a matrix or mould, walled in with time and space, for Jupiter and his wife and brothers to be cast in.

It is not before, but after the time of Homer, namely, in Hesiod, that we see such development given to this pseudo-archaic system as can alone allow it to be taken for the image of something that had really existed as a religion. For example, it would be quite out of keeping with the tone of Homer were we to find in him the sentiment which is contained in a fragment of Euripides[773];

We have still to consider the relation of the Olympian scheme to the last of the four στοιχεῖα. The principle of brute-worship was so marked a characteristic of the Egyptian idolatry, that it seems to lie at the very foundation of the system. Perhaps we should be justified in associating with this principle the inability of the[411] Egyptians to attain to any high conceptions of beauty. They scarcely could soar in this respect above the standard of that which they regarded as a tabernacle meet for divinity to dwell in.

The same principle appears to have found its way into Persia probably at a late date, and from the Median, not the Eteo-persian, source of the religious traditions of the country. Malcolm[774] has given us the copies, from remains found in the country, of the Persian representations, probably however late ones, of their divinities, exhibiting strange mixtures of human form with that of the brute.

It would therefore be wonderful if we failed to find in the Greek mythology some traces, however faint, of an element that not only existed in Asia, but displayed so much vigour there, as to have entered deeply into the religion that even now sways a considerable portion of its population, if not, indeed, to form the one really capital and operative article of that religion.

Döllinger[775] has noted the points connected with the state and being of animals, which might suggest ideas capable of being developed into this repulsive system. Such are the unity and tranquillity of animal life—it being borne in mind that domesticated animals were those which supplied the chief type of deity. Such, again, is the instinct of the future, bearing a nearer outward resemblance to foreknowledge than would any anticipations founded on forethought, reasoning, and experience. Above all, there seems to be force in the remark that man, by his marked individuality, and by the freedom of the will, is, as it were, disabled from becoming the mere organ of another existence. The[412] gods in assuming human form, assumed in a great degree human nature also. But the passive and neutral nature of animals offered itself as a medium without taste or colour, such as needed not in any manner to alter or modify the powers of which it was to be the vehicle.

Had the idea been in its origin that of an inherent sacredness of animals as such, it is not probable that we should have seen such extraordinary anomalies in its development as those which permitted the same animal to be adored in one province of Egypt, and immolated in the next[776].

The grossness of brute-worship was completely refined away by the Greeks during the process of transfer to their own mythology. The vestiges of the system, and they are no more than vestiges, still traceable in the Homeric poems, are apparently as follows:

1. I find the chief note of it in the extraordinary sacredness of the oxen of the Sun: a sacredness inconsistent and inexplicable, if it be tried only by the circumjacent incidents of the Odyssey, and by the laws of the Greek mythology.

The offence of the crew of Ulysses consisted simply in this; that[777], after exhausting every effort to maintain themselves, when they have at length no alternative before them except that of starving, they consumed some of the best among these oxen for food. They observed, as far as they could, all the proper religious rites, but they used leaves instead of barley, and water for wine, inasmuch as neither of the usual requisites were forthcoming. They promised a temple also to the Sun, to be built on their return, and to be enriched with abundant votive offerings. Lastly, I think,[413] any one who reads the manly and just speech of Eurylochus, in which he proposes the sacrilege, will judge that the sympathies of the Poet are with him. In this speech, he states the necessity; he next proceeds to vow the erection of a temple, and dedication of its ornaments in the event of safe return. Then he concludes by declaring, that if vengeance is, notwithstanding, to be taken on them, he for his part would far rather die once for all like a man than famish in the solitary island. There is not in the tone of the speech the slightest indication of impiety[778].

The terrible punishment inflicted was prefigured by extraordinary portents. The empty hides of the animals crawled about[779], and the flesh lowed on the very spits. Here we see at its climax the fine Greek imagination, working upon the foundation supplied by the Egyptian superstition, and extracting from the coarsest earthy matter the means of true poetical sublimity.

It is impossible to conceive a case, in which the offence committed is more exclusively of the kind termed positive, or more entirely severed from moral guilt, until we include the element to which the poems do not expressly refer, of the elevated sanctity attaching to the animal itself. The Homeric fiction is[780], that they were the playthings of the Sun in his leisure hours. But to forbid the use of any of these animals for food, even under the direst necessity, would have been simply to caricature the nature of positive commands, in the very same spirit as that which would have had, not the sabbath made for man, but man made for the sabbath. Still, when once we let in the assumption that these animals had essen[414]tially sacred lives, which might not be taken away, then the offence becomes a moral one of frightful profanation, and the vengeance so rigorously exacted is intelligible.

I do not mean that Homer recognises that dogma which the Egyptians then affirmed, and which at this present epoch, after the lapse of three thousand years, has wrought myriads of Hindoos to madness. The religion of Greece included no such idea, and the religious practice of the Greeks wholly precluded it. But in this instance we see a part of the Egyptian religion in transitu, in the very process of transmutation that it was to undergo when passing into the Greek mythology, which utterly repudiated its substance, but strove to retain an image of it under poetic forms, betraying by their inconsistency their exotic origin.

The consummation of the whole tale lies in this: that the vengeance is not the mere personal act of the Sun, but is inflicted by Jupiter himself on behalf of the whole Olympian Court, to which the appeal had been already made[781].

2. Another instance, confirmatory of the statement of Döllinger as to the rationale of brute-worship, is to be found in the curious passage of the Iliad where Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, is endowed with speech. The gift is from Juno, but the limit of the gift is carefully defined[782]:

It was utterance that Juno gave, not intelligence. The matter to be spoken was not a gift. The horse proceeds, evidently by a native insight into the future, to intimate to Achilles his coming fate; at first more darkly (v. 409); but when he comes nearer the point[415] and glances at a man as the ordained instrument of doom (416),

then, I suppose lest the animal should proceed to particularize, and, though prophetic yet unwise, should break the current of the hero’s thought and action at the critical moment by naming Paris—the Ἐρινύες are made to interfere; they restore the order of nature, and stay the exercise of Juno’s irregular and abnormal gift.

3. The immortality of these horses is probably conceived in the same spirit. We may the more easily understand it to be a poetical rendering of the Egyptian belief in the divinity of many animals, when we recollect that exemption from death is, with Homer, the one and perhaps only essential characteristic of deity, so that his gods are ordinarily defined by it as ἀθάνατοι.

4. We have another indication of relation to the same ideas, in the assumption by deities of the forms of various birds: namely, by Minerva, as Od. i. 320; iii. 372; Il. vii. 59; Od. xxii. 240; by Apollo, Il. vii. 59; by Sleep, Il. xiv. 290; and by Ino Leucothee, Od. v. 353. In this instance we again see the refining power of the Greek imagination. It is only the forms of birds which are assumed by Homeric deities: creatures more ethereal, though not more intellectual, than the other brute races; and whose figure, when assumed, at once bestows in visible form an attribute of high superiority to man, namely, the increased facility and speed of locomotion.

5. One or two other traces may be suggested, but they are slighter and more dubious. It is possible that Homer drew from this source the Olympian horses of Juno (Il. v. 720, 768–72) and the sea-horses of Nep[416]tune (Il. xiii. 23). A similar notion may be involved, when the Poet makes Apollo stoop to feed the horses of Admetus in Pieria, and the oxen of Laomedon on Ida (Il. ii. 766, and xxi. 448). The serpent (δρακὼν) appears in Homeric portents as a symbol, but without peculiar meaning.

The horse was not one of the sacred animals of Egypt; and when Homer placed it in such near relations with deity, as he has done in these places and elsewhere, he may not only have indulged a personal predilection, but he also may have been converting the crudity of Egyptian material to the form and uses of the Greek religion, in the normal exercise of his vocation.

One concluding word may be said in extenuation of the indignity which, according to our ideas, attaches to the worship of the inferior animals. In the worship of the elemental powers we see error, but in the worship of beasts we see shame, and even brutality. Perhaps this distinction may be due as much to pride as to pious susceptibility.

Over animals, man has thoroughly obtained the mastery; but Elemental powers are still in many cases masters over us, and we lie like babes in the lap of their strength and vastness. It does not appear clear why we should consider the worship of that which is more highly organized, and which comes half-way to intelligence, as essentially more shameful than the worship of inferior organizations without life or instinct of any kind. If it be said that, by its negations, inanimate Nature becomes a fitter shrine of deity than the brutes, the same argument applied to the brutes, compared with man, might equally avail to give claims to brute-worship as compared with anthropophuism, against which, notwithstanding, nature summarily revolts.

[417]

We have now considered at some length the state and tendencies of religion, both objective and subjective, among the Greeks of the heroic age: let us proceed to attempt a sketch of their morality; which rested in part upon acknowledged relations to the Olympian deities, but which, it is clear, had likewise other supports and sanctions.

In general outline it may be thus summed up. An high spirited, energetic, adventurous, and daring people, they show themselves prone to acts of hasty violence, and their splendid courage occasionally even degenerates, under the influence of strong passion, into ferocity, while their acuteness and sagacity sometimes, though more rarely, take a decided tinge of cunning. Yet they are neither selfish, cruel, nor implacable. At the same time, self-command is scarcely less conspicuous among them than strong, and deep, and quick emotion. They are in the main a people of warm affections and high honour, commonly tender, never morbid: they respect the weak and the helpless; they hold authority in reverence; domestic purity too is cherished and esteemed among them more than elsewhere, and they have not yet fallen into the depths of sensual excess.

The Greek thanks the gods in his prosperity; witness[418] Laertes. In his adversity he appeals to them for aid; or, if he is discontented, he complains of them; for he harbours no concealed dissatisfaction. Ready enough to take from those who have, he is at least as ready to give to those who need. He represents to the life the sentiment which another great master of manners has given to his Duke of Argyle, in the ‘Heart of Midlothian;’ ‘It is our Highland privilege to take from all what we want, and to give to all what they want[783].’ Distinctions of class are recognised, but they are mild and genial: there is no arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the other. Reverence is paid to those in authority; and yet the Greek thinks in the spirit, and moves in the sphere, of habitual freedom. Over and above his warmth and tenacity in domestic affections, he prizes highly those other special relations between man and man, which mitigate and restrain the law of force in societies as yet imperfectly organized. He thoroughly admires the intelligence displayed in stratagem; whether among the resources of self-defence, or by way of jest upon a friend, or for the hurt or ruin of an enemy; but life in a mask he cannot away with, and holds it a prime article of his creed, that the tongue should habitually represent the man[784].

Before proceeding, however, to examine the morality of the Greek heroic age, as to its particular sanctions, or in any of its applications to the regulation of human conduct, we are met by a preliminary question: had the Greeks any idea of a fixed and substantive rule of morals at all? were they believers in goodness as apart from strength? did they recognise a law of right as between man and man, or were their notions of relative[419] duty entirely founded on a more or less far-sighted self-love, and on a prudential calculation of the consequences which would follow to society, and to each individual, if the rights of others were to be held in universal or in general disregard?

When we consider how hard it is to keep the moral standard high, even after religion has placed before our view a Divine pattern for man to follow, and how among the Greeks religion, first corrupted itself, had already begun to pour out its own corruption upon morals, we shall not venture to pitch our expectations very high: optimism and pessimism are here alike out of place: we want the clear, dispassionate, and direct discernment of the facts. And when we observe how, down to this day, the epithets which ought to designate virtue only, and in particular the word good, tend irresistibly to attach themselves to other gifts, such as genius, rank, wealth, skill, and power, we must not hastily conclude, from finding a similar use in Homer, that there was no idea or standard of goodness except that belonging to preeminence in the particular kind, according to which a clever thief is a good thief; good, that is, by doing effectually what he professes to do, or good, like the unjust steward of the parable, in respect of the intelligence he displays, though evil in respect of the direction which he gives to it[785].

Homer, in speaking of different classes of society, uses the line[786],

But after all we can translate this, without much verbal change, or any departure from our own idiom, ‘such services as the lower orders render to good society,’ or ‘to the better classes.’

[420]

Mr. Grote[787] says, that ‘the primitive import’ of the words ἀγαθὸς, ἐσθλὸς, and κακὸς relates ‘to power and not to worth;’ and that the ethical meaning of them is a later growth, which ‘hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted by his disciples.’ I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and wrong, which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward, and not upward. It is admitted, that what we may call the dynamical sense of the epithets has held its ground in later times along with their ethical signification: the important question to be determined is, whether the latter signification was an improvement introduced by civilization into the code of barbarism, or whether it indicates a principle of human nature on its better, which is also its weaker side, and one which we see, all along the course of history, struggling to assert itself against the tyrannous invasion of other propensities and powers.

The word ἐσθλὸς is found in combination with what is absolutely vicious, in the remarkable case of Autolycus:

But the meaning of ἐσθλὸς appears to be, one who excels; the application of it to Autolycus is not at all unlike the commendation of the unjust steward; and the epithet did not in the later Greek acquire any essentially different force, or any exclusive appropriation to moral excellence. Its use in Homer may be compared with his application of δῖα to Clytemnestra. Yet[421] it leans peculiarly to moral excellence. For the ἀμύμων is opposed to the ἀπηνὴς, who is certainly a moral delinquent; and the highest honour of the ἀμύμων is, that men proclaim him ἐσθλός (Od. xix. 329–34).

Again, with respect to χείρων and its opposite κρείσσων, with other words similar to both. In searching for the signs of a standard in its own nature absolute, we can expect little from a class of terms, which by their very structure bear witness that they are simply comparative. Especially the etymology of χείρων, directing us to the word χεὶρ as its root, exhibits force as its most commanding and essential idea. Yet, when the aristocracy of Ithaca are called (Od. xxi. 325) πολὺ χείρονες ἄνδρες, must we not admit that even in this word there inheres a strong moral element?

But as to the words ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, the case is far more clear: and here I ask, can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ἀγαθὸς to that which is morally bad? or the word κακὸς to that which is morally good? If it can, cadit quæstio; if it cannot, then we have advanced a considerable way in proving the ethical signification. For it is on all hands admitted, that besides their proper sense, ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, like our good and bad, have a derivative meaning, in which they are employed to denote what is agreeable, or what is preeminent in its kind, and the reverse respectively; qualities which bear an analogy to goodness on the one hand, and to badness on the other, according to the universal testimony of human speech. Now, if the use of this derivative sense stops short, in the case of ἀγαθὸς, when it comes to border on what is positively bad, and in the case of κακὸς, when it comes to touch upon what is positively good, there must be a reason for the abrupt cessation, at that point, of the function of the words; and it can be none other than that nature herself[422] revolts from a contradiction in terms; as we never say a good villain, or a bad saint. But the contradiction would not exist, unless the ethical sense were inherent in the words.

Now, I venture to state, with as much confidence as can well exist in the case of a negative embracing such a number of instances, that we do find this limitation throughout the poems of Homer, in the secondary use both of ἀγαθὸς and of κακός. In one passage there is at first sight some obscurity in the meaning of the latter term, κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[789]. Here however the context plainly shows it to be, ‘it will not do for a mendicant to be shy.’

But the positive sense of both words can be clearly and indisputably made out from a number of passages, of which I will quote a portion.

Although it is true, that in Homer the word ἀγαθὸς very often refers more to the ideas of particular excellences and of power, than to that of moral worth; yet in some passages we find a latent bias, as it were, towards the last named idea, and in others we have a clear and full expression of it.

As an example of the first, I quote the description of Agamemnon[790], ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής, ‘A good king, and a brave warrior.’ Now the word ἀγαθὸς here evidently has a special regard to the moral element. Homer surely intends to describe, by the epithets he applies to each of the two substantives, a special excellence suitable to each character respectively. The goodness, so to speak, of a warrior consisted in bravery: the goodness of a king, partly indeed in prudence, but chiefly in justice, in mildness, and in liberality. If ἀγαθὸς in this place meant merely ‘good in the virtue of its kind,’ then it might[423] as well stand with αἰχμητής as with βασιλεὺς, and therefore the antithesis would be a bad and pointless one.

In other cases the moral colouring of the term is full and indubitable. Bellerophon[791], when he resists the seduction of the wife of Prœtus, is ἀγαθὰ φρονέων. Jupiter, when incensed, is described by Minerva thus, φρεσὶ μαίνεται οὐκ ἀγαθῇσιν[792]. To follow good advice is ὁ δὲ πείσεται εἰς ἀγαθόν περ[793]. A man who is ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐχέφρων, is also the one who must necessarily have regard and affection for his wife[794]. And Clytemnestra, before she was corrupted, had good dispositions; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν[795].

The word κακὸς again, in a majority of cases, refers to defect or calamity in things, or to poltroonery, or other baseness of that kind, in persons: but it directly indicates moral badness in such passages as the following. Leiodes pleads that he tried to keep the Suitors from doing wrong, κακῶν ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι[796]. Telemachus warns the Suitors that the gods will turn upon them in wrath, ἀγασσάμενοι κακὰ ἔργα[797]. Jupiter views such deeds with indignation, νεμεσσᾷται κακὰ ἔργα[798]. And Juno reproaches Apollo for giving countenance to the Trojans, as κακῶν ἕταρ’ αἰὲν ἄπιστε, where our finding faithlessness in the immediate context, points to moral depravity as the signification of the word κακῶν[799].

In the word δίκαιος, however, we have an instance of an epithet never employed except in order to signify a moral or a religious idea. Like the word righteous among ourselves, it is derived from a source which would make it immediately designate duty as between man and man, and also as it arises out of civil relations. But it is applied in Homer to both the great branches[424] of duty. And surely there cannot be a stronger proof of the existence of definite moral ideas among a people, than the very fact that they employ a word founded on the observance of relative rights to describe also the religious character. It is when religion and morality are torn asunder, that the existence of moral ideas is endangered.

Minerva, in the form of Mentor, is pleased with Telemachus for handing the cup first to her at the festival in Pylos, because it is a tribute of reverence to superior age. For this he is called πεπνυμένος ἀνὴρ[800] δίκαιος, and the idea is that of relative duty. Again, when she advises him for a while to let the Suitors alone, it is ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι[801]; and they do not know the retribution that hangs over them. In this case the meaning must be either ‘just’ or ‘pious.’

In another case, where the very same phrase is employed, δίκαιος can only mean ‘pious.’ ‘Jupiter,’ says Nestor, ‘ordained calamities for the Greeks on their return, because they were not all either intelligent or righteous[802]:

‘Wherefore many of them perished’ (he continues) ‘through the wrath of Minerva, who set the two Atridæ at variance.’ Now here it appears that the original offence of the Greeks could only have consisted in the omission of the usual sacrifices, while the passage has no reference whatever to relative duties: δίκαιος therefore must refer simply to duty towards the gods. And, however imperfect may be that notion of divine duty which made it consist in sacrifice wholly or mainly, yet plainly the neglect to sacrifice was for[425] the Greeks of the heroic age a moral offence, although it consisted only in the breach of a law of the class termed positive. A passage yet more fatally adverse to the position of Mr. Grote is, I think, that where Homer describes the Ἄβιοι[803] as δικαιότατοι ἀνθρώπων. For there he appears to be speaking of persons clearly less advanced in civilization, more rude, less wealthy and intelligent, than the Greeks; and yet he applies to them an epithet which proclaims them to have been, in his opinion, either the most just, or the most pious of mankind.

Moreover, it does not appear that anywhere among the Greeks were religion and morals as yet effectually dissociated. It is true that the language of mere mythology treats the religious character of man as established by bounty in sacrifice. But this is one of the points, and a very vital one, in which the theistic system of the Greeks was worse than their ethical instinct, and became, therefore, a positive source of corruption. While the Scriptures of the Old Testament rigidly controlled the propensity of man to substitute perfunctory observances for the service of the heart, by saying, ‘to obey is better than sacrifice,’ the Jupiter of the Greeks tells them, that to sacrifice is better than to obey. And it is only in the mouth of a traditive deity that we find any more elevated sentiment. To a certain extent, indeed, yet not effectually, this representation may be qualified, if we recollect that in these passages the deities of Olympus, conceived according to the laws of anthropophuism, when they have occasion to speak of human piety, speak of it in that aspect under which it was peculiarly beneficial to themselves, but do not on that account intend wholly to set aside its other parts,[426] while they undoubtedly disturb the scale of relative importance in the moral order.

But man, the handiwork of God, was less depraved than the idols which were the handiwork of man. Among the Greeks, the pious man is nowhere separated from the just or moral man. Not in words, for the question of a stranger always is, whether men are, on the one hand, insolent, fierce, and unrighteous, or, on the other, hospitable and pious to the gods[804];

Nor are they in any instance separated in deeds. We hear of no religious observances by the Suitors in Ithaca; but Nestor and Menelaus are both found engaged in them. The wicked Ægisthus, having corrupted Clytemnestra and gained the throne, then offered many sacrifices to the gods in the hope of keeping it, and suspended many decorations in their honour[805]; but he is not on this account spoken of with less horror, nor indeed did this extorted profession save him from divine vengeance, sent by the hand of Orestes. Nor does it appear that he had ever been liberal in sacrifice before. The persons who are extolled, obviously or expressly, on this ground in the Odyssey are, the illustrious Ulysses[806], and the trusty Eumæus in his humble cottage[807]. So that on the whole, as between Greek and Greek, regularity in divine worship by sacrifice was neither taken for the substance of morality, nor allowed as a substitute for it, but was a test of it, and was habitually found in union with it. The connection is clearly set out in the case of Eumæus[808]:

[427]

Nor must we forget that, had it been otherwise, a constant moral profanation, abhorred by the feeling of the time, would have been involved. For sacrifice, as ought to be the case with all ritual, had a moral character and adjuncts. It was either ordinary, as at the common meal, or solemn. In the former case the surrender by man of a portion of his food was a witness to God as the giver, and an expression of thankfulness intelligible to an unsophisticated age. In the latter case, and even in the former[809], prayer or thanksgiving were commonly combined with the rite. The spirit of man, when he approached the altar, was bowed down before the powers of heaven; and though it was a heavy sin in nations who had a clear knowledge of God to lapse into the practices of those who could but feebly grope (to use the language of saint Paul[810]) for Him, yet the use of religious observances, when it is ordinarily combined, as we find it combined in Greece, with the possession in other respects of virtuous character, is in effect one of the strongest testimonies to the existence of a substantive standard of morals, which it associates at once with the unseen world, and not with any mere reckoning of results, drawn from the life and experience of man.

If then the Greeks of the heroic age recognised a real type of good and evil in human action, the next question is, what were the motive powers by which they were drawn towards the practice of virtue?

These powers proceeded from three sources.

One was a regard to the gods; to their rewarding the good, and punishing the bad. Of this we have[428] already treated in regard to some of the most important points. The general proof rests upon almost every page of the poems, especially as regards the punishment of the unkind, unjust, and cruel. The Homeric representations of a future state obscurely, but sensibly, add strength to the same class of sanctions.

The second was the voice of conscience, speaking for each man within his own breast[811].

The third was a sentiment ranging between reverence and fear, which led to the performance of duty, and to the avoidance of crime, in consideration of the general authority and established opinion of mankind.

We may consider those examples from bygone days, which are so often adduced either for warning or for imitation, as belonging to this third division of moral powers.

The finer forms of this third class of sentiments pass by imperceptible shades into the second.

After his conquest of Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil the body of the slain Eetion, σεβάσσατο γὰρ τόγε θυμῷ: accordingly he burnt him, with his precious armour on. Now it would have been no crime to strip him of this valuable booty, and therefore would have drawn down no vengeance: but the high standard of his own chivalrous feelings would not suffer the act. We have no reason to suppose that in this instance he had any regard to the general opinion of the Greeks. For as when they gathered round the corpse of Hector, every one of them inflicted a wound upon it, and as it was the common custom of the war to strip the dead of their arms, nothing can be more unlikely than that the army would have resented a[429] similar proceeding on the part of Achilles towards Eetion. It was therefore to his own mind that he deferred. Here there was a conscience not only taking notice of the broader and, so to speak, coarser, outlines of duty, but likewise exhibiting a refined and tender sense of it.

Again, Telemachus says, by way of appeal to the good feeling of the Suitors themselves (Od. ii. 138.),

In this place he seems to refer to the sense of right within each man, and by no means to their regard for appearances as before each other; while that, from which he exhorts them to abstain, is a purely moral wrong. So Glaucus appears to aim at the individual conscience, when he impresses on Hector and the Trojans the duty of recovering the body of Sarpedon, lest the Myrmidons should deface his remains (Il. xvi. 544–6). Again, Menelaus addresses a similar exhortation to the Greeks, and here expressly exhorts each person to feel and act for himself (Il. xvii. 254),

In one passage particularly, Telemachus distinguishes with great clearness the three kinds of motive by the terms proper to them respectively (Od. ii. 64–7);

That is νέμεσις, for the self-judging conscience: αἰδὼς, for human opinion: and lastly, fear, in regard to the divine wrath.

The existence of the moral standard within a man is[430] also, I think, very strongly implied in the word ἀτασθαλίη, which is applied to deep, deliberate, habitual, or audacious wickedness. For when it is intended to let in any allowance for mere weakness, or for solicitation from without, or for a foolish blindness, then the word ἄτη is used. And I doubt whether, in any one instance throughout the poems, these two designations are ever applied to one and the same misconduct. It is certainly contrary to the general and almost universal rule. The ἀτασθαλίη is something done with clear sight and knowledge, with the full and conscious action of the will: it is something regarded as wholly without excuse, as tending to an entire moral deadness, and as entailing final punishment alike without notice and without mercy. Nothing can account for the introduction into a moral code of a form of offence conceived with such intensity, and ranked so high, except the belief that the man committing it had deliberately set aside that inward witness to truth and righteousness, supplied by the law of our nature, in the repudiation of which the universal and consentient voice of mankind has always placed the most awful responsibility, the extremest degree of guilt that the human being can incur.

The high place assigned throughout the poems to public opinion as a moral check is visible at every turn. And this check applies variously to various classes. With the most abandoned, like the Suitors, it is feeble; and is only invoked on special occasions, as when Telemachus combines it, in the passage lately cited, with the other moral sanctions. Even Paris is represented as quite beyond the reach of it: and Helen meekly wishes, that if the gods had determined she should live, she could have been the husband of a man[431] more open to the influence of the public sentiment[812]:

But upon characters less frivolous and less corrupt, this power acts with great efficacy: so much so, that Phœnix says he was restrained, when in his passion, from killing his father by some benevolent deity, whose mode of proceeding was, we shall perceive, very remarkable: for the suggestion he made to Phœnix with such good effect was, not that he would be punished by the gods for the offence, but that he would become an offence and scandal among men[813]:

The δήμου φάτις, or public opinion, weighs even with the matron Penelope among the motives to her virtuous and heroic conduct; and the maid Nausicaa, no less circumspect than artless, finds in the φῆμις ἀδευκὴς, the bitter gossip, of Scheria, an apology for desiring Ulysses not to enter the city in her company[814].

But the sentiment of regard to general opinion comes out in other and yet finer forms as a practical regulator of conduct in the heroic age.

Perhaps we might venture to rely upon the uses of the single word αἰδὼς, with the cognate verb and adjective, in Homer, for proof that the condition of the Greeks of his age was a condition of high civilization, in that which constitutes its most essential part, namely, that which relates to the affections and passions of man; the expansion by moral forces of the one, and the compression of the other.

Shame, in all its many forms, has more than one[432] pervading characteristic to mark it as an agent alike powerful and delicate in its influence upon human conduct.

First, it essentially involves this idea: that while it refers to an external standard, independent of ourselves though able to act upon us, still the power thus invoked is one altogether distinct from the idea of force. So sensitive indeed is the feeling of shame, that at the first moment when force comes into view, it alters its nature, and passes into fear. That which it apprehends is something, which dwells only in the ethereal region of opinion; and yet this, by the fineness of its appreciation, it converts into an agent effective both to excite and to restrain. Thus it exhibits to us the human spirit guided by silken reins, and in this way bears emphatic witness to the high training, by which alone it can become susceptible of so gentle a guidance.

Secondly, it embraces not only the character of acts as they are in themselves or appear to us, but also the aspect which they will naturally present to others. It therefore essentially involves the recognition of a high form of relative duty: it obliges us, in regulating the whole tenour of our conduct, to make the feelings of others an element in our own decisions. This principle of a mutual regard, not confined to certain positive acts of relative duty, but pervading the whole course of moral action, lies at the root of all genuine and high civilization.

Shame must have reference to some standard exterior to ourselves, and it therefore tends towards uprooting the law of selfishness. In one of its highest forms, the one perhaps most familiar to us in Homer, it is termed self-respect. But self-respect does not mean a regard to self: it means a virtuous regard to a[433] standard established by adequate consent and authority, and owned, not set up, by the individual conscience; together with a determination that ‘self’ shall be made to conform to it.

The φθορὰ of this sentiment is what we term false shame: which does evil, or refrains from good, in submission to a depraved standard of opinion external to us, and in defiance of our own knowledge of right. This kind of shame is treated with no respect in Homer: for examples of it we must look to Amphimachus and Leiodes, two better-minded but complying Suitors, who end by perishing with the rest.

The numerous forms of the sentiment of αἰδὼς in the heroic age are a proof of the large and varied development to which it had already attained.

How fine a feeling is that according to which, as with Homer, the bold men are also the shamefaced ones! as in his line,

This line, as it is repeated, seems to have the character of a γνώμη in the poems[815].

The most marked and frequent use of αἰδὼς is in the sense of self-respect as applied to military honour and bravery. The words αἰδὼς, Ἀργεῖοι, which are employed as an exhortation to fight, constitute one of the Homeric formulæ. Homer does not permit this use of the word to the Trojans: but once it is employed for his gallant favourites, the Lycians. (Il. xvi. 422. xvii. 336.)

Once, indeed, the term is applied to Trojans, but this is in the converse of the usual sense. It would be αἰδὼς, a disgrace, says Æneas, were we to let Troy be taken through our want of manhood. This is a lower signification. And again, as we shall see, the established[434] formula of military incitement for the Trojans is different and less refined[816].

Sometimes αἰδὼς is an excess of deference, or what we might call scrupulosity; the feeling which carries the fastidious observance of some right sentiment towards others up to the point where it threatens to interfere with a public or other clear duty. So Telemachus begs of Nestor, ‘tell me the truth,’

In the Doloneia, Agamemnon, fearful that Diomed will choose Menelaus as a companion out of deference, says, ‘Do not let αἰδὼς influence you: choose the best man.’ Sometimes it is compassion, or ruth; as when Achilles, before the ransom, is said to show no αἰδὼς towards the body of Hector. But here αἰδὼς includes the idea of shame and self-respect. Sometimes it is reverence towards a superior, as in Od. xiv. 505, and in αἰδοῖος applied by Helen to Priam in Il. iii. 172. In this manner it becomes applicable to the sentiments a man should entertain towards the gods,

And this is a very remarkable use of the term, because Priam certainly does not mean to urge upon Achilles a dread of the gods, but something quite distinct. Sometimes it is applied by a superior to an inferior; and means ‘his or her dues,’ as among the Immortals, where Jupiter says to Thetis, that he reserves the honour of the ransom for Achilles,

It may also be felt towards an inferior among men: Agamemnon is exhorted to feel it towards Chryses[820], for it is not a personal sentiment, but implies an object,[435] outside the mere person who is the immediate occasion of it. So Achilles is intreated to revere (αἴδεσθαι) Lycaon, a vanquished and suppliant enemy[821].

Sometimes it signifies the constitution of a special relation, over and above the general bond between man and man. A person’s αἰδοῖοι are his relations, friends, guests, and the like. Even so a wanderer is αἰδοῖος to the gods (Od. v. 447). Sometimes it means purely mental modesty, as in Od. viii. 171, ὁ δ’ ἀσφαλέως ἀγορεύει αἰδοῖ μειλιχίῃ; he speaks with that engaging bashfulness and careful indication of respect for his audience, which forms a principal grace of the orator. Sometimes the physical, as well as mental, quality of modesty; as when αἰδὼς kept the goddesses at home (Od. viii. 324). Sometimes, again, simply shyness; as when Telemachus is exhorted by Minerva to put away αἰδὼς in Od. iii. 14; or as in the phrase κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης; ‘it will never do for a beggar to be shy.’

No finer shading of sentiment, I think, can be found in the language of the most civilized nations, nor any case so remarkable of a high and tender, and at the same time largely developed state of feeling at a time when material progress was so partial, rude, and slight. And of the vital importance of this element of the Greek moral code, we find a proof in the representation of Hesiod, who gives it as a characteristic of his iron, or post-Homeric, age, that αἰδὼς along with νέμεσις had fled from the earth.

There are other words, the use of which in Homer approximates occasionally to the sense of αἰδώς. The nearest of them is σέβας (as in Il. xviii. 178), with its verb σέβομαι; which, as we have seen, is sometimes applied simply to an internal standard recognised by the con[436]science. But in Il. iv. 242, οὔ νυ σέβεσθε; seems to be equivalent to οὐκ αἰδεῖσθε; or ‘for shame.’

The word νέμεσις, too, is sometimes used in a sense akin to that of αἰδώς: as when Neptune exhorts the Greeks, ἐν φρεσὶ θέσθε ἕκαστος αἰδῶ καὶ νέμεσιν (Il. xiii. 121): compare vi. 351. Again, in Od. i. 263, ii. 136, xxii. 40. But this sentiment is usually half way between αἰδὼς and fear, because what it apprehends, though it is not force, yet neither is it simple disapproval; rather it is disapproval with heat, disapproval into which passion enters. It contributes, however, to complete a very remarkable picture of the human mind.

The comparison between Greeks and Trojans, or Europeans and Asiatics, will prove, we shall find, greatly in favour of the former as to most parts of their morality. We have now to touch upon a feature in Greek manners which is unfavourable.

With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose; while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshedding among the Trojans: and enough is told us of Trojan life and manners to have probably brought out this characteristic, had it existed.

Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a prudential error, an ἄτη πυκινὴ[822], when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the[437] wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever[823].

The ordinary practice, we learn from the blunt speech of Ajax to Achilles[824], was to accept the established fine upon the loss even of a brother or a son, if offered, and then to let the slayer remain unharmed. If he would not pay, or if the relations would not accept the payment, the alternative was flight: but it does not appear that this entailed any loss of character, perhaps rather otherwise. It was, however, the most common issue of such an affair, and, as such, it furnishes Homer with a simile. Priam, appearing before Achilles by surprise, is compared to a man who, having had the misfortune to kill somebody, appears unexpectedly in a strange place[825].

We will proceed to examine the cases of homicide recorded in the poems, which are alike numerous and remarkable.

I. Medon[826], the illegitimate brother of Oilean Ajax, migrates from Locris to Phylace, having, in the usual phrase, killed a man, ἄνδρα κατακτάς. This man was a kinsman, not improbably a brother, (for γνωτὸς may mean brother, as in Il. iii. 174, and xxii. 234), of his ‘stepmother,’ as she is called; that is, of Eriopis, the lawful wife of his father. And yet he retains or improves his position in Phylace, and appears, in the Thirteenth Iliad, as the commander of all the Phthians except the Myrmidons.

II. Theoclymenus[827], of the prophetic family of Melampus, suddenly makes his appearance before Tele[438]machus, when he is about to embark from the Peloponnesus for Ithaca. He inquires of Telemachus who he is[828]; and, on finding that the youth is not in his own country, but a stranger, he says, ‘So am I: I have killed a man, and am flying from the vengeance of his family: they are powerful, and I am in fear lest they should take my life.’ Telemachus immediately promises to take him on board, and entertain him hospitably. He does not seem at all shocked at the intimation he has received. He does not think it worth while to ask the fugitive, whether he killed the man wantonly, or under provocation. But he forthwith assigns to him the place of honour[829]:

III. The next is an instance not less remarkable than the one last named. Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules and Astyoche, kills Licymnius the maternal uncle of his father, and his own grand-uncle. The sufferer is, moreover, in his old age, or he could hardly be the grand-uncle of an adult person; and no plea or palliation is mentioned for the act. The children and grandchildren of Hercules prepare to levy war upon him: but so far is he from having suffered in character for what hardly can have been other than a barbarous and brutal action, that he is enabled to raise a large body of emigrants, who accompany him to Rhodes. When distributed there in three settlements, they are blessed by the peculiar favour of Jupiter; and Tlepolemus appears before Troy as the commander of the Rhodian contingent[830].

IV. Again, the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus had its origin in the circumstance that Menœtius[439] delivered over his son into the protection of Peleus, because, being a youth, he had quarrelled with another youth, the son of Amphidamas, over a game of dice, and had slain him, νήπιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων, as the Poet says; that is, of course, without malice prepense[831]. This is the more worthy of notice, because it is evident that the character of Patroclus, partly perhaps for the sake of contrast with that of Achilles, and therefore of relief to it, is meant to be represented as one of peculiar gentleness[832]; a quality in which no one of the great Greek chieftains, except Menelaus, can compete with him.

V. In the Fifteenth Iliad, Hector slays Lycophron, son of Mastor, when he is aiming at Ajax. This was an inhabitant of Cythera who had quitted his country for homicide, ‘but whom,’ says Ajax to Teucer, ‘we honoured as if he had been a beloved parent[833].’

VI. Again, the case of Epeigeus is remarkable; for he had been lord of Budeum:

But having slain a cousin, apparently also of the higher order, he had to fly to Peleus and Thetis for protection[834].

VII. In the Thirteenth Odyssey, Ulysses, after being deposited in Ithaca, gives a fabulous account of himself to the disguised Minerva, in which we may be sure that he includes nothing which was deemed essentially dishonourable. In this account he represents himself as a fugitive from Crete on account of homicide. Orsilochus, the son of Idomeneus, had endeavoured, as he says, to deprive him of his share of the Trojan[440] booty: for this cause he waylaid him by night, took away his life without being perceived by any one as he was returning from the country, and then embarked, to avoid the consequences, in a Phœnician ship[835].

VIII. An anonymous Ætolian, having slain a man, fled to Ithaca, visited Eumæus, and as a matter of course was entertained, nay petted, by him; ἐγὼ δέ μιν ἀμφαγάπαζον (Od. xiv. 379–81).

Even this great number of instances do not so fully illustrate the familiarity of the practice, and its thorough disconnection from the idea of moral turpitude, as the mode in which it furnishes the material of general illustration or remark. When Homer desires to represent on the shield of Achilles the ordinary form of public business in an assembly, he chooses a trial for homicide[836]. And so Ulysses, when explaining to Telemachus the formidable difficulties with which, after the slaughter of the Suitors, he has to contend, observes that those whom he has slain were the very flower of the community; whereas, in ordinary cases, a man flies his country after having put but a single person to death, and this even though he be one who has few to take up his quarrel[837].

Now if we knew these facts concerning the Greeks of the heroic age, and knew nothing else, we should at once conclude that they were an inhuman and savage people, who did not appreciate the value of human life. But this is not so. They are not a cruel people. There is no wanton infliction of pain throughout the whole operations of the Iliad, no delight in the sufferings of others. The only needless wounds are wounds given to the dead[838]; a mode of action which[441] imputed nothing brutal or degrading, in times when mankind had not yet learned from the Christian Revelation the honour due to the human body.

It is not then mere savageness, and the low estimate put upon life, which determines the view of the heroic age with respect to homicide. And if not, then it can only be an unbalanced appreciation of some other quality, such as courage, which was commonly implied and exhibited in such cases.

It seems as though the display of force and spirit of daring, which accompany crimes of violence in a rude age, had such a value in the estimation of the early Greeks, as to excuse proceedings which would otherwise have been visited with the severest censure. We shall find reason to believe that Paris may have had a certain credit in their eyes for carrying off Helen by the strong hand, which went to redeem or mitigate his adultery, and breach of hospitable rights. This idea, which is undoubtedly startling, is supported by the strange narrative of Hercules and Iphitus. Iphitus was the possessor of certain fine mares. Hercules, determined to possess them, visited him, received his hospitality, slew him, and carried off the animals. Now it may indeed be the mixed character of Hercules, which places his εἴδωλον in the Shades, while he is himself among the Immortals; but still the scale is cast on the whole in his favour. Yet surely the story of Iphitus exhibits a crime of the blackest dye; and the only palliation of it that is conceivable seems to lie in this, that he probably did not use stratagem, but proceeded by main force. The crime of Ægisthus, the blackest in the poems, appears to derive its highest intensity from the fact, that he slew Agamemnon like an ox at the stall, in the friendly feast itself, without[442] notice or the opportunity of defence, and by a plot deliberately laid. Such is the effect of all the three passages in which this outrage is described[839]. The most favourable supposition which the case of Hercules admits is, that he came for plunder, and put the possessor of the horses to death, without premeditation, upon his refusal to yield them up; and that such an act, though a proper object of divine resentment, was yet not black enough to destroy his title to honour and a celestial abode[840].

We will now pass on to a kindred subject.

Thucydides has stated that in the earlier ages of Greece the practice of piracy was alike widespread and honourable: οὐκ ἔχοντός πω αἰσχύνην τούτου τοῦ ἔργου, φέροντος δέ τι καὶ δόξης μᾶλλον[841]. In support of this opinion he refers to the questions then usually addressed to strangers on their arrival in a country; such as that by Nestor to the pseudo-Mentor and Telemachus, in order to learn what their business was, or whether they were pirates[842];

Now I think that the last line seems to explain the favourable view which was taken by the Greeks of the practice of piracy. For it combined with the hazards of navigation, then so much more serious than at present, the chance of desperate encounters. It appealed, in the very highest degree, to the spirit of adventure; a spirit congenial especially to the earliest youth of a people full of unsatisfied and, so to speak, hungry energies. The mischief inflicted was inflicted on[443] ἀλλόδαποι, on those with whom there was no close tie, either as compatriots or as ξεῖνοι. Now we must bear in mind that the law which, even in the time of Thucydides, governed the relations of the Greek tribes among themselves, during the period of their high civilization, was a permanent or ordinary state of hostility suspended from time to time by conventions for so many or so many years[843]. The same principle, applied to a period when political organization was less mature, and when men lived rather in knots and companies than in states, involves the Homeric view of piracy. And that view, entertained in such times, should occasion far less surprise, than our finding Thucydides inform us that the same system continued throughout whole divisions of Greece in his day; καὶ μέχρι τοῦδε πολλὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ νέμεται, περί τε Λοκροὺς τοὺς Ὀζόλας, καὶ Αἰτώλους, καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶνας, καὶ τὴν ταύτῃ ἤπειρον[844]. The gains of the pirate’s life were in some sense fairly balanced by its dangers. The piracy of that age was not like piracy in ours, the strong and well-armed waiting for the feeble and defenceless; it was a game of more even chances, and the real resemblance for it is to be found, not among the Algerine corsairs, not even in the Highland clans sweeping down from the mountains upon the Lowland Scots, but most properly in the more even-handed forays of the border warfare between England and Scotland.

There is indeed yet a higher authority for this kind of piracy, than that to which Thucydides has referred. Ulysses, when he has destroyed the Suitors, considers,[444] in conversation with his wife, not only how he is to preserve his remaining property in live stock, but how he is to replace what his enemies have destroyed. Part he thinks his subjects will make up to him by presents, but great part he will himself obtain by freebooting[845];

We can hardly, I think, restrain the meaning of the word to the booty of legitimate and successful war. Sometimes, as in the case of the Cicones, piracy is scarcely distinguishable from war; but Ulysses fairly relates of himself a piratical attack upon Egypt, which can leave us no room for scruple in supposing, that he might without hesitation think of doing again what he thought it worth while to pretend that he had done before. Both these last-named instances may serve, however, to show that, in times when preparedness for war was habitual, the pirate took no great advantage in such attacks as these. For with the Cicones Ulysses had the worst of it at last[846]; and in the case of Egypt, according to his fable, the whole party were taken prisoners or slain. Kidnapping, however, such as that of Eumæus stolen in his childhood, is not, I presume, to be regarded as equal in honour to freebooting with the strong hand, thus apparently stamped with the sanction of Ulysses.

And yet this model-man had been stung to the very quick by Euryalus in Phæacia, who said to him, ‘You do not look like a man to compete in athletic games; but rather like one of the captains of merchant vessels, who looks after the cargo and makes rapacious profits[847]!’

Nor, after all, is this so strange as at first sight it[445] might appear; for the Phœnicians, the merchants of those days, were also kidnappers and slave-dealers: and if their transactions were not, like those of the pirates, uniformly bad, they were, when exceptionable, double-dyed in guilt, because they involved fraud as well as robbery.

Again, as to piracy, it by no means appears that it was attended with respect, nor is the language of the poems quite uniform regarding it. In the νεκυία of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this description ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες[848]. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt is mentioned as an act of ὕβρις, an outrage deservedly punished by Jupiter[849]. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phœnician, embraced kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the Phœnician nurse, who in her turn carried off the young Eumæus.

Upon the whole, after allowing liberally for the masculine character and redundant energies of the Hellenic people, we shall best explain their favourable view of piracy by remembering the near relation it then bore both to war, which we know may be just and honourable, as well as to trade, which we regard as in itself both innocent and beneficial. Since Homer’s time the character of war has been softened, and that of trade has been elevated, almost immeasurably; while that of piracy has been lowered; hence there is now a wide gulf, where there was then scarcely even a seam discernible; and Homer might have sung the expressive words of Goëthe in Faust,

[446]

We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a tendency to family feuds, beyond certain limits, of which the poems do not afford any instance on the Trojan side.

Of these, two have already been noticed among the homicides. Medon kills his father’s wife’s kinsman. Tlepolemus kills his grand-uncle. But also Phœnix for a quarrel flies from his father’s home and settles in Dolopia. Phyleus, the father of Meges, for a similar reason migrates to Dulichium[850]. Eurystheus, as the great grandson of Jupiter, is of reputed kin to Hercules his son; but persecutes him through life with the imposition of cruel and endless toils. Meleager has a fierce feud with his family, which is recited by Phœnix as a warning to Achilles. Bellerophon is expelled from Greece by a family quarrel. Ægisthus himself is the cousin of Agamemnon.

As with families, so with communities. The pre-Troic legends are almost invariably legends of the internal raids and wars of Greece. They were a people of the strong and the red hand, marvellously combined with high refinement, true love of art and song, and an unexampled political genius.

But although the Homeric age had not ceased to be as yet an age of violence, it was as far as possible from being one marked by a general sway either of unbridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion; and if it is sometimes mistakenly supposed to have borne this character, the appearances which produce the illusion are due only to the fact, that vice of all kinds then went straight forward to its work, and had not yet learned, in the school of the wisdom of this world, how much it might gain from method, order, and reserve.

We have ample signs of that regard for temperance,[447] bodily as well as mental, which Homer united with his thoroughly convivial spirit. By the mouth of Ulysses, he reprehends even that mild form of excess in wine which does no more than promote garrulity (Od. xiv. 463–6). When the Greeks were about to suffer great calamities on their return, he makes them proceed in a state of drunkenness to the Assembly[851]. When Elpenor dies by an accidental fall, he assigns drunkenness as the cause, and takes care to inform us that he was young, and neither valiant nor sensible[852]. Ulysses encourages the brutal Polyphemus to drink, with a view to his own liberation. And the proceedings of the monster, when intoxicated, are certainly more revolting than those of Stephano, if not than those of Caliban, in the Tempest. Again, though it is certainly true, that the most vivid denunciation of excess in liquor to be found throughout the poems is put into the mouth of the Suitor Antinous[853], yet I think it was plainly meant to be accepted as spoken in earnest, and as expressing the sense of Homer. Wine, we thus learn, caused the Centaur Eurytion to lose his ears and nose. In no single case does the Poet permit liquor to act in the slightest degree upon the self-possession of his heroes, or of any character whom he esteems; or represent them as either doing, or leaving undone, any act through excess in drink[854]. The only allusion to its influence, in connection with a practical result, is one very faint, and perfectly innocent. It is when, dissatisfaction having prevailed among the Grecian kings and army, as we see[448] from the speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Agamemnon to treat his Council to a supper, before proceeding to obtain their advice; and observes to him, that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other provision in abundance. The intention apparently is to lay the ground for concord, not in excess, nor even here in hilarity, but at least in amicable humour[855]. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the banquet for the livelong day, but not to men; for the pseudo-Mentor observes to Nestor in the Third Odyssey, that it is not seemly to sit long at the sacred (that is, regular and public) feast[856].

It is much to be regretted that Horace, who in many cases has shown himself an accurate reader of Homer, has in this point grossly mistaken him:

And this summary character, unfortunately false, has saved men the trouble of collecting the true one from the works of the Poet himself.

When we turn to another form of temperance or self-government, namely, that which we call self-control, we find it eminently exemplified among Greeks. It appears as a pervading and national quality in that silence on the field of battle, which they combined with such an inward energy of determination. In Ulysses it is carried up to its perfection. Perhaps the only occasions on which he even seems to relax it are those of the answer to Euryalus in the Eighth Odyssey, and the reply to Agamemnon in the Fourth Iliad.

So much, however, of emotion as he suffers to escape him in those passages, only serves to heighten the effect[449] of his words, not to make him deflect by one jot or tittle, though in undoubted warmth, from the true rule of reason. But we find this quality not only developed powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses; it is also strongly infused into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which he bears[858] the chiding of Agamemnon on his rounds, and rebukes Sthenelus for having been provoked into a petulant answer. At the same time it is highly illustrative of the national character, that this young and ardent warrior, who could thus bear a reprimand on the field, stored up the recollection of it within his breast: and when, at the beginning of the Ninth Book, Agamemnon showed his own faint-heartedness by advising the abandonment of the enterprise, then Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon[859]. Nay more, perhaps the most striking proof of the abundance of this high quality among the Greeks is in the very case where it is on the whole outmatched by the passion that it ought to master, namely, in the case of Achilles. There is something indeed sublime in the manner in which, many times over, when he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he eyes his own passion, even as a tiger is eyed by its keeper, and puts a spell upon it, so that it dare not spring. Thus it is, when he parleys with himself on the question, whether he shall end the strife with Agamemnon by slaying him, in the Assembly of the First Book. And thus again, when he feels that the words which Priam has incautiously let drop are kindling a flame which, if further fed, would consume the aged and sorrowing suppliant, he is con[450]scious of the rising tempest, and before it has swollen to such force as to disturb his self-command, he sternly, but yet not unkindly, bids him to desist. It is by trying them in mental conflicts like these, that Homer shows us of what mettle his Greek kings were made. It would be curious to draw out a list of the multitude of words in which he describes, under every possible aspect, the power and habit of self-control. But perhaps one of his slightest is also one of his most effective touches. The applause of the Greeks in their Assembly is always described by a word different from that employed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the Trojans. He usually says ἐπὶ δ’ ἴαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν for the Greeks: for the Trojans it is ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν. The Greeks shout forth their energetic approval: the Trojans clatter, as if their tongues could not bear restraint.

Yet we must not suppose, either on account of the self-command of the Greeks that they were apathetic, or on account of their frequent homicides that they were inhuman, and savagely indifferent to the infliction of pain on their fellow-creatures.

Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans appear to have been ferocious in the treatment of enemies. The extreme point to which they go is that of giving no quarter: but they never, even in the exasperation of battle, inflict torture with their weapons. The immolation of twelve Trojan youths over the dead Patroclus is doubtless cruel: but it falls far short of what the passions of war have produced in other times and countries. With the manner of inflicting death, passion never has to do.

An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious,[451] is suggested by the passages in which Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles[860], Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector[861]; and again in which Jupiter[862] suggests to Juno, that nothing could satiate her spite against Troy so well as if she were to eat up Priam and his whole family. For the question arises, how is it that we find these remains of the wildest savagery in company with a refinement of manners and feeling, which the poems very frequently exhibit, and which even reaches in some important points to a degree never exceeded in any country or any period of the world?

The answer I presume to be this: that the civilization of the Greeks in the heroic age, though as to the mind it was really a very high, was yet also a very young civilisation. Its path was marked and decided, but it had not had time to travel far from barbarism. It was not safe by distance, nor defended by the ramparts of long tradition, nor strengthened by the force of continuing bent, and consolidated immemorial habit. The Homeric gentleman, with his civilization, stood, in respect to barbarism, like him who voyages by sea,

only the thickness of the plank is between him and the wilderness which he has left: and if passion makes a breach, the mood of the wild beast reappears. We may account for the cannibalish observation of Jupiter by the fact that he has no self-control in Homer: but that of Hecuba is to be accounted for on the principle I have endeavoured to describe. So it is with Achilles: and so, too, when the wise Ulysses, slaughtering the wretched women of his household who had erred,[452] seems tinged for once with a flush of barbarism. When we let loose the tiger within us, his range is limited not by any force springing from our own will or choice, but by the strong dikes and barriers of social wont, and by habits of thought as well as action, which have been accumulated by the long labours of many successive generations of mankind.

We have already[863] noticed something that will well bear comparison with this state of things in the reports which are made to us respecting modern Persia, the cradle in all likelihood of the family of Achilles.

At the same time it is to be borne in mind that this cannibalism, of which we have glimpses in Homer, in the first place was limited, even in speculation, to enemies; and in the second place, existed in speculation only. Of this we have pretty strong proof from the case of the crew of Ulysses in the Twelfth Odyssey. They did not touch the oxen of the Sun, until death from hunger stared them in the face. Then Eurylochus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before them, between dying on the one side, and the slaughter of some of the animals on the other. But those circumstances of the last extremity, to which they were reduced, were the very circumstances in which the fortitude even of Christians[864] has given way, and with respect to which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so succumb.[453] Yet there is not in the case before us the slightest hint at a resort to this most horrible remedy.

Besides the circumstance, that in Homer the cannibal dicta, abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and that there are no corresponding acts, we have to observe that the Poet is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connection with the positive infliction of suffering upon an enemy. It was by no means so among the later Greeks. Too many instances might, indeed, be supplied of the increase of cruelty with the lapse of time.

Homer, again, has nowhere made woman to be even the sorrowing minister of justice: as if he felt that there was a radical incompatibility between the proper gentleness of her nature, and the use of the sword of punishment. But in the Hecuba of Euripides, after the aged matron, exasperated by the treacherous murder of her son Polydorus, has put to death the two children of the assassin Polymestor, and has likewise put out his eyes, he addresses to her these words (v. 1233),

and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, replies

In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he thinks of the principle of exultation over fallen enemies. When Euryclea is about to shout over the fallen Suitors, Ulysses, though he has not yet ended the bloody work of retribution, gravely checks her. ‘It is wrong,’ he says, ‘to exult over the slain. These men have been overtaken by divine providence, and by their own perverse deeds: for they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whom[454] they had to do: wherefore they have miserably perished in their wickedness.’ The whole tone and language of this rebuke, so grave and earnest as it is, and more sad even than it is stern, is worthy of any moral code that the world has known.

There is indeed a terrible severity in the proceedings of Ulysses against the Suitors, the women, and his rebellious subjects. But it is plain that the case, which Homer had to represent, was one that required the hero to effect something like a reconquest of the country. It is also plain that Homer felt that these stern measures would require a very strong warrant. Hence without doubt it is, that the preparations for the crisis are so elaborate; the insults offered to the disguised master of the palace so aggravated; and the direct agency of Minerva introduced to deepen his sufferings. Hence, again, when the incensed warrior is about to pursue with martial ardour the flying insurgents, his eagerness is mildly marked as excessive, and is effectually checked by the friendly but decisive intervention of Jupiter. Some critics have objected to this passage, and have argued that it could not be genuine. They surely must forget, that Homer does not seek to present us in his protagonists with a faultlessness which would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived by him and by his age, of life either divine or human. Both Ulysses and Achilles may err. But where they err, it is in measure and degree. Ulysses is the minister of public justice, and of divine retribution. But he is composed, like ourselves, of flesh and blood, and he carries his righteous office, in a natural heat, to the verge of cruelty. Then the warning voice is vouchsafed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys. And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us? And[455] has neither our philosophy nor our experience of life taught us that there are no circumstances, in which a good and just man runs so serious a risk of becoming harsh and cruel unawares, as when he is hurried along by the torrent of an originally righteous indignation?

Even so with Achilles. He is, no more than Ulysses, merely vengeful, but he resents a wrong done to justice, to decency, and to love, in his person. Upon the stream of this resentment he is carried, until it threatens to become a torrent. Then, by an admirable design, he is chastised in the yet deeper passion of his soul, his friendship for Patroclus; and so is recalled within the bounds of his duty to his suffering countrymen.

But in both cases the foundation of conduct is just and sound: by neither is any sanction given to the principle which the Gospel rebukes, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ For a wrong done to principles of public morality and justice is in each case alike the thing chiefly resented, although in each case the person who resents it is also a person that had greatly suffered by it.

Again, we should misunderstand Homer’s picture of the Greek character, if we conceived that he left no room in it for those accesses of emotion, with respect to which it may be difficult to say whether they contributed most to its strength or its weakness, while it seems clear that they are in near association with both.

The Poet’s intention does not oblige him to place his protagonists beyond the reach of human infirmity, as we see in the stubborn wrath of Achilles, and in the awakened keenness of Ulysses for the blood of his rebellious subjects[865]. And though he never exhibits them[456] as vicious, still, in the case of Ulysses, as well as in that of Achilles, he has introduced into his picture great quickness of temper, which is indeed nearly, though not necessarily, connected with sensitiveness of honour. On two occasions in particular is this observable: in the sharp answers namely of Ulysses, first to Agamemnon, who on his circuit accuses him of remissness in military duty[866]; and secondly to the θυμοδακὴς μῦθος of Euryalus[867], who has taken him for a πρήκτηρ or merchant, and a rogue to boot.

The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.

A marked indication of the power of this principle among mankind is to be found in its prevalence even among the Olympian deities. For its appearance there has no relation to divine attributes properly so called; it is strictly a part of the mythology; a sentiment copied from the human heart and life, and transferred to these inventive or idealized formations. Indeed we always find it in connection with that in which they are most human, namely, the indulgence of their sensual passions, and the results of that indulgence in their human progeny. It is not, therefore, among the higher or traditive deities that we find the sentiment; it does not exist in Apollo or Minerva, whose love is always of a different kind, and is grounded in the gifts or character of the person who is the object of it, as for instance, the great Ulysses[868], or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built the ships of Paris[869]. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascalaphus, in Venus about Æneas; and these two last are[457] the two deities whose ethical and intellectual standard is the lowest of all[870].

When we come down to earth, we find the sentiment strong everywhere. Among the Trojan royal family, where there is but little sense of the higher parts of morality, this feeling is intense alike with Priam and with Hecuba. The latter is not passionate, she is ἠπιόδωρος[871]. Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she could devour the conqueror[872]. Ulysses chooses for the title by which he would be known that of the Father of Telemachus[873]. It is true indeed that, then as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself felt; and it was then more ingenuously acknowledged. Hence Telemachus, attached to his father, when he explained the double cause of his grief and care to the Ithacan assembly, first named the death or absence of his father, but then proclaimed as the chief matter, the continuing waste and threatened destruction of his property[874]:

And the gist of his complaint against the Suitors was, not their urging Penelope to marry, but their living upon him while prosecuting the suit[875]. But then this is a father, whom he has never known or consciously seen. The Shade of Achilles in the nether world is anxious upon one subject: it is that he may know if old Peleus is still held in honour. In another he is also deeply interested; it is the valour of his son: and the gloom of his chill existence is brightened into an exult[458]ing joy, when he learns that Neoptolemus is great in fight[876]. The mother of Ulysses died neither of disease nor of old age, but of a broken heart for the absence of her son[877]. But the most signal proof of the power of the instinct is in its hold upon the self-centred character of Agamemnon, which, as a general rule, leaves no room in his thoughts for anything, except policy alone, that lies beyond the range of his personal propensities and especially his appetite for wealth. But when the gallant Menelaus, ashamed of the silence of his countrymen, accepts the challenge of Hector[878], Agamemnon seizes him by the hand, and beseeches him not to run so terrible a hazard. And again, in the Δολώνεια, when Diomed has to select a companion, Agamemnon, in dread lest his choice should fall on Menelaus, desires him to take not the man of highest rank, but the most valiant and effective companion for an enterprise of so critical a kind. His motive was apprehension for the safety of his brother[879]:

The war too is full of the most pleasing instances of attachment between brothers; Ajax and Teucer, Glaucus and Sarpedon, and many other instances less illustrious, might be quoted. It is the sad end of Polydorus which at the last works up Hector into the most daring heroism; and again in the Odyssey, the advantage is set forth of having brothers, who defend a man while he is living, and avenge him when he is dead[880].

And hence it is that, even though Greeks were hot of head and ready of hand, we find no instance where, in consequence of a broil, one member of a family inflicts violence or death upon another of the same[459] household. The horrible idea of parricide, and the execration with which public opinion would brand such a crime, restrain Phœnix at the very height of his passion from laying hands upon his father[881]:

Directly that we pass beyond the household and its affections intertwined by habit, the aspect of the case alters. Out of six instances of unpremeditated homicide in Homer, three[882] are committed upon relations by blood or by affinity, though not very near ones. Medon, the bastard of Oileus, kills a relation of the lawful wife. Tlepolemus the son of Hercules kills his grand-uncle Licymnius. Epeigeus of Budeum kills his cousin.

This marked line of distinction, between the homicides of crime and the homicides of misfortune, illustrates another point in the structure of Greek society. Relationships do not appear to have been reckoned by them as subsisting beyond a rather narrow range. We cannot trace any defined idea of kin more remote than the first cousin. The lexicographers treat the term ἀνέψιος as capable of a wider sense; but the only individuals named as ἀνέψιοι by Homer, whose relationships we can follow, are first cousins: namely, Caletor son of Clytius, and Dolops son of Lampus, both first cousins of Hector[883]. There are also persons named in the poems, whose consanguinity we can trace, while it is nowhere noticed by the Poet: for instance, Eumelus is first cousin, once removed, to Nestor. Priam and Anchises are second cousins: Æneas and Hector third. These relationships are never referred to. Thus then society is not arranged in clans, but in tribes, united[460] by the general sense of a common name, a common abode, a common history, a common religion, and a remote sense of a common tribal stock, without any sense of personal affinity in each individual case. Again, it is curious to observe that the xenial relation was not less vivacious than that of blood. The tie of blood subsists in the second generation from the common ancestor; and Diomed and Glaucus similarly own one another as ξεῖνοι, because two generations before Œneus had entertained Bellerophon[884].

The elevated and free social position of womankind in the Homeric times of itself implies a great purity of ideas respecting them. This subject, however, will receive a separate discussion.

There is a passage of Athenæus which conveys to us a tradition of no ordinary beauty, and effectually severs for us ideas and objects which only a corrupt bias has associated. He tells us that Zeno of Citium[885], whatever the practice of the Stoic leader may have been, conceived of Ἔρως, the God of Love, as a deity of friendship, liberty, concord, and public happiness, and of nothing else. So likewise his antecessors in philosophy taught that this deity was as a being perfectly pure: σεμνόν τινα καὶ παντὸς αἰσχροῦ κεχωρισμένον. This idea took refuge in the Venus Οὐρανία, the opposite one in the Πάνδημος, or promiscuous[886]. In the later ages of Greece, the distinction of these two characters one from the other feebly lived on: but there was no subjective basis for the separate existence of the former, and it was practically eclipsed, if not absorbed. The true severance of the ideas probably was effected before the time of Homer; and they were lodged in[461] separate impersonations. The effective form of the Celestial Venus is to be sought most probably in Diana, though it was natural for Plato and the philosophers to keep alive the memory of the distinction by way of apology for the popular religion. The traces of this unstained conception were in later times only to be found in the sphere of art, and were even there not always visible: but in the Homeric poems, and probably in the Homeric period, this purity of admiring sentiment towards beautiful form appears to have been a living reality.

Our inquiry on this subject must have reference partly to the Poet, and partly to his period and nation. I will first deal with the points which have a bearing upon the age as well as the bard: and will thereafter subjoin what appears to touch Homer only.

Let us commence, then, by considering that one and only case, in the whole compass of twenty-eight thousand lines, which might lead to an opposite conclusion: the case of the second Lay of Demodocus, or the adultery of Mars and Venus[887].

Of course it is impossible to justify this single passage upon its own merits: but there are many circumstances that ought to be borne in mind by those who wish to form an accurate judgment upon it in its connection with the morals either of the Poet himself, or of the age to which he belonged.

Of these the most important, in my view, is the tendency which the Pagan religion already powerfully showed to become itself the positive corrupter of morality, or, to speak perhaps more accurately, to afford the medium, through which the forces of evil and the downward inclination would principally act for the purpose of depraving it. Even in Homer’s time, the existing[462] mythology contained ample warrant for the scene of indulgence here laid bare; and we see the remaining modesty and delicacy of mankind feebly resisting the torrent of passion, which ought to have been counteracted, but which, on the contrary, was principally swollen and impelled, by the agency of the acknowledged religion of the country.

It was impossible for Homer to be altogether above the operation of influences so closely allied with an origin believed to be celestial: nor could it be easy for the popular Poet wholly to disregard the tastes of his hearers: the Poet, whose strains swept over the whole height and depth of life and nature, both human and divine, could not absolutely shut out from his encyclopædic survey so marked a characteristic of Olympian habits. He has not omitted to mark as peculiar, in more ways than one, the licence he has assumed. The lay is sung in an assembly attended by men only: and it purports also to describe a scene, from which the goddesses intentionally kept away. The amusement of the deities present is not universal: Neptune, the senior one among them, does not laugh[888], but takes the matter gravely, and desires to put an end to the scandal, by promising to make to the injured husband a pecuniary reparation[889]. He evidently appears to act under an impulse of offended dignity at least, though not of modesty. Again, the Poet endeavours to give a ridiculous air, not only a laughable one, to the whole proceeding, through the[463] extreme mortification of the guilty persons; who, when released, are made to disappear in real dismay and discomfiture[890]. In this point he altogether differs, undoubtedly, from the generality of the writers of licentious pieces, as materially as he does in the simplicity of his details; and that supposition of a partially moral aim on which some have ventured, is not so extravagant as to deserve total and absolute rejection.

It has been common to employ, in vindication of Homer, the supposition that the passage is spurious. There is something rather more marked in the personal agency of the Sun than the poems elsewhere present; and undoubtedly Apollo is made to assume a tone wholly singular, and unsupported by what is told of him in the rest of the poems. These are arguments, so far as they go, against it. But I do not venture to adopt this alluring expedient: for the general character of the colouring, diction, and incidents, appears to be Homeric enough. And again, if licentiousness was to come in, this was exactly the way for its entrance, because it was after a banquet; because it was among men exclusively, and not in the presence of women; because of the connection with mythology; and because the tale is thoroughly in keeping with the mythological character of the personages chiefly concerned.

The direct reference however of the evil to the influence of a perverted religion can be supported by distinct evidence from other parts of the poems. In the Iliad there appear to be but two passages, which can fairly be termed indelicate. One is the account of the proceeding of Juno, with the accompanying speech of Jupiter, in the Fourteenth Book[891]. This relation belongs strictly to the mythology of the poem, and it[464] is evidently handled in an historical manner; for Jupiter’s details, at least as it seems to me, are introduced for the purpose of fixing ancient national legends, as much as the stories of Nestor and Phœnix. The other passage is that, which in a few words contains the sensual advice given by Thetis, as a mother, to her son Achilles in his grief, by way of comfort;

This precisely exemplifies the relation of which I speak. The deity teaches the debased lesson: the human hero passes by the recommendation in silence. Homer would have put no such language as this into the mouth of one of his matrons.

When we come to pass sentence upon Homer, we must remember that, since in the Odyssey he represents the comic as well as the serious side of life, he ought in justice to be first compared with his successors. And here we not only shall find he gains by the comparison with Aristophanes or with Horace, but that he gains yet much more when tried by the standard of the other great school of poets which followed him in associating heroic subjects with wit and with amusement, namely, the poets of the Italian romance. There is hardly, perhaps, one of that whole school of Christian writers, who has not descended to licentiousness of far more malignant type. Nor let it be supposed that the Æneid shows in this respect any superiority in Virgil or in his hearers. As to Virgil, and as to his poems, if we take the whole of them into view, I am afraid that whatever the veil of words may do, the case was in reality bad enough: as to the hearers of the Æneid, we[465] must remember that they were not a people, but a court: we must compare his Roman auditors with the hearers of Homer, not as to that particular only of their public amusements, but as to the whole; that is, we must compare the Homeric poems not with the Æneid alone, but with the Æneid and the Floralia. In Homer’s time, men had not learned to screen their vices behind walls which also serve to fortify them. And it still remains more than doubtful whether the appetite of Homeric Greece would have endured the garbage on which Christian Florence was content to feed, during its carnivals, in the period of its most famous civilization.

From this scene let us turn to consider the evidence for asserting the comparative purity of Homer’s age, and the peculiar purity of his mind.

2. We find in Homer no trace whatever of the existence of those unnatural vices, which appear to have deeply tainted the lives of many of the most eminent Greeks of later days[893]; which drew down the blasting sentence of St. Paul[894]; which in early times had been visited on the Cities of the plain; and which, it is no less strange than horrible to think, have left their mark upon more than one period or portion even of the literature of Christendom, in a manner and degree such as must excite scarcely less of surprise than shame.

The seizure of Ganymedes became in later times the basis of a tradition of this kind: but there is not a trace of it in Homer. The intense love and admiration of beauty to which his pages bear constant witness is wholly disconnected from animal passions, and in its simplicity and earnestness is, for its combined purity and strength, really nearer the feeling of some of the[466] early Italian painters, and of Dante, than any thing else I can recall.

This is the more remarkable when we bear in mind what had already, and long before his time, happened in the East, and is recorded for us in the Book of Genesis.

Homer most rarely alludes to what is unbecoming in the human form: in the case of woman not once, and in the case of men only where he has a legitimate and sufficient purpose. Thus when Ulysses[895] threatens to strip Thersites to the skin in the event of his repeating his turbulence and insolence, it is plainly with an honest view to inflict upon him the last extremity of shame, and to make him an object of general and wholly unmixed disgust. Again, when Priam refers to the likelihood that his own body may be stripped naked, and then mangled by animals after his death, every one feels that the insult to natural decency, which he anticipates, contributes only to enhance the agony of his feelings. And the scene in the Odyssey, where Ulysses emerges from the sea upon the coast of Scheria, will always be regarded as one of the most careful, and yet most simple and unaffected, examples of true modesty contained in the whole circle of literature. Now these appear to be, not peculiarities, but samples of the general manners. We should look in vain for the proofs of an equal truth and fineness of perception among the Hebrews or among their forefathers, unless it be among a very few individuals, who, under a direct teaching from above, became select examples of virtue.

Many other indications in the poems converge upon[467] the same point. The horror with which incest was regarded is one. The deep grief and humility stamped on the character of Helen is a second. The manner in which the chastity of Bellerophon is held up to admiration, and followed by reward, is a third[896]. The high-toned living widowhood of Penelope is of itself conclusive on the point before us.

Homer’s subject in the Iliad was one, which tempted and almost forced him into indecency, where he had to refer to the original crime of Paris or to describe his private life. The manner in which he has handled it is deserving of all praise. He treats as an evil gift the original promise and temptation to Paris. The scene in the end of the Third Book was necessary in order to complete the view of the character of that bad prince: and it could not have been drawn in a manner less calculated to seduce the mind, whether by the management of its details, or by the sentiments of loathing which it raises against the principal actor.

Undoubtedly we must, as regards the whole morality of the poems, ascribe much to the praise of Homer personally: yet it is plain that he represented his age in no small degree. First, because, as a popular and famous minstrel, he could not have been in sharp or general contrast with the feeling of his contemporaries. Secondly, because we perceive remains of this seriousness and purity in the older Greek writers junior to Homer. Thirdly, because we find from Thucydides that, at the time when the original Olympian games were instituted, it was still the custom carefully to avoid the exposure of the human form, and that a different practice was introduced afterwards by the[468] Lacedæmonians, probably without evil intention, and for gymnastic ends alone (Thuc. i. 6).

And now, if we contemplate the belief, ideas, and institutions of the heroic period, as they would work upon an individual, we shall, perhaps, find that they fully justify the outline with which this section began. We may, indeed, see in the Homeric pictures of that age much to condemn or to deplore; but we may also be led to believe that if, through God’s mercy, there have been happier, there also have been less happy forms, for human destiny to be cast in.

The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents, and in desire to emulate their fame: he shares in manly and in graceful sports, acquires the use of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit, then, of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts, gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn[897]. And when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For all this time he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father’s domain.

[469]

He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for the time until reason has re-established her control. Short, however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his friend or his neighbour, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity: while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual who has become his enemy, he will acquire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury[898]. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need; to the wayfarer, the poor, the suppliant who begs from him shelter and protection. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbours will not be wanting to replace them.

His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it staring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known; drunkenness is marked only by its degrading character and the evil consequences that flow so straight from it, and is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered in his father’s hall, enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup[899]. For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who[470] celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and their country’s heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals of religion; the maiden’s hand upon his wrist, and the gilded knife glancing from his belt, as they course from point to point, or wheel in round on round[900]. That maiden, some Nausicaa or some Hermione of a neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her, ‘from the flower to the ripeness of the grape,’ with respect, fidelity, and love.

Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of trouble. Government is a machine, of which the wheels move easily; for they are well oiled by simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires; by unity of interest; by respect for authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed; by love of the common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes of his people, in war he lends them the precious example of heroic daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs; and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by the ample domains which are set apart for the prince by the people[901]. Finally, he closes his eyes, delivering over the sceptre to his son, and leaving much peace and happiness around him[902].

Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the concluding phase of which Homer’s youth, at least, was passed. But a dark and deep social revolution seems[471] to have followed the Trojan war: we have its workings already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could even Ulysses cope with it, contracted though it was for him within the narrow bounds of Ithaca. On the mainland, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly broken. The Pelopid, Neleid, Œneid houses are a wreck: disorganization invites the entry of new forces to control it: the Dorian lances bristle on the Ætolian beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal Greece, the Greece of Homer, is no more.

When we take a general survey of the practical morality of the Heroic age, and compare it with that of later times, we must at once be struck with the great superiority of the former, in all that most nearly touches the moral being of man. The mere police of society, indeed, improves with the advance of civilization. The law of determinate rights to property, which we rather dangerously call the law of meum and tuum, whereas it is but a limited part of that great ordinance, comes to be better understood in later times, and better defended by penal sanctions. A clearer ideal, as well as actual, distinction, is gradually established between force and civil right. But who will venture to say that the duties of man to the Deity, or the larger claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of Sylla or of Augustus, than in the days of Homer?

It is to be expected that, when the elements of wealth are for the most part such as nature offers, when man has hardly left the mark of his hand upon the earth, when little has been appropriated, and that little indeterminately, then the description of right which is least understood should also be least respected; namely, the law which withdraws things from original community[472] of use into individual dominion. To this day we dispute, what was the pristine foundation of the law of property. Why do we not perceive that this is equivalent to an admission, that in the first periods of political society, the whole idea of property must of necessity have been more or less vague? And consequently, that even plunder in primitive times is a different thing from plunder in later times, not only as to public estimation, but as to the moral colour of the act, and that it should be judged accordingly?

Let us then consider the notes of moral superiority which the Heroic age of Greece presents to us.

Human sacrifices were not then offered upon bloody altars to the gods. Not even the direst extremity of suffering suggested the thought of cannibalism as an alternative of escape from death[903]. Wailing infants were not then exposed to avoid the burden of their nurture. The grey hairs of parents were treated with reverence and care; and if their weakness brought down insult upon them, it stung the souls of their children, even after death. To age in general a deep and hearty reverence was paid by the young. Woman, the grand refining element of society, had not then been put down in the estimation of any man, far less of the wisest men, to the level of persons degraded by the habits of captivity, and was not held to be a ζῶον ἔμψυχον. Slavery itself was mild and almost genial. It implied the law of labour, and possibly, in ordinary cases, a prohibition to rise in life: but of positive oppression, and of suffering in connection with it, or of any penal system directed to its maintenance, we have no trace whatever. Marriage was the honourable and[473] single tie between man and his helpmate[904]. Connections with very near relations were regarded with horror; the wife was the representative, the intelligent companion and friend, of her husband; adultery was held in aversion, a crime rarer then than in most after-periods: and the sacred bond between husband and wife was not liable to be broken by the poor invention of divorce.

Organized unchastity had not then become a kind of devil’s law for society. The very name and nature of unnatural lusts appear to have been unknown in Greece, centuries after Sodom had been smitten for its crimes. The detestable invention, which set gladiators to kill one another for the amusement of enraptured spectators, was reserved for times more vain of their philosophy and their artificial culture. The rights of the poor were acknowledged in the form of an unlimited obligation to relieve them, under pain of the divine displeasure: and no stranger or suppliant could be repelled from the door of any one, who regarded either the fear of God or the fear of man.

As respects the gods, the remains of ancient piety still in some degree checked the activity of the critical faculty, and the reverence for the Power that disposes events and hates the wicked was not yet derided by speculation, nor wholly buried beneath fable and corruption. True, sacrifice was regarded as the indispensable and effective basis of religion: but in general, as between Greek and Greek, those who were most careful of virtue were also most regular in their offerings. Men were believers in prayer: they thought that, if in need they humbly betook themselves to supplication, they would be heard and helped. In short, they kept their hold upon a higher power, which we[474] see to have been real, because they resorted to it at those times when human nature eschews illusion, and cries out for reality. Ulysses, in affliction or in need, addresses himself to the gods: even Ægisthus, when alarmed, begins to think much of them: but Cicero or Quintilian, when the arrow of grief has touched them to the quick, seek for comfort in philosophical calculations on the great woe and little weal of life.

Yet, even while all this was so, there lay in the accumulating mythology the thickly scattered seeds of destruction, both for belief and for duty. How could marriage continue single, pure, or permanent, in the face of the promiscuous lusts of Jupiter? Why should not helpless infants be exposed, when Juno, disgusted with the form of Vulcan, threw him down into the sea? Why should not man make a joyous spectacle of blood and wounds, when they were already beheld with amusement by the highest of the gods? The examples of rebellion, of discord, of luxury and selfish ease, were all of them ready to forward the process of corruption among men; and this armoury of curses was prepared too in the very quarter, where his eye should behold nothing but what is august and pure.

Again. In all descriptions of tender feelings the Greeks of the Homeric age are much nearer than those of later times to the standard of truth and nature.

The heroes of Homer weep freely; but, says the Agamemnon of Euripides[905], while he complains of the restriction, weeping is the recognised privilege of humble life only;

[475]

And Aristotle thought, as is thought now, that weeping was unfit for men. The wise man, he conceives[906], cannot incite others to mourn with him, διὰ τὸ μηδ’ αὐτὸς εἶναι θρηνητικός: but women, and woman-like men, γύναια καὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἄνδρες, are glad of such companionship in sorrow.

There are indeed three most important points of the Homeric poems, in which it would appear that the Greek character greatly hardened, and greatly sank, as the nation advanced in its career. One of them is the principle of sympathy. Another is that of placability, which Homer has very powerfully exhibited in Achilles. The third is that of humility, of which we have an example in Helen, in the Helen of Troy and the Helen of Sparta, such as heathenism nowhere else, I believe, presents to us.

It has thus appeared that if we take the state of morality as it appears among mankind in the poems of Homer, and compare it with that of Greece in its highest civilization, we find before us two grand differences. Those offences against the moral law, which constitute crimes of violence, were more justly appreciated at the later period; but as to those which constitute, in the language of Christianity, the lusts of the mind and of the flesh, a great preference is due to the former.

We are naturally led to inquire, Whence these two movements in opposite directions? That mankind should either lose ground or gain it, in morality as a whole, is far less startling at first sight, than that, at one and the same time, with respect to one great portion of the moral law there should be progress, and with respect to another, retrogression.

[476]

In reality, however, this was the condition of man: retrogression as to his spiritual life, but advance and development, up to a certain point, with regard to the intellectual and the social career. Sins of the flesh lay chiefly between God and the individual conscience: the social results did not palpably and immediately reach beyond the persons immediately concerned. But crimes of violence struck directly at the fabric of society by destroying security of person and property; and robbed mankind, especially the ruling part of mankind, of the immense advantages and enjoyments which they reaped from civilized life. Thus, the moral sense was quick, and even grew quicker with the lapse of time, when it was fed and prompted by such motives of self-interest as lay within its appreciation, like those which the desire to enjoy the commodities of life supplied. But it languished and all but died, when its business was to maintain those virtues which involve severe self-denial, and of which the reward never can be fully appreciated except by those who are so favoured as to practise them in the highest degree.

Nor must we overlook some special bearings of the institution of slavery upon this question. As it grew and was consolidated, it of course entailed an increased necessity for laws to defend life and goods against violence. But as regarded the other class of offences, its influence was all in the sense of more and more relaxation. For beauty and defencelessness, when they were combined in slaves, at once wrought up attraction to the uttermost, and removed all obstacles to enjoyment. While at the same time the partial indulgence, which at all periods has commonly attended such commerce between slaves and their masters, operated as a safety valve to let off the political dangers[477] of that system: so that, on the one hand, slavery was a feeder to lust, and, on the other, lust was a buttress to slavery.

That it was not on moral grounds that in the later times of Greece life and property were better defended than in the former, we may partly judge from finding that, though it is in the nature of all society that a nation should rather incline to gild the days of its forefathers with ornaments beyond the truth, the later Greek traditions crammed the heroic age with a mass of crimes of which Homer knows nothing. He sets Minos and Rhadamanthus before us as characters positively good: Thyestes and others are at worst neutral in character: but all these, according to the later tradition, were either accessory to, or contaminated with, the most horrible enormities.

It seems, indeed, as if Homer had himself lived to note the signs of moral degeneracy. In part, we may perhaps say, it is inseparably associated with that deterioration in the character and idea of government, which begins to be traceable in the Odyssey. But in that poem he has given us another indication of it, unlike any thing in the Iliad, where he never contrasts the present unfavourably with the past, except as to mere corporal strength. For he makes Minerva as Mentor deliver to Telemachus the sentiment, that among sons a small number only are equal to their fathers[907], a very few indeed excelling them, but the greater part falling short of them. In later times, we have come to associate threnodies of this kind with the notion that they are complaints of course, formulæ taken up and reiterated successively from generation to generation. It may or may not be just thus to view[478] them: but whether it be just or not for later times, I think that we ought not so to limit the force of the idea when it meets us in the age of Homer: the world was then young, and human society had not so learned its ‘ancient saws or modern instances,’ as to separate them from the truths of experience and of observation. The greatest ornament of the poems of Hesiod, the series of the Ages declining from gold to iron, probably expresses the actual state of the facts, as it seems to move on the same line with the narrative of the early Scriptures: and Homer’s lamentation on degeneracy in all likelihood may belong to a real portion of the same descending process.

[479]

No view of a peculiar civilization can on its ethical side be satisfactory, unless it include a distinct consideration of the place held in it by woman. And, besides, the position of the Greek woman of the heroic age is in itself so remarkable, as even on special grounds to require separate and detailed notice. It is likewise so elevated, both absolutely and in comparison with what it became in the historic ages of Greece and Rome amidst their elaborate civilization, as to form in itself a sufficient confutation of the theories of those writers who can see in the history of mankind only the development of a law of continual progress from intellectual darkness into light, and from moral degradation up to virtue.

The idea and place of woman have been slowly and laboriously elevated by the Gospel: and their full development has constituted the purest and most perfect protest, that the world has ever seen, against the sovereignty of force. For it is not alone against merely physical, but also against merely intellectual strength, that this protest has been lodged. To the very highest range of intellectual strength known among the children of Adam, woman seems never to have ascended, but in every or almost every case to have fallen some[480]what short of it. But when we look to the virtues, it seems probable both that her average is higher, and that she also attains in the highest instances to loftier summits. Certainly there is no proof here of her inferiority to man. Now it is nowhere written in Holy Scripture that God is knowledge, or that God is power; while it is written that God is love: words which appear to set forth love as the central essence, and all besides as attributes. Woman then holds of God, and finds her own principal development in that which is most God-like. Thus, therefore, when Christianity wrought out for woman, not a social identity, but a social equality, not a rivalry with the function of man, but an elevation in her own function reaching as high as his, it made the world and human life in this respect also a true image of the Godhead.

Within the pale of that civilization which has grown up under the combined influence of the Christian religion as paramount, and of what may be called the Teutonic manners as secondary, we find the idea of woman and her social position raised to a point even higher than in the poems of Homer. But it would be hard to discover any period of history or country of the world, not being Christian, in which they stood so high as with the Greeks of the heroic age.

There are various heads under which we may inquire into the subject before us.

One is the law of marriage in the heroic age, and the state of the specific relation between the sexes.

A second is the employments assigned to women; how high did they reach, and how low did they descend?

A third is the social footing on which they stood, as tested by manners.

[481]

A fourth is the general outline of the woman’s character, as it is to be estimated from the varied specimens which Homer has set before us.

Firstly; a main criterion of the general condition of woman in a given state of society is to be found in the view which it may exhibit of the great institution of marriage. In proportion as that institution is purified and elevated by just restraint, the condition of woman is honourable, free, and happy. In proportion as it is relaxed, in accommodation to human infirmity or appetite, the condition of woman is degraded and servile; for where desire is the law, strength is its appropriate and only sanction, and the cause of the weaker fails. Just as a strict and efficient police is most important to the unprotected, so a strict law of marriage is most for the interest of the woman.

The general position of womankind in the Homeric age is high on both sides of the Archipelago; but, as respects marriage, its chiefest pillar, it is perceptibly even higher among the Greeks than among the Trojans. Among the multitude of cases, that either directly or incidentally come before us in the poems, there is nothing that at all resembles the Asiatic household of Priam, or that seems to favour polygamy. Nor have we any instance where a wife is divorced or taken away from her husband, and then made the wife of another man during his lifetime. The froward Suitors, who urge Penelope to choose a new husband from among them, do it upon the plea that Ulysses must be dead, and that there is no hope of his return: a plea not irrational, if we presume that the real term of his absence came to even half the number of years which Homer has assigned to it. The ancient law of England, while it repudiated the principle of divorce, recognised the presumption of[482] the husband’s death, when brought near to certainty by a long term of absence, as equivalent to death itself for the purpose of exempting the wife from civil penalty in case of her marriage. Ægisthus, again, finds it extremely difficult to corrupt Clytemnestra: and his success in inducing her to marry him entails, as if a matter of course, the murder of her former husband. The crime is mentioned by Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, as consisting of the two parts, of which he by no means specifies the latter as the more atrocious[908];

The law of marriage differs from most other human laws in a very important particular. It is their excellence to impose the minimum of restraint, which will satisfy the absolute wants of society: but the aim and the criterion of a good law of marriage is to impose the maximum of restraint that human nature can be induced bonâ fide to accept. Doubtless there is here also a conceivable excess: but it would be and has been indicated by the general withholding of submission, or evasion of obedience. Up to that point, the restrictions of the marriage law are not evils to be endured for the sake of a greater good, but are good in themselves.

In order that this great institution may thoroughly fulfil its ends, it is especially requisite,

1. That it should not be contracted between more than one man and one woman.

2. That it should on both sides be, in the main and as a general rule, deliberate and spontaneous.

3. That the contract, once made, should not be dissolved.

And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative:

[483]

4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand within certain near degrees of relationship.

5. It is always requisite that this engagement should exclude not only the possibility of marriage for either partner with a third person, but also any other fleshly connection without marriage.

Of these propositions, the first, third, and fourth, are heads of restraint on marriage. Every one of the three was acknowledged by the Greeks of the heroic age.

The rule of conjugal fidelity was admitted, though not wholly without relaxation, to be as applicable to men as to their wives. This, and all the other restrictions, were applied to women with undeviating strictness.

1. As regards the first, it is plain, from a mass of evidence so large as to amount, in spite of its being negative, to demonstration, that the uniform practice of the Greeks required the marriage union to be single. This, however, of itself, is saying little; but it imports much besides what is on the surface: it implies, that, with due allowances, the spirit of the marriage contract is a spirit of equity and of well adjusted rights, as between those who enter into it.

2. This relation was also conceived by the Greeks in a spirit of freedom.

It held a central place in life thoroughly European, as opposed to the Oriental ideas. Nay, it approximated very much to the ideas prevailing in our own country as well as age. We do not find in the poems any instance of a marriage enforced against the will of a young maiden, or contracted when she was of years too tender to exercise a judgment. Nausicaa fears that if she is seen with Ulysses, censorious tongues will immediately[484] put it about that she is going to be married to him. They will say, ‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger with Nausicaa?’[909] Surely she is going to become his bride. Truly she has picked up some gallant from afar, who has strayed from his ship: or some god has come down to wed her. Better it were if she found a husband from abroad, since, forsooth, she looks down upon her Phæacian suitors, though they are many and noble. Then continues this model of maidens; ‘Thus I shall come into disgrace; and indeed I myself should be indignant with any one who should so act, and who, against the will of her parents, frequented the company of men before being publicly married.’ In this remarkable passage we have such an exhibition of woman’s freedom, as scarcely any age has exceeded. For it clearly shows that the marriage of a damsel was her own affair, and that, subject to a due regard freely rendered to authority and opinion, she had, when of due age, a main share in determining it. That is to say, to the extent of choosing a mate among the competitors. The expression of giving away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used[910], but we perceive the limits of its meaning from the passage just quoted. The more so, because similar expressions as to the proceedings of parents are applied in Homer to the marriages of sons[911]. I do not suppose it would have been open to any maiden to remain single. That all should marry, that there should be no class living in celibacy, was a kind of law for society in its infant state, even as now it may be said to be almost a law for the most numerous classes of society. Above all I suppose it to be clear that a marriageable widow could not ordinarily remain in[485] widowhood. No reproach arises to Helen, on account of the renewal of her irregular union with Deiphobus; and when Penelope, or others in her behalf, contemplate the death of Ulysses, and her consequent release from the marriage state, that change is always treated as the immediate preface to another crisis, namely, the choice of a second husband.

Although social intercourse with man might not, as Nausicaa says, be sought by damsels, it might innocently come on occasions such as those afforded by public festivities, or by an ordinary calling[912].

But again, the persecution of Penelope by the Suitors bears emphatic testimony to the freedom of woman within the limits I have described. The utmost of their aim is to coerce her into marrying some one; even as their sin lies in bringing this pressure to bear upon her before the death of Ulysses has been ascertained. On the other hand, the pressure is a moral one: her violent removal is never thought of; and the absolute silence of the poem on the subject proves that it would have been at variance with the prevailing manners, had any cabal been formed, in order even to constrain her choice towards a particular person. The very presents, by which the profligate Suitors endeavoured to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses, speak favourably of the free condition of the sex, and seem to show, that it descended even into lower stations.

For the Greek in the heroic age, marriage was the pivot of life. It took place in the bloom of age: hence[913] the beautiful expression, θαλερὸς γάμος, Od. vi. 66, xx. 74. It even marks of itself the age of persons;[486] Alcinous has five sons, three ἠΐθεοι, and two ὀπυίοντες, (Od. vi. 63): three youths or bachelors, and two married.

Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom, and dowries sometimes given with the bride. Where the two concurred, the presents may have been either in the nature of compliments, or intended to meet the expense of the wedding festivities. The absence of the former, and the occurrence of the latter, seem each to be more or less in the nature of an exception. With a wife returning to her parents, the dowry returned also[914]. On the other hand, to judge from the story of Vulcan and Venus, wherever adultery was committed, the guilty man was bound to pay a fine[915]. The poems give us several instances where personal gifts and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a wife[916]. The drawing of the Bow affords a conspicuous example of the prevailing ideas.

Upon the whole, then, in all that related to forming engagements by marriage, there seems to have been preserved a large regard to the freedom and dignity of woman[917]. War was doubtless in this respect her great enemy; she then became the prey of the strongest, and it is probable that this may have been the most powerful instrument in promoting the extensive introduction of concubinage into Greece.

With respect to the ceremonial of marriage, and the nature of its formal engagement, the Homeric poems furnish us with scanty evidence. There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The expression δαινύναι γάμον, in Od. iv. 3, seems to contain all that would be included by us when we speak of celebrating marriage. Not that it was the[487] mere banquet that created the conjugal relation: it was doubtless the ἀμφάδιος γάμος, the solemn public acknowledgment, to which relatives and friends, and, in such a case as that of Hermione, the public or people of the state, thus became witnesses. This subject will be further considered in connection with the case of Briseis.

3. If the mode of entry into the obligations of married life was as simple and indeterminate as we have supposed, such a want of formalities greatly enhances the strength of the testimony borne by the facts of the heroic age to what may be called the natural perpetuity of the marriage contract.

It is a very remarkable circumstance, that, of the two great poems of Homer, each should in its own way bear emphatic testimony to this great, and, for all countries that can bear it, this most precious law.

Neither poem presents us with any case of a divorced wife; of a couple between whom the marriage tie, after having once been duly formed, had ceased to subsist. And each poem in its own way raises this negative evidence to a form of the greatest cogency, from its happening to present the very circumstances under which, if under any, the dissolution of the bond would have been acknowledged.

In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus, his κουριδίη ἄλοχος, has been living for many years in de facto adultery with Paris. The line between marriage on the one hand, and continued cohabitation together with public recognition on the other, being faintly drawn, Helen is familiarly known in Troy as the wife of Paris; so she is called by the Poet, and so she calls herself[918]. Menelaus, too, is described as her former husband[919]. Whether[488] this was a mere acquiescence in a certain state of facts, or the regular result of more relaxed usages respecting marriage in Troy, may be doubtful. But it is clear that the view of the Greeks was directly opposite. They never speak of Paris as the husband of Helen. In their estimation, all the rights of Menelaus remained entire; and, as we shall see, it appears that, even while the possession of them was withheld from him, he acknowledged the reciprocal obligations. Nay, Hector himself seems to describe Helen as still the wife of Menelaus; γνοίης χ’ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν παράκοιτιν[920]. The war was (so to speak) juridically founded on the fact, that the lawful marriage was not dissolved by adultery, even with the addition of all that followed: that the relation of Helen to her ancient husband was unchanged. Accordingly, Agamemnon recollects with pain, that if his brother should die, he will no longer be in a condition to demand her restoration, and to enforce it by arms, for his soldiers will forthwith return home[921].

The result is in full conformity with this view. When the war ends, Helen resumes her place as a matter of course in the house of Menelaus. She bears it with unconstrained and perfect dignity; and her relations to her husband carry no mark of the woful interval, except that its traces indelibly remain in her own penitential shame.

It is plain that the Greeks heartily detested the crime of adultery: for one of the three great chapters of accusation against the Suitors is, that they wooed[489] the wife of Ulysses in his lifetime[922]. But it is not less plain that they knew nothing of the idea, that by that crime it was placed in the power of any person to obtain or to confer a release from the obligations of marriage.

Next to adultery, desertion or prolonged absence has afforded the most favoured plea for the destruction, so far as human law can destroy it, of the marriage bond. And indeed it is hardly possible to push the opposite doctrine to its extreme, and to say that no married person may remarry, except with demonstrative evidence of the death of the original husband or wife respectively. Probably, however, no period of the world has exhibited a more stringent application of the doctrine of indissolubility to the case of desertion, than that on which the plot of the Odyssey is founded; where, after an absence of the husband prolonged to the twentieth year, Penelope still waits his return; prays that death may relieve her from the dread necessity of making a new choice; and, thus directed by her own conscience and right feeling, likewise apprehends condemnation by the public judgment in the event of her proceeding to contract a new engagement[923].

The Heroic age has left no more comely monument, than its informal, but instinctive, and most emphatic sense, thus recorded for our benefit, of the sanctity of marriage, of the closeness of the union it creates, and of the necessity of perpetuity as an element of its capacity to attain its chief ends, and to administer a real discipline to the human character.

4. A further proof of the elevated estimate of marriage among the Greeks is afforded by their views, so far as they can be traced, of the offence termed incest.

The Homeric deities, indeed, were released in this[490] respect, as in others, from all restraint. Eris, or Enuo[924], was both the sister and the concubine of Mars: Juno, the sister and the wife of Jupiter. Æolus[925], though called φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν, must have been more than man; because Jupiter had made him warden of the Winds, which it was his prerogative to confine or to let loose[926]. And in virtue, I suppose, of belonging to the class of superior beings, his six daughters were, without any consciousness of offence, the wives, the αἰδοῖαι ἄλοχοι, of his six sons[927].

In Troy, Helen apparently becomes the wife of two brothers in succession. We must not overrate the force of merely negative evidence, but it will be observed that Homer does not furnish us with any trace of this usage among the Greeks. The story of Phœnix probably implies, that the connection of the same woman with a father and a son was incestuous; for the full efficacy of the remedy proposed by his mother turns on the supposition, that there would remain to his father no alternative but incest after Phœnix had gained his object, and that such an alternative would at once deter him from the love of the stranger.

In Scheria, Alcinous is married to Arete, the daughter of his elder brother Rhexenor[928]. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was apparently also his niece[929]. Again, we appear to find in the Iliad an example of a marriage, by one shade yet less desirable, that of a man with his aunt. Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was married to a daughter of Adrastus: and Ægialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called Ἀδρηστίνη, was probably his aunt likewise[930].

[491]

We have also among the Trojans an example of a man’s marriage with his aunt. Iphidamas, son of Antenor[931], was brought up in the house of Cisses his maternal grandfather; and he contracted a marriage with his mother’s sister just before proceeding to the war.

At the same time, the law of incest is clearly a progressive one from the infancy of mankind onwards, and what we have to consider is not so much its precise extent, as the degree of genuine aversion with which the violation of it is regarded. Upon this subject there can be no doubt, when we read the passage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting the μέγα ἔργον of Œdipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them[932]. In principle, then, that restriction of the field of choice, which adds so greatly to the intimacy and firmness of the marriage tie, was fully recognised in Greece.

Neither do we want traces in Homer of that remarkable effect of the unifying power of marriage, which confers upon each partner in the union an equal and common relation to the family of the other, by a convention which has so much of the moral strength of fact. The most remarkable of all the indications upon this subject in the poems is that, which relates to the future life of Menelaus. He is said to be elected to the honour of a place in the region of Elysium after this life, not in virtue of his own merits, but as being, through his marriage with Helen, the son-in-law of Jupiter.

The recognition of relationships through the wife or husband to the husband or wife respectively, and the existence of names to describe them, is a sign of the completeness of the union effected by the marriage tie.[492] That these terms were not merely formal and ceremonious, we may judge from the speech of Alcinous:

Now of these words we have the following;

πηὸς, for any relative by affinity;

ἐκυρὸς, πενθερὸς, father-in-law;

ἐκυρὴ, mother-in-law;

δαὴρ, brother-in-law;

γαλοὼς, sister-in-law;

γαμβρὸς, son-in-law;

νυὸς, daughter-in-law;

μητρυίη, stepmother; or the lawful wife, in relation to a spurious son. There is but one real example, Eeribœa, of a stepmother in Homer (Il. v. 389).

And, lastly, we have εἰνατεὶρ, husband’s sister-in-law, a relationship not expressed by any word in the English and many other languages. The εἰνατέρες are always separate from the γαλόῳ.

The formation of this large circle of relationships by affinity is the correlative to a well-defined strictness in the marriage law. For these relationships would mean nothing, but would simply betoken and even breed confusion, unless marriage were perpetual and incest eschewed.

Friedreich[934] truly observes, that the law of incest, instead of being tightened, was relaxed at a later period in Greece; a very decided mark of moral retrogression, which cannot be cancelled by all the splendours of her history.

5. We come now to the remaining question; how[493] was this great obligation practically observed in the Greece of the heroic age?

Part, at least, of the answer is easy to give. By women it was observed admirably. Except only in the case of Anteia, two generations old, there is no instance in Homer of a woman who seeks the breach of it. The forcible or half forcible seduction[935], and progressive contamination, of a part of the unmarried women who belong to the household of Ulysses, is one of the three great crimes which draw down from Heaven such fearful vengeance upon the Suitors. Of the παλλακὶς, we hear but twice in the poems; nor can we say that this word meant more than a concubine[936]. Among the Greek chieftains, cases of homicide are more frequent than those of bastardy. And when such instances are mentioned, it is not in the hardened manner of later times.

It is something at least that, in such matters, a nation should be alive to shame. We have various signs that this was so in Greece. One of them is the tender expression[937]:

It must be remembered, when we touch upon these morbid parts in human life and nature, that the society of that period did not avail itself of the expedient of the professional corruption of a part of womankind in order to relieve the virtue of the residue from assault.

Among the Greek chieftains and their families, Polydore, a sister of Achilles, had a spurious son[938]. Nestor[939] sprang from a father of spurious birth. Each Ajax had a spurious brother. Only Menelaus of all the chiefs is mentioned as having himself had an illegitimate son. This son, who has the touching name of Mega[494]penthes, was born to him by a slave, evidently after the rape of Helen; he was apparently recognised in part; his marriage was celebrated at the same time with that of his legitimate sister Hermione, but it was contracted with a person of lower station. He was τηλύγετος, the last as well as the first; though Helen, owing, as the Poet intimates, to a divine decree, had no more children, with whom to console her husband, after her return from the abduction.

The superior rank conferred by lawful birth is in every case strongly marked; and this perhaps is the reason why we never find the succession to sovereignty in Greece disturbed by illegitimate offspring.

The great majority of illegitimate births in Homer are those ascribed to the paternity of deities. It is probable that this extraction may be pleaded to cover sometimes marriages which were conceived to be beneath the station of the woman; sometimes instances like that of Astyoche[940], when war had both excited passion, and provided opportunities and victims for its gratification[941]. Setting these cases aside, the cases of illegitimacy in heroic Greece appear to be rare.

At the same time, instances are found[942] in which a spurious child (only, however, I think in the case of a son) is brought up in a manner approaching to that of the legitimate offspring: and a certain relationship is acknowledged to exist, for the wife is said to be μητρυίη, or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case of Pedæus, it was Theano, Antenor’s wife, who herself educated the bastard: but it is plain that in Troas concubinage was far more fully recognised, than in Greece.

Agamemnon in the First Iliad, as we have seen, when announcing his attention to make Chryseis a[495] partner of his bed, by no means treats this concubinage as being what it would have been with Priam, a matter of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring her to his wife Clytemnestra[943].

In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by the use of the word γέρας, prize, Homer might, as it is commonly assumed, mean to indicate, for most of the principal chiefs, that they had captives taken in war for concubines. But the point is far from clear; and at any rate Menelaus, as is observed by Athenæus, forms an exception[944]. This circumstance affords rather a marked proof of Greek ideas with respect to the durability of the marriage tie; for that author is probably right in ascribing it to his being, as it were, in the presence of his wife Helen. This concubinage, however, appears to have been single in each case where it prevailed; or, if it was otherwise, Homer has at least deemed the circumstance unfit to be recorded. There is no sign that the seven Lesbian damsels of Il. ix. 128 were concubines.

Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede[945] for the companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment in a peculiar degree. He calls her his ἄλοχον θυμάρεα[946]. It is said that the word ἄλοχος may mean a concubine[947]. I do not find any passage in Homer, except this of Il. ix., where it may[496] not with the most obvious propriety be translated ‘wife.’ It has its highest force, no doubt, in such expressions as μνηστὴ ἄλοχος and κουριδίη ἄλοχος: even as we say intensively ‘wedded wife.’ But the term is the standing phrase for wife, as much as τέκνα for children; and it is impossible, consistently with what we see of the usages of marriage among the Greeks, to suppose that the same term was alike applicable to wives and concubines. Nor is it necessary to draw such a conclusion from this passage. We might be tempted to suppose, that Achilles here puts a strain as it were upon the use of the word, and for the moment calls Briseis his wife, in order to prepare the way for the tremendous and piercing sarcasm which immediately follows[948]:

But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure, observe, that the whole argument of this passage turns upon and requires us to suppose his having treated Briseis as he would have treated a wife. So likewise his declaration, that every good man loves and cares for his wife, becomes insipid, and the whole comparison with the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife to the name ἄλοχος.

Probably the explanation may be, that she was designated for marriage with him; for in the Nineteenth Book, where she utters a lamentation over Patroclus, she declares how that chief kindly encouraged her to bear up in her widowhood and captivity, promising that she should be the wife of Achilles, and that the banquets, which, with their attendant sacrifices, seem to have constituted for the Homeric Greeks the cere[497]monial of marriage, should be celebrated on their return to Phthia[949]. I should therefore suppose that we might with strict justice render ἄλοχος, in Il. ix. 336, ‘my bride;’ always remembering that we are dealing with a relation that was not governed by rules, and that might virtually inure by usage only.

The subsequent passage[950], in which the hero speaks of marrying some damsel of Hellas or Phthia, is quite consistent with this construction, for, as it is plain that no actual marriage had been concluded between them, his relation to Briseis terminated with her removal de facto. The same passage, as well as the custom of Greece, makes it reasonable to understand that the mother of Neoptolemus, whoever she may have been, was now dead.

Indeed it is to be remembered all along, that we are speaking of a state, rather than an act. We know nothing of a ceremonial of Homeric marriage beyond the exchange of gifts and the celebration of festivities in connection with the domicile, neither of which could ordinarily have place in the case of a captive while continuing such. She would grow into a wife in virtue of intention on the part of her lord, confirmed by habit, and sealed by a full recognition when the circumstances, that would alone admit of it, should have arrived.

The concubinage of the Greek chiefs, practised as it was during a long absence from home, bears an entirely different domestic and social character from that of Priam. It clearly constitutes, especially if the connections were single, the mildest and least licentious of all the forms in which the obligations of the marriage tie could be relaxed.

[498]

The presence of a concubine within the precinct of the family seems to have been differently viewed by the Greeks; for here, and here only, do we find the disparaging word παλλακὶς (whence the Latin pellex) applied to a person in that position. The two cases of it are as follows. In one of them Ulysses feigns a story of his having been a son of the Cretan Castor, born of a παλλακὶς, but (which he mentions as a departure from the general rule) regarded by his father as much as were his legitimate children[951]. The other is the instance of Phœnix in the Ninth Iliad. Amyntor his father had an intended or actual concubine; and, bestowing his affections on her, slighted the mother of his child. She, in resentment or self-defence, entreated her son Phœnix to cross or anticipate his father[952], and win the woman to his own embraces[953]. He complied; and thus drew down upon himself the dire wrath and curses of his father, which kindled his own anger in return; but he restrained himself from the act of parricide, and became a fugitive instead. This legend is somewhat obscure; but it appears to indicate plainly that concubinage was not a recognised institution among the Greeks, as it seems to have been among the Trojans.

So again, when Laertes had purchased Euryclea[954], we are told that he never attempted to make her his concubine, anticipating the resentment of his wife. It is plain, therefore, that this would have been an admitted offence on his part; and accordingly, that concubinage was contrary to the ideas of Greece respecting conjugal obligation.

Within the precinct of the Greek marriages, which was secured and fenced in the manner we have seen,[499] there prevailed that tenderness, freedom, and elevation of manners, which was the natural offspring of a system in the main so sound and strict. The general tone of the relations of husband and wife in the Homeric poems is thoroughly natural; it is full of dignity and warmth; a sort of noble deference, reciprocally adjusted according to the position of the giver and the receiver, prevails on either side. I will venture to add, it is full also of delicacy, though we must be content to distinguish, in considering this point, between what is essential and what is conventional, and must make some allowance for the directness and simplicity of expression that characterized an artless age[955].

With this delicacy was combined a not less remarkable freedom in the Greek manners with respect to women. We find Penelope appearing in her palace at will, on all ordinary occasions, before the Suitors; although, on the other hand, no woman would be present where any thing like license was to be exhibited, as we may judge from the case of the lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey. The general freedom of woman is however most fully exhibited in the case of Nausicaa. She goes forth into the country with her maidens unattended. When Ulysses appears there is no fear of him as a man, or even as a stranger, but only from his condition at the moment. This difficulty she surmounts with a dignity which she could not have possessed by virtue of her personal character only, nor except in a case where great liberty was habitually and traditionally enjoyed by women.

Her arrangement of the manner in which he is to enter the city apart from her, and her regard in this[500] matter to opinion, both rest upon the same presumption of her freedom from petty control, as does her playful demand upon Ulysses for ζωάγρια, or salvage.

Again, how remarkable it is that Alcinous, far from being surprised that his maiden daughter should have entered into conversation with a stranger, is actually on the point of finding fault with her for not having shown a greater forwardness, and brought him home in her own company: a reproach, from which Ulysses saves her by his intercession[956].

It is not only from this or that particular, but it is from the whole tone of the intercourse maintained between men and women, that we are really to judge what is the social position of the latter.

And this tone it is which supplies such conclusive evidence with respect to the age of Homer. Achilles observes, that love and care[957] towards a wife are a matter of course with every right-minded man. Love and care, indeed, may be shown to a pet animal. It is not on the mere words, therefore, that we must rest our conclusions; but upon the spirit in which they are spoken, and the whole circle of signs with which they are associated. It is on the reciprocity of all those sentiments between man and wife, father and daughter, son and mother, which are connected with the moral dignity of the human being. It is on the confidence exchanged between them, and the loving liberty of advice and exhortation from the one to the other. The social equality of man and woman is of course to be understood with reserves, as is that other equality, which nevertheless indicates a political truth of the utmost importance, the equality of all classes in the eye of the law. There are differences in the nature and constitution of the two great[501] divisions of the race, to be met by adaptations of treatment and of occupation; without such adaptations, the seeming equality would be partiality alike dangerous and irrational. But, subject to those reserves, we find in Homer the fulness of moral and intelligent being alike consummate, alike acknowledged, on the one side and on the other. The conversation of Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Iliad, of Ulysses and Penelope in the Twenty-third Odyssey, the position of Arete at the court of Alcinous, and that of Helen in the palace of Menelaus, all tell one and the same tale. Ulysses, for example, where he wishes to convey his supplication in Scheria to the King, does it by falling at the Queen’s feet: but she does not supplicate her husband: the address to her seems to have sufficed. And Helen appears, in the palace of Menelaus, on such a footing relatively to her husband, as would perfectly befit the present relations of man and woman. Nay, we may take the speech of Helen in the Sixth Iliad, addressed to Hector, where she touches on the character of Paris, as equal to any of them by way of social indication. What we there read is not the sagacity or intelligence of the speaker, but it is the right of the wife (so to call her) to speak about the character of her husband and its failings, her acknowledged possession of the standing ground from which she can so speak, and speak with firmness, nay, even with an authority of her own.

When we see Briseis, the widow of a prince, sharing the bed of Achilles, and delivered over as a slave into the hands of Agamemnon, when we find Hector anticipating that Andromache might be required to perform menial offices for a Greek mistress, and Nestor encouraging the army not to quit Troy until they had forced the Trojan matrons into their embraces, we are[502] struck with pity and horror. But we must separate between the danger and suffering which uniformly dogs the weak in times of violence, most of all, too, after the sack of a city, and what belongs to the age of Homer in particular. After this separation has been effected, there remains nothing which ought to depress our views of the position of woman in the heroic age. The sons of Priam, princes of Troy, were sold into captivity by Achilles as he took them[958]: of course the purchasers put them to menial employments. Not only so, but Eumæus, the faithful swineherd and slave of Ulysses, was by birth royal: his father Ctesios was king of two wealthy and happy cities[959]. From the name Εὐρυμέδουσα, it would appear probable that she also, the chamber-woman of the palace of Alcinous, though a captive, was of noble birth[960].

There is not in the whole of the poems an instance of rude or abusive manners towards woman as such, or of liberties taken with them in the course of daily life. If Melantho gets hard words, it is not as a woman, but for her vice and insolence. The conduct of the Ithacan Suitors to Penelope, as it is represented in the Odyssey, affords the strongest evidence of the respect in which women were held. Her son had been a child: there was no strong party of adherents to the family; yet the highflown insolence of the Suitors, demanding that she should marry again, is kept at bay for years, and never proceeds to violence.

We find throughout the poems those signs of the overpowering force of conjugal attachments which, from all that has preceded, we might expect. While admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an Immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining[503] every day for Penelope[961]. It is the highest honour of a hero to die fighting on behalf of his wife and children. The continuance of domestic happiness, and the concord of man and wife, is a blessing so great, that it excites the envy of the gods, and they interrupt it by some adverse dispensation[962]. And no wonder; for nothing has earth to offer better, than when man and wife dwell together in unity of spirit: their friends rejoice, their foes repine: the human heart has nothing more to desire[963]. There is here apparently involved that great and characteristic idea of the conjugal relation, that it includes and concentrates in itself all other loves. And this very idea is expressed by Andromache, where, after relating the slaughter of her family by Achilles, she tells Hector, ‘Hector, nay but thou art for me a father, and a mother, and a brother, as well as the husband of my youth[964].’ To which he in the same spirit of enlarged attachment replies, by saying that neither the fate of Troy, which he sees approaching, nor of Hecuba, nor of Priam, nor of his brothers, can move his soul like the thought, that Andromache will as a captive weave the web, and bear the pitcher, for some dame of Messe or of Hypereia[965].

With the pictures which we thus find largely scattered over the poems, of the relations of woman to others, the characters which Homer has given us of woman herself are in thorough harmony. Among his living characters we do not find the viragos, the termagants, the incarnate fiends, of the later legends.[504] Nay, the woman of Homer never dreams of using violence, even as a protection against wrong. It must be admitted, that he does not even present to us the heroine in any more pronounced form, than that of the moral endurance of Penelope. The heroine proper, the Joan of Arc, is certainly a noble creation: but yet one perhaps implying a state of things more abnormal, than that which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric age. The pictures of women, which Homer presents to us, are perfect pictures; but they are pictures simply of mothers, matrons, sisters, daughters, maidens, wives. The description which the Poet has given us of the violence and depravity of Clytemnestra, is the genuine counterpart of his high conception of the nature of woman[966]:

For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it become more shameful and degraded when, by a total suppression of its better instincts, it has been given over to wickedness.

Of the minor infirmities of our nature, as well as of its grosser faults, the women of Homer betray much less than the men. Nowhere has he introduced into a prominent position the character of a vicious woman. The only instance of the kind is among a portion of the female attendants in the palace of Ulysses, where, out of fifty, no more than twelve were at last the willing tools, having at first[967] been the reluctant victims, of the lust of the proud and rapacious band of Suitors. Clytemnestra, indeed, appears as a lofty criminal in the perspective of the poem, but her wickedness, too, is wholly derivative. Ægisthus corrupts her by a long[505] course of effort, for, as Homer informs us, she had been a right-minded person; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσι[968]. On the one side we have only to place her and the saucy slut Melantho; on the other, we have Andromache, Hecuba, and Briseis in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Penelope and Euryclea, Arete and Nausicaa; the slightly drawn figures, such as that of the mother of Ulysses in the Eleventh Odyssey, are in the same spirit as the more full delineations. There is not a single case in the poems to qualify the observation, first, that the woman of Homer is profoundly feminine: secondly, that she is commonly the prop of virtue, rarely the instrument, and (in this reversing the order of the first temptation) never the source, of corruption.

In company with all that we have seen, we likewise find that the limits of the position of woman are carefully marked, and that she fully comprehends them. There is nowhere throughout the poems a single effort at self-assertion: the ground that she holds, she holds without dispute. If at any point a stumblingblock could be likely to be found, it would be between a mother just parting with her authority, and a son newly come of age. Yet Penelope and Telemachus never clash, and thoroughly understand one another. Again, the Homeric man, even the Homeric good man, is sometimes the subject of hasty, vehement, and tumultuous passions; the woman never. She finds her power in gentleness; she rules with a silken thread; she is eminent for the uniformity of her self-command, and for the observance of measure in all the relations of life. The misogynism which marked Euripides and other later writers has, and could have, no place in Homer: the moral standard of his women is higher than that of his men; their office,[506] which they perform without fault, is to love and to minister, and their reward to lean on those whom they serve.

The lower aspect of the relation between the two sexes is in the poems wholly secondary. All that tends to sensualize it is commonly repelled or hidden, and, when brought into mention at all, is yet carefully and anxiously depressed. Even the cases of exception, which lie beyond the pale of marriage, are kept in a certain analogy with it, and are as far as possible removed from the promiscuous and brutal indulgence, which marked the later Pagan ages, including those of the greatest pride and splendour, and which still so deeply taints the societies of Christendom.

We may find, if it be needed, some further evidence of the high position of woman upon earth in the relation subsisting between the Homeric gods and goddesses respectively. For that relation approaches as nearly as may be to equality in force and intelligence, while in purity the latter are on the whole superior. After Jupiter, the deities most elevated in Homer are, Juno and Minerva, Neptune and Apollo; and of all these, I think, we must consider Minerva to have stood first in his estimation. This arrangement could not but harmonize with, while it also serves to measure, his ideas of the earthly place and character of woman.

A similar inference is suggested by the tendency of the Greeks to enshrine many ideas, sometimes great, and occasionally both great and good, in feminine impersonations.

We will, lastly, inquire into the employments of women in the heroic age; both to ascertain how nearly they could approach to the summits of society, and also what was their general share in the division of occupations.

[507]

Among nations where war, homicide, and piracy so extensively prevailed, it is certainly deserving of peculiar consideration, that we should find any traces of the exercise of sovereignty by a woman. There are however three cases in the poems, which in a greater or less degree serve to imply that it was neither unknown nor wholly unfamiliar.

1. Andromache states, that her mother was queen in Hypoplacian Thebes. The word is βασίλευεν[969]. It implies more than being the mere wife of a king; though, as it was during the life time of her husband Eetion, we cannot justly infer from it that there was here any exercise of independent sovereign power. It is the only instance in the Iliad, where we have any word, that has βασιλεὺς for its basis, applied to a woman.

2. The common tradition is, that Jason acquired possession of Lemnos by marriage with Hypsipyle its queen. This is so far supported by Homer that, while Jason clearly appears in the poems as a Greek, we notwithstanding find his son sovereign of Lemnos, without any indication of a conquest or regular migration, and Hypsipyle is mentioned as his mother. The simple fact that the mother, contrary to Homer’s usual practice, is in this case named as well as the father, raises a presumption that it is because she had reigned in the island[970].

In the Eleventh Odyssey we are told that Neleus, the younger of the two illegitimate sons of Tyro, came to dwell in Pylos, and that he married Chloris, the youngest daughter of Amphion an Iasid, giving large presents to obtain her hand[971]. The text proceeds,

[508]

This may mean that she became his queen when he was king of Pylos: or it may mean that he became her husband when she was already queen there.

The Odyssey discloses to us the manner in which, under circumstances like those of the Trojan war, sovereign power would naturally pass into female hands otherwise than by inheritance.

It would appear that, when Agamemnon set sail for Troy, he left Clytemnestra in charge of his affairs as well as of his young son Orestes, only taking the precaution to provide her with a trustworthy counsellor in the person of his Bard[972]. As it was by inveigling Clytemnestra that Ægisthus obtained the sovereign power, she must evidently have been its depository.

In like manner it would appear, that Penelope was left in charge of Telemachus by Ulysses when he went to Troy, and that Mentor was appointed to perform for her some such friendly office, as that which the Bard undertook for Clytemnestra. The statement here is, that Ulysses committed to him authority over his whole household[973]. But it is plain that Penelope had the indoor management; since Telemachus speaks of the mode in which she regulated the reception of strangers[974], and we hear of her rule in other matters[975]. Here we see openings for the natural formation of the word βασίλισσα, which seems originally to have meant, not a king’s wife merely, but a woman in the actual exercise of royal authority; and which first appears in the Odyssey.

The ordinary occupation of women of the highest rank in the poems is undoubtedly to sit engaged, along with their maidens of the household, in spinning, weav[509]ing, or embroidery. Thus we find it with Helen, Penelope, and Andromache. But when Hector bids Andromache retire to these duties, he speaks of them in contradistinction not to all other duties, but to war, which, as he says, is the affair of men. Even this rule, however, was subject to exception. The Bellerophon of Homer fights with the Amazons[976]; and the part taken by the goddesses in the Theomachy shows, that the idea of women-soldiers was not wholly strange to his mind; as it is in fact to this day, I believe, less attractively exemplified in the African kingdom of Dahomey. But manual employments, taken alone, would not afford a just criterion. The dialogues of the speeches clearly show that then, as now, the woman was concerned in all that concerned her husband.

Next to political supremacy, we may naturally inquire how far women were qualified for the service of the gods.

We have various signs, more or less clear, of their sharing in it. The reference to the Nurses of Dionysus cannot be wholly without force in this direction. The abstraction of Alcyone by Apollo has probably a more positive connection with female ministry. But we are provided, as far as Troy at least is concerned, with one clear and conclusive instance. The Sixth Iliad affords us a glimpse of a female priesthood, and a worship confined to women, that subsisted among the Trojans. Helenus, alarmed at the feats of Diomed, urges Hector to desire Hecuba to collect the aged women for a procession to the temple of Athene, with a robe for a gift, and with the promise of a hecatomb (Il. vi. 75–101). Hector then acquaints the troops, that he was going to desire the old counsellors and the matrons of the[510] city to supplicate the deities, and to promise hecatombs (iii. 15). There seems to be something of policy in the way in which he thus generalizes, for the army, his account of the design: perhaps afraid of the effect that might be produced by its peculiar character. When he finds Hecuba, he lays upon her precisely the injunction that Helenus had recommended. She sends her female servants to collect the aged women through the city (286, 7). She leads them to the temple of Athene in the citadel. They are there received by Theano, who had been appointed, apparently by the Trojan public[977], priestess to that deity. Theano takes the robe from Hecuba, and herself offers it and prays. Her prayer is for the city, and not for the men by name, but for the wives and infants: and her promise is, we will sacrifice, ἱερεύσομεν, twelve, not oxen, but heifers, yearlings, untouched by the goad (Il. vi. 296–310). Thus the feminine element runs apart through the whole.

We have no reason to conclude that this order of things was exceptional; for though the time was one of peculiar danger and emergency, the temple, the worship, and the priesthood stand before us as belonging to the regular institutions of Troy.

We have no case like that of Theano among the Greeks. It could, indeed, hardly be expected; as priesthood had not yet grown to be an Hellenic institution. Yet, while the direct force of the narrative speaks for Troy alone, we are justified in giving it a more general significance, because the Greek woman is apparently rather before than behind the Trojan one in influence, and in the substantiveness of her position.

In the Trojan genealogy[978] no notice is taken of women; nor have we any means of judging whether[511] they were regarded as capable of succession to the throne, or what was their political and historical importance. But among the Greek races this was clearly great. The large number of women whom Homer has introduced in the realm of Aides, and the parts assigned to them, are plain indications of their important share in the movement of Greek history.

The apportionment of the ordinary employments of women appears to have been managed in general accordance with the suppositions, towards which all the foregoing facts would lead us.

We have them indicated in a great variety of passages of the poems, from among which we may select two in particular.

The first relates to Circe and her attendant Nymphs; but we may take it as an exact copy of the arrangements of a prince’s household.

Circe has four female servants, who are called δρήστειραι. The first provides the seats with the proper coverings; the second prepares and lays the tables; the third mixes the wine and brings the goblets; the fourth carries water, and lights the fire to boil it[979].

The second passage exhibits to us the household of Ulysses at the break of day, when the in-door and out-door servants are setting about their morning duties.

There were fifty women servants. Of these twelve were employed as flour-grinders (ἀλετρίες); and this appears to have been the most laborious employment among all those assigned to women. Eleven of the twelve have finished their task and retired to rest; the twelfth remains till the morning at her work, and curses the Suitors who cause her such fatigue[980].

[512]

It is now dawn[981]. Part of the maid-servants are lighting the fire. The old but active Euryclea is up betimes, and has[982] the place of housekeeper. She desires a part of them to set smartly about sweeping the house, and putting the proper covers on the furniture; another part are to wipe the tables and the cups; a third bevy, no fewer than twenty in number, are dispatched for water[983].

Meantime the men-servants (δρηστῆρες or θεράποντες)[984] of the Suitors have made their appearance, and they set about preparing logs for the fire. Then come in from the country the swineherd with his swine, the goatherd with his goats; and, from over the water, the cowherd with his cow, and with more goats.

Taking the general evidence of the poems, it stands thus. Of agricultural operations, we find women sharing only in the lighter labours of the vintage[985]; or perhaps acting as shepherdesses[986]. The men plough, sow, reap, tend cattle and live stock generally; they hunt and they fish; and they carry to the farm the manure that is accumulated about the house[987].

Within doors, the women seem to have the whole duty in their hands, except the preparation of firewood and of animal food. The men kill, cut up, dress, and carve the animals that are to be eaten. The women, on the other hand, spin, weave, wash the clothes, clean the house, grind the corn, bake the bread and serve it[988], with all the vegetable or mixed food, or what may be called made dishes[989] (εἴδατα πολλά). They also prepare the[513] table, and hand the ewer with the basin for washing. And a portion of them act as immediate attendants to the mistress of the palace, Andromache, Penelope, or Helen.

Thus far all is easy and becoming; but an apparent difficulty confronts us when we find, that it was the usage for women to undertake certain duties connected with the bathing of men. Sometimes this was done by servants; thus it was managed for Telemachus and Pisistratus in the palace of Menelaus, and for Ulysses in that of the Phæacian king. On the other hand, it was sometimes an office of hospitality rendered by women, and even by young damsels, of the highest rank, to distinguished strangers of their own age or otherwise. Polycaste, the young and fair daughter of Nestor, (as the text is commonly interpreted,) bathed and anointed Telemachus, and put on him a cloak and vest[990]. Helen herself, when she was living in Troy, performed the like offices for Ulysses, on the occasion of his mission thither in the disguise of a beggar[991]:

And lastly, the goddess Circe discharged the very same function, with some addition to the description, on behalf of Ulysses her visitor. For here it is explicitly stated, that she poured water over his head and shoulders[992]:

This usage has given occasion, as was perhaps to be expected, to much criticism[993] upon the immodest habits[514] of Homer and his age. Pains have also been taken in their defence[994]. And certainly, if there be need of a defence, Eustathius does not supply one by pleading, that it was the custom of the time, and that the Pylian princess doubtless acted by the command of her father[995]. What is wanted appears to me not to be defence, but simply the clearing away of misapprehensions as to the facts.

It would assuredly be strange, were we to detect real immodesty among such women of the heroic age as Homer has described to us; or even among such men. At a period when the exposure, among men only, of the person of a man constituted the last extremity of shameful punishment[996], and when even in circumstances of the utmost necessity Ulysses exhibited so much care to avoid anything of the kind[997], it is almost of itself incredible that habitually, among persons of the highest rank and character, and without any necessity at all, such things should take place. And, as it is not credible, so neither, I think, is it true.

It may be observed, that there is no case of ablution thus performed in the Iliad. But this appears to be only for the same reason, as that which makes the meals of the camp more simple, than those which were served in the tranquillity of peace and home.

The words commonly employed by Homer in this matter refer to two separate parts of the operation: first, the bathing and anointing, then the dressing. They are commonly for the first λούω and χρίω: for the[515] second βάλλω, with the names of the proper vestments added (Od. iii. 467);

But the whole question, in my view, really depends upon this: whether the verbs used mean the performance of a particular operation, or the giving to the person concerned the means of doing it for himself. Just as by feeding the poor, we mean giving them wherewithal to feed themselves. This is the suggestion of Wakefield[999], and I believe it to be the satisfactory and conclusive solution of the whole question. We might be prevailed upon to travel a good way in company with Heroic simplicity, and yet not quite be able to reach the point which the opposite interpretation would require.

I think that the construction, which I have indicated as the proper one, is conclusively made good, first by the general rules for the sense of the words λούω, λούομαι, and kindred words in Homer: and secondly, by the detailed evidence of facts.

When the guests at a feast wash their hands, the standard expression is in the middle voice, χερνίψαντο δ’ ἔπειτα. When Ulysses and Diomed washed in the sea, the expression is ἱδρῶ ἀπενίζοντο: when they afterwards bathed and anointed themselves, it is λούσαντο, λοεσσαμένω, ἀλειψαμένω[1000]. To smear arrows with poison is ἰοὺς χρίεσθαι χαλκήρεας[1001]. For the maidens of Nausicaa, when they bathe and are anointed, we have λοεσσάμεναι and χρισάμεναι[1002]. In fact the usage is general.

The case stands rather differently with βάλλω. Here[516] the active usage is, I believe, the common one. But there is ample authority for the converse or active use of the middle voice, which corresponds with the middle use of the active. As for instance,

There can therefore surely be no reason to doubt that βάλλειν in this place follows the inclination of the leading words of the passages, and signifies, that as the water and the oil, so likewise the fresh clothing to put on, were given by the damsel for the purpose, but by no means that the operations, or any of them, were actually performed by her.

If the word βάλλειν meant ‘to put on,’ there would be, as Eustathius[1004] observes, an ὑστερολογία, for the χίτων was as a matter of course put on before the φᾶρος. But if it means ‘to give for the purpose of putting on,’ then there is no solecism in the mode of expression.

We must not, however, pass by the case of Circe in the Tenth Odyssey, where, as we have seen, it is stated that the water was actually poured by the Sorceress over the head and shoulders of Ulysses. It is also true that the old word λοέω, equivalent to λούω, is used there in the active voice.

Upon this I observe three things:

1. The statement that the water was poured over his head and shoulders, as he sat in the bath, evidently implies that what may be called essential decency was preserved.

2. Even if it were not so, we could not in this point argue from the manners or morals of a Phœnician goddess to those of a Greek damsel.

3. The meaning probably of λοέω is middle, in this as well as in the other cases: she gave him water to[517] wash with, pouring it over his head and shoulders, and then leaving to him the substance of the operation, which was not completed by this mere act of affusion.

Finally, let us consider the evidence from the case of Ulysses in Scheria, which appears of itself conclusive.

1. In Od. vii. 296. Ulysses says that Nausicaa (according to the popular construction of the term) bathed him: καὶ λοῦσ’ ἐν ποταμῷ.

2. But from Od. vi. 210, we find that what she did was not to bathe him, but to give orders to her attendants that he should be bathed,—that is, should be provided with the requisites for bathing. Her words were, λούσατέ τ’ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ’ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ’ ἀνέμοιο.

3. Upon this they took him to a recess, gave him clothing and oil, and bid him bathe himself, ἤνωγον δ’ ἄρα μιν λοῦσθαι: upon which he requested them to stand off, as otherwise he could not proceed: ἄντην δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐγώγε λοέσσομαι (ibid. 218–22).

It would appear therefore, that the statements of Homer give no ground whatever for sinister or disparaging imputation. His pictures do not entirely correspond with modern ideas: but they may well leave on our minds the impression that, in the period he described, if the standard of appearances in this department was lower, that of positive thought and action was higher, as well as simpler, than in our own day.

We have now concluded what it seemed needful to say on the employments of women.

It was, however, little likely that a state of things, such as has been described, should last.

The idea of marriage was in aftertimes greatly lowered, together with the moral tone in general; and the very name of γάμος, with its kindred words, under[518]went a change of sense, and was made applicable to such a relation as that established between the Greek chieftains in the war of Troy and their captives in cases where they had wives already[1005].

Thus, in the Hecuba of Euripides, as the mother of Cassandra, she intercedes with Agamemnon to avenge the murder of her son Polydorus, on the ground that the youth had become a κηδεστὴς, or relation by affinity to Agamemnon, who had a wife already[1006]:

And, in the Troades, Cassandra has with Agamemnon certain σκότια νυμφευτήρια (258); and again,

Similar language is used in the case of Andromache[1008]. The ideas of the heroic age would have admitted no such depravation of marriage.

In truth it would seem not only as if, before Christianity appeared, notwithstanding the advance of civilization, the idea and place of woman were below what they should have been, but actually as if, with respect to all that was most essential, they sank with the lapse of time.

The contrast between the views of the marriage state entertained in the heroic age, and at the period which we regard as the acmè of the Greek civilization, will, perhaps, be best conceived by referring to the passage ascribed to Demosthenes, as it is quoted by Athenæus, which explains succinctly the several uses of prostitutes, concubines, and wives, apparently as classes all alike recognised, and without any note of a moral difference[519] in their social position and repute respectively. The first are for pleasure, the second for daily use, the last for legitimate offspring, and for good housekeeping[1009].

And yet it continued to be, in the time of Aristotle, a favourable distinction of Greece as compared with the barbarians, that the woman was not with them equivalent to the slave. Throughout their history they continued to be a nation of monogamists, except where they became locally tainted with oriental manners[1010].

Again, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking a general survey of the relation between man and wife, describes it as a government indeed, but as analogous to that natural and perfect form of government which he terms aristocracy. It is founded on merit and fitness. The man leaves to the woman all for which she is best suited, and each kind contributes its particular gifts to make up the common stock.

There was much, then, of solidity, and permanence in the ground secured for the Greek woman by the heroic age. But the philosopher, sagacious and dispassionate as he is, had still a much less elevated view of her position than Homer had exhibited.

There may[1011], he says, be in a tragedy a good or bad woman, a good or a bad slave; there is room for variety even in these; καί τοίγε ἴσως τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστι. No such classification, no such comparison, could have found place in the heroic age. Yet more remarkable is the little postscript assigned to the widows of the dead in the funeral oration assigned by Thucydides to Pericles: “If I must[520] also say a few words, for you that are now widows, concerning what constitutes the merit of a woman, I will sum up all in one short admonition. It will be much for your character not to sink beneath your own actual nature (τῆς ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γένεσθαι); and to be as little talked about as possible among men, whether for praise or for dispraise[1012].”

[521]

Even if they are regarded in no other light than as literary treasures, the position, both of the oldest books among the Sacred Scriptures, and, next to them, of the Homeric poems, is so remarkable, as not only to invite, but to command the attention of every inquirer into the early condition of mankind. Each of them opens to us a scene, of which we have no other literary knowledge. Each of them is, either wholly or in a great degree, isolated; and cut off from the domain of history, as it is commonly understood. Each of them was preserved with the most jealous care by the nation to which they severally belonged. By far the oldest of known compositions, and with conclusive proof upon the face of them that their respective origins were perfectly distinct and independent, they, notwithstanding, seem to be in no point contradictory, while in many they are highly confirmatory of each other’s genuineness and antiquity. Still, as historical representations, and in a purely human aspect, they are greatly different. The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from the very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously finding their way through an extended solitude, into times[522] otherwise known, and into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The Homeric poems are like a broad lake outstretched in the distance, which provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and marvellous, but which is entirely dissociated by an interval of many generations from any other records, except such as are of the most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane to compare them. In this point of view, the Scriptures stand so far apart from every other production, on account of their great offices in relation to the coming of the Redeemer, and to the spiritual training of mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to them.

But undoubtedly, after however wide an interval, the Homeric poems thus far at least stand in a certain relation to the Scriptures, that no other work of man can be compared to them. Their immediate influence has been great; but that influence which they have mediately exercised through their share in shaping the mind and nationality of Greece, and again, through Greece upon the world, cannot readily be reduced to measure: Les vraies origines de l’esprit humain sont là; tous les nobles de l’intelligence y retrouvent la patrie de leurs pères[1013]. Insomuch that, passing over the vast interval between those purposes which concern salvation, and every other purpose connected with man, this remains to be admitted, that there is a relative parallelism between the oldest Holy Scriptures and the works of Homer. For each of them stands at the head of the class of powers to which they respectively belong; and[523] the minor seems to present to our view, as well as the major one, the indications of a distinct Providential aim that was to be attained through its means.

The relation, however, of the Homeric poems to the earlier portion of the Sacred Scriptures, appears to me to be capable of being represented in a more determinate form than it assumes when they are merely compared as being respectively the oldest known compositions, and as each confirming the testimony of the other by numerous coincidences of manners.

For the Eastern world, it is, I suppose, generally acknowledged that we ought to regard Mahometanism as having had, no less than Judaism, a place, though doubtless a very different place, in the determinate counsels of God. So in the West, we must view the extraordinary developments, which human nature received, both individually and in its social forms, among the Greeks and Romans, as having been intended to fulfil high Providential purposes. They supplied materials for the intellectual and social portions of that European civilization, which derives its spiritual substance from the Christian Faith. And they wrought out solutions apparently conclusive for the questions which absolutely required an answer, as to the capacity or incapacity of man, when without the aid of especial divine light and guidance, to work out his own happiness and peace. That Divine Word, which tells us that the Redeemer came in the fulness of time, indirectly points to the great transactions which filled the space of ages since the Fall, when time was not yet full; and the greatest of all those great transactions surely were the parts played by Greece and Rome, as the representatives of humanity at large in its most vigorous developments. They too, as well as the discipline of the Jewish people,[524] doubtless belonged to the Divine plan. All these varied manifestations may differ much in their character and rank, but yet, like the body, soul, and spirit of a man, they are to be referred to one origin, and they are integrants to one another.

Just in the same manner with the parallel currents of historical events, it would appear that the early Scriptures and the Homeric poems combine to make up for us a sufficiently complete form of the primitive records of our race. The Scriptures of the Old Testament give us the history of the line, in which the promise of the Messiah was handed down. But the intellectual and social developments of man are there represented in the simplest and the slightest, nay, even in the narrowest forms. With the exception of Solomon, who, in spite of his wisdom, was enticed away from God by lust, and of the two illustrious specimens of uncorrupted piety in the midst of dangerous power, Joseph and Daniel, I know not whether we can, on the authority of Holy Scripture, point to any character of the Mosaic or Judaic history as great in any other sense, than as the organs of that Almighty One, with whom nothing human is either great or small. It is plain that if we bring the leading characters of that history into contrast with the Achilles or the Ulysses of Homer, and with his other marked personages, these latter undoubtedly give us a representation and development of human nature, and of man in his social relations, that Scripture from its very nature could not supply. Each has its own function to perform, so that there is no room for competition between them, and it is better to avoid comparison altogether; and to decline to consider the legislation of Moses as a work to be compared either with the heroic institutions, or with systems[525] like those of Lycurgus or of Solon. We then obtain a clear view of it as a scheme evidently constructed not alone with human but with superhuman wisdom, if only we measure it in reference to its very peculiar end. That end was not to give political lessons to mankind, which are more aptly supplied elsewhere. It was to fence in, with the ruder materials of the ceremonial and municipal law, a home, within which the succession of true piety and enlightened faith might be preserved; a garden wherein the Lord God might, so to speak, still walk as He had walked of old, and take His delight with the sons of men. But this high calling had reference only to chosen persons, a few among the few. Over and above this interior work, there was a national vocation also. The aim of that vocation seems to have been to isolate the people, so as to stop the influences from without that might tend in the direction of change; and so far to crystallize, as it were, its institutions within, that they might preserve in untainted purity the tradition and the expectation of Him that was to come.

When the Almighty placed his seal upon Abraham by the covenant of circumcision, and when He developed that covenant in the Mosaic institutions, in setting the Jewish people apart for a purpose the most profound of all His wise designs, He removed it, for the time of its career, out of the family of nations.

Should we, like some writers of the present day, cite the Pentateuch before the tribunal of the mere literary critic, we may strain our generosity at the cost of justice, and still only be able to accord to it a secondary place. The mistake surely is to bring it there at all, or to view its author otherwise than as the vehicle of a Divine purpose, which uses all instruments, great, insignificant, or middling, according to the end in view, but of which[526] all the instruments are perfect, by reason not of what is intrinsic to themselves, but, simply and solely, of their exact adaptation to that end[1014].

If, however, we ought to decline to try the Judaic code by its merely political merits, much more ought we to apply the same principle to the sublimity of the Prophecies, and to the deep spiritual experiences of the Psalms. In the first, we have a voice speaking from God, with the marks that it is of God so visibly imprinted upon it, that the mind utterly refuses to place the prophetical books in the scale against any production of human genius. And all that is peculiar in our conception of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, does not tend so much to make them eminent among men, as to separate them from men. Homer, on the other hand, is emphatically and above all things human: he sings by the spontaneous and the unconscious indwelling energies of nature; whereas these are as the trumpet of unearthly sounds, and cannot, more than Balaam could, depart from that which is breathed into them, to utter either less or more.

But most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of philosophical or poetical competition. In that Book, for well nigh three thousand years, the piety of saints has found its most refined and choicest food; to such a degree indeed, that the rank and quality of the religious frame may in general be tested, at least ne[527]gatively, by the height of its relish for them. There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude and rest. There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul to God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had its foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged Book it was permitted to anticipate His coming.

We can no more then compare Isaiah and the Psalms with Homer, than we can compare David’s heroism with Diomed’s, or the prowess of the Israelites when they drove Philistia before them with the valour of the Greeks at Marathon or Platæa, at Issus or Arbela. We shall most nearly do justice to each by observing carefully the boundary lines of their respective provinces.

It appears to be to a certain extent agreed that Rome has given us the most extraordinary example among all those put upon record by history, of political organization; and has bequeathed to mankind the firmest and most durable tissue of law, the bond of social man. Greece, on the other hand, has had for its share the development of the individual; and each has shown in its own kind the rarest specimen that has been known to the world, apart from Divine revelation. The seeds of both these, and of all that they involved, would appear to be contained in the Homeric poems[1015]. The condition of[528] arts, manners, character, and institutions, which they represent, is alike in itself entire, and without any full parallel elsewhere. It is for the bodily and mental faculties of man, that which the patriarchal and early Hebrew histories are for his spiritual life.

Of the personal and inward relations of man with God, of the kingdom of grace in the world, Homer can tell us nothing: but of the kingdom of Providence much, and of the opening powers and capabilities of human nature, apart from divine revelation, everything. The moral law, written on the tables of stone, was in one sense a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, because it demonstrated our inability to tread the way of righteousness and pardon without the Redeemer. And perhaps that ceremonial law, which indulged some things to the hardness of heart that prevailed among the Jews, was by its permissions, as some have construed a very remarkable passage in Ezekiel[1016], a schoolmaster in another sense; because it witnessed to the fact that they had greatly fallen below the high capacities of their nature. And again, in yet a third sense, we may say with reverence that these primeval records are likewise another schoolmaster, teaching us, although with another voice, the very same lesson: because they show us the[529] total inability of our race, even when at its maximum of power, to solve for ourselves the problems of our destiny; to extract for ourselves the sting from care, from sorrow, and above all, from death; or even to retain without waste the vital heat of the knowledge of God, when we have become separate from the source that imparts it.

It seems impossible not to be struck, at this point, with the contrast between the times preceding the Advent, and those which have followed it. Since the Advent, Christianity has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilization; and has driven, harnessed to its chariot as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of the world. Its learning has been the learning of the world, its art the art of the world, its genius the genius of the world, its greatness, glory, grandeur, and majesty have been almost, though not absolutely, all that in these respects the world has had to boast of. That which is to come, I do not presume to portend: but of the past we may speak with confidence. He who hereafter, in even the remotest age, with the colourless impartiality of mere intelligence, may seek to know what durable results mankind has for the last fifteen hundred years achieved, what capital of the mind it has accumulated and transmitted, will find his investigations perforce concentrated upon, and almost confined to that part, that minor part, of mankind which has been Christian.

Before the Advent, it was quite otherwise. The treasure of Divine Revelation was then hidden in a napkin: it was given to a people who were almost forbidden to impart it; at least of whom it was simply required, that they should preserve it without variation. They had no world-wide vocation committed to them;[530] they lay ensconced in a country which was narrow and obscure; obscure, not only with reference to the surpassing splendour of Greece and Rome, but in comparison with Assyria, or Persia, or Egypt. They have not supplied the Christian ages with laws and institutions, arts and sciences, with the chief models of greatness in genius or in character. The Providence of God committed this work to others; and to Homer seems to have been intrusted the first, which was perhaps, all things considered, also the most remarkable stage of it[1017].

Without bearing fully in mind this contrast between the providential function of the Jews and that of other nations, we can hardly embrace as we ought the importance of the part assigned, before the Advent of our Lord, to nations and persons who lived beyond the immediate and narrow pale of Divine Revelation. The relation of the old dispensation to those who were not Jews, was essentially different from that of Christendom to those who are not Christians. Only the fall of man and his recovery are the universal facts with which Revelation is concerned; all others are limited and partial.[531] The interval between the occurrence of the first, and the provision for the second, was occupied by a variety of preparations in severalty for the revelation of the kingdom of God. Until the Incarnation, the world’s history was without a centre. When the Incarnation came, it showed itself to be the centre of all that had preceded, as well as of all that was to follow: and since the withdrawal of the visible Messiah, the history of man has been grouped around His Word, and around the Church in which the effect and virtue of His Incarnation are still by His unseen power prolonged.

The picture thus offered to our view is a very remarkable one. We see the glories of the world, and that greatest marvel of God’s earthly creation, the mind of man, become like little children, and yield themselves to be led by the hand of the Good Shepherd: but it seems as though the ancient promise of His coming, while just strong enough to live in this wayward sphere, was not strong enough to make the conquest of it; as if nothing but His own actual manifestation in the strength of lowliness and of sorrow, and crowned by the extremity of contempt and shame, was sufficient to restore for the world at large that symbol of the universal duty of individual obedience and conformity, which is afforded by the establishment of the authority of the spiritual King over all the functions of our nature, and all the spheres, however manifold and remote they may seem to be, in which they find their exercise. Nor is this lesson the less striking because this, like other parts of the divine dispensations, has been marred by the perversity of man, ever striving to escape from that inward control wherein lies the true hope and safety of his race.

But, even after the Advent, it was not at once that[532] the Sovereign of the new kingdom put in His claim for all the wealth that it contained. As, in the day of His humiliation, He rode into Jerusalem, foreshadowing his royal dominion to come, so Saint Paul was forthwith consecrated to God as a kind of first fruits of the learning and intellect of man. Yet for many generations after Christ, it was still the Supreme will to lay in human weakness the foundations of divine strength. Not the Apostles only, but the martyrs, and not the martyrs only, but the first fathers and doctors of the Church, were men of whom none could suspect that they drew the weapons of their warfare from the armouries of human cultivation: nor of them could it be said, that by virtue of their human endowments they had achieved the triumphs of the cross; as it might perhaps have been said, had they brought to their work the immense popular powers of St. Chrysostom, or the masculine energy of St. Athanasius, or the varied and comprehensive genius of St. Augustine.

Nor, again, if we are right in the belief that we are not to look for the early development of humanity in the pages of Jewish and patriarchal history, but rather to believe that it was given to another people, and the office of recording it to the father, not only of poetry, but of letters, does it seem difficult to read in this arrangement the purpose of the Most High, and herewith the wisdom of that purpose. Had the Scriptures been preserved, had the Messiah been Incarnate, among a people who were in political sagacity, in martial energy, in soaring and diving intellect, in vivid imagination, in the graces of art and civilized life, the flower of their time, then the divine origin of Christianity would have stood far less clear and disem[533]barrassed than it now does. The eagle that mounted upon high, bearing on his wings the Everlasting Gospel, would have made his first spring from a great eminence, erected by the wit and skill of man; and the elevation of that eminence, measured upward from the plain of common humanity, would have been so much to be deducted from the triumph of the Redeemer.

Thus the destructive theories of those, who teach us to regard Christianity as no more than a new stage, added to stages that had been previously achieved in the march of human advancement, would have been clothed in a plausibility which they must now for ever want. ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are[1018].’ An unhonoured undistinguished race, simply elected to be the receivers of the Divine Word, and having remained its always stiffnecked and almost reluctant guardians, may best have suited the aim of Almighty Wisdom; because the medium, through which the most precious gifts were conveyed, was pale and colourless, instead of being one flushed with the splendours of Empire, Intellect, and Fame.

---