.5.;^^^^^^ v«» - . -;#^ »S>i IH> !*.1^^P*^. v^^; X^"' t^ ^^^ ^ P &S3 ^^. ^« ^S^f^ m '•Oftsocf Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L I This book is DUE on the last date stamped belo> 3CT 8 - 1926 ^*T^rr: ;^<1 INTERLIBRAKT lam FOUR wEm^iJki^tfwBttaa JUL 1 8 1947 HOV 2 lybtl ^CT r; K. t^Si 0CT2 6t959 JAN 3 - 1961 ^^> Form L-9-15j»-8,'24 F^ SOUTHERN branch; UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES, CALIF. STUDIES ON HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L. M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. IN THKEE VOLUMES. VOL. IL Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore. — Hob ace. X F E D : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. M.DvJCCl.VIll. {The viyht of Tvandatmi isjxservcd.] 1 7 9 STUDIES ON HOMEU AND THE HOMERIC AGE. OLYMPUS: Oii, THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE. BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L. M. P. FOR THE TJNIYERSITY OF OXFORD. Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore. — Horace. OXFORD: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. M.DCCC.LVHI. [The right of Translation is renerved.] THE CONTENTS. OLYMPUS THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE. SECT. I. On tJie mixed cha/racter of the Supernatural System, or Theo-mythology of Homer. Homer's method not systematic Page i Incongruities of his Theo-mythology point to diversity of sources 2 Remnants of primitive tradition likely to be found in the Poems . 3 Extra-judaical relations between God and man 6 With tradition it combines invention 9 It is a true Theology corrupted 9 It has not its basis in nature-worship 10 It could not have sprung from invention only 13 Sacrifices admitted to be traditional 15 Tendency of primitive religion to decay 17 Downward course of the idea of God 18 Decline closely connected with Polytheism 20 Inducements to Nature-worship 21 ^ The deterioration of rehgion progressive 23 Paganism in its old age 25 The impersonations of Homer 26 The nature of the myths of Homer 29 vi CONTENTS. Tradition the proper key to many of them 30 He exhibits the two systems in active impact 32 Steps of the downward process 33 Sources of the inventive portions 35 Originality of the Olympian system 37 SECT. II. The traditive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology. The channels of early religious tradition 39 Some leading early traditions of Scripture 40 As to the Godhead 42 As to the Redeemer 42 As to the Evil One 43 Their defaced counterparts in Homer 43 Deities of equivocal position 46 Threefold materials of the Greek religion 48 Messianic traditions of the Hebrews 49 To be learned from three sources 49 Attributes ascribed to the Messiah 51 The deities of tradition in Homer 54 Minerva and Apollo jointly form the key 55 Notes of their Olympian rank 56 Of their higher antiquity 57 The Secondaries of Minerva 59 The Secondaries of Apollo. . . . , 60 Argument from the Secondaries 63 Picture of human society in Olympus 64 Dignity and precedence of Minerva 66 Of Apollo 69 Minerva's relations of will and affection with Jupiter 70 Those of Apollo 71 Apollo the Deliverer of Heaven 72 Power of Minerva in the Shades 73 These deities are never foiled by others 74 Tlie special honour of the Trine Invocation 78 They receive imiversal worship 79 They are not localized in any abode 82 They are objects together with Jupiter of liabitual prayer 83 CONTENTS. vii Exempt from appetite and physical limitations 86 Their manner of appreciating sacrifice 88 Their independent power of punishment 90 They handle special attributes of Jupiter 94 They exercise dominion over nature 98 Relation of Apollo (with Diana) to Death 10 f Exemption from the use of second causes 104 Superiority of their moral standard 105 Special relation of Apollo to Diana 108 Disintegration of j)rimitive traditions 108 The Legend of Alcyone 1 1 1 Place of Minerva and Apollo in Providential government 113 It is frequently ascribed to them 115 Especially the inner parts of it to Minerva 117 Apollo's gift of knowledge 119 Intimacy of Minerva's personal relations with man 121 Form of their relation to their attributes 122 The capacity to attract new ones 124 Wide range of their functions 1 25 Tradition of the Sun 1 26 The central wisdom of Minerva 129 The three characters of Apollo 130 The opposition between two of them 131 Minerva and Apollo do not fit into Olympus 133 Origin of the Greek names 133 Summary of their distinctive traits 134 Explanation by Friedreich 138 Treatment of Apollo by Miiller 141 After-course of the traditions 142 The Diana of Homer 1 43 Her acts and attributes in the poems 144 The Latona of Homer 147 Her attributes in the poems 149 Her relation to primitive Tradition 153 Her acts in the poems 154 The Iris of Homer 156 The Ate of Homer 158 The aTaa-BoKiT] of Homer 162 Other traditions of the Evil One 162 Parallel citations from Holy Scripture 165 The Future State in Homer 167 viii CONTENTS. Sacrificial tradition in Homer i^i He has no sabbatical tradition 171 SECT. III. The inventive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology. The character of Jupiter 173 Its fourfold aspect. — i. Jupiter as Providence 174 2. Jupiter as Lord of Air 178 Earth why vacant in the Lottery 179 3. Jupiter as Head of Olympus 181 His want of moral elements 183 His strong political spirit 185 4. Jupiter as the type of animahsm 186 Qualified by his parental instincts 189 The Juno of Homer 190 Juno of the Ihad and Jvmo of the Odyssey 191 Her intense nationality 192 Her mythological functions. 193 Her mythological origin 197 The Neptune of Homer 199 His threefold aspect 200 His traits mixed, but chiefly mythological 201 His relation to the Phoenicians 205 His relation to the tradition of the Evil One 206 His grandeur is material 209 The Aidoneus of Homer 210 His personality shadowy and feeble 2x1 The Ceres or Demeter of Homer 212 Her Pelasgian associations 213 Her place in Olympus 215 Her mythological origin 215 The Proserpine or Persephone of Homer 217 Her marked and substantive character 218 Her connection with the East 220 Her place in Olympus doubtful 223 Her associations Hellenic and not Pelasgian 224 The Mars of Homer 225 His limited worship and attributes 226 Mars as yet scarcely Greek 229 CU.\TENT8. ix The Mercury of Homer 23 1 Preeminently the god of increase 233 Mercury Hellenic as well as Phoenician 235 But apparently recent in Greece 237 His Olympian function distinct from that of Iris 23S The poems consistent with one another in this point 241 The Venus of Homer 243 Venus as yet scarcely Greek 244 Advance of her worship from the East 247 Her Olympian I'ank and character 249 Her extremely limited powers 249 Apparently unable to confer beauty 251 Homer never by intention makes her attractive 252 The Vulcan of Homer 254 His Phoenician and Eastern extraction 255 His marriage with Venus 257 Vulcan in and out of his art 259 The 'He'Xtoy of Homei" 260 In the Ihad 261 "In the Odyssey 262 Is of the Olympian court 263 His incorporation with Apollo 264 The Dionysus or Bacchus of Homer 266 His worship recent 266 Apparently of Phoenician origin 267 He is of the lowest inventive type 269 SECT. IV. The Composition of the Olympian Court ; and the clasaijication of the whole supernatural order in Homer. Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus 271 Case of Oceanus 273 Together with that of Kronos and Rhea 274 The Di majores of the later tradition 275 Number of the Olympian gods in Homer 275 What deities are of that rank 277 The Hebe and the Paieon of Homer 278 The Eris of Homer 280 Classification of the twenty Olympian deities 282 The remaining supernatural order, in six classes 283 I CONTENTS. Destiny or Fate in Homer 285 Under the form of Aiaa 286 Death inexorable to Fate or Deity ahke 287 Destiny under the form of Mo'ipa 290 Under the form of fiopos 293 General view of the Homeric Destiny 294 Not antagonistic to Divine will 297 The minor impersonations of natural powers 298 The "ApTTviat of Homer 300 The Erinues of Homer 302 Their office is to vindicate the moral order 305 Their operation upon the Immortals 306 Their connection with Aides and Persephone 308 Their relation to Destiny 310 Their operation upon man 310 Their occasional function as tempters 312 The translation of mortals 313 The deification of mortals 314 Growth of material for its extension 316 The kindred of the gods (i) the Cyclopes 318 (2) The Laestrygones 319 (3) The Phaeacians 320 (4) iEolus Hippotades 322 SECT. V. The Olympian Community and its Members considered in themselves. "The family order in Olympus 325 The political order in Olympus 326 Absence of important restraints upon their collective action .... 327 They are influenced by courtesy and intelligence 328 Superiority of the Olympian Immortals 330 Their unity imperfect 331 Their polity works constitutionally 332 The system not uniform 333 They are inferior in morality to men 334 And are governed mainly by force and fraud 335 Their dominant and profound selfishness 337 The cruelty of Calypso in her love 339 CONTENTS. xi -Their standard of taste and feeling low 340 The Olympian life is a depraved copy of the heroic 341 The exemption from death uniform 342 The exemption from other limitations partial 345 Sometimes based on peculiar grounds 346 Divine faculties for the most part an extension from the human 348 Their dependence on the eye 350 Their powers of locomotion 352 Chief heads of superiority to mankind 353 Their superiority in stature and beauty 354 Their hbertinism 355 Their keen regard to sacrifice and the ground of it 357 Their circumscribed power over nature 358 Parts of the body how ascribed to them 359 Examples of miracle in Homer 361 Mode of their action on the human mind 363 They do not discern the thoughts 365 SECT. VI. The Olympian Comnnmity and its Members considered in their influence on hitman society and conduct. Lack of periodical observances and of a ministering class 367 Yet the religion was a real power in life 368 The effect of the corruption of the gods was not yet fully felt. . . 369 They show little regard to human interests 371 A moral tone is occasionally perceptible 373 Prevalent belief as to their views of man and life 374 It lent considerable support to virtue ^ 377 Their course with respect to Troy 378 Bearing of the religion on social ties 380 And on political relations 383 The Oath 383 Bearing of the religion on the poems 385 As regards Neptune's wrath in the Odyssey 387 As regards the virtue of purity 388 As regards poetic effect 388 Comparison of its earliest and latest form 390 Gloom prevails in Homer's view of human destiny 392 The personal belief of Homer 394 CONTENTS. SECT. VII. On tlie traces of an origin abroad for the Olympian Religion. The Olympian deities classified according to local extraction . . 397 Their connecfion as a body with the ^Ethiopes 399 Confirms the hypothesis of Persian origin 402 Herodotus on the Scythian rehgion 402 His report from Egypt about the Greek deities 404 Four several bases of religious systems 405 Anthropophuism in the Olympian religion 406 Nature- worship as described in the Book of Wisdom 406 Its secondary place in the Olympian religion 407 In what sense it follows a prior Natm'e-worship 409 The principle of Brute-worship 410 Its traces in the Olympian religion 411 Chief vestige : oxen of the Sun 412 Xanthiis the horse of Achilles 414 SECT. VIII. The Morals of the Homeric Age. The general type of Greek character in the heroic age 417 The moral sense in the heroic age 418 Use of the words ayados and Kanos 42 1 Of the word SUaios 423 Religion and morals were not dissociated 425 Moral elements in the practice of sacrifice 427 Three main motives to virtue, i. Regard to the gods 427 2. The power of conscience 428 3. Regard for the sentiments of mankind 430 The force and forms of aldCoi 431 Other cognate terms 435 Homicide in the heroic age 436 Eight instances in the poems 437 Why viewed with little disfavour • . . 440 Piracy in the heroic age 442 Its nature as then practised 443 Mixed view of it in the poems , 444 Family CONTENTS. xiii - Family feuds in the heroic age 446 "-^Temperance in the heroic age 447 --Self-control in the heroic age 448 Absence of the vice of cruelty 450 ^ Savage ideas occasionally expressed 451 These not unfamiliar to later Greece 453 Wrath in Ulysses 454 Wrath in Achilles 455 Domestic affections in the heroic age 456 Relationships close, not wide 459 "Purity in the heroic age 460 Lay of the Net of Vulcan 461 Direct evidence of comparative purity 465 ~ Treatment of the human form 466 Treatment of various characters 467 ~~ Outline of Greek life in the heroic age 468 Its morality, and that of later Greece 471 "" Points of its superiority 472 Inferior as to crimes of violence 475 Some effects of slavery 476 Signs of degeneracy before Homer's death 477 SECT. IX. Woman in the heroic age. The place of Woman generally, and in heroic Greece 479 Its comparative elevation 480 1. State of the law and custom of marriage 481 Marriage was uniformly single 483 2. Conceived in a spirit of freedom 483 Its place in the career of life 485 Mode of contraction 486 3. Perpetuity of the tie of marriage 487 Adultery 488 Desertion 489 4. Greek ideas of incest 489 5. FideUty in married hfe 492 Treatment of spurious children 494 Case of Briseis 495 Mode of contracting marriage 496 b xiv CONTENTS. Concubinage of Greek chieftains in Troas 497 Dignity of conjugal and feminine manners 499 Social position of the wife 500 Force of conjvigal attachments , 502 Woman characters of Homer 503 The province of Woman well defined , 505 Argument from the position of the goddesses 506 Women admitted to sovereignity 507 And to the service of the gods 509 Their household employments 511 Their service about the bath 512 Explanation of the presumed difficulty 515 Proof from the case of Ulysses in Scheria 517 Subsequent declension of Woman 518 SECT. X. The Office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that of tlie early Books of Holy Scrijpiture. Points of literary resemblance 521 Providential functions of Greece and Rome 523 Of the Early records of Holy Scripture 524 The Sacred Books are not mere literary works 525 Providential use of the Homeric poems 527 They complete the code of primitive instruction 529 Human history had no visible centre up to the Advent 531 Nor for some time after it 532 A purpose served by the whole design 533 OLYMPUS, OLYMPUS, OR THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE. SECT. I. On the Micved Character of the Supernatural System, or Theo-MTjthology, of Homer. X HOUGH the poems of Homer are replete, perhaps beyond any others, with refined and often latent adapta- tions, yet it may be observed in general of the modes of representation used by him, that they are preemi- nently the reverse of systematic. Institutions or cha- racters, which are in themselves consistent, probably gain by this method of proceeding, provided the exe- cution be not unworthy of the design. For it secures their exhibition in more, and more varied, points of view, than can possibly be covered by the more didactic process. But the possession of this advantage depends upon the fact, that there is in them a harmony, which is their base, and which we have only to discover. Whereas, if that harmony be wanting, if in lieu of it there be a groundwork of fundamental discrepancy, then the conditions of effect are wholly changed. The multiplied variety of view becomes a multiplication of incongruity; each new aspect offers a new problem : and the more masterly the hand of the artist, the more ar- duous becomes the attempt to comprehend and present in their mutual bearings the pictures he has drawn, and the suggestions he has conveyed. B 2 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Tluis it has been with that which, following German example, I have denominated the Theo-mythology of Homer. By that term it seems not improper to desig- nate a mixture of theology and mythology, as these two words are commonly understood. Theology I suppose to mean, a system dealing with the knowledge of God and the unseen world : mythology, a system conversant with the inventions of man concerning them. In the Homeric poems I find both of these largely displayed : but with this difference, that the first was in visible de- cline, the second in such rapid and prolific develop- ment, that, while Homer is undoubtedly a witness to older fable, which had already in his time become set- tled tradition, he is also in this department himself evidently and largely a JMaker and Inventor, and the material of the Greek mythology comes out of his hands far more fully moulded, and far more diversi- fied, than it entered them. Of the fact that the Homeric religion does not pre- sent a consistent and homogeneous whole, we have abundant evidence in the difficulties with which, so soon as the literary age of Greece began, expositors found themselves incumbered ; and which drove them sometimes upon allegory as a resource, sometimes, as in the case of Plato, upon censure and repudiation^. I know not whether it has been owing to our some- what narrow jealousies concerning the function of Holy Scripture, or to our want of faith in the extended Providence of God, and His manifestations in the Avorld, or to the real incongruity in the evidence at our command, or to any other cause, but the fact, at least, seems to me beyond doubt, that our modes of dealing with the Homeric poems in this cardinal respect have a Dollinger Held. u. Jud. v. i. p. 254. Extended relations of God to man. 3 been eminently unsatisfactory. Those who have found in Homer the elements of religious truth, have resorted to the far-fetched and very extravagant supposition, tliat he had learned them from the contemporary Hebrews, or from the law of Moses. The more common and popu- lar opinion'^ has perhaps been one, which has put all such elements almost or altogether out of view ; one which has treated the Immortals in Homer as so many im- personations of the powers of nature, or else magnified men, and their social life as in substance no more than as a reflection of his picture of heroic life, only gilded with embellishments, and enlarged in scale, in propor- tion to the superior elevation of its sphere. Few, comparatively, have been inclined to recognise in the Homeric poems the vestiges of a real traditional know- ledge, derived from the epoch when the covenant of God with man, and the promise of a Messiah, had not yet fallen within the contracted forms of Judaism for shelter, but entered more or less into the common con- sciousness, and formed a part of the patrimony of the human race^. But surely there is nothing improbable in the suppo- sition, that in the poems of Homer such vestiges may be found. Every recorded form of society bears some traces of those by which it has been preceded : and in that highly primitive form, which Homer has been the instrument of embalming for all posterity, the law of general reason obliges us to search for elements and vestiges belonging to one more primitive still. And, if we are to inquire in the Iliad and the Odyssey for ^ See Heyne ad II. i. 603; deacon Williams :' Primitive Tra- Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, dition,' 1843, by the same; Ediub. i. 3. And so late as the Cam- Rev. ISTo. 155, art. Homerus, and bridge Essays 1856. p. 149. the refei-euce, p. 5c, to Cesarotti's c See ' Homerus, pt. i.' by Arch- Eagionamento Storico-Critico. B 2 4 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. what belongs to antecedent manners and ideas, on what ground can it be pronounced improbable, that no part of these earlier traditions should be old enough to carry upon them the mark of belonging to the religion, which the Book of Genesis represents as brought by our first parents from Paradise, and as delivered by them to their immediate descendants in general ? The Hebrew Chronology, considered in connection with the probable date of Homer, Mould even render it difficult or irrational to proceed upon any other supposition : nor if, as by the Septuagint or otherwise, a larger period is allowed for the growth of our race, will the state of this case be materially altered. For the facts must remain, that the form of society exhibited by Homer was itself in many points essentially patriarchal, that it contains, in matter not religious, such, for instance, as the episode of the Cyclops, clear traces of a yet earlier condition yet more significant of a relation to that name, and that there is no broadly marked period of human experience, or form of manners, which we can place between the great trunk of human history in Holy Scripture, and this famed Homeric branch, which of all literary treasures appears to be its eldest born. Stand- ing next to the patriarchal histories of Holy Scripture, why should it not bear, how can it not bear, traces of the religion under which the patriarchs lived ? The immense longevity of the early generations of mankind was eminently favourable to the preservation of pristine traditions. Each individual, instead of being as now a witness of, or an agent in, one or two trans- missions from father to son, would observe or share in ten times as many. According to the Hebrew Chro- nology, Laniech the father of Noah was of mature age before Adam died : and Abraham was of mature age Suffi.cienthj proved from Hohj Scripture. 5 before Noah died. Original or early witnesses, re- maining so long as standards of appeal, wonld evidently check the rapidity of the darkening and destroying process. Let us suppose that man now lived but twenty years, instead of fourscore. Would not this greatly quicken the waste of ancient traditions? And is not the converse also true ? Custom has made it with us second nature to take for granted a broad line of demarcation between those who live within the pale of Revelation, and the residue of mankind. But Holy Scripture does not appear to recognise such a severance in any manner, until we come to the revelation of the Mosaic law, which was like the erection of a temporary shelter for truths that had ranged at large over the plain, and that were ap- parently in danger of being totally absorbed in the mass of human inventions. But before this vineyard was planted, and likewise outside its fence, there were remains, smaller or greater, of the knowledge of God ; and there M'as a recognised relation between Jehovah and mankind, v\^hich has been the subject of record from time to time, and the ground of acts involving the admonition, or pardon, or correction, or destruction, of individuals or communities. The latest of these indications, such as the visit of the Wise Men from the East, are not the most remarkable : because first the captivity in Babylon, and subsequently the dissemination of Jewish groups through so many parts of the world, could not but lead to direct com- munications of divine knowledge, at least, in some small degree. From such causes, there would be many a Cornelius before him who became the first-fruits of the Gentiles. Yet even the interest, which probably led to such communications from the Jew, must have 6 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. had its own root in relics of prior tradition, which attested the common concern of mankind in Him that was to come. Bnt in earlier times, and when the Jewish nation was more concentrated, and was certainly ob- scure, the vestiges of extra-patriarchal and extra-judaical relations between God and man are undeniable. They have been traced with clearness and ability in a popu- lar treatise by the hand of Bishop Horsley^'. Let us take, for instance, that case of extreme wick- edness, which most severely tries the general proposi- tion. The punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins was preceded by a declaration from the Most High, importing a direct relation with those guilty cities'^ ; and two angels, who had visited Abraham on the plains of Mamre, ' came to Sodom at even.' Ruth the Moabitess was an ancestress, through king David, of our Lord. Rahab in Jericho, ' by faith,' as the Apostle assures us, entertained the spies of the Israelites. Job, living in a country where the worship of the sun was practised, had, as had his friends, the knowledge of the true God. Melchizedek, the priest of On, whose daugh- ter Joseph married, and Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, are other conspicuous instances. Later in time, Nineveh, the great Assyrian capital, received the mes- sage of the prophet Jonah, and repented at his preach- ing. Here the teaching organ was supplied from among the Jews : but Balaam exhibits to us the gift of inspir- ation beyond their bounds. Once more ; many cen- turies after the Homeric manners had disappeared, and d Horsley's Dissertation on S. Irenfeus, Cambridge, 1857. the Prophecies of the Messiah Williams's Primitive Tradition, dispersed among the heathen, p. 9. See also Mr. Harvey's Observa- « See Genesis xviii.i, 20, xx. i. tions on the Gnostic System, Heb. xi. 31. pp. iii and seqq., prefixed to his The question one ofldstory. 7 during the captivity, we find not only a knowledge of God, but dreams and signs vouchsafed to Assyrian kings, and interpreted for them by the prophet Daniel. We have, in short, mingling vs^ith the whole course of the Old Testament, a stream of evidence which shows the partial remnants of the knowledge of God, apart from that main current of it which is particularly traced for lis in the patriarchal and Mosaic histories. Again, many centuries after Homer, when all traces of primi- tive manners had long vanished, still in the Prometheus of yEschylus, and in the Pollio of Virgil, we have signs, though I grant they are faint ones, that the celestial rays had not even then ' faded into the light of common day' for the heathen world. It would really be strange, and that in a high degree, if a record like that of Homer, with so many resemblances to the earliest manners in other points, had no link to connect it with them in their most vital part. The general proposition, that we may expect to find the relics of Scriptural traditions in the heroic age of Greece, though it leads, if proved, to important prac- tical results, is independent even of a belief in those traditions, as they stand in the scheme of revealed truth. They must be admitted to have been facts on earth, even by those who would deny them to be facts of heavenly origin, in the shape in which Christendom receives them : and the question immediately before us is one of pure historical probability. The descent of mankind from a single pair, the lapse of that pair from original righteousness, are apart from and ulterior to it. We have traced the Greek nation to a source, and along a path of migration, which must in all likelihood have placed its ancestry, at some point or points, in close local relations with the scenes of the earliest Mosaic records : the retentiveness of that people equalled its 8 Olymjnis : the Religion of the Homeric age. reccptiveness, and its close and fond association with the past made it prone indeed to incorporate novel matter into its religion, but prone also to keep it there after its incorporation. If such traditions existed, and if the laws which guide historical inquiry require or lead us to suppose that the forefathers of the Greeks must have lived within tlieir circle, then the burden of proof must lie not so properly with those who assert that the traces of them are to be found in the earliest, that is, the Homeric, form of the Greek mythology, as with those who deny it. What became of those old traditions? They must have decayed and disappeared, not by a sudden process, but by a gradual accumulation of the corrupt accretions, in which at length they were so completely interred as to be invisible and inaccessible. Some period therefore there must have been, at which they would remain clearly perceptible, though in con- junction with much corrupt matter. Such a period might be made the subject of record, and if such there were, we might naturally expect to find it in the oldest known work of the ancient literature. If the poems of Homer do, however, contain a pic- ture, even though a defaced picture, of the primeval religious traditions, it is obvious that they afford a most valuable collateral support to the credit of the Holy Scripture, considered as a document of history. Still we must not allow the desire of gaining this ad- vantage to bias the mind in an inquiry, which can only be of value if it is conducted according to the strictest rules of rational criticism. We may then, in accordance with those rules, be prepared to expect that the Hellenic religion will prove to have been in part constructed from traditional know- ledge. The question arises next. Of M'hat other materials Invention combined ivith tradition. 9 in addition was it composed ? 'i'lic answer can be l)ut one ; Such materials would be supplied by invention. But in- vention cannot absolutely create ; it can only work upon what it finds already provided to its hand. The provi- sion made in this instance was sim])ly that with which the exj)erience of man supjdied him. It was mediate or immediate: mediate, where the Greek received matter from abroad, and wrouf^ht u])on it : immediate, where he conceived it for himself. That experience lay in two spheres — the sphere of external nature, and the sphere of life. Each of these would afford for the purpose the elements of Power, Grandeur, Pleasure, Beauty, Utility ; and such would be the elements suited to the work of constructing or developing a system that was to present objects for his worship. We may therefore reasonably expect to find in the religion features refer- able to these two departments for their origin ; — first, the powerful forces and attractive forms of outward nature ; secondly, the faculties and propensities of man, and those relations to his fellow-men, amidst which his lot is cast, and his character formed. If this be so, then, in the result thus compounded out of tradition purporting to be revealed, and out of invention strictly human, we ought to recognise, so long as both classes of ingredients are in effective coexist- ence, not strictly a false theology, but a true theology falsified : a true religion, into which falsehood has entered, and in which it is gradually overlaying and absorbing the original truth, until, when the process has at length reached a certain point, it is wholly hidden and borne down by countervailing forces, so that the system has for practical purposes become a false one, and both may and should be so termed and treated. I admit that very different modes of representing the case have been in vogue. Sometimes l)y those to whom 10 Olymjms : the Reluj ion of the Homeric age. the interest of Christianity is precious, and sometimes in indifference or hostility to its fortunes, it is held that the basis of the Greek mythology is laid in the deification of the powers of nature. The common as- sumptions have been such as the following : That the starting-point of the religion of the heroic age is to be sought only in the facts of the world, in the ideas and experience of man. That nature-worship, the deifica- tion of elemental and other physical powers, was the original and proper basis of the system. That this system, presumably self-consistent, as having been founded on a given principle, was broken up by the inter- vention of theogonic revolutions. That the system, of which Jupiter was at the head, was an imperfect recon- struction of a scheme of divine rule out of the frag'ments of an earlier religion, and that it supplanted the elder gods. In short, the Greek mythology is represented as a corrupt edition, not of original revealed religion, but of a Nature-worship which, as it seems to be as- sumed, was separated by a gulf never measured, and never passed, from the primitive religious traditions of our race. Further it seems to be held, that the faults and imperfections of the pagan religion have their root only in a radical inability of the human mind to pro- duce pure deity ; that they do not represent the depra- vation of an ancient and divine gift, but rather the simple failure of man in a work of invention. Indeed, we need not wonder that it should fail in a process which, critically considered, can mean little else than mere exaggeration of itself and from its own experi- ence^, and which must be so apt to become positive caricature. f See Niigelsbacli, Homerische Heidenthum und Judenthum, Theologie, i. i. ii. i. Also (if I ii. i. §. i. p. 54. understand it rightly), Dollingei-'s The basis luas not in Nature-worship. 11 Afrain, Dean Prideaux, in his Connection of Sacred and Profane History, gives the following genesis of the Greek mythology. From the beginning, he says, there was a general notion among men, founded on a sense that they were impure, of the necessity of a mediator with God. There being no mediator clearly revealed, man chose mediators for himself, and took the sun, moon, and stars, as high intelligences well fitted for the pur- pose. Hence we find Saturn, Jupiter, jNIars, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Diana, to be first ranked in the polytheism of tlie ancients : for they were their first gods^. This theory is not in correspondence with the facts of the heroic age. There is no sense whatever of an impurity disabling men from access to God ; no clear or general opinion of the necessity of mediation ; no glimpse even of a god superior to Jupiter and the rest with whom they were on behalf of man to mediate. And, again, the opinion, that the origin of the religion lay in Nature-worship, has had the support both of high and also of recent authorities. The eminent and learned Dr.Dollinger, in his ' Heidenthum und Judenthum,' says, that the deification of Nature, its forces, or the particular objects it offered to the senses, constituted the groundwork of the Greek, as well as of the other heathen religions. The idea of God continued to be powerful even w hen it had been darkened, and the godhead w^as felt as present, and active everywhere in the physical order. In working out his general rule for each mythological deity in particular, this author con- ceives the original form of their existence to have been that of a Nature-power, even where the vestiges of such a conception have, under subsequent handling, become faint or imperceptible. Thus Juno, Minerva, Latona, g Prideaux, i. 3. vol. i. p. 198. 12 Ohjmpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Diana, and others in succession, are referred to such an origin^. Now in dealing with this hypothesis, I would ask, "what then has become of the old Theistic and IMessia- nic traditions? and how has it happened they have been amputated by a process so violent as to make them to leave, even while the state of society continued still primitive, no trace behind them ? But further. I would urge with confidence that the ample picture of the religion of the heroic ages, as we have it in Homer, which is strictly for this purpose in the nature of a fact, cannot be made to harmonize with the hypo- thesis which refers it to such a source. The proof of this statement must depend mainly on the examina- tion which we have to institute in detail : but I am anxious at once to bring it into view, and to refer briefly to some of the grounds on which it rests, because it is susceptible of demonstration by evidence as con- tradistinguished from theory. On the other hand, when I proceed farther, evidence and theory must of necessity be mixed up together ; and dissent from a particular mode of tracing out the association between the traditional and inventive elements of the system might unawares betray the reader into the conclusion, that no such dis- tinct traditional elements were to be found, but that all, or nearly all, was pure fable. I say, then, there is much in the theo-mythology of Homer, which, if it had been a system founded in fable, could not have ap- peared there. It stands before us like one of our old churches, having different parts of its fabric in the different styles of architecture, each of which speaks for itself, and which we know to belong to the several epochs. in the history of the art, when their character- istic combinations were respectively in vogue. ^ Heidenthum uikI Judeuthum, b. ii. sect, i, 2. pp. 54-81. Nor is the si/stem from inuentiorc onhj. 13 While on the one hand it lias deities, such as La- tona, without any attributes at all, on the other hand, we find in it both gods and goddesses, with an assem- blage of such attributes and functions as have no com- mon link by which invention could have fastened them together. They are such, likewise, as to bring about crosfe divisions and cross purposes, that the Greek force of imagination, and the Greek love of symmetry, would have alike eschewed. How could invention have set up Pallas as the goddess at once of peace and its in- dustries, of wisdom, and of war ? Its object would clearly have been to impersonate attributes ; and to associate even distinct, much less conflicting attributes, in the same deity, would have been simply to confuse them. How again could it have combined in Apollo, who likewise turns the courses of rivers by his might, the offices of destruction, music, poetry, prophecy, archery, and medicine ? Again, if he is the god of medicine, why have we Paieon? if of poetry, why have we the Muses? If Minerva be (as she is) goddess of war, why have we Mars ? if of the work of the Artificer, why have we also Vulcan ? if of prudence and sagacity, and even craft', why Mercury? And again, the theory is, that the chief personages of the mythology are representatives of the great powers of the physical universe. I ask, therefore, how it happens that in the Homeric, or, as we may call it, primitive form of the system, these great powders of the universe are for the most part very indistinctly and par- tially personified, whereas w^e see in vivid life and con- stant movement another set of figures, having either an obscure or partial relation, or no relation at all, to those powders? Such a state of the evidence surely strikes at i II. xxii. 247. 14 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric oge. the very root of the hypothesis we are considering: but it is the state of the evidence which we actually find before us. Take for instance Time, Ocean, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Air; all these prime natural objects and agents are either not personified at all in Homer, or so indistinctly and mutely personified that they are the mere zoophytes of his supernatural world, of which the gorgeous life and brilliant movement are sustained by a separate set of characters. Of these more effec- tive agents, some are such as it is impossible rationally to set down for mere impersonations of ideas ; while others are plainly constituted as lords over, and not beings derivative from, those powers or provinces of nature, with which they are placed in special relations. It cannot for instance rationally be said that the Ho- meric Jupiter is a mere impersonation of the air which he rules, or the Homeric Neptune of the sea, or the Homeric Aidoneus (or Aides) of the nether world. For to the first of these three, many functions are assigned having no connection with the air. As for example, when he gives swiftness of foot to iEneas on Mount Ida, that he might escape the pursuit of Achilles^. In the case of the second, there is a rival figure, namely, Nereus, who never that we know of leaves the sea, who is the father of the Sea-nymphs, and who evidently fulfils the condi- tions of Sea impersonated far better than does Nep- tune ; Neptune, who marched upon the battle-field in Troas, and who, with Apollo, had himself built the w^alls of Ilium. Besides all this, the sea, to which Neptune belongs, is itself not one of the great ele- mental powers of the universe, but is derived, like rivers, springs, and wells, from Father Ocean, who fears indeed the thunderbolt of Jupiter, but is not bound to ^ II. XX. 92. Traditive orujia of Sacrifice. 35 attendance even in the gvc^xt chapter of Olympus'. As to Aidoneus, he can hardly im])ersonate tlic nether Avorld, because in Homer he does not represent or go- vern it, but only has to do -with that portion of it, which is inhabited by the souls of departed men. For, as far beneath his realm as Earth is beneath Heaven, lies the dark Tartarus of Homer, peopled with KpoVo? and his Titans. Nor, on the other hand, do we know that the Elysian fields of the West were subject to his sway. The elemental powers are in Homer, though not altogether, yet almost altogether, extrinsic to his grand Olympian system. Without, then, anticipating this or that particular result from the inquiry into the mode and proportions in which traditional and inventive elements are com- bined in the poems of Homer, it may safely be denied that his picture of the supernatural world could have been drawn by means of materials exclusively supplied by invention from the sources of nature and expe- rience. And indeed there is one particular with respect to which the admission will be generally made, that the Greek mythological system stood indebted at least to a primitive tradition, if not to a direct command ; I mean the institution of sacrifice. This can hardly be supposed to have been an original conception in every country ; and it distinctly points us to one common source. Sacrifice was, according to Dr. Dollinger'", an inheritance which descended to the Greeks from the pristine time before the division of the nations. With- out doubt the transmission of ritual, depending upon outward action, is more easy than that of ideas. But the fact that there was a transmission of something 1 II. xxi. 195-9. XX. 7. "1 Heid. u. Jutl. iv. 5. p. 202. 16 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. proves that there was a channel for it, open and con- tinuous : and the circumstances might be such as to allow of tlie passage of ideas, together with institutions, along it. It cannot be necessary to argue on the other side in any detail in order to show, that for much of his super- natural machinery, Homer was indebted to invention, whether his own or that of generations, or nations, which had preceded him. Had his system been one purely tra- ditional in its basis, had it only broken into many rays the integral light of one God, it would have presented to us no such deity as Juno, who is wholly without prototype, either abstract or personal, in the primitive system, and no such mere reflections of human passions as are Mars and Venus : not to speak of those large ad- ditions, which we are to consider as belonging not so much to the basis and general outline of the system, as to the later stages of its development. Let us now endeavour to inquire what mental, moral, and physical influences would be likely, in early times, to give form and direction to that alterative process, which the primitive ideas of religion, when removed beyond the precinct of Revelation and the knowledge of the Sacred Records, had to undergo. This law of decline we may examine, first ideally, according to the influences likely to operate on the course^ of thought with respect to religion : and then with reference to that which is specifically Greek, by sketching in outline the actual mode of handling the material at command, which resulted in the creation of the Homeric or Olympian system. The first belongs to the metaphysical genesis of the system : the second to its historical formation. So long as either the Sacred Records, or the Light Tend€7icy of primitive reWjion to decay. 17 which sujiplied thein, remained within reach, there were specific means either in operation, or at least accessib'e, which, as f;xr as their range extended, would serve to check error, whether of practice or speculation, and to clear uj) uncertainty, as the sundial verifies or corrects the watch. But the stream darkened more and more, as it got farther from the source. The Pagan religion could boast of its unbroken traditions; like some forms of Christianity, and like the government of France until 1789. But its uninterrupted course was really an uninterrupted aberration from the line of truth ; and to boast of the evenness of its motion was in effect to boast of the deadness of the conscience of mankind, which had not virtue enough even to disturb progressive degeneracy by occasional reproach. In later times, the Pagan system had its three aspects : it was one thing for the populace, another for states- men, and a third for philosophers. But in Homer's time it had suffered no criticism and no analysis : the human self-consciousness was scarcely awakened ; in- trospection had not begun its work. Imagination and affection continually exercised their luxuriant energies in enlarging and developing the system of preternatural being and action. However copiously the element of fiction, nay, of falsehood, entered into it, yet for the masses of mankind it was still subjectively true". All was forward movement. Man had not, as it were, had time to ask himself, is this a lie? or even, whither does it tend ? His soul, in those days of in- fancy, never questioned, always believed. Logical inconsistency, even moral solecism, did not repel it, nor slacken the ardour of its energies in the work of construction : construction of art, construction of man- ° Grote, Hist. Greece, vol. i. p. 467. C 18 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. ners, construction of polity, construction of religion. This is what we see, in glowing heat, throughout the poems of Homer, and it is perhaps the master key to their highest interest. They show us, in the province we are now considering, heroes earning their title to the Olympian life, mute nature everywhere adjusting her- self to the scheme of supernatural impersonations, and religion allied to the human imagination, as closely as it was afterwards by Mahomet wedded to the sword. Everywhere we see that which is properly called myth, in the process of formation. Early mythology is the simple result of the working of the human mind, in a spirit of belief or of credulity, upon the material offered to it by prior tradition, by the physical universe, by the operations of the mind, and by the experience of life. We may, as follows, accomjjany the vicious series through which thought might probably be led, with re- spect to the theory of religion. If we begin with the true and pure idea of God, it is the idea of a Being infinite in power and intelli- gence, and though perfectly good, yet good by an un- changeable internal determination of character, and not by the constraint of an external law. Such was the starting-point, from which the human mind had to run its career of religious belief or specu- lation. But the maintenance subjectively of the origi- nal form of the image in its clearness depended, of course, upon the condition of the observing organ ; and that organ, again, depended for its health on the healthi- ness of the being to whom it belonged. Hence we must look into the nature of man, in order to know what man would think respecting the nature of God. Now^ man, the prey of vicious passions, though he holds deeply rooted within himself the witness to an Doivnward course of the idea of God. 19 extrinsic and objective law of goodness, which he needs in order to develop what he has of capacity for good, and to bring into subjection the counteracting and re- bellious elements, is nevertheless prevailingly under the influence of these last. Hence, in the absence of special and Divine provision for the remedy of his in- ward disease, although both conscience and also the dispensations of Providence shadow forth to him a law of goodness from without, yet the sense of any internal law of goodness in himself becomes, with the lapse of time, more and more dim and ineffectual. Thus, as he reflects back upon his own image con- ceptions of the Deity, the picture that he draws first fails in that, wherein he himself is weakest. Now, the perce])tion of mere power depends upon intellect and sense : and as neither intellect nor sense have received through sin the same absolutely mortal wound which has reached his spiritual being, he can therefore still com- prehend with clearness the idea and the uses of power, both mental and physical. Accordingly, the Godhead is for him preternaturally endowed with intelligence and force. But how was he to keep alive from his own re- sources the moral elements of the divine ideal ? Coer- cive goodness, goodness by an external law, goodness dependent upon responsibility, was, by the nature of the case, inapplicable to Deity as such : while of goodness by an internal law, he had lost all clear conception, and he could not give what he had not got. Of course it is not meant, that this was a conscious operation. Rarely indeed, in reflective and critical periods, does it happen that man can keep a log-book of wind, weather, and progress, for the mind, or tell from what quarter of the heavens have proceeded the gales that impel it on its course. c 2 20 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. But, by this real though unconscious process, good- ness would soon disappear from his conception of the Godhead, while high power and intelligence might re- main. And hence' it is not strange, if we find that Homer's deities, possessed of power beyond their faculty of moral direction, are for the most part, when viewed in the sphere of their personal conduct, on a lower level than his heroes. When therefore these latter charge, as is not unfre- quent with them, upon the gods the consequences, and even in a degree the facts, of their own fault or folly, the proceeding is not so entirely illogical as we might at first suppose. For that great conception of an all- good and all-wise Being had undergone a miserable transmutation, bringing it more and more towards the form of an evil power. Hence, perhaps, it is that we find these reproaches to the Deity put into the mouth even of Menelaus, one of the noblest and purest cha- racters among the heroes of Homer". Again, this degradation of the divine idea was essen- tially connected with the parcelling it out into many portions, according to the system of polytheism. That system at once brought down all the attributes from their supreme perfection to scales of degree : established finite and imperfect relations in lieu of the perfect and infinite : carried into the atmosphere of heaven an earthy element. The disintegration of the Unity of God prepared the way for the disintegration of His several attributes, and especially for weakening and effacing those among them, which man had chiefly lost his capacity to grasp. When once we have substituted for the absolute that which is in degree, and for the perfect that which n II. iii. 365, and xiii. 631-5. Inducements to Nature-worshij). 21 is defective, we have brought the divine element within the cognizance of the human : the barrier of separation is broken down, and, without any consciousness of undue license, we thenceforward insensibly fashion it as we please. Each corruption, as it takes its place in the scheme of popular ideas, is consolidated by the action of new forces, over and above those which, even if alone, were sufficient to engender it : for the classes, who worked the machinery both of priestly caste, and of civil government, found their account in accumu- lating fable up to a mountain mass. Each new addi- tion found a welcome : but woe to him, who, by shaking the popular persuasion of any one article, endangered the very foundations of the whole. Such is an outline, though a faint and rude one, of what may be called the rationale, or the law of cause and effect, ajiplicable to the explanation of the pro- gressive and, at length, total corruption of the primi- tive religion. We may also endeavour to trace the motives which might determine the downward movement of the hu- man mind in the direction, partially or wholly accord- ing to circumstances, of what is called Nature- worship. On the one side lay the proposition handed down from the beginning — there is a God. On the other side arose the question — where is He? It was felt that on the whole He was not in man, though there was in man what was of Him. It was obvious to look for Him in the mighty agencies, and in the sublime objects of Nature, which, though (so thought might run,) they did not reveal Him entirely, yet disclosed nothing that was not worthy to belong to Him. Here is a germ of Na- ture-worship. Hence it is that we find Aristotle, at a period when thought was alike acute, deliberate, and 22 Oli/mpits : the Religion of the Homeric age. refined, declare it to be beyond all doubt that the hea- venly bodies are far more divine than man". Now this germ could not be one only. Trains of thought and reasoning, essentially alike, would, accord- ing to diversities of minds and circumstances, lead one to place the God in one natural sphere or agency, and another to place him in another. There was no com- manding principle either to confine or to reconcile these variations ; thus the same cause, which brought deity into natural olyects, would also tend to exhibit many gods instead of one. Such was the ])ath by which man might travel from Theism to Nature-worship. But other paths, starting from other j)oints, would lead to the same issue. Suppose now the case of the mind wholly without the tradition of a God. To such a mind, the vast and overmastering but usually regulated forces, and the beautiful and noble forms of nature, would of them- selves suggest the idea of a superior agency ; yet, again, not of one superior agent alone, but of many. Thus some men would build upwards, while others, so to speak, were building downwards, and they would meet on the way. And, again, a third operation could not but assist these two former, and combine with their results. For the unaided intellect of man seems not to have had damina to carry, as it were, the weight of the tran- scendent idea of one God, of God infinite in might, in M'isdom, and in love. Again, it was awful as well as ponderous ; because it was so remote from man, and from his actual state. He therefore lightened the idea, as it were, by dividing it from one into many ; and he o Kal yap avOpconov ciXXa ttoKv raTci ye, i^ hv 6 Koapos crvvicrTrjKev . BdOTfpa Trjv (f)v(ni>, oiou to. (pavepa- Eth. Nicom. VI. vii. 4. Progressive deterioration. 23 brought it nearer to himself, nearer to his sympathies, by humanizing its form and attributes. By this process he in time destroyed indeed his reverence, but he also beguiled his fears, and created for himself objects not of dread, so much as of familiar association. Yet once again ; it may, I think, be shown that a kind of natural necessity led man to denominate actual powers, which he saw and felt about him, not through the medium of generalization by abstract names, but by making them persons. Thus easy, and almost inevitable, under mental laws, was the road to Nature-worship. The path, that led into the deeper corruption of Passion-worship, has been already traced. It is then in entire accordance with what has pre- ceded, that, when the Pagan system has come into its old age, we should find it so wholly deprived of all the lineaments of original beauty, grandeur, and goodness, that we can read the destructive philosophy and poetry of the atheistic schools, and of Lucretius in particular, without the strong sentiment of horror, which in them- selves they are fitted to excite. Milton, in the First Book of Paradise Lost, treats the Pagan gods as being, under new names, so many of the fallen angels, who with Satan had rebelled, and with him had been driven out from heaven, so that the world of heathen from the first had simply ' devils to adore for deities.' Whether this sentiment be poetically warrantable or not, (and for my own part I cannot but think it was one too much connected with a cold and lowered form of Christian doctrine,) it is not historically sound. We should distinguish broadly between this assertion, that the Pagan religion was an original falsehood, and the declaration of St. Paul, ' I say that the things which 24 Olympus : the Reliyion of the Homeric age. the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to Godi.' To the same class as the words of the Apostle, belong-, as T conceive, these (and other) sentences of Saint Augustine"" ; 7ion sunt dii, 7naUgni sunt spiritus, quibus ccterna tua felicitas pwna est Proinde si ad beatam pervenire desideras civitatem, devita dcBmonum societatem. For these terrible descriptions apply not to the infancy, but to the decrepitude of Paganism. The difference between them was as the difference between the babe in arras, and the hoary sinner on the threshold of death : and while the one representation summarily cuts man off from God, the other only shows to how fear- ful a distance he had by degrees travelled away. As time went on, and the eidola of succeeding generations were heaped one upon another, the truly theistic element in the Pagan mythology was more and more hidden and overborne, until at length its association with evil was so inveterate and thorough, that the images, which the citizen or matron of the Roman empire had before the mind as those of gods, bore no appreciable resemblance to their divine original, but more and more amply corre- sponded with that dark side of our nature, on which we are accessible to, and finally may assume the like- ness of, the evil one. But the critical error that we seem to have committed may be thus described ; we have thrown back upon the Homeric ])eriod the moral and mythological character of the system, such as we find it developed in later Greece and Rome : forgetful of the long and dim inter- val, that separates Homeric religion from almost every subsequent representation, and not duly appreciating the title of the poems to speak with an almost exclu- sive authority for their own insulated epoch. Further, it is reasonable to remember that some of '1 I Cor. X. 20. "■ De Civ. Dei, ii. 29. Parfanism in its decay. 25 the powerful alteratives, which in subsequent ages told upon the form and substance of this wonderful mytho- logy, had not begun to act in the time of Homer. These alteratives were speculative thought, and poli- tical interests. Philosophy, ever dangerous to the popular religion of Greece in the days of its maturity and prosperity, became its ally in the period of its de- cline, when its original vitality had entirely ebbed away, and when the Ved'illa Regis^ raised aloft through- out the Roman empire, drove it to seek refuge in holes and corners. Then the wit of man was set to repair the tottering fabric ; to apologize for what was profligate, to invent reasons for wiiat was void of mean- ing, to frame relations between the depraved mytho- logy, and the moral government of the world. Even that corru[)t and Avicked system had, as it were, its epoch of death-bed repentance. The services thus rendered by philosophers were late and ineffectual ; but it was the civil power, which had been all along the greatest conservator of the classical mythology. It felt itself to have an interest in sur- rounding public authority with a veneration greater than this world could supply : a commanding interest, with the pursuit of which its necessities forbade it to dispense. Whatever exercised an influence in subduing and enthralling the jiopular mind, answered its purpose in the view of the civil magistrate. Hence his multifari- ous importations into religion, each successively intro- duced for this purely subjective and temporal reason, removed it farther and farther from the ground of truth. Every story that he added to the edifice made its fall more certain and more terrible. Numerosa parabat ex- cehcB turris tabulaia. But in Homer's time there is no trace of this employment of religion by governments, as a means of sheer imposition upon their subjects. 26 Olymjms : the Religion of the Homeric age. So likewise in Homer there is no sign that con- scious speculation on these subjects had begun. In- deed, of that kind of thought which involves a clear mental self-consciousness, we may perhaps say, that the first beginning, at least for Europe and the West, is marked by the very curious simile in the Iliad ^ — 0)9 8' OT av at^] voos avepos k. t, A. Homer, then, spoke out in simplicity, and in good faith, the religion of his day, under those forms of poetry with which all religions have a well-grounded affinity : for the imagination, which is the fountain-head of poetic forms, is likewise a genuine, though faint, pic- ture, of that world which religion realizes, through Faith its groundwork, ' the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen*.' And, indeed, he had no other form in which to speak forth his soul. That which we call the inven- tion of the Greeks at work upon the subject-matter of religion was, in fact, the voice of human nature, giving expression in the easiest and simplest manner to its sense of the great objects and powers amidst which its lot was cast. It has been well said by Professor M. JMiiller, in an able Essay" on 'Comparative IMytho- logy,* that ' abstract speech is more difficult, than the fulness of a poet's sympathy with nature.' Thus it was not so much that poetry usurped the office of religion, as that their respective functions brought them of necessity to a common ground and a common form of proceeding. Homer saw, heard, or felt the action of the sun, the moon, the stars, the atmosphere, the winds, the sea, the rivers, the fountains, the soil ; and he knew of family affections, of governing powers, of a s II. XV. 8o. t Heb. xi. i. u Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 36. On Impersonation in Homer. 27 healing art, of a gift and skill of mechanical construc- tion. Action, in each of these departments, could not but be referred to a poMer. How was that power to be expressed ? At least for the Greek mind, less subtle, as Aristotle has observed, than the Oriental, it was more natural to deal Mith persons, than with metaphysical abstractions. It was foreign to the mental habit of the heroic age to conceive of abstract essences; as it still remains diffi- cult, more difficult perhaps than, in the looseness of our mental j^rocesses, we suppose, for the men of our own generation. Even now, in the old age of the world, we have many signs of this natural difficulty, which formerly was a kind of impossibility. Especially we have that one which leads all communities, and above all their least instructed classes, to apply the [)ersonal pronouns he or she to a vast multitude of inanimate objects, both natural, and the products of human skill and labour. These objects are generally such as stand in a certain relation to action : they either do, suffer, or contain. If then the Nature-forces could not be expressed, or at least could not be understood as abstractions, to ex- press them as persons was the only other course open to the poet. It was not an effort to follow this method : it w^ould have required great effort to adopt any other. How s])ontaneous was the impulse which thus gene- rated the mythological system, we may observe from this, that it not only personified in cases where, an agency being seen, its fountain was concealed from view, but it likewise went very far towards personifica- tion even in cases where inanimate instruments were wielded by human beings, and where, as the source of the phenomenon was perceived, there was no occasion to clothe it with a separate vitality. Hence that copious 28 Ohjmjms : the Religion of the Homeric age. vivifying power which Homer has poured like a flood through his verse. Hence his bitter arrow {iriKpo?), his darts hungry for human blood {XiXatofxeva X/ooo? aa-ai), his ground laughing in the blaze of the gleaming ar- mour (yeXacrcre Se iraara irepi yQwv -^oXkov vtto (TTepoTryj^). Hence again his free use of sensible imagery to illus- trate metaphysical ideas : for example, his black cloud of grief, his black pains, his purple death^. Hence that singularly beautiful passage on the weeping of the death- less horses of Achilles for Patroclusy. Hence too it is, that he does not scruple to carry imagery, drawn from the sphere of one sense, into the domain of another, an operation which later poets have found so difficult and hazardous. He has an iron din^, a brazen voice% a brazen or iron heaven '\ a howling or shouting fire, a blaze of lamentation'^. Hence, by a system of figure bolder perhaps than has been used by any other poet, he invests the works of high art in metal with the at- tributes of life and motion. This daring system reaches its climax in the damsel satellites*' of gold, that support the limping gait of Vulcan : in the dogs of metal, that guard the palace of Alcinous : in the elastic arms of Achilles, which, so far from being a w^eight upon him, themselves lift him from the ground : and in the ani- mated ships of the Phneacians, which are taught by instinct to speed across the sea, and to pilot their own course to the points of their destination ^. On every side we see a redundance of life, shaping, and even forcing, for itself new channels : and thus it becomes more easy ^ II. V. 83. xvii. 591. xviii. ^ II. xv. 328. xvii. 425, 565. 2, 4. c Od. XX. 353. y II. xvii. 426-40. ^ II. xviii. 417. For the Shield, z II. xvii. 424. notice xviii. 539, 599-602. xix. a II. xviii. 222 : more Strictly, 386. a voice of bronze, ^ Od. viii. 556. Nature of the myths of Homer. 29 for us to conceive the imj)ortant truth that, when he impersonates, lie simply takes what was for him the easiest and the most effective way to describe. Every where he is carrying- on a double process of action and reaction : on the one hand bringing Deity down to sensible forms ; on the other, adorning and elevating humanity, and inanimate nature, with every divine en- dowment. Homer, then, is full of mythical matter. But the word mijth, of which in recent controversies the use has been so frequent, is capable of being viewed under either of two princii)al aspects. In one of these, it signifies a story which is not con- tem[)orary with the date of the facts it purports to re- late, but is in reality an after-view of them, which colours its subject, and exaggerates, ad lihitimi, ac- cording to conditions of thought and feeling which have arisen in the interval. In the other of these senses, it is an allegory which has simply lost its counterpart : it was true, but by separation from that which attached it to fact, it has become untrue : being now of necessity handled, if handled at all, as a substantive existence, it has passed into a fable, and is only distinguished from pure fable, in that it once indicated truths contemporary with itself, though probably truths lying in a different region from its own. It is in this last sense that the term myth is chiefly, and most legitimately, applicable to the religious system of the Homeric poems: but they may also probably contain more or less of the mythical element in the former sense. We, having obtained knowledge of the early deriva- tion and distribution of mankind, and of the primitive 30 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. religion, from sources other than those open to Homer, shall find in this knowledge the lost counterpart of a great portion of the Homeric myths. The theological and jMessianic traditions which we find recorded in Scripture, when compared with the Homeric theogony, will be found to correspond with a large and important part of it : and, moreover, with a part of it which in the poems themselves carries a cluster of distinctive marks, not to be explained except by the discovery of this correspondence. The evidence, therefore, of the meaning of this part of the Homeric system is like that which is obtained, when, upon applying a new key to some lock that we have been unable to open, we find it fits the wards, and puts back the bolt. In his learned and acute Essay ^ on Comparative My- thology, Professor Max Miiller undertakes to illustrate a doctrine that appears to be the exact opposite of Mr.Grote's ' Past which was never present.' If I under- stand him rightly, there was at some one time a pre- sent for every portion of the reputed past^: so that, by a reference to eastern sources, the nature of that present, and of the original consistent meanini>' for what after- wards on becoming unintelligible is justly called a myth, has in many cases been, and may yet in many more come to be, unveiled. Originally impersonations of ideas and natural powers, the heathen gods never represented demons or evil spirits*^, and were ' masks without an actor,' * names without being :' while their reality, consisting in their relation to the facts of the universe, faded and escaped from perception in the course of time. The myths of the Veda are still in J Oxford Essays, 1856. g Essays, p. 42. ^ Ibid. p. 48. Nature of tJie myths of Homer. 31 the stage of growth : Ilesiod and Horner too are of the ' later Greeks,' and not only the Theogony of Hesiod is ' a distorted caricature,' but the poetry of Homer ' is extensively founded on myths fully groM'n, and in the stage of decay, that is to say, long severed from their corresponding deities. I do not doubt that in all mythology at its origin, there has been both a shell and a substance : and that the tendency of the two to part company, which we see even under the sway of revealed religion, must have operated with far more power, where ordinarily at least, man was thrown back, without other aid, upon his rea- son and his conscience, beset as they were and are with overpowering foes. But then, as it seems to me, we must anticipate great changes in the shell itself. It will not retain, when empty, the identity of the form ; which has lost the support that it had from within when full. On the contrary, it will become unlike its original self, as well as unlike its arcliLtype or substance, so that probably much of it must always remain without a key. Upon the other hand, as there was already a true re- ligion in the world when an untrue one began to gather upon and incrust it, there must arise the question already put ; what, according to the theory before us, became of this true religion ? It did not disappear in a day : there was no wilful renunciation of it by single or specific acts, no sharp line drawn between it and the false ; but the human element was gradually more and more im- ported into the divine, operating by continual and suc- cessive disintegrations of the original ideas. If so, then there seems to be nothing unreasonable in the belief that the traces of them might long remain discernible * PP- 43, 47; 49; 55; 87. 32 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. in the adulterated system, even if only as the features of a man are discernible in the mask of a buffoon. No doubt it would be unreasonable to look for such traces in Homer, if he were indeed, in the popular sense of the terra, which probably Professor M. Miiller does not intend, a later Greek ; a Greek dealing with a mythological system of which his nation had already had its use, from which the creative principle had de- parted, and which was on the road from ripeness to decay. I am far from saying that there are no myths in Homer, where the original and interior meaning has ceased to be discernible : but I shall seek to show that the contrary may be confidently averred, and fully shown, with respect to the great bulk of his mytho- logy, and that we see in him two systems, both alive, and in impact and friction, though with very unequal forces, one upon the other ; the first, that of traditional truth, and the second, of the inventive impersonation of nature both material and invisible. And certainly it is very striking that, with one or two very insignificant exceptions, all those ancient fables, which Professor Miiller treats as having become unintelligible without the key of the Veda, and which he explains by means of it, are fables unknown to Homer, and drawn from much later sources. The general view, then, which will be given in these pages of the Homeric Theo-mythology is as follows : That its basis is not to be found either in any mere human instinct gradually building it up from the ground, or in the already formed system of any other nation of antiquity ; but that its true point of origin lies in the ancient Theistic and Messianic traditions, which we know to have subsisted among the patriarchs, and which their kin and contemporaries must have carried Steps of the downward process. 33 with them as they dispersed, although their original warmth and vitaHty couki not but fall into a course of gradual efflux, Avith the gradually widening distance from their source. To travel beyond the reach of the rays proceeding from that source was to make the first decisive step from religion to mythology. To this divine tradition, then, were adfled, in rank abundance, elements of merely human fabrication, which, while intruding themselves, could not but also extrude the higher and prior parts of religion. But the divine tradition, as it was divine, would not admit of the accumulation of human materials until it had itself been altered. Even before men could add, it was neces- sary that they should take away. This impairing and abstraction of elements from the divine tradition may be called disintegration. Before the time of Homer, it had already wrought great havock. Its first steps, as far as the genesis of the mythology throws light upon them, would appear to have been as follows : objectively, a fundamental corruption of the idea of God ; who, instead of an Omnipotent wisdom and holiness, now in the main represented on a large scale, in personal character, the union of appetite and power ; subjectively, the primary idea of religion was wholly lost. Adam, says Lord Bacon, was not content with universal obedience to the Divine Will as his rule of action, but would have another standard. This offence, though not exaggerated into the hideous- ness of human depravity in its later forms, is represented without mitigation in the principles of action current in the heroic age. Human life, as it is there exhi- bited, has much in it that is noble and admirable ; but nowhere is it a life of simple obedience to God. This disintegration of primitive traditions forms the D 34 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. second stage, a negative one, in the process which pro- duced the Homeric Theo-mythoiogy. When the divine idea, and also the idea of the rela- tion between man and his Maker, had once been fun- damentally changed, there was now room for the intro- duction without limit of w^hat was merely human into religion. Instead of man's being formed in the image of God, God was formed in the image of man. The ancient traditions were made each to assume a separate individual form ; and these shapes were fashioned by magnifying and modifying processes from the pattern that human nature afforded. Again, as man does not exist alone and individually, but in the family, so the neaiiis of the family was intro- duced as the basis of a divine order. This we may call, resting on the etymology of the word, the divine CEco- nomy of the Homeric religion. But as with man, so with the supernatural world, on which his own genius was now powerfully reflected, families themselves, when multiplied, required a politi- cal order ; and therefore, among the gods also a State and government are formed, a divine polity. Human care, by a strange inversion, makes parental provision for the good government of those deities whom it has called into beino-. o The propagation, for -which a physical provision was made among men, takes place within the mythological circle also, under the laws of his intelligent nature. The ranks of the Immortals are filled with persons metaphy- sically engendered. These i)ersons they represent con- crete forms given to abstract ideas, or, to state nearly the same thing in other words, personal modes of existence assigned to powers which man saw as it were alive and at work in the universe, physical or intelligent, around Sources of the inventive portions. 35 him. But here too a distinction is to be observed. Sometimes the deity was set above the natural power, as its governor and controller: sometimes he merely signified the power itself j)ut in action. The former mode commonly points to tradition ; the latter always to invention. And lastly, when a supernatural Korrixo/ of Homer. Lastly : the rainbow of Holy Scripture is repre- sented in the Homeric Iris. These, then, speaking generally, are the principal remnants from primitive traditions, of which, if of any thing of the kind, we may expect to find the vestiges within the Olympian Court. In order to throw a fuller light upon the subject, I shall chiefly examine the characters of the Homeric deities, and of the more important among them in )3ar- ticular, not as a body but individually. An opposite practice has for the most part prevailed. It has been assumed that they are homogeneous ; they have been 46 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. treated as a class, subject to the same laws ; and varia- tions, not to be accounted for from mythological data, have been viewed as mere solecisms in the conception of the class. This has mainly tended, I believe, to thrust the truth of the case into dark corners. But the proper- ties which distinguish the Homeric Immortals in com- mon from men are in reality less important than those which establish rules of discrimination within their own body, and which point to the very different sources that have supplied the materials incorporated into dif- ferent portions of the scheme. In the enumeration which it will be requisite to make, it might be allowable to treat Neptune and Pluto as traditive divinities, because in their relation to Jupiter, which abstractedly is one of equal birth and equal honour, they appear to share in representing the primitive tradition, which combined a trine personality with unity in the godhead. Effect was given to this tra- dition by supposing the existence of three deities, who were united by the bond of brotherhood, and of w^hom each had an important portion of the universe assigned to his immediate superintendence. But for the assign- ment of attributes to these personages, when severally constituted, tradition seems to have afforded no aid. Jupiter, as the eldest and most powerful, became heir general, as it were, to whatever ideas were current respecting the one supreme God : or the point might be otherwise stated, as for instance thus, that the con- ception which the Greeks derived from elsev.here of a supreme God, they, on taking it over, shaped into the Eldest Brother of their Trinity. But the concentration of ideas of supremacy upon him was at variance with, and enfeebled the notion of, the trine combination. The tradition itself, moreover, did not determine pro- Varying/ de(jrees of the traditive cliaracter. 47 vinces for Neptune or Pluto ; and consequently, though these deities may be considered traditional with regard to their basis, they belonged to the invented class as respects character and attributes, and it is in conjunc- tion with that class that I propose to consider them. Again, Jupiter does not fully represent any one spe- cific tradition: but he assembles irregularly around him the fragments of such traditions as belonged to the re- lation between men and the One Ruler of the universe. On the one hand he is in comjietition with other impersonations; on the other hand, with abstractions, which, if they wanted the life, yet had not forfeited the purity of godhead. Latona, again, will be known rather by relative and negative, than by absolute and positive, signs ; except as to the point of her maternity. So Diana does not equally divide with Apollo, her twin brother, the substance of the tradition that they jointly represent ; but rather is the figure of a person on whom the residue, consisting of properties that the Homeric Apollo could not receive, is bestowed. It is mainly in her ancillary relation to Apollo that she should be viewed. It will of course be my object to bring out, as clearly and fully as I can, that portion of the evidence, which proves the presence of a strong traditive element in the Theomythology of Homer. But it is not free from difficulty to determine the best mode of proceeding with tliis view. The traditive part of the materials is not separated by a broad and direct line from the inventive ; nor has it been lodged with- out admixture in any of the members of the Olympian system. Like the fables of the East, it has undergone the transforming action of the Greek mind, and it is 48 Olyminis : the Religion of the Homeric age. throughout the scheme variously mingled and combined with ideas of human manufacture. There is scarcely any element of the old revelation that is presented to our view under unaltered conditions : scarcely any person- age of the divine order, as represented by the Poet, stands in the same relation of resemblance to those primeval traditions, which are to be traced in his figure and attributes. The ancient truths are not merely im- perfect ; they are dislocated, and, with heavy waste of material in the process, afterwards recast. On account of this bewildering diversity, it will, I conceive, be most conducive to my purpose if I com- mence the inquiry with those deities in whom the pro- positions I maintain are best represented : for the present putting aside others, in whom the representa- tion of tradition, either from the overpowering presence of other elements, or from the general insignificance of the character, is less effective. I have spoken, thus far, of the ancient traditions, as they are delivered either in the ancient or in the more recent books of the Bible. And I hope it will not be thought to savour of mere paradox, if the result of my search into the text of Homer shall be to exhibit the religion of the Greeks, in the heroic age, as possessed of more resemblances to a primitive revelation, than those religions of the East from which they must have borrowed largely, and which we presume to have stood between them and the fountain-head. We have doubtless to consider the Greeks, as to their religion, in three capacities : first, as receivers of the remains of pristine tradition ; secondly, as having imported, along with it, from abroad the de- praved forms of human fable ; thirdly, as tliemselves powerful inventors, working u[)on and adding to both Messianic traditions of the Hebrews. 49 descriptions of material. But, before we conclude that the religion of Homer must needs be farther from that of the patriarchs than the religions, as we now read them, of Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, we ought to be assured that the editions, so to speak, in which we study those religions, are older than the Homeric poems. Whereas, with respect to the great bulk of the records at our command, this, I apprehend, is the very reverse of the truth. There is, however, one source to which we may legiti- mately repair, as next in authority to the Holy Scrip- tures themselves with respect to the forms of ])rimi- tive tradition : I mean the earliest and most authentic sacred literature of the Hebrews. Not that in kind it can resemble the sacred records ; but that it is at least likely to indicate what were the earliest forms of de- velopment, and the initial tendencies to deviation. Since that nation became unhappily committed, through its chief traditional authorities, to the repudia- tion of the Redeemer, a sinister bias has operated upon its retrospective, as well as upon its present and pro- spective theology. There are nevertheless three depo- sitaries of knowledge from which we may hope to learn what were the views, entertained by the ancient He- brews themselves, with regard to the all-absorbing sub- ject of the Messianic traditions. In the first place it would appear, from the very nature of the prophecies of the Old Testament, that there must, in all likelihood, have existed along with them a system of authoritative contemporary exposi- tion, in order that holy men might be enabled to derive from them the consolation and instruction which, apart from their other purposes, they were divinely intended to convey. The highly figurative character E 50 Olympus : the ReUgion of the Homeric age. and frequent obscurity of their language supports, if it does not require, this belief: and the constant practice, attested by the later Scriptures, of public explanation of the sacred Books, including- the Prophets, in the synagogues of the Jews, brings it as near as such a case admits to demonstration. These expositions of the Sacred Text began, as it appears, to be committed to writing about the time of the Babylonish captivity ; when the Chaldee tongue became the vernacular, and the old Hebrew disappeared from common use. They were collected in the Para- phrases or Targumim : and the fragments of the oldest of them, which had consisted of marginal notes, were consolidated into a continuous Targum by Onkelos, Jo- nathan, and others". Apart from the Targumim, the sacred literature of the Jews appears, from the tim^e of the captivity on- wards, to have run in two main channels. One class of teachers and writers rested chiefly on the dry traditionary system condemned by our Saviour in the Gospels, and gave less and less heed, as time went on, to the doctrine of Scripture, and of their forefathers, concerning the Messiah. In the second century after Christ, this tradi- tionary system was reduced by the Rabbi Jehuda into a volume called the Mischna. And in the sixth or seventh, there was composed a larger work, the Gemara or Tal- mud, which purported in part to comment on the Mi- schna, and which also presented a more extensive and more promiscuous collection of Rabbinical traditions. In the midst of the ordure of this work, says Schottgen, are to be found here and there certain pearls °. " Schbttgen's Horse Hebraicse " Schottgen Prajf. 17. B. I. et Tahnudicse, vol. ii. De Messia, c. iii. 7,8. and Rabbin. Lect. B. Prsef. ss. 3. 4. 1 2. and B.I. c. iii. 2,3. I. c. 5. Messianic traditions of the Hebrev's. 51 Parallel with this stream of chiefly spurious learning, there was a succession of pious writers, who both searched the Scriptures, and studied to maintain and propagate the Messianic interpretations of them. Of this succession the Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai was the great ornament; and by his disciples was compiled, some sixty years after his death, or about A.D, 170, the work termed the Sohar, which is so Christian in its sense, as to have convinced Schottgen that Simeon was himself a Christian ; although, perhaps from not being under- stood, he was not repudiated by the Jews^. Upon this work was founded the Cabbalistic or mystical learning. From these sources may be derived many INIessianic ideas and interpretations that were current among the ancient Jews. Of them I proceed to extract some, from the work of Schottgen, which may throw light upon the interior system of the Homeric mythology in its most important aspects. 1. First and foremost, these traditions appear to bear witness to the extraordinary elevation of the Messiah, and they fully recognise his title to the great Tetragrammaton'i. 2. Next, that introduction of the female principle into the sphere of deity, which the Greeks seem to have adopted, after their antliropojdiuistic manner, with a view to the family order among the Immortals rather than as a mere metaphysical conception, appears to have its prototype in the Hebrew traditions. When in the Holy Scriptures we find wisdom per- sonified in the feminine, we regard this only as a mode of speech, though as one evidently tending to account P Schottgen Prsef. 12-15. B. I. and II. c. ii. c. iii. 6, 7. Rabb. Lect. I. c. vi. q Schottgen, I. i. i. E 2 52 Olymjms : the Relyjion of the Homeric age. for the sex of Minerva. But the Jewish traditions went far beyond this^. The two natures of our Lord woukl ap])ear from the Sohar to have been distinguished under the figure of mother and daughter. The Sche- china, or ' glorj of God,' is of the feminine gender : and the relation of His divinity to His humanity is set forth under the figure of a marriage. He is therefore called mother and matron ; temimribits futtiris omnes hostes tradentur in manus MatrontE, as Schottgen renders the Sohar ^ The A0709, or Word of the Lord, is also shown to have been, according to the genuine traditions of the Jews, a common expression for the Messiah. The relation thus exhibited is in marked analogy with that between Minerva and Jupiter. This expression of the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos is also in correspondence with the language of Philo, De Confusione Linguarum, pp. 255, 267*. 4. The ideas of sonship and primogeniture" are likewise recognised among the titles of the IMessiah, according to the Sohar and other Jewish authorities. We shall have to inquire what Homeric deities there are, who, by the distinction between their mode and time of birth, and that of others, may appear to repre- sent these characteristics. 5. The Lord of Hosts, or Zebaoth^ is another title of the Messiah : and we may therefore expect, in any traditionary remnant found elsewhere, to discover some strong and commanding martial development. 6. The Messiah was preeminently conceived of by the Jews as being the Lights. This property is in imme- r Schottgen, I. i. 3. " lb. 1. 1.5, 9. ^ Ib.I.i.6. s Ibid. I. i. 12, 18. >' Ibid. II. Loc. Gen. xiii. xciv. t Ibid. I. i. 2. et alibi, and I. iii. 10, 23. Messianic traditions of the Hebrews. 53 diate connection with the idea of the Ao'yo9. It cannot fail to be observed, how vividly such an idea is repre- sented in the ancient name » Od. xxiv. 60. n U. i. 604. Argwnent from the Secondaries. 63 as the Original, remains in possession of the indivisible gift : they assist him in one which is essentially distri- butive. And as they share in his music, so also in his knowledge : but only in that which relates to the ])ast : with the future they have no concern". But as either Minerva or Vulcan can teach a smith, so either Apollo or the Muse can inspire a bard i'. Such then are the Olympian Secondaries. None of them, it will be observed, are properly derivative beings. All of them represent, in some sense, traditions, or ima- ginations, distinct from those respecting their principal deity : nor are they in the same kind of subservience to them as the Eilithuiai to Juno, who have no worship paid them, and are of doubtful personality ; or as the metal handmaids to Vulcan himself. But they are deities, each of whom singly in a particular province administers a function, which also belongs to a deity of higher dignity. And though a difference is clearly discernible in the form of the possession and adminis- tration, yet there still remains a clear and manifest du- plication, a lapping over of divinities, which is entirely at variance with the symmetry that we might reckon upon finding in an homogeneous conception of the Greeks. This irregular duplication is kept in some degree out of view, if we set out with the determination to refer the Homeric deities to a single origin, to make a regular division of duties among them, and to pare down this, or enlarge that, till we have brought them and their supposed gifts into the requisite order. But as it stands in Homer, free from later admixtures, and from prepossessions of ours, it is a most curious and o II. ii. 485. P Od. viii. 488. 64 Olympus : t/ie Religion of the Homeric age. significant fact, and raises at once a serious inquiry as to its cause. I submit that it may be referred to the joint opera- tion of two circumstances. First, to the particular form of the early traditions that were incorporated into the invented or Olympian system. Secondly, to the principle of economy, or family and social order, reflected back from the human community upon the divine. If the primitive tradition, even when disfigured by the lapse of time, yet on its arrival in Greece still visibly appropriated to one sublime person, distinguish- able from the supreme God, and femininely conceived, the attributes of sovereign wisdom, strength, and skill ; and to another, in the form of man, the gifts of know- ledge, reaching before and after, and identified in early times with that of Song, as well as that of healing or de- liverance from pain and death ; then we can understand why it is that, when these great personages take their places as of right in the popular mythology, they con- tinue to keep hold on certain great functions, in which their attributes are primarily develoj)ed. But on the other hand, the divine society must be cast into the form of the human ; and this especially must take effect in three great organic particulars. First, by means of the family, which brings the members of the body into being: secondly, by political association, involving the necessity of a head, and of a deliberative organ : thirdly, by the existence of certain professions, which by the use of intellectual gifts provide for the exigencies of the community. The merely labouring classes, in whose place and idea there is nothing of the governing function, are naturally without representa- tion, in the configuration of the divine community, as to Picture of human society in Olympus. (>5 the forms of their particular employments : though the people at large bear a rude analogy to the mass of in- ferior deities not included in the ordinary meeting of the gods, yet summoned to the great Chapter or Par- liament. Olympus must, in short, have its <^i]imi6€pyoi. Who these were for an ordinary Greek community like that of Ithaca, we learn from the speech of Eu- ma:;us % Toiv u% brjjjiLoepyol 'iacnv, jxdvTiv, 1] b]Tripa KaK&v, 7) riKTova bovpcov, ?) /cat OicTitLP aoibov. Here, indeed, there is no representation of the principle of gain or commerce, which does not appear as yet to have formed a class in Greece, though the Ithacans ha- bitually sacrificed to Mercury'". But that formation was on the way ; for the class was already known, doubtless as a Phcenician one, under the name of 7rpr]KTrjpe9, men of busiuess, apt to degenerate into rptoKTai, or sharpers. Nor was there a class of soldiers ; but every citizen became a soldier upon occasion. With these additions, it is curious to observe how faithfully the Olympian copy is modelled upon the human original. The five professions, or demioergic functions, are, 1. /uavTi?, the seer. 2. ii]Tt]p KGKwv, the surgeon. 3. TcKTcov Sovpcov, tho sklllcd artlficcr. 4. aoiSo'?, the bard. 5. TTpijKTijp, the man of business or merchant. Now all these were actually represented in Apollo and Minerva; the first, second, and fourth by Apollo, the third and fifth by Minerva, who was also the highest type of war. But this union of several human professions in one divine person would have been fatal ci Od. xvii. 383. "^ 0(1, xiv. 435, om\ xvi. 471. F 66 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. to the fidelity and effectiveness of the Olympian picture, to which a division of labour, analogous to the division existing in actual society, was essential. Therefore the accumulation was to be reduced. And in order to make this practicable, there were distinct traditions ready, on which could be laid the superfluous or most easily separable attributes of Apollo and Minerva. So Apollo keeps unimpaired his gift of foreknowledge, and Mi- nerva hers of sublime wisdom. With these no one is permitted to interfere. But the ujrip is represented in Paieon : the t€ktwv (into Olympus however no inferior material enters, and all work is evidently in metal, of which the celestial Smith ^ constructs the buildings themselves, that on earth would be made of wood) is exhibited in Vulcan : the aoiSo? in the IMuses, the TTprjKTrip in Mercury, and the man of war in jMars. 3. Though Minerva cannot contest with Juno the ho- nour of mere precedence in the Olympian court, yet, as regards substantial dignity, she by no means yields even to the queen of heaven. Sometimes, undoubtedly, when she moves in the interest of the Greeks, it is upon the suggestion of Juno made to herself, as in II. i. 195 ; or through Jupiter, as in II. iv. 64. But it is probable that this should be referred, not to greater eminence or authority, but simply to the more intensely and more narrowly Hellenized character of Juno. There are, at any rate, beyond all doubt, some arrangements adopted by the poet, with the special intent, to all appearance, of indicating a full equality, if not an actual pre-eminence, for JNIinerva. Twice the two goddesses descend together from Olympus to the field of battle. Both times it is in the chariot of Juno. s II. XV. 309. Dignity and precedence of Minerva. G7 Now Iris, as on one occasion, at least, she acts at Juno's bidding*, and as on another we find her unyok- ing the chariot of Mars, might with proi)riety have been employed to discharge this function at a moment when the two greatest goddesses are about to set out together. It is not so, however. Juno herself yokes the horses, and also plays the part of driver, while Minerva mounts as the warrior beside her^ To be the cha- rioteer is generally, though not quite invariably, the note of the inferior. But irrespectively of this official distinction, Minerva with her JiLgis is the conspicuous, and Juno evidently the subordinate figure in the group. In the Odyssey, again, we have a most striking indi- cation of the essential superiority of Minerva to the great and powerful Neptune. Attending, in the dis- guise of a human form, the sacrifice of Nestor at Pylos to his divine ancestor, she does not scruple, on the invi- tation of the young prince Pisistratus, to offer prayer to that deity, in the capacity of a courteous guest and a re- ligious Greek. Her petitions are for Nestor, fOr his family, for his subjects, and for the errand on which she, with Telemachus, was engaged. All are included in the general words with which she concludes" : ■fjixiv ivyoixh'oicn TsXevTrjaaL Tube epya. But at the close the poet goes on to declare that what she thus sought in prayer from her uncle Nep- tune, she forthwith accomj)lished herself : o)s up' eTieiT TjpaTo, koI avTij Travra reXevra. Yet once more. The same train of ideas, Mhich explains how Olympus is fitted with a set of Seconda- t II. V. 745-8. ^ Od. iii. 55-62. Vide Nitzsch in loc, F 2 68 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. rieSj also shows to us why these Secondaries have only the lower or subsidiary form of their several gifts. It is because these gifts were already in the possession of higher personages, before the introduction of the more recent traditions represented by the Secondaries : tradi- tions, of which the whole, (except that of Paieon, who is not worshipped at all, and exists only in and for Olym- pus,) bear upon them, as received in Greece, the marks of modernism'^. They naturally submit to the condi- tions, anterior to themselves, of the hierarchy into which they are introduced. But, on the one hand, their exist- ence, together with the peculiar relation of their work and attributes, rather than themselves, to the great deities of tradition, Apollo and Minerva, constitutes of itself a strong argument for the separate and more ancient origin of those divinities. On the other hand, they bear powerful testimony to the force of that prin- ciple, which reflected on the Achaean heaven the experi- ence of earth. For there is not a single dignified and intellectual occupation known to and in use among the Hellenic tribes, properly so called, which has not, as far as may be, counterpart on Olympus. Not even the priest- hood is a real exception ; especially if I am right in believing it to be Pelasgian, and not yet to have been adopted in the time of Homer as one of the Hellenic insti- tutions. But, even if it had been so adopted, it could not, from the nature of the case, have been carried into the Olympian system, since there were no beings above themselves to whom the gods could offer sacrifice, and since, according to the depraved idea of it which had begun to prevail, in offering it they would have parted with something that was of value to themselves. X See the accounts of the several deities, in Sect. ill. Of Apollo. 69 We do not hear a great deal respecting mere ceremo- nial among the Olympian divinities. To Jupiter, how- ever, and to Juno, is awarded the conspicuous honour, that, when either of them enters the assembled Court, all the other deities rise upy. It is plain that Homer included in the picture before his mental eye ideas relating to that external order which we term prece- dence : and it may be shown, that IVIinerva had the pre- cedence over the other gods, or what we should term the seat of honour ; that place which was occupied, in the human family, by the eldest son. Juno we must presume, as the reflection of Jupiter, would occupy the place of the mother. When Thetis is summoned to Olympus in the Twenty- fourth Iliad, she receives on her arrival the honours of a guest, in which is included this distin- guished place beside the chief person, and it is JMinerva who yields it up to her ; 1] 8' apa Trap Au irarpl KadeC^TO, ei£e 8' 'AO/p'r]^'. 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^ Trap T€ Ka(Jiyvr\T(d Qpa(TVH.r\h(.'L koX TiarepL y others. 75 to find that Diomefl niid Ulysses, guided by Minerva, have a('coni]dislied tlie bloody pnr])ose of tbeir errand. Among men, as among gods, Minerva touches nothing except what is destined to triumph. She is not, there- fore, 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 Juj)iter ; Venus is not only smitten to the ground by jNIinerva, but beaten bv 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 igno- minious punishment of hanging in chains, with an anvil at each foot ''. Neptune is no where subjected to personal igno- miny ; but he is baffled by Laomedon, and is also unable to avenge effectually the mutilation of his son Polyphe- mus. 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®. On the other hand, Apollo arrests with sudden shock the victorious career of Diomed', and again of Patro- clus". And in the destinies of Ulysses, Minerva, who '■ II. XV. 18. t II. V. 440. s II. i. 398-406. u II. xvi. 707. 76 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. protects him, effectually, tliougli after a struggle, pre- vails against Neptune, who does liis 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^, to save Ai)ollo 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 IMars or JSIercury: he was on the losing side, that of the Trojans : why should he not, like jNIars, 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 01ym])ian order, every consideration derived from that source would tend to assign to Mars a higher place than Apollo. His function w^as 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 ? iVgain, 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, X II. xxi. 435. These deities are never foiled by others. 77 and second in power to none bnt Jupiter himself. Why should the child of Latona be placed so far above the child of one so much his snjierior in l)irth, accord- ing- 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 iron- ical advice, and thus makes it easy, indeed inevitable, for him to echo the sentiment, and say, let us leave them, hapless mortals, to them«;clves. 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 formid- able friend of the Greeks, has already quitted the field of battle^. And in the Fifth Odyssey, it is contrived that only when Neptune withdraws from the persecu- tion of Ulysses, then at length Minerva shall instantly appear to resume her charge over him^. 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 2 I). XV. 2l8-2C. a Ocl. V. 380-2. 78 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. any manner which should place it in entire harmony with the general rule w'e have been considering, unless we may consider that he had his revenge in the oppor- tunity afforded him by the Theomachy of refusing to fight for Troy. But this is a ease 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. I. It is quite clear from Homer, that these two deities received from rRen a special and peculiar honour: though it may be open to question, whether this retained only the indeterminate form of a senti- ment, 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 re- markable line At yap, Zev re Trdrep koX ^ kOr]vair\ koX "AttoXXov. This verse meets us, not upon occasions having refer- ence 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'\* and again, that all his warriors had the same activity of spirit as the two Ajaxes^. Nestor with these words wishes himself young again '^: as does old Laertes*'. Achilles prays in this form, when exasperated, for the de- struction of Greeks and Trojans alike *^: Menelaus for the appearance of Ulysses among the Suitors S; Alcinous thus expresses the wish that Ulysses could b II. ii. 371. c iy. 288. (' vii. 132. | 80 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Even without examination of details, the proof of this proposition might rest upon their relative positions in regard to tlie 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"^, 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 '. Agamemnon himself has only been misled by his own avarice and passion, and he shortly sends a solemn mission to appease the offended divinity™. 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 wdiom 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 jMinyeius ; by Telema- chus 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 wdien, near Scheria, he has at length again touched upon the outermost border of the Greek world. k II. ii. 546. 1 II. i. 22. "1 Ibid. iv. 30. Their worship universal. 81 There is no deity, without excepting* even Jupiter, with respect to whom we have such am})le evidence in the poems of the development of his worship in positive and permanent institutions, as is given in the case of Ajjollo. 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 Deli)hi. 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 Fieri a or in Pherne, claims the services of Alcyone, the daughter of Marpessa, in yEtolia, 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 moun- tains, in Troas under Laomedon, in Greece near the Enipeus, in the land of the Cyclops, in the sea far north of Phaeacia. But this is entirely owing to the wide extent of the OaXaa-a-a, his portion of the great kingdom of external Nature, which, being as broad as the Phoenician traditions of the Odyssey, at once gives him G 82 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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" 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 /xai/xi?, or of the oioovLart]?. Not in Greece only and in Troas proper ; but in Percote, among the Mysians, and even among the Cyclops in the Outer Zone**. 3. The next distinction I shall note in the traditive deities is, that they are confined to no one spot or re- gion 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 im- plies it. Deraeter would appear to have a local abode, probably in Crete. Aidoneus and Persephone are ordi- narily 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 Mgsd n Od. XV. 252. o II. ii. 831, 859. and Od. ix. 508, Not localized as to abode. 83 in iEgialos ; which it is not easy to account for, except upon the supposition that he resided peculiarly at these places?. Now it is expressly declared that his ])alace was in ^gae : from thence he sets out for the plain of Troy, and thither he repairs when he desists from the persecution of Ulysses. The name yEg?e is not men- tioned in the Catalogue, and Helice, as it is called evpela, was evidently a district ; thus it may have been the district in which Mgdd stood, perhaps as its sea- porfi. Before the time of Strabo ^Egoe*' had disap- peared. Now Minerva has a peculiar relation to Athens, and is once mentioned as betaking herself thither''. Again, the e2:)ithet AvKijyivtjg, rarely given to Apollo, has sug- gested 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*, 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 resi- dence in any particular spot, or as showing, like Juno, an exclusive partiality to any particular race or city. P II. viii. 203. that were I not so fearful of q II. ii. 575. xiii. 20. Od. v. offending on the side of license, 381. Strabo, p. 387. I should be inclined to suspect I" In accordance with the pre- the hand of the diaskeuast in this vailing opinion, I take this to be passage more than in almost any the JEg3d of iEgialus, not of Eu- other of the Poems, bcea. ^ II. V. 105. s Od. iii. 78-81. I may state, G 2. 84 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 4. Although hivocatioii 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 supe- riority 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 in- voked by the Envoys on their way to the encampment of Achilles : here ao-ain their course lies alono* the sea- o o 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 remark- able, to Juno. Prayer however is very usual in the poems : but it is confined to three divinities only, Jupiter, x\ polio, 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 t II. X. 278, 284, 462. Comp. 507. u II. xvii. 19. Objects of habitual prayer. 85 Diomed in the Doloiieia invoke Minerva*. Mcnelaus, when about to attack Enpliorbus, prays first to Jupiter". Nestor, too, addresses Jupiter, and not his own ances- tor Neptune ^ in the great straits of the Greek army. Glaucus beseeches Apollo to heal his wound y; and if this address be thought to belong to his medical func- tion, 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^. His priest Chryses offers prayer to him from the plain of Troas (II. i. 37) : but this may be incidental to the office. The cases of prayer to Jupiter and ]\Iinerva are purely private peti- tions, without notice, suggested by the circumstances of the moment : and they show that though Homer had perhaps no abstract idea of omnipresence, he as- signed 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^: at yap, Zev re Trarep, koI 'AOrivairj, koI "AttoKXov. 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, X II. iv. 119. y II. xvi. 514. z II. iv. 119. ^ II. ii. 371. et alibi. 86 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age, Phoebus Apollo has delivered you : and doubtless you took care to pray to him, when you ventured within the clang of spears :' vvv avri a kovcrcraTO (t>ol(3os 'AttoWojV) (p /xe'AXec? ev\e(r6at, ioiv is bovirov aKovTa^v. 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 gene- rally 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 inclu- sively 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 Avere incensed with Jupiter because of his bias towards the Trojans, when we knov/ 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 inven- tion, 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 Telemaclms, but it is not stated that she drinks of it''. With this compare the meal of Mercury on the island of Calypso*^, the invitation to Iris to join in the banquet of the Winds, and her own ij Od. iii. 51, 62. c Od. v. 92-6, Exempt ft'om ap2yetite and limitations. 87 fear lest she should lose her share of the Ethiopian hecatombs^. 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 at- tended at the marriage of Thetis together with the rest of the gods, where they all banqueted^ ; iv be av Tolaiv haivv e'xwi' (jyopixiyya' and in the Third Odyssey Minerva comes to attend the gracious sacrifice of Nestor offered in her honour^, IpSiV avTLocaaa. Chryses pleads the performance of the sacrificial rites, as one ground of favour with the gods' : in which, how- ever, 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 plea- sure 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'\ ovT ap oy evywXri'i e'/n/xe/x^erat, ovd^ e/ca70jui/3?js* So Diomed and Ulysses have the closest personal rela- d II. xxiii. 207. e II. xxiv. 63. f Od. iii. 435. s' II. i. 40, '' II. i. g'^. 88 Ohjmpiif! : the Religion of the Homeric ar/e. tions with Minerva ; but are nowhere said to have ac- quired tlieir place in her good-will by sacrifices : though both x\pollo for Hector, and Minerva for Ulysses, plead in the Olympian court, before the other gods, the sacri- ficial bounty of those heroes respectively*. 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 : 6 Se cppeva Tepirer aKovwv^. Further, the contrast may be drawn not Avith divinities of their OMn generation only, but with the long journeys of Neptune' for a feast, and with the marked and apparently unvarying language of Jupiter himself. They receive sacrifice M'ith a dignity, which does not belong to the other deities. When prayer and offer- ings are presented to Jupiter by the Greeks, and he means to refuse the prayer, it is added, that he not- withstanding took the sacrifices'^ : dA,A' oye hiKTO fxev Ipa, ttovov 8' aixeyaproi' o^eAAej*. In the nearly parallel case of Minerva (II. vii. 3 1 1 .), 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" : ov yap T alxl/a QeGtv TpeneraL voos alev iovrav. With this we may contrast the case of Neptune, who had threatened to overwhelm the city of the Phaea- i II. xxiv. 33. and Ocl. i. 60. k J[_ i. 472-4. 1 Ocl. i. 22-5. '" II. ii. 420. n Od. iii. 143-6, Exempt from appetite and limitations. 89 cians with a moiintain ; but who is apparently diverted from his purpose simply by the sacrifice which, under the advice of Alcinous, they offer to him". 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 pic- ture 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. ]\Ii- nerva is going from Olympus to Ithaca ; when she has departed, then she has arrived : /3?/ 8e Kar OvXv/xttoio Kapr\V(av at^aaa' arri 8' 'J^afcrj? ivl 8?j/:x&), €77* 'npo6vpoi. Only within the last few years have the triumphs of natural philosophy supplied us with an a])proximative 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 : TO) 8' at^avTe "n^Ticrdrjv' "\hriv h'' 'iKavov TToXviribaKa^l. " 0(1. xiii. 167-83. P Od. i. 102, 3. a II. XV. 150. 90 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. On one occasion, however, Minerva is represented, even when unattended by any other deity, as employ- ing the foot-wings which Mercury commonly used, and they are said to carry her'' : TO. [XIV (pipoVy Tiixkv e(f vyprjv rjb' iiT air^Lpova yaiav, ajxa ttvoltj^ avip.oio. 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 (li. xiii. 17-31), and Juno (II. 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 sub- stantiveness of character and position, Apollo and Minerva always appear as acting for and from them- selves, in vindication of their offended prerogatives. Even Neptune, when he is incensed at the erection of the unconsecrated ram])art of the Greek camp, and fearful that it will eclipse the renown of his own handi- work, the wall of Troy, appeals to Jupiter on the sub- ject, and receives from him the permissive suggestion, that he should himself destroy it so soon as the war is over^ He pursues a similar course, when he is anxious to chastise the over-boldness and maritime success of the Phasacians*. Venus, wounded by Diomed, does not r Od. i. 97. =* II. vii. 445. ' Od. xiii, 125-64. Their indejjendent power of punishment. 91 even by appeal attempt to obtain redress". Mars, in the same condition, makes liis complaint, both of Diomed and of Minerva, to Jupiter. It is true that afterwards, on the death of his son, he proposes to aj)- pear on the field of battle : but then he is in a state of fury'', and is aware that the act would be one of re- bellion 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^. Dionysus had made no appeal ; but Jupiter avenged the insult to his order. The Sun, after his oxen have been eaten by the com- panions 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^. When Aides, or Pluto, re- paired 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 jirobably 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, pffended by Thamyris^, proceed to maim him, probably in voice i> V. 352. ibid. 871. z Od. xii. 377 and 387. " II. XV. I J 3. * II. ii. 594-600. It i.s com- y II. vi. 135-40. nion to render nripbs blind: but 92 Oly minis : the Religion of the Homeric age. or hand, the organs connected with his profession. This po\ver to punish within each particular province appears to form an exception to the general rule. It is pro- bably 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 ap- pears as utterly unequal to her great antagonist. When Apollo comes into view, the mode of pro- ceeding is very different from that of the deities of in- vention. 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, be- cause Jupiter, at a later stage, participates in and ex- tends the vengeance''. But the most conspicuous in- stance 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 it would be strange that this viousaOTeement between him and should be meant, since blindness them. The more natural con- is associaifced in the case of De- stiniction of the passage seems to modocus with conferring the gift be such as I have ventured to of song, which here is taken away point at in the text. For blindness (Od.vii. 64). ApoUodorus (i. 3. 3.) did not maim Bards, who neither reports that the Muses had the ■wrote nor read their composi- power of blinding him by a pre- tions. ^ II. xxiv. 605-9. llieir independent power of puninhment. 93 account of what he esteemed a moral offence, and an outrage to his priest Chryses. Now it is to he remem- bered 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 in- significant, 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 ]\Iinerva, from the paucity of clear instances in the poems where she per- sonally has received offence. There is one important case, where her wrath aj)- pears; and it is there described as mvi? oXorj, and as ^eivog Xo'Ao?*^. 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 cala- mitous Return, ' since they were not all upright, where- upon many of them miserably perished through the inexorable wrath of JMinerva.' 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 IVIinerva 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-^ c Oa. iii. 135; 145. 94} Ohjmpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. videiitial 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. io8). 7. Apollo and Minerva carry this among other notes, that we find them administering mythological or natu- ral 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 jMinerva, 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 ^ : em 8' eybovTTriaav 'A67]vair] re Koi "Upri, Tifi&(raL ^aaiXija 7:oKv\pv(Toio Mu/c^yrjs. This association is to be observed in another passage, where these goddesses jointly communicate courage to a warrior. But M'hen we find them associated in ad- ministering 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 d II. xi. 45- They use special attributes of Jupiter. 95 that capacity may, without exciting surprise, take in hand what belongs, so to speak, to the menage. M\- nerva, as a daughter, has no such chiim ; and her pos- session 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 alylo^o?. And we never hear of the iEgis out of the hands of Jupiter, except it be in those of jNIinerva, or of Apollo. The ^gis is the peculiar arm of Minerva ; ap- parently, 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^. 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^ : r]v ovbe Atos bdjxvrja-L KCpavvo?. Again, the Fifteenth Book of the Iliad, Jupiter intrusts Apollo with his own Mg\s, that he may wave it on the field of battle to intimidate the Greeks ^. 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 ^gis by JNIinerva 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. e II. V. 735-42. f II. xxi. 401. S II. XV. 229. 96 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Proximate to, but extending beyond, the last named distinction, there is a function mythologically confined to Jupiter througliout the poems, with two exceptions only. The function is that of giving indications, pal- pable 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 for- mer deity is in general more largely endowed than Minerva in regard to the future, though a less conspi- cuous figure in the direction of the present. Still slie 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 ^, KipKos, 'ATToAAoot'o? Tayv'i ayyeXo's^ 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', 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 h 0(1. XV. 526. i She has also minor interpositions : see Od. xxii. 205, 256, 273, 297. They use special attributes of Jiqnter. 97 Apollo. Hence it is that Tlieoclymenus, as the repre- sentative of a great prophetic family, is brought into the company of Tclemachus, that he may become the organ of Apollo in the remaining part of the drama. This is the more remarkable, because Tlieoclymenus does not repay the friendly aid he had received by taking part in the final struggle on the side of Tel e- machus ; so that his share in the proceeding stands out the more consj^icuously 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', 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 be- fooled {irapeirXay^ev Se poijiaa). Secondly, the hall is filled with sensible portents : preternatural night en- velopes 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 involun- tary tears, their lips with unnatural smiles. Of all this the announcement is made by Theocly menus, a trait which I interpret as referring the array of the pheno- mena 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 stupe- fying the Suitors, is expressly assigned to Minerva. But ]\Iinerva has likewise the power over signs, which is enjoyed by Jupiter and Apollo. As Diomed and Ulysses are setting out on their nocturnal expedi- i Od. XX. 345-71. H 98 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. tion in the Tenth Iliad, Minerva sends the apparition of a heron to cheer them*^: 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 Nagels- bach*, 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 Tepa?, 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'". She stands, therefore, in a different position to that of Apollo and JNIinerva. 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 Olym- pian deities, she does not extend her action from the inner, or Greek, into the general range of the outer, or Phoenician 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 (i) she does act in Scheria, and assists in bringing Ulysses to the shore of that island : (2) the class of yuai/rez? are found among the Cyclops : (3) Calypso is amenable to kll. X. 274. Minerva's patron- (Welsford on the English Lan- age of the heron was probably guage, p. 152.) connected with her martial cha- 1 Horn. Theol. iv. 16, p. 147. racter : for it appears that in m II. xix. 404-7. See inf. Sect. Sanscrit the word Scandha signi- iii. on Juno, lies both war and also the heron. Their (loniinion over Nature. 99 the command of the Olympian court, and sj)oaks of herself as belondnjj to the same wide class of deities with Aurora and Ceres. (4) Minerva assigns a special reason, namely, regard towards her uncle Ne])tune, for not having accompanied Ulysses all along his voyage (Od. xiii. 341). The power of Minerva over nature seems to be uni- versal in kind as Avell as in place. 1. She and Apollo assume the human form in com- mon 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 II. xvii. 321-34, Homer meant that Apollo did the same to iEneas. 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 trans- formation". 2. Apollo frames an etScoXov, or image of a man, which moves and fights^, representing jEneas on the battle field : and Minerva frames an elSoAov of Iphthime, to appear in a dream to her sister Penelope, and to con- vey to her a revelation of Minerva's will p. This power is exercised by the two divinities exclusively. 3. Minerva on many occasions assumes the shape of a bird'i : sometimes in common with Apollo^ Ino Leucothee, the marine goddess, becomes a water-bird, and "Ytti/o? takes the form of the bird Chalcis, when he has to act upon Juj)iter. Both these operations may probably be considered as belonging to the special func- tions of these agents : with Apollo and Minerva, the n II. iii. 396. q II. xix. 351. Od. i. 320. et " II. V. 449. cdibi. P Od. iv. 796, 826. r II. vii. 59. H 2 100 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. power appears to belong to a general supremacy over nature, wliich 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 ap- pearance 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^. As respects power over inanimate nature, we have seen Minerva joined with Juno in the act of thunder- ing. She can order out a rattling zephyr {KeXaSovra), or simply a toward breeze, or again a stiff Boreas {Kpainrvov), to speed her friend across the main* : 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 with- draws the prohibition". Nor is the power of jNIinerva over nature for pur- poses of wTath less clear than for purposes of favour : since ]\Iercury tells Calypso that, inasmuch as the Greeks had offended her, she sent a storm upon them^ 'AdrjvaLrjV olKltovto, 7] (r(f>iv luGipcf aV€iJ.6v re kukov Kal Kvy-ara ixaKpd. On the other hand, when Ulysses and his companions have propitiated Ajiollo on behalf of the Greek army, then he sends them a toward breeze for their return to the camp^. But we have a still more notable in- s Od. xiii. 429-38. xvi. 172, ^ Od. xxiii. 243-6. 455. xviii. 69, and xxii. 156-62 ; ^ Qd. v. 108. Od. xviii. 195. xxiv. 369. ^ II. i. 479- t Od. ii. 420. XV. 292, V. 385. Relation of Apollo together with Diana to Death. 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 eiffht Idaean rivers for nine whole days to efface the Greek rampartJ". To Neptune is left the task of restoring them to their channels : perhaps on the same principle as the treatment of Juno, relatively to INIinerva, in the preparation and use of the chariot''. 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 cha- racter, 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 imme- diate agent in the destruction of animals : but his prin- cipal 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 de- stroyer. Hence it is he, and not Venus, who saves y II. xii. 24j 32. ^ II. V. 7. 102 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. iEneas^: it is. he who carries Hector out of danger^. 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 ^ 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 ])alpable 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 '^, Death by shipwreck, or by the lightning of heaven ^ or by the fury of Scamander, whirling warriors to the sea, and burying them in the sand and shingle *^,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 Avhich it a II. V. 445. ^ 11 XV. 262. ^ 0(1. xi. iy8-203. c II. \i. 205, 428. xxi. 484. Od. c Od. V. 127. xi. 324. -XV. 478. f II, xxi. 318-21. Relation of Apollo together ivith Diana to Death. 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 : ■napos he {xiv "ApTefxis eKra At?/ €V a[X(f)LpvTi], Aiovvcrov iJLapTvp(r]aLi>S. 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 '' : Tr]V 8' "AprepLts lo^iaipa oXs ayavois /BeXeea-cnv k'noi)(^op.ivr] KaTeiT€(f)V€P. Nor is the expression casual ; it is one of the regular Homeric ybr??zz^/<^. Sometimes she discharges this office in actual concurrence with Apollo. The happy island, where Eumasus passed his childhood, knew neither famine nor disease : but when its people reached the term of their old age, then^ €Xd(i)V apyvpoTo^os ^AttoWcov 'Apre//t8t ^vv oils ayavo'LS jSeKeerraiv €TroL)(6p.evos KareTrecpvev. Again, when the corpse of Hector is by preterna- tural 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'^. S Od. xi. 324. h Qf 11 xix. 59. Od. xviii. 201. xx. 61. » Od. XV. 407-11. k II. xxiv. 753. 104 Oli/)npus : t?ie Religion of the Homeric age. 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, ^(pvcraopog. 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 pro- bably be signified in nearly all. Even of the children of Niobe^ 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 tra- ditional source of these remarkable attributes of the children of Latona, we should tread softly and care- fully, for w^e 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 de- structive to His enemies, but wlio 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. lo. 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 cou- rage into the two Ajaxes, strikes them, (II. xiii. 59.) As 1 11. xxiv. 606. Laodamia is an exception : see II. vi. 205. Iiulependence of second causes. 105 an accompanyiiif^ significant act, of a nature tending by itself to j)roduce the result, this greatly weakens the force of the passage in f)roof of divine or extraordinary power. In like manner, when the same divinity con- verts the ship of the Pha?acians into a rock, he drives it downward with his hand'". But A])ollo performs no such outward act when he infuses courage into Hector, or into Glaucus ; or when he heals the wounds of the latter chieftain". So likewise, when Minerva alters the personal ap- pearance of Telemachus, Ulysses, Laertes, or Penelope, by improving it, she uses no sign or ministrative act. Only when she effects an organic though partial trans- formation in the case of Ulysses" 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 IVlinerva finally endows the hero with heightened beauty of figure and countenance, it is done without the use of any visible sign whatever^. This employment of instruments is, in fact, suscep- tible 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^, 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. »" Od. xiii. 164. P Od. xxiii. 156-63. " II. XV. 26?. xvi. 528-9. q Nagelsbach, i. 25. " Od. xiii. 429. xvi. 172, 455. 106 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 conspicuonsly 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'': but the notice, a very succinct one, though not quite in keeping with her highest dig- nity, 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 dis- tinguished 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 '■ II. xxiv. 27-30. Superior itu of their moral standard. 107 testifies directly to the nature of the dominioii from which it frees her. The other two j)rivileged beings are Pallas and Diana'*. 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 Deniodocus in the Eighth Odyssey, from which the god- desses in a body absent themselves. In the legend, too, of the Ninth Iliad we find that Apollo carried off the daughter ofMarpessa, 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 ^schylus' (whose accuracy and truthfulness often recall those of Homer) to Apollo ; ayvov T ^ATToWoi vyab' ait" ovpavov B^ov. 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 con- dition, and the more direct operation of her failure in this respect on the marriage tie through the disorgani- zation 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 * Hymn, ad Ven. 8, i6. t ^scl). Suppl. 222. 108 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 foetid corruption of the time of Martial^, 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 represen- tative. 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 JNIessianic tra- dition fall chiefly to his share : she retains what was then, to the shame of our race, thought its less pre- cious 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 disinte- grated, 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 disinte- gration, 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- 11 Epigr. X. 6^. Disintegration of traditions. 109 come incredible to another. Just as there are indi- vidual men at every epoch, who cannot believe in ge- nerosity and elevation of character, because they have in themselves no mirror which can reflect sucb quali- ties ; so a generation ruled by more debased ideas cannot comprehend what another, influenced by less impure tendencies, could readily embrace. On the same prin- ciple, the Gospel gives not to the sagacious, but to the * pure in heart,' the greatest triumph of mental vision, namely, that 'they shall see GodV Accordingly, when it happens that a tradition be- comes 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 fr.iud 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 y that tradition. The Apollo of Homer was still one, with a great diversity of gifts ; but mythological sole- cisms were already apparent in his character, like cracks in a stately building. This, too, was settled by disin- tegration ; 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, ^ St. Matt. V. 8. y Inf. Sect. iii. 110 Olympus: tJie Religion of the Homeric age. 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 elScoXou 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 IVIinos 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 IMinoses^: 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 iniao'ination in inventino- circumstances of horror for the biography of the piratical enemy of their country. It was, I conceive, an early example of this disinte- gration, which divided between Apollo and Diana dif- ferent 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 althouofh the lodcal turn of the Greek mind soon came to place Apollo in morally disadvantageous con- trast, under this particular head, both with his sister and with Pallas, he may be favourably compared with the ^ Hock's Creta, vol. ii. Legend of Marpessa. Ill other Homeric gods. There is something in the tra- dition that he was nnshorn {uKepa-eKo/jA]^), which is evi- dently intended to connect him with the innocence of yonth. 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 ISIercury, human children as the fruit of their indulgence. The reasons which lead me to sup])ose that the le- gend of Marpessa is not of a sensual character are these. The words used are ^ ; ore fJLLv eKaepyos avt]pTTaae ^o'lIBos 'AttoAAo)!'. Now none of the numerous intrigues of the mythical deities with women include violence: they ahvays appear, so far as the language used gives them a specific cha- racter, to have been voluntarily accei)ted connections ^. 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 *^, Tov KoL avrip€L\j/ai'TO 6eol Ad olvo\oe'6eti>, 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 trans- action assigned to Apollo in the poems is the manner in which he disarms and partially disables Patroclus. a II. ix. 564. ^ II. ii. 513 ; xvi. 184, and otlier cases. <^' 11. XX. 234. 112 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric aye. Nothing can be more wretcbed than bis operations on this occasion. The god comes up to the hero enveloped in cloud ; strikes bim from behind on the back ; and knocks off bis armour. I can conceive but one ex- planation 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 per- haps have rendered bim punishable (II. xvi. 698-71 1). 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 michastity is more readily par- doned, 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 Pan- darus to a very black act of treachery, the breach of the Pact. So far from being unwilling in this matter, she was even eager '^ ; ^s etTTaiy lOTpvpe irdpos jxeixavlav ^ A6r\vr]v. Besides judgment and industrial skill, she gave Kep- Sea to Penelope^: and she describes herself^ as ex- celling among the gods in craft as well as counsel ; fxrjTi re /cAeo/xat Kot K^pbecrtv. With the exception of this initial tendency to de- ^ II. iv. 73. P Od. ii. 117. f Od. xiii. 299. Their place in Providential Government. 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 l)oems, whether in the 01ymi)ian Court, or in her in- tercourse with men. Alike in the Iliad and the Odyssey, her counsel, which prevails, undoubtedly also deserves to prevail. She is in both the cliampion 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 dis- courage virtue by permitting the ruin of this excellent man 8". 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 govern- ment 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 accord- ing 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 pal- pable and practical, and on the other of higlier moral elevation. These were the tendencies which, among the incidents of his supremacy, on the one hand, e Od. V. 7. 114 Olj/mpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 prac- tical governors of the Avorld, tended to increase their importance at tlie 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 consi- derably 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 IMinerva especially, to conduct the highest of all the divine processes in the administration of moral disci- pline, 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 unau- thorized, 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 there- fore 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 w^e may discern, graven as it were upon the relation between themselves and Jupiter, the It is frequently ascribed to them. 115 mark which shows that it was originally derived from the office of ITiin, 'by whom God made the worlds^'.' Scarcely ever do we find Homer deviate from the gene- ral rule which exhibits them as the ordinary Providence of the world for governing the detail of life. There i?, 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 iEgis, he himself descends to such acts of minute inter- ference as breaking the bowstring of Teucer'. 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 ex- pressed by Homer under the names Oeo?, Qeo), aOavaroi, SaljUMv. 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 extra- ordinary distinction is assigned to him : and the n? of the Suitors thus places him at the head of the Olympian company'^ ; et Kev 'AttoAAwi; ■i]iuv l\rjKj]at Kol aOdvarot Oeol aAAot. 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 1' Heb. i. 2. i II, XV. 463. k Od. xxi. 364. I 2 116 Olympus : the Reliffion of the Homeric age. attack Patroclus, ' in the hope that Apollo may give him success I' Presently, Patroclus, dying, attributes Hector's victory to Jupiter and Apollo, his own death to Apollo and ^lolpa "' ; Apollo, says Xanthus the im- mortal horse, slew Patroclus, and gave glory to Hector". 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, IMinerva takes no part in the proceedings. When Hector is about to be vanquished Apollo retires, and IMinerva straightway appears upon the field". In the Doloneia, Ulysses and Diomed succeed, because Jupiter and IMinerva befriend them p. Minerva rejoices, when she finds her name invoked first of all the gods'! : and she instructs Laertes to call upon Jupiter with herself, assuming for her own name the first place ; iv^dfxevos Kovpr) TXavKcoTTLbt koI At/, iraTpL^. Agamemnon feels that he is certain to take Troy, if only Jupiter and Minerva will it^ Ulysses expects to slay the Suitors 'by the favour of Jupiter and Minerva*.' But in fact, the whole scheme of divine retribution, of which that hero is the organ, was planned by IMinerva and not by Jupiter, as is twice declared to us from his own lips". I must not, however, omit to notice one pas- sage 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 • II. x^^. 715. " Ocl. ii. 6i). K 130 Oti/mjnis : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 Pene- lope in her distress pray to Minerva, who can deliver Telemachus from death; that is, can raise him up again: ?; yap k4v fxiv cTretra koI gk davdroio aau>aaL^. 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 slie 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 w^hole conception is therefore funda- mentally 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 conclu- sion 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 s Od. iv. 750-3. The conflicting Characters of Apollo. 131 prayer, the healer of wouiitls, the cliani[)ion 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 M'as 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 satis- factorily explain either the double character of Apollo as Saviour and as Destroyer, or the apparently miscel- laneous character of the attributes which successively attached to him^. 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 contra- diction is harmonized by the supposition of a traditionary origin, but otherwise it obstinately remains a contra- diction. Again, look at the nature of this peculiar rela- tion. 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 t The character of Apollo the Destroyer is well represented in a fragment of Archilochus : wi/a^ "AttoXXoi/, Kai av /xev tovs alriovs TTrjfiaivi, Kol (T(f)as ok\v, Sjcnrep oXXvets. Archil, apud Macrob. Fragm. 79. Ed. Gaisl'ord. K 2 132 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric aye. imaginative discrimination of the Greeks, and of their love for k)gical 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 jiowder, 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 imper- sonate 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 ex- pression 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? Tliey do not harmonize ivlth Olympus. 133 Again, as these great deities are anomalies in tlieni- selves, so are tliey 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 fiiXures 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 hisvarious 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 wdiich 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 know^n 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 Mi- nerva, its mere statistics might be visibly improved. The discussions which have arisen upon the ety- mology of the name Apollo, are in themselves signifi- cant of the difficulty of accounting for his origin my- thologically. Miiller mentions the derivation from the sun ('Hfe'Xtof, AHeXtof) in order to reject it; as he re- pudiates (and very justly) the whole theory, which treats this deity as an elemental pow-er. Passing over others as unworthy of serious notice, he rejects airoWvixi^^, as 134 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. ' founded on a partial and occasional attribute of the god,' and adopts aireWayv 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 ^o'l^o^, the bright and clear''. Clemens Alexandri- nus, in the Stro7nata, fancifully derives the name from a privative, and iroWow, and interprets the name as signifying the negation of plurality, and thus the unity of the Godhead >'. The name of Athene would appear to be formed by transposition from the Egyptian Neith^ to whom, ac- cording to ancient inscriptions, very high and compre- hensive 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. I. The dignity accorded to them is quite out of *i Which however has the sanction of Euripides as well as Archi- lochus, (sup. p. 131 n.); da xP'^o'otpeYyes 17X1', ios fi oTraXeaas odfv (T 'AttoXXcov' ejjL^pavcos Kkfjaei /3pords. Eurip. Phaeth. ap. Macrob. Sat. i. 17. X Doiians, II. vi. 6, 7. > Strom. L. i. p. 349 B. z See Bunsen's 'Egypt's Place,' I. vi. A. 7. Summary of distinctive traits. 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^. 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 par- tial and individual action of particular gods. 6. The defence of heaven against rebellion is dimly recorded to have been the act of Apollo ; and indispen- sable 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 ^ See the observation of Neptune, II. xv. 1 95-8. 136 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. in })articulai' ; and for Apollo there is no trace of any such residence at all. 4. Tliey are both the objects, Minerva more particu- larly, of general invocation and prayer, irrespective of place and circumstances. 5. They are exempted from the chief physical limita- tions, 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 my- thological 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 per- sonal 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. Summary of distinctive traits. 137 3. Their relation to tlicir mytliological attributes is difrercnt in kind from tliat of tlie 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 Ho- meric 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 Homeiic 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 gradu- ation, 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 re- spect to the facts they contain. To amass evidence is one thing ; to penetrate into its heart and spirit is 138 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. another. The former without the latter is insufficient; but the former is to the latter an indispensable pre- liminary. The works of Homer should be viewed, and their testimony registered, like the phenomena of a geological period : so unencumbered is he with specu- lation 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^. He observes the separate cha- racter of their relations both to Jupiter and to man- kind ; 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 unmis- takeable 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 agree- ment with the views expressed in the present work. a Die Realien in der Iliade on the sublimity of the Apollo of und Odyssee von J. B. Friedreich. Honier : but his account of the Erlangen, 1856. In three parts, deities of the poems is brief and See P. iii. §. 194. p. 635, and rather slight. B. II. ch. xii. §. 198. p. 689. Mm*e observes sect. 4. Escplanation l>y Friedreich. 139 But I venture to think that tlie particular mode of the relation between the Homeric and the primitive tra- dition, 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 — I. The trine Kronid brotherhood. 1. Minerva and Apollo. 3. Apollo and Diana. The principle of the severance always being, to get rid of some difficulty, encountered by the human appre- hension in embracing the integral tradition. The difficulty at the first step was to reconcile equa- lity, 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 con- taining 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 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 rejiresented), we have no evidence that there was any such substantive body of primitive tradition resj^ecting the Holy Spirit, as would be likely to form the nucleus of a separate mythological impersonation, and especially of one en- dowed 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 A070?, 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 tra- ditions of the Word and the Incarnate Messiah respec- tively. 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 A070?, but it would be hard to connect ideally with Mailer's treatment of A'pollo. 141 the Holy S])irit, who lias 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 Miiller, 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 recog- nises 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 influ- ences there, which, at the most, tradition would only warrant us in believing to have existed in a very con- tracted form, and with influence altogether secondary. Altogether, this sheer Dorianism of Apollo is at vari- ance 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 extraordi- nary height, and to the very broadest range. Again, Miiller'' acknowledges the great difficulty of the dual- ism presented to us by the figures, concurring as they do in such remarkable functions, of Apollo and Diana: a diflficulty, which he seems to think incapable of full ^ B. II. ch. ix. 2. and 9. 142 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. explanation. While attaching great value to his trea- tise, 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) de- fective mode of appreciation of the Homeric as com- pared with the later traditions, against which I have ventured to j^rotest, 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. Accordino-lv tlie orioinal cha- racter of Apollo, which he bore during the infancy of the mythical system, is in many points the more signi- ficantly 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 en- larged 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 IVIinerva 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 transcend- ant in his importance, but that Minerva retained her full rank. One and the same Ode of Horace supplies The Diana of Homer. 143 the proof of both. He places Apollo on a level not only with Diana, but with Bacchus^ : Proeliis audax, nequc te silcbo, Liber : et sasvis inimica virgo Belluis ; ncc tc rautuendc ccrta, rhtE'bc, sagitta. But, after having described the supreme and transcen- dant dignity of Jupiter, he at once ])roceeds to place Pallas before every other deity without exception d : Unde nil majus gcncratur ipso : Nee viget quicquam simile aut secundum ; Proximos illi tamcn occupavit Pallas honores. 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 Miiller% 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 XvKela and ovkla, both the destroyer and the pre- server ; that she administers her oflflce as angel of Death, sometimes in v/rath and sometimes without it ; and that her name Artemis, meaning, as he conceives, healthy and uninjured, is in close correspondence with those of Phoebus Apollo. c Hor. Od. I. xli. 21. tarch. Spnpos. ii. p.617. C. Find. ^ Ibid. 17. Compare tlie pas- Fragm. xi. 9. and the Orphic sages cited by Nagelsbach, Hom. Foet iu Diintzer, p. 9. Theol. I. ii. 21. Hesiod Theog. ^ Dorians, ii. ch. 9. 896. Callim. Lav. Fall 132. Flu- 144 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. All this is ill conformity witli 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 spot- less 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 them- selves 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 correspond- ences may in their own degree bear witness to the ori- ginal 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®. 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 extend- ing her agency to Troy, where she taught Scamandrius to hunt*"; probably to Crete, in the case of the daugh- ters of Pandareos ; she is invoked in Ithaca by Pene- lope, puts Ariadne to death in Dia, exercises a similar function for the women in ^vpln, sends the Calydoniaii boar for a defect of homage in ^tolia, and is fami- c See 'Persephone' in section iii. ^ II. v. 49-52. The Diana of Homer. 145 liarly mentioned in connection with the Greeks gene- rally, while her ])lace 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 tra- ditional origin would perhaps have been more doubtful than it now is. When she is invoked by Penelope, it is in connec- tion with her share of the s])ecial ministry of deaths. 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^. In the Fifth Iliad, she and her mother Latona appear as deities purely subsidiary to Apollo. He deposits iEneas in his temple : there, not in a temple of their own, Latona and Diana attend upon and heal him'. 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 (II. 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 in- stances 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 over- bear the traditional. Her side in the Trojan war is to be explained by g Ofl. XX. 6i. h II. ix. 533-7. ' II. V. 444-7- L 146 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 prin- cipally ancillary to Apollo, and equipped with reflec- tions, or stray fragments, of prerogatives chiefly be- longing 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 mytho- logical original in the religions of the East or of Egypt. Dollinger conceives that the union of Diana with Apollo wiis 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 inex- plicable diversity of function. She, like other deities of Greece, has been thought to represent the Astarte of the Syrians. Again, Herodotus^ has given us most curious information respecting the gods of the Scy- thians, 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', is composed (i) of the name Mitra, which the Persians gave to Venus™, and which reversed becomes Artim, and (2) of the Sanscrit Bha.s, meaning shine, and thus corresponding with the ^oi/So^ of Apollo, and the TXavKwirig 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 y^^pva-tjXaKUTo?, ^pucnji/ios, k Herod, iv. 59. Language, chap. iii. p. 78. 1 Welsfoid on the English m Herod, i. 131. The Latona of Homer. 147 and ■x^f)vcr60povo■ I do not reckon the ElXtdvlai, II. xi. 270. i. ii. 491. xiii. 299. who appear to be purely pocti- ^ Hymn, ad ApoU. 62. cal and tigurative daughters of ' Theogon. 918-21. Juno, like the Muses of Jupiter ; 152 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. descent and consanguinity, and for her total want of attributes ? It must be granted that there is a certain deo'ree 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 ve- hicle, 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 sus- pected Proem of his Theogony, entirely passes her over in the body of it, and furnishes Venus with an- other 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 ac- tivity. Latona has beauty and majesty, qualities which a])pertain to every goddess as such : she is KaWnrdprjogy €V7r\oKa/xog, KaWnrXoKa/J-og, ■^vaoTrXoKajj.og, ijuKO/nog, /cfOjOV, TTorvia, and epiKvS}]^: 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 Her relation to primitive Tradition. 153 meaniiig or purpose intrinsic to herself : she shines only in tlio reflected glory of her ofr8i)ring, and is com- monly vvorshij)])ed only in union with them". If there- fore 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 repre- sented 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 re- ])resents 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 pe- culiar 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 inter- pretation 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 per- sonage. Backward as is the position of Latona in the practi- cal 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- » Smith's Diet., art. Lcto. 154 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. cognised Greek legend ; by the punishment of Tityiis ; and by her inclusion in the Catalogue of the Four- teenth 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 indivi- dual 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 ^. 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 >' attributed to her is this: that when Apollo^ has carried the bruised and stunned ^neas 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 illustra- tive of the traditional basis of the IMother 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 how- ever is here the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo. Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him. " II. XX. 72. y II. xxi. 496-504. z II. V. 445. et seqq. Her .sUyo(.S. 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 tra- dition discoverable in Homer, we have yet one very remarkable group of impersonations to consider, that in which the goddess "Art] is the leading figure. Com- monly 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. "Ati] 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 "At>; 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 ^schylus'\ f II. xi. 29. s Od. xviii. 7. •> ^scli. Agam. 696-715. The At(> of Homer. 159 But the word never bears in Homer tlie sense of cala- mity coming sim}»ly from without. This is evident even from the large and general description, where she aj)pears in company with the Ajra/'. Vigorous and nimble, she ranges over the whole earth for mischief. After her, slowly lag the Prayers or Airai, honoured however in being, like her, daughters of Jupiter. These arc limping, decrepit, and unable to see straight before them. The leading idea of "At>] is not force, but cunning. She is the power that tem])ts 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^ 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. ThenceforM'ard she can only exercise her function among men ; who, when they have yielded to the se- duction, and tasted the ashes under the golden fruit, at length set about repentance or prayer : All lost ! to prayers^ to prayers ! all lost !i Now though the impersonation of Ate 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 "At>/. In this sense it will supply a consistent meaning to the fine passage in the speech of Phoenix : for we are swift, so says the Poet, to i II. ix. 499-514. k II. xix. 95 seqq. • Tempest, I. i. 160 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 Airal, when we have to make our entreaties for pardon, and to think of resti- tution and amendment. Yet as even the gods listen to their entreaties, ' so,' says Phoenix, ' shouldst thou, O Achilles : and if thou dost not, then mayest yet thyself fall.' But if "Art] meant only misfortune, the passage loses all its harmony, and even becomes absurd ; for surely none will say that men are slow to discern adver- sity, 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 cha- racteristic of the true distinctive character of the Ho- meric "Atj;, than that in which Dolon confesses his folly "^: TToW'rjCTiv [x anjai irapeK voov ijyayev' EKTOip. Here we have Hector, the tempter : arm, the temptation : voo?, the sound mind, from which temp- tation diverted the self-duped simpleton : '//yayev, ex- pressive of the medium, namely, through volition, and not by force. The elements combined in the idea of the Homeric "At>], 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 con- sent, whether unconscious or express. 3. Under her dominion he commits offences against the moral law, or the law of prudence. "» II. X. 390. The Ate of Homer. 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"AT»/ is herself sometimes prompted or sent by others, as by 'E^oau?, (Od. xv. 234,) or by her with Zeu? and Molpa, as in II. xix. 87. And ac- cordingly she too is a daughter, nay, the eldest daughter, of Jupiter himself". 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. "Arri the person, and arr} the effect, are, moreover, frequently blended by the Poet. Among the principar'Arat of Homer are those, 1. Of Jupiter, 11. xix. 91 — 129. 2. Of Dolon, II. 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, II. xix. 88, 134-8. 5. Of Paris, II. vi. o^i^G, xxiv. 28. 6. Of Helen, Od. iv. 261. xxiii. 223. 7. Of manslaughter, II. 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 i)lace only of Homer, aV*? seems to mean n II. xix. 91. M 162 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. calamity not imputable to the sufferers fault, further than by some slight want of vigilance. This is the arri 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 arri : probably because the word pro- jDerly signifies a particular temptation followed by a par- ticular act, rather than a continued course of action. This, again, serves the more closely to associate "At*/ with the primitive tradition of the Fall of Man. The higher form of human M'ickedness, which is attended with deliberate and obstinate persistence in wrong, is not uTn but uTaa-OaXlr]. Such is the wicked- ness of ^gisthus 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" : 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 yiew the dispersed fragments of tradition concerning the Evil One which seem to be discernible in Homer. 1. "Art] is the first, and the one which comes nearest to presenting a general outline. 2. A second is found in Kpovos^, 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 ; o Od. i. 7. him we have no other mention in P II. xiv. 203. viii. 478. Avhere Homer. Tapetus is joined with Kpovos. Of Other traditions of tJie Evil One. 163 or else, apparently like Orion, offend the gods in general by their presumption. Tliey are punished in the Shades. But those who have aimed at the dethronement or de- struction of Godhead itself are in the far deeper darkness of Tartarus^. I suggest this as a possible explanation of the double place of punishment ; which is otherwise a])parently 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 "Arr) embodies that of Guile. These are the Oeol vTroraprdpeoi, or the eveprepoi, or evepOe Oeo), M'ho form the infernal court ofKpovos; Kpovou aiui.(pi9 iovre? (II. xiv. 274, 9. XV. 225). They are evidently themselves in a state of penal suffering ; but they must also have the power of inflicting tlie severest punish- ment on some other offenders ; for they, and not Aides or Persephone, seem to be the persons called to be wit- nesses of the solenin oath for the avoidance of perjury, taken by Juno in the Fourteenth Book ^. 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. (II. 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- q II. viii. 13 — 18. r II. xiv. 273, 278. M 2 164 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 KjooVo?, whom Jupiter thrust down thither. And the giants under Eurymedon, for their mad auda- city, are driven to perdition^. Lastly, Otus and Ephi- altes, 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*. 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 6eo\, and in their association with l\p6vo?, as also in the high parentage of the others, we have the celestial origin of the rebels. In the hurling down of K^jovo's 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 mytho- logical 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 re- volt of the Immortals of Olympus, headed by Juno, Neptune, and iSIinei-va, against Jupiter, which was put down by Briareus or ^ga^on of the hundred hands. Who this JiI,ga}on 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 * Od. vii. 60. t Od. xi. 305-20. Citations from Holy Scripture. 165 among rnortals, it might be conjectured that tlie im- mediate 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 (II. i. 403.) call him M^gdiiow^ 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 : 6 yap avre /3n/ ov Trarpos ap.€iV(av. 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", OS TToO^ vTTepOviiotai TiydvTeacrLV ISacTikevev' aAA.' 6 piki^ wAeo-e \aov ardaOakov, ajXero 8 avTos. 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. £cce gigantes gemunt sub aquis, et qui habitant cum eis. Vulgate, nh ylyavreg lULaioDOi'ia-oprai VTTOKaTwOev vSaT09 kcu twv yeirouoov avrov ; LXX. 2. Prov. ii. 18. eOeTO yap irapa Tcp QavuTic Tov oIkov avTtji, Kai Trapa tw aoi] jueTa tcov yi]y£uo}v tovs aPova^ av- T^?. LXX. 3. Prov. xxi.i6. Vir, qui erraverit a via doctrifits, in ccetu gigantmn commorabitur. Vulg. avhp -rrXavooimevoi " Od. vii. 59. 166 Oh/mjms : tlie Religion of the Homeric age. €p oSou SiKaiocrvi't]^ ev (Twayajy^j yiyavTMV avaTravarerai. LXX. See Gen. vi. 4, 5 : in which we perhaps see the ori- ginal 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 everlast- ing chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.' AVe 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 ^.' Again, in the Apocryphal Books. 1. Wisdom xiv. 6. ' In the old time also, when the proud giants |)erished, the hope of the world, go- verned 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 fool- ishness.' 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 owti foolish- ness.' Auth. Version. We thus appear to find in Homer many displaced fragments of the old traditions of the Bible with re- spect 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 'Ar^/, and the idea of spiritual danger to man through guile tempting him extrinsically but in- ^ St. Pet. ii. 2. 4. 5. The Future State in Homer. 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 con- fused. From the Homeric traditions of the Evil One and the fallen angels, we may properly pass to tliose 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 be- comes 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 dis- torted 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 Pagan- ism, it has lost this place : practically, a phantasma- goria was substituted for what had been at least a subjective reality : and the most sincere and pene- trating minds thought it absurd to associate anything of substance with the condition of the dead^. The moral ideas connected with it appear before us in y Arist. Eth. I. lo, ii. 168 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. descending series ; and thus they point backwards to the remotest period for their origin and their integrity. Lastly, it would appear that the traditions them- selves 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 divi- sions. 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. Tt 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 K^ooVop and 'IciTrero? reign. This is as far below Aides, as the heaven is upwards from the earth ^. Tliere 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 glooms The shade of Agamemnon weeps aloud with emotion and desire to clasp Ulysses : and Ulysses in vain attem))ts to con- sole 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 ^ II. \-iii. 16, 479. a Od. xi. 391. 488. The Future State in Homer. 169 there are in general under any judicial infliction. It is stated, indeed, that Minos^ administers justice among them ; but we are not told whether, as seems most j)robable, 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, Sisyj)hus, and Tan- talus. Castor and Pollux, who appear here, are evident objects of the favour of the gods*^. Hercules, like Helen of the later tradition, is curiously disintegrated. His elSeoXov meets Ulysses, and speaks as if possessed of his identity : but he himself (avTo?) is enjoying re- ward 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 lapetos and Kpovo?, there the Titans^ : there probably Otus and Ephialtes, who not only wounded Mars but assaulted Olympus^: there too, were Eurymedon and the Giants, who perished by their aracrOdXiai. Thither it is that Jupiter threatens h V. 569. c Od. xi. 302-4. <^ II. xiv. 274, 9. e II. V. Od. xi. 313. 170 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. to liurl do^yn offensive and refractory divinities^ Direct rebellion against heaven seems to be the specific offence which draws down the sentence of relegation to Tar- tarus. Still in the Third Iliad Agamemnon invokes certain deities, as the avengers of perjury upon man^; /cat ol virivepOe Kaixovras ai'dpcairovs t(vv(t6op, otis k i-niopKOV op^ocrarj. It is not clear whether this passage implies that all perjurors are punished in Tartarus ; or whether Aido- neus, Persephone, and the Erinues are the subterra- neous deities here intended : but as the Titans are elsewhere only mentioned in express connection with Tartarus, and from the description of the Erinues in II. 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 wei'e 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 desti- nation of the good. There is the place of torment, occupied by the Evil One and his rebellious com- panions : and there is an intermediate state, the recep- tacle 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 ^ II. V. 897, 8. viii. 10-17. 401-6. g 11. iii. 278. cf. xiv. 274, 9. SacviJicicU tradition in Homer. 171 to tlie i)laces of reward and punishment proj)er, in the Homeric scheme, when we remember what a tendency to develop itself beyond all bounds, the simple primi- tive 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 rece])tacles of souls in favour with the Deity. But some primitive tradition of the translation of Enoch may account for what would other- wise stand as an additional anomaly. Upon the whole, the Homeric pictures of the pro- longation 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 pe- nalties for sin ; all these things, though vaguely con- ceived, 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 ]>erhaps the best preserved of all its parts among nations that had broken the link of connection with the source. 172 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Of the sabbatical institution, which the Holy Scrip- ture 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 sur- vive 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 disap- pearance 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 re])resents any observances simply religious. The religious ele- ment, 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 ener- gies are absorbed in a ceaseless conflict with the yet untamed powers of nature. SECT. III. The inventive Element of the Homeric Theo-myth ology. 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 mytliology. Las been in some degree forestalled by our prior ex- amination 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 Mill 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 im- pression of pain and melancholy on the mind. ' If thou beest He ; but Oh ! how fairn, how changed !' 174 Olympus: the Relvjion of the Hameric age. The Jupiter of Homer is to be regarded in these four distinct capacities: 1. As the depository of the principal remnants of mo- notheistic 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. I. He ])roeures 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, JNlinerva does the like. 1. He is a kind of synonym for Providence with re- ference 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 Olynjpian assembly. The grandest Jupiter, as Providence. ITo of these occasions is at the close of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, where Minerva, stimulated by her own sym- pathizing keenness, seems to have winked at the pas- sionate inclination of Ulysses to make havock among his ungrateful and rebellious subjects. Juj)itcr, 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 re- quired caution to the exasperated sovereign. Peace immediately follows^. Jupiter, with some of the substantial, has all the titular appendages of a high supremacy. He is habi- tually denominated the Father of gods and men. He is much more frequently identified with the general go- vernment of the world, than is any other deity. He is universally the Ta/uLUj? iroXeixoio. 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, sorrov»'ful incidents of human destiny'. He lias ak^o tliis one marked and paramount distinction, that he does not descend to earth to execute his own behests, but in general either sends other dei- ties 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 JMinerva, 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. Nagelsbach*^ considers that Jupiter alone can act from a distance : but the prayer of Glaucus to Apollo, ^ Od. xxiv. 481. 525-41. 546. i II. V. 91. xix. 223. iv. 34. i. 353, 408. k Horn. Theol. Abschn. ii. 176 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. followed immediately by the healing of his wounds, seems to prove the reverse conclusively. Again, Mi- nerva reminds Telemachus that the deity can save even when at a distance (Od. iii. 2,31): we have no au- thority 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 INIinerva 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 accom- panies 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 (ex- cept perhaps as to the destinies of states), the faculty of controlling death, are scarcely to be discovered in Ju])iter, but are oftener made clearly legible in Apollo or Minerva. Indeed Minerva appears always to have latent claims, which Homer himself could not fully un- derstand 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'; 1 II. xvii. 567. Jupiter as Providence. 177 ws (f)aTO' yr]Oi]a^v 8e 0ea yXavKwiri^ Adrji't], oTTi pa ol TidixTTpioTa Oeutv ?}p7/craT0 ttui'tuii'. This sentiment may be accounted for in two ways. It may be due to the vulgar vanity of a merely mytho- logical 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 Olym- pian 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 Ju- piter is principally made available in the latter capacity. Not that the Poet had defined for himself the distinc- tion. But there were two processes, each of which had been actively advancing : the breaking up of Godhead into fragments, which diminished the relative distance betAveen Jupiter and the other Immortals : and the re- flection 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 tradi- tive 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 oc- casions of state : but they scarcely enter into his every- day life. Indeed, their chief effect is the negative one of withdrawing him, on the score of dignity, from imme- diate contact with mortals and with their concerns ; and, N 1 78 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. were it not for his atmospheric prerogatives, this iso- lated 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 II. ii. 353, and such as the occasions when the ToXavra are produced. As examples of minor in- terposition, 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 "\ 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 aj^pear 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, ■ "^ II. xi. 544. viii. 133-6. XV. 463. xi. 181-94. Jupiter as Lord of Air. 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 la-ofxopov Kai ojuj] TreTrpco/aeuov a'i(T>j (II. 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 opera- tions, combined with the fact that it sensibly acts on no- thing, 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 ofiice 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 com- paratively obscure Homeric Taca, who has no life or function, except in connection with the idea of ven- geance to be executed upon the wicked ; and this she N 2 180 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. probably derives from the belief, that the rebel spirits were piuiished 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 AuVerer? Trora^to/, are his : the clouds and tempests obey his compelling, the winds blow at his command. The hail and snow come from him" : he impels the falling star", and, when he desires a more effective weapon or a more solemn lesson than usual, he launches the scathing thunder- bolt?. All signs and portents whatever, that appear in air, belong primarily to him ; as does the genial sign of the rainbow, acm Kpoi'L(t)v kv 2^e0ei aTrjpL^e, repas /xepo~a>y av9p(aiTU>v^. And when these or any of them are used by other deities, it is only by such as have a peculiar relation- ship, 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 Zevs Kara-^Oovio^ '". 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. n II. X. 5. o II. xiii. 242. P Od. xii. 415-17. xxiv. 539. '1 II. xi. 27. «• II. ix. 457. Jupiter as Head of Ohjmpus. 181 But the most considerable and characteristic mani- festation of the Homeric Jupiter is that, in \vhich 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 my- thological prerogatives, which are for Olympus as the Crown and Sword of State on Earth. He is the ori- ginal owner of the i^gis. To him the gods rise up at their meetings ^ He is not tied to swear by Styx% 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 Ju- piter is expressly declared (II. 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* suggests to Neptune the plan of a combination among all the Hellenizing gods to restrain Jupiter, and to assist the r II. i. 533, sll.i. 524-30. See however xix. 113. * viii. 201. 182 Olympus: the Relir/ion of the Homeric age. 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". 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 supre- macy. 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 Mgseon among all mankind ^. 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 y. When he finds Neptune has retired, he frankly owns it is much better for them both ; as to have put him down by force ^ would have been a tough business {ou Kev avi- opcoTi y ereXecrO}]). 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 Ju- piter bragged of his being stronger than them all to- gether. Neither he nor Juno obeyed the command of Jupiter, to observe neutrality until his purpose of glori- fying Hector should have been accomplished. On the whole, the superiority of Jupiter to any one god is clear, though not immeasurable. His superiority " II. i. 209-11. y II. XV. 49-52. ^ 11. i. 397-405. z II. XV. 228. Jupiter as Head of Olynqyus. 18B 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 weight- iest part of the Olympian Court. In his government of the other gods, the moral ele- ment 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% 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 in- dolence 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^. Wearied with the perpetual din, he finds satis- faction in a change of prospect ; but at another time, a II. V. 8 02. b II. xiii. i-6. 184- Ohjmpus: the Religion of the Homeric age. refreshed as we may suppose, he coolly states that he shall enjoy a sight of the battle : ey^' opocav cf)p4va Tip\\iojj.o.L^. The political element of Jupiter's character, reflected more narrowly and turbnlently 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 im- mediate contact with the Olympian body. For ex- ample, 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, iph'' arap ov tol t^Slvt^s kTtaiviofxev deol aKkoi. She suggests in preference a prompt rescue and disposal of the dead body. Jupiter is not here in actual con- tact 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, acqui- esces, though at the cost of the utmost pain*^. Over and above the mere insignia of sovereignty, Jupiter holds some of his best prerogatives, both ter- restrial 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 Pe- lops : even the heralds are his agents, Ato? ayyeXoi, and act in his name. On Olympus it falls to him in this capacity, not only to conduct and superintend the proceedings of the c II. XX. 23. fl II. xvi. 431-61. His jwlitical spirit. 1 H5 whole body of Tnimortals, as a body, but to exercise a very large influence over their relations individually with men, and with one another. The Suu carries to Jupiter in full court, as head of the body, his complaint against the crew of Ulysses, and Jupiter at once under- takes to avenge it*^. Juno, again, appeals to him on the conduct of Mars^, and he permits her to let loose Minerva on him. Mars, when wounded, goes to Ju- piter with his complaint?^, and Diana also, when re- quested, makes him privy to hers, after she has taken her seat upon his knee'\ 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. Some- thing 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 Des- tiny 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 sfrandeur of dimension commended him to the ad- &' e Od. xii. 377. S II. V. 872. ^11. V. 753. 1» II. xxi. 505. 186 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. miring favour of the Greek artist, who made it his supreme effort to embody the conception of the Sove- reign 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 as- semblage. 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 continu- ally prosecutes upon the ancient and pure idea of God- head. Hence not only in his character, as in other cases, does the inventive power everywhere sap, cor- rode, invade, and curtail the ancient traditionary con- ception 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 per- sonal source and origin of life, the father of gods and men, the supreme manifestation of Power and know- ledge, the principal, though imperfect living representa- tion of a Providence and Governor of the world. Regarded from another point of view, as we see dis- closed 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^ The emancipation from truth, the • II. ii. 2, 12-15. ^iv. 294-6, et alibi. Jupiter as the type of animalism. 187 self-abandonment to gross joassion, the constant breacli of the laws lie 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 ex- pected, 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 Ho- mer. Latona, for instance, is a wife, an aXo-)(09 of Jupiter. Mercury says of her^^ — apyakiov h\ TrXrjKTi^eaO' dXoxoicrt Atos ve(f)e\riy€p€Tao. But the intrigues with the wife of Ixion, or with the daughter of Phoenix, 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 •* Oil. xi. 5S0. II. xxi. 498. 188 Ohjmpus: the Religion of the Homeric age. her family by tlie children of Latonal 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 un- equal 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'", who not only outwits him, but sends Iris down to earth without his knowledge, just as Neptune moves {Xadpn) on the plain of Troy unseen by him". He ought to be supreme in force, and he boasts that he could drag with ease all the deities of Olympus, whom he ad- dressed, 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 °, but it is subject to interruption, both volun- tary and involuntary, from sleepP. 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^, Minerva '11. xxiv. 6ii. '" II. xiv. xix.97. xviii. 168. " II. xiii. 352, 6. o II. xiii. 1-7. P II. i.6ii. xiv. 352. 'i Od. i. 66. Qualified by his parental instincts. 189 ])lcads tlie 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 suscepti- bility, 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 afiection. Mars is wrought up to fury by learning the death of his son Ascalaphus ; and Ju})iter, after much painful rumination on consenting to the fall of Sarpedon, sheds gouts of blood over the dearest of his children'". This is singularly grand as jioetry, 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 \Aas 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 JujDiter, the selfish prin- ciple comes out with greater force : he is not merely indifferent, but he absolutely rejoices in the strife of the Immortals : eye'Aacro-e hi ol cf)[kov rjTop yrjOoavvri, o& opojo Oeov^ eptbt ^vvLovras. 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 r II. X\-i. 458. 190 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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,""'H|Oj;, is, I apprehend, a form of epa, the earth ^; 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 Hel- lenic 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 indi- cations 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 s Welsford on the English Language, p. 165. The Juno of Homer. 191 does she resent the imputation ^ When Vulcan is born, angry at tlie mean appearance and lameness of the infant, she pitches him down into the sea". These representations are entirely at variance with the con- stant dignity and self-command, which mark the de- portment 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 main- tained in Diana, her resort to the use of sensual passion, in II. xiv., even though only as an instrument for an end, is a mark that the character is, in its basis, mytho- logical. 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 Providen- tial order at all, nor takes any share in superintend- ing it^. 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 dis- appear from view. To appreciate the force of this circumstance, we must contrast it with Homer's treat- ment of another deity, inferior to her in the Olympian t II. iv. 34-6. conflict "with hei' in II. xix. 418. u II. xviii. 395-9. On this very curious subject see ^ Hence the 'Eptwes are in inf. sect. iv. 192 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. community. The three greatest deities, among- those who embody much of primitive tradition, are Jupiter, ]\Iinerva, and Apollo. Of these, Jupiter, in the cha- racter 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 Theocly- menus, 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 pro- vided 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 dis- honour. 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^. Again, she was ignomiuiously punished by Jupiter; M'ho suspended her with her hands in chains, and with anvils hanging from her feet^'. Her strong and profound Greek nationality has obtained for her the name of Argeian Juno. The fer- vour of this nationality is most signally exemplfied in the passage where Jupiter tells her, that she regards the Greeks as her childreny; and again, where she lets ^^' II. V. 392, ^ 11. XV. 18-21. y II. xviii. 358, 9. Her intense nationality . 193 us know that it was she^ who collected the armament against Troy. She conducts Agamemnon the head of the Greek nation safely on the sea a; and carries Jason through the riAay/cra/''. This is the vivifying idea of her whole character, and fills it with energy, vigilance, de- termination, and perseverance. Iler hatred of Her- cules 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 le- gitimate 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 pro- mise intended by Jupiter for Hercules, and that engaged her afterwards in a constant struggle to bear doM'n that elastic hero, whose high personal gifts still threatened to eclipse his royal relative and competitor. So again, unlike Minerva^ even while seeking to operate through Trojans, she studiously avoids contact with them. Mi- nerva is sent as agent to Pandarus^^; but this is on the suggestion of Juno. In truth, this intensely national stamp localizes the divinity of Juno, and, being counter- acted by no other sign, fixes on her the note both of invention, and of Greek invention. With respect now to her dignity and positive func- tions, these are of a very liigh order. The Olympian gods rise from their seats to greet her (as they do to Jupiter) when she comes among them^. ^- II. iv. 24. a Od. iv. 513. ^ Od. xii. 72. c Vid. II. iv. 94. -1 II. iv. 64. ^ II. XV. 85. o 194 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. She acts immediately upon the thoughts of men : as vhen, at the outset of the Iliad, she prompts Achilles to call the first Greek assembly ; rw yap eVi cppecr] OiJKe 6ea XevKwXevos "Hpt]^. On various occasions, she sug- gests action to jMinerva, and it follows^ : 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^. It may be that in her seeming to employ iVIinerva, as in so many of her high- est functions, she is reflecting one of the high preroga- tives 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', 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-' .- ' with your aid,' so thinks Jupiter, ' he will easily be kept in order, and will have to act as ive 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^, and evokes a cloud of vapom* 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 jjroceedings seem to be a reflected image of her hus- *" II. i. 55. Comp. viii. 218. ' II. i. 195. S II. ii. 156. V. 711. viii. 331. J II. xv. 49-52. h Vid. supr. p. 66. ^ II. v. 784-92. Her mythological functions. 195 band's. Iris' is not only his messenger, but lier's. She not only orders the AVinds, but she sends the Sun to his setting'", in spite of his reluctance. When, in her indignation at the boast of Hector, she rocks on her throne, she shakes Olympus". She endows the deathless horses of Achilles with a voice". And con- joined with Minerva, she thunders in honour of Aga- memnon 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 Phoenix, that with Minerva she can confer valour p. 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 el^o^ koa Triwrnv. We should rather have expected the last to come from Minerva : but she endowed them with epya 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 iriwrh or prudence, we see a point of contact between her powerful but more limited, and IMinerva's larger character^. 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 corre- spondence with that of the Phoenicians, who are like Greeks, somewhat seriously maimed in that one great department. This full idea is exhibited on two great 1 U. xvlii. 1 68. " II. xix. 407. ^ Ibid. 239. P II. ix. 254. " II. viii. 193. q Od. XX. 70-3. O 2 196 Olympus: the Religion of the Homer ic age. 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 EilithuiaB re- tarding another, proceeds to make Eurystheus the reci- })ient of what Jupiter had intended for another less re- mote descendant of his own. Again, in the Fourteenth Ih'ad, 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 (Tl. xiv. 158) as she looked upon Jupiter, enslaves him for the time through a passion of ^^■hich 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 pa- triot, exhibiting little of divine ingredients, but gifted with a marked and powerful human individuality. It may be Vvorth 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 appa- rently manages the other by command given to the Eilithuiaj (II. xix. 119). If so, then she was evidently in the Poet's mind subject to the laws of space and corporal presence : anJ his figure of the horse's spring was one on which he would not rely for the manage- ment of an important piece of business. There are three places, and three only, in the poems, which coukl connect Juno with the Trojans. One is the Judgment of Paris (II. xxiv.29). The others are no more Her mytliological origin. 197 than verbal only. Hector swears by Jupiter " the loud thundering husband of Plere'^." And again, he wishes he had as certainly Jupiter for his father, and Juno for his mothers as he is certain that the day will bring disaster to the Greeks. We cannot, then, say that she was ab- solutely unknown to the Trojans in her Hellenic form, while they may have been more familiar with her east- ern prototypes*. It docs 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 rp*ferable to the principle, which I have called oeconomy, and under which tlie 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, 'Pea, Earth or Matter, found a suitable mate for KpoVo?, 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, »■ II. X. 329. s ii_ xiii. 827. t See II. iii. 104. 198 Olympus: the Beligion of the Homeric age. but only after the time of Homer, Amphitrite for Nep- tune, and Proserpine for Hades. In Homer the latter is more, and the former less than this. It was by no- thing less than an entire metamorphosis, that the Greek Juno was educed from, or substituted for, some old dei- fication of the Earth. She is much more a creation than an adaptation. What she really represents in Olympus, is supernatural wifehood ; of which the com- mon mark is, the want of positive and distinct attri- butes in the goddess. With this may be combined a negative sign not less pregnant with evidence ; namely, the derivation and secondary handling of the preroga- tives 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 iEgis. 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 Eilithuia\ She is, M'hen 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 be- came a goddess, to give effect to the principle of oeco- nomy, 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 cither logical in- stinct, 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. The Neptune of Homer. 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 com- plete, of eastern traditions. The rei)resentation in theo- logy 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, cor- responding 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 rela- tion to Jupiter, that she has been so liberally endowed with power over nature. Neptune. Neptune is one of three sons of K^oVo? and 'Pea, 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. Where- fore, 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 com- mand his own sons and daughters. Perhaps there may here be conveyed a taunt at Jupiter with respect to 200 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 resent- ment if Jupiter should spare Troy*. 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", but referring distinctly to the certain difficulty of the affair ; e77et ov Kev avibpo^ri y eTeXicrdrj'^. 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 pro- nounce, 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 tra- dition 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. ' II, XV. 174-217. »» Vid. 11. viii. 13. ^ II. xv. 220-35. His ty\(l(s cfiiejii/ )nytholor/icaf. 201 With respect to the first, the ])roposition itself* seems to contain nearly all that can be said to belong to Nep- tune 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 res})ect paid to him by the children of Jupiter. Apollo is restrained by this feeling (r«\U?) from coming to blows with him^" : a similar sentiment restrains Minerva, not only from ap- pearing to Ulysses in her own Phecacian aXo-o9% but even, as she says, from assisting him at all during his previous adventures^. But this is all. The prerogatives Mdiich 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 vvas 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^, or the Phae- acians'^ seek to avert threatened disaster, or when > II. xxi. 468. z Od. vi. 329. '^ II. xi. 728. Od. iii. 5. a Od. xiii. 341. c Od. xiii. t8i. 202 Olympus : the Reiigion of the Homeric age. Polyphemus his son roars to him for help^. The sacrifices to him have apparently a local character : at Onchestus is his aXao?^, and Juno appeals to him in the name of the offerings made to him by the Greeks at Helice and yEgoe^. The Envoys of the Ninth Iliad pray to him for the success of their enterprise ; but it is w^hile their mission is leading them along the sea- beach^. He can assume the form of a man; can carry off his friends in vapour, or lift them through the air^^ ; can inspire fire and vigour into heroes, yet this is done only through a sensible medium, namely, by a stroke of his staff'. He blunts, too, the point of an hostile spear '^. But none of these o])erations are of the highest order of power. And when Polyphemus faintly expresses the idea tbat Neptune can restore his eye, (which however he does not ask in jirayer,) Ulysses taunts him in reply with it as an undoubted certainty, that the god can do no such thing. With this we may con- trast the remarkable bodily changes operated by Mi- nerva 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 Mi- nerva ; 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. ■ Od. V. 335. » Od. XV. 420. * II. xxiii. 277. u Od. i. 22. 206 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. circle of the Phoenician traditions, that he should visit a nation, of which Homer, I believe, conceived as being but a little beyond Phoenicia. But we have still to consider the fragments of infor- mation 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 after- wards did, indiscernible to the human eye''. Among these rivulets of tradition, some of the most curious connect themselves with the nam.e of Ne])tune, who was, in his mythological character, prepared to be its recij)ient : for in that character he was near to Jupiter in strength, while his brotherly relation by no means implied any corresponding tie of affection. AVith Juno and Minerva, he took part in the dan- gerous rebellion recorded in the First Iliad. He re- fuses to join in a combination of Hellenizing gods against him, on the ground of its hopelessness : but afterwards, when all others acquiesce in the prohibi- tion, 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 >', ^ Vid. sup. Sect, ii. p. 44. 7 Od. ix. 275. A nd to the tradition, of the Evil One. 207 oil yap Ki/K-AwTies Atos alyi6)(0v aKiyovcnv, ovbe. Oecav jxaKapoiV eTret?/ iioXv (piprepoC et/xey. The whole of this dangerous class, the kindred of the gods, seem to have sprung from Ne])tune ^\ The Laestrygones, indeed, are not expressly said to be his children. But they are called ovk avSpea-a-iv eoiKore?, aWu Tiyaa-iv : and the Giants are expressly declared to be divinely descended in a speech of A lei nous*'': CTret (T(j)L(Tu> iyyvOev dp.ev, uxTirep KvKXcfiTTis re /cat aypia ({)v\a FiyuvTcov. Neptune was the father of Nausithous and the royal house of Scheria, through Periboea: 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''; dAA' 6 ix€v wAcore Aaov ardaOaXov, wAero o'' avTui. Thus we have Neptune placed in the relation of an- cestor to the rebellious race, whom it is scarcely pos- sible to consider as other than identical with the Titans condemned to Tartarus*'. But we have one yet more pointed passage for the establishment of this strange relationship. In the veKvi'a of the Eleventh Odyssey, Ulysses sees, among other Shades, Iphimedea, the wife of Aloeus, who bore to Neptune two children '\ 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 z Od. X. 1 20. a Od. vH. ijo^. ^ Od. vii. 60. c II. xiv. 274, 9. d Od. xi. 505-20. 208 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 arrange- ment. 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 sufFerere 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 prero- gatives 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 aNvare that he will escape from his present danger (oi'^t? »/ ij-iv Lavei) by reaching tiie shore of Scheria. This knowledge is His grandeur is material. 209 shared by the minor goddess Leucothee: Jind doubtless on the same principle, namely, tliat it is marine know- led oe. So lie can predict to Tyro that tliere will be more than one child born to her : here, too, he speaks of what is personal to himself. When we take Nep- tune ont of his province, we find none of these extra- ordinary gifts, no sign of a peculiar subjugation of nature or of man to him. He shares in the govern- ment 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 Cha- ry bdis^ 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 preroga- tives, distributed and held in severalty, are the frag- ments of a conception too weighty and too compre- hensive 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 mo- tion, the unconquerable might, the wide extent, of the QaXaa-a-a, 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 e Od. xii. 107. p 210 Olympus .-, the ReUfjion of the Homeric age. 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 ^gean, 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 com- monly 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 no- where told that it is an unwarrantable boast — that they are of equal dignity and honour. He bears the lofty title of Zei/? KaTa-)(06vLo/p could not but remain a mere outlier. But as the poetry of the system was developed, and its i>hilosoi)hy suhmerg-ed and forgotten, this diffieulty 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 as^reeable to the Homeric representation of Ceres in its four main branches, (i) as Pelasgian, (2) as subject to lustful ])assion, (3) as a secondary wife of Jupiter, and (4) as immediately asso- ciated with productive Earth, Persephone. Although the Persephone of Homer is rarely brought before us, and our information respecting her is there- fore 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 in- deed altogether doubtful personality, though she after- wards grew into his spouse. Now Neptune was a deity much more in view than Aides : and it is not likely that we sliould have found Persephone more fully developed than Amphitrite, had she not represented some older and more indej)endent tradition. Again, in cases wliere the female deity is the mere reflection of the male, we do not find her invested with a share in his dcmiinion, although, as in the case 218 Olympus: the religion of the Homeric age. 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 'Kpovoq, not of 'Pea ; 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*': and the region in which she dwells is not less hers than his p, ets 'At6ao hoiwvs koI ^Traivrjs Yl€pa-e* Buttrnann's Lexil. p. 62. ?/<, voc. atvos. t Ocl. xi. 217. S20 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. this, that we are left to suppose that Ceres had some offspring by Jupiter, while none is named '^e The chain of presumptions appears to me to become complete, when M'e take into view two other pieces of evidence sup])lied by the poems. In the far East^, be- yond the couch of the morning Scin, 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 appli- cable to Homer, this apjiears 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 ayvri, it is most likely to be of Uiana, 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 re- flection 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 ^, is the peculiar and exclusive property of Apollo. Let us now lastly consider, Mhat 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 eirepa-a, from the verb TrepOw, and the other '. We must take these circumstances into view alonjr 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 insti- tution, that belonged to her worship, except in those groves planted in the far East ; and no sign of any other " Od. XV. 409. y Od. X. 135-9. 222 Olympus : tJte Religion of the Homeric age. 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 Phoenicians, 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 ori- ginal Hellic tradition brought into the country from the l^ast, 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 mytho- logical wives, or feminines, to their respective husbands, is such, that it seems most reasonable, instead of de- riving 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- Her relation to Olympuif. 223 personation, so it may have been ^vith their sovereio^n. 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 my- thology, all that gave life was feminine, so conversely, all that represented the destroying agency might as- sume a similar form. In her case, as in that of one or tw^o others, it is difficult to discover whether Homer meant a particular deity to be included, or not, among the Olympian gods of the or- dinary or smaller assembly. There is no indication in the poems, which directly connects Persephone with Olympus ; and that celestial jialace may seem to belong to the government of the living world, and to be al- most incapable of relations Mith that of the departed. Nor is she connected specially with the Olympian sys- tem, like Aidoneus, by the position which birth confers. The aAo-09, and the worship ])aid her there, can hardly belong to the departed spirits on tlieir 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 ])oems are un- questionable, 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 u[)on the facts before us, I ven- ture, however, on a further extension of these hypo- theses 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 S24 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. race for itself. Can we then, probably refer Diana and Persephone to different sources etlinically? It is plain that Diana was Morshi|)pe(l 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 subter- raneous 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 Aides. 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 s])irit. There is, indeed, mention of wine used to ex- tinguish the flame of the funeral pile, but none of in- vocation along with it, as there is in the case of Patroclus^ And as we have no less than an hundred lines spoken over or otherwise be -towed upon the dead Hector, the omission is singular. It becomes still more significant, when we recollect that the Greeks, and their godiless Juno, invoke the deities of the under-world, and the powers connected with a future state, in their solemn oaths and imprecations"; but when Hector swears to Dolon, (our only example of a Trojan oath,) he adjures Jujiiter alone ''. Now ic may be that the religion of Troy did not include so distinct a re- ference to a future state, as that of (lireece, and that the Trojans knew nothing of Persephone, or of any deity holding her place. This hypothesis would at once ^- II. xxiii. 218-21. 271-4. XV. 36-40. xix. 258-60. a II. iii. 278. ix. 454. 569. xiv. ^ II. x. 329. The Mars of Homer. 225 accord with the features of the Homeric portrait, and with the striking absence among the Trojans of all pointed i-eference 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*^. The hypothesis which the cir- cumstances appear to suggest is, not that the Trojans disbelieved a future existence, but that they neither felt keenly respecting it, nor gave a mythological de- velopment to the doctrine. Mars. Even in Homer, JNIars is externally the most im- posing figure among the masculine deities of pure in- vention. 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 con- siderable 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- c II. xvi. 856, 7, and xxii. 362, 3. 226 Olymjms : the Religion of tJie Homeric age. modocus ; and tlie 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 what- ever 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 rever- ence 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 war- rior was putting on the armour of Achilles ; hv hi jjiLV "Aprjs 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 6dp(To? to the Pseudo-Ulysses ; but this he does only in conjunction with Minerva^ His possession of the attributes of deity appears to have been most limited. The use of the word"A|0>;? not only for the passion of war, but even for its wea- pons, shows us that the impersonation was in this case as yet very partially disengaged from the metaphysical ^ II. xvii. 2IO. e Od. xiv. 216. His limited worship and attributes. 227 ideas, or the material objects, in wliicli 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, in- deed, 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, exclu- sive possession, but he administered his ofHce in part- nership 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 ^ Over the body of Patroclus the struggle was one of which, says the Poet, neither Mars nor IMinerva could think lightly^. Achilles, when pursuing the Trojans, calls for assistance ; for, says he, neither JMars nor JNIinerva could undertake to dispose of such a multitude *\ Mars and Minerva, says Jupiter, will take charge of the concerns of war K 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 ^. 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 battle- field menaces the gods with trouble from the displea- sure of Jupiter, Minerva strips his armour off his back, scolds him sharply, and replaces him in his seat ^ And f II. xv-iii. 516. S xvii. 398. ^ xx. 359, i II. V. 430. k II. V. 885-7. 1 II. XV. 110-42. Q 2 228 Ohjmpus : the Relifjion of the Homeric age, she is pointed out by Jupiter as the person, whose ha- bitual duty it was to keep him in order by the severest means °^ ; In the Fifth Iliad, he stirs up the Trojans, and en- velopes the fight in darkness : but here he is acting under ecpeT/uLoi, or injunctions from Apollo °, who thus appears, like ]\Iinerva, in the light of a superior to him, even in his own department. We learn, again, that he was overcome and im- prisoned by the youths Otus and Ephialtes, whom Apollo subdued : he was in bondage for thirteen months, and would have perished, had not JMercury released him '^. 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 p of the death of his son Ascalaphus, until he receives the in- formation 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 ^. Mars in the Olympian court bears some resemblance to Ajax among the Grecian heroes. But the intel- lectual element, which appears to be simply blunt in Ajax, in INIars 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 ciiltus is assigned to him : but he is represented -tn II. V. 766. 1 II. V. 508. o II. V. 385. P II. xiii. 521. XV. no et seqq. 1 II. v. 845. Mars as yet scarcely Greek. 229 as greedy of blood, and as capable of being satiated with if. Except with Venus for his mere person, he has no favour with any other Olympian deities^ Juno de- scribes him as lawless and as a fool : and Jujjiter tells him that, were he the son of any other deity but him- self, he would long ago have been ejected from his place in heaven ^ On one occasion, his name is associated with those of Agamemnon and Ne])tune : but the due relation between them is still preserved. Agamemnon is com- pared 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". 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 JNIars, 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 esta- blished 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 «■ II. V. 289. 8 Od. viii. 310. t V. 831, 97. " II. ii. 478, and viii. 349. 230 Olympus : the ReU3S' He is the man of business for the Olympian deities, SiaKTopo^. Od. viii. 335. V. 28^ He is the giver of increase, Swrop edcov. Od. viii. ;^^^. II. xiv.490. He is the most sociable of deities, II. xxiv. 334. a-ol yap re fxaXicrrd ye (pLkrarov ecmv avSp] eTaipiararai. The extraction of Mercury stands somewhat ob- scurely 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 justi- fied in considering him as the child of a Phoenician tradition^. This is also clear on Homeric grounds. Although Homer does not expressly connect him with Atlas, he makes Calypso, the daughter of that person- age, address him as al^oloi; re (plXo? re. These expres- sions are usually applied by him where there is some special relation of consanguinity, affinity, or guestship: as between Jupiter and his adopted child ^ and parti- cular 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 Phoenician origin for Mercury. We thus understand how he becomes the general agent for the gods : because the Phoenicians supplied the first and principal means of communication between z DoUinger, Heid. u. Jud. p. » See sup. Ethnology, sect. iv. 74. ^ II. xxiv. III. Mercunj the god of increase. 233 the several nations in the heroic age : they were the nien-of-busiiie&s for the world ^. It thus becomes plain, again, how lie can with pro- priety 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 a|)parent anomaly, which makes the god of in- crease also the god of thievery,is thus exi)lained: 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'^. His proper office in regard to the epja of men seems not to be industry, nor skill in production or manufacture; but handiness and tidiness in the per- formance of services. He, says Ulysses, gives to the epya, which may mean both the deeds and the indus- trial productions of men, their x'^'? and kv^o?., their grace and credit or popularity'^. This idea of increase forms the common or central element of the various attributes assigned to JNIercury. 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 unfail- ing 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 cor- rupted the virgin Polymele*^, though she belonged to the c Od. ix. 124. e Od. xiy. 319. ^ Od. viii. 161-4. aud xv. 416. f II. xvi. 179-86. 234 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 affirmatives'. Each of these incidents seems to apper- tain to something distinctive in his character. That character, again, imports the extended inter- course 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. jNIoreover, 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 \vith 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 enras'ed and worsted him. The Phoenician origin of jMercury 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 Heilenizing deities : for his talents would natu- rally 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 re- ferred to his love (II. xiv. 490) : and he reveals himself to Priam by his name (II. xxiv. 460) : but it is remark- able, 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 & Od, viii. 334-42. Mercury lldhulc and Ptuenician. 235 first revelation and (.lej)arture, or Avlien a second time he appears, and afterwards quits liini anew (682-94). On tlie otlier liand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the Greeks. lie conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops : he carries the warning of the gods to il*I.gisthus : sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca : and he is liberally treated with saci'ifices by Autolycus in Parnesus, where he repays his worshipper by be- stowing on him the arts of ])erjur> and purloining^. Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had much intercourse with the Phoe- nicians. On the other hand, the Trojans, wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little or nothiiio" of maritime commerce. Their inter- course 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 Gal- lipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or har- bour. A Phoenician deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achaean side during the war. Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of agent, have been with perfect pro- priety sent to Calypso : but his mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection with Phoenician traditions, give a peculiar projjriety 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 '' Od. xiv. 435, and xix. 394-8. S36 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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'.' Now this was no aifair of Calypso's ; none, that is, on which the gods could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses : hut 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 M'hat other ground Mercury should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official report. Again, it is jH-obably on account of his Phoenician connection, that the intervention of Mercury is em- ployed in the Tenth Odyssey k, to supi)ly Ul3'sses 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 Phoeuicianl It is the cluster, which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey : and it is se- vered from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a geographical line, but by an entire change in my- thological 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, w^ho, 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 ' Od. xii.389, 90. ^ Od. X. 275-307. 1 See ' Acliseis, or Etlinology,' sect. iv. Mercury recent in Greece. 237 Mercury is appointed to command tlie latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both tlie company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phoenician importation into Greece- There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark that he had somewhat recently be- come known to the Greeks, agrees with other indi- cations of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures, indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops'" ; 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 TrpwTov vTrrjvtjTrj'f, in the fairest flower of youth". 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 ap})earance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and not merely adapted to a particular occa- sion. 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 for- midableCirce. Therefore, without laying too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful ap])earance 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 JNIaias, the mother of Mercury, or to Diana the mother of Venus. Yet it is a large m II. ii. 104. Od. xi. 626. 1 II. xxiv. 348. Od. x. 279. S38 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 natural- ized. 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 iEolus; whom it is possible that Homer may have regarded as Hellic, rather than proi)erly 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 M'ith 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 state- ment, on which has been founded a standing popular argument against the unity of authorship in the two ])oenis, and also against the genuineness of the Twenty- fourth Iliad itself. The statement, however, aj^pears to rest upon a pure misap])rehension ; for it assumes the identity of the cha- racter of Iris and ]\Iercury respectively as messengers. Whereas there is really a difference, corresponding with the difference in dignity between the two deities: and His Ohjmjnan office and t/u/t of Iris. 239 Homer is in regard to them perfectly consistent with himself. Mercury is sometimes a messenger in tlie pro])er sense, and sometimes an ag'ont, or an agent and mes- senger combined. It is not true that, so far as tlie Ih'ad is concerned, he only appears in the last Book in one of these capacities. For in the Second Book" we find, that he carried the Pelopid sceptre from Ju- piter 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 Achcean throne in the Peloponnesus. In the Twenty- fourth Iliad, JNIercury is not really a messenger at allP; 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 j)osition of the utmost danger. This is an office like that undertaken by JMinerva in the Fourth Book, when, as she was commissioned to bring about a breacli of the Pact by the Trojans, she repaired to Pandarus for the purpose. But the func- tion of Iris is simply to carry messages, and chiefly from one deity to another ; she is not only ayyeXo^, but /ueTayyeXo^^ ; 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 ''. Nay, on one occasion, with- out any divine charge, hearing the prayer of Achilles to o II. ii. 104. P II. xxiv. 334. q II. xxiii. 199. •■ II. xviii. 165-8. 210 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. two of the Winds, she spontaneously carries it to the palace, where they w^ere all feasting together ^ Only in the Odyssey do we find Mercury unques- tionably and simply discharging the duty of a mes- senger; and this on tv.o occasions: the first, when he brought to ^gisthus the warning that his crimes, if committed, would be followed by retribution from the hand of Orestes; the second, wdien he communicated to Calypso the command to release Ulysses. But there is in reality no discrepancy whatever be- tween the two poems : inasmuch as Mercury and Iris, though both messengers, act in different characters. Iris is in one case the spontaneous messenger, w4io carries a hero's w-ish 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 mes- senger, 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 menage to Calypso is called Zj^i/o? ayye- Xit] : but it became the message of Jupiter, because it was a proposal made by JNIinerva 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 * : 'Epixdav ixev eTretra^ hiciKTopov ^ Apy(ieK aTrayye'AAeiTKe Kiwr, ore Tiov ris avcoyoi. 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, akK tl rts Kakeane OeStv QeTLV And Iris, hearing him, sets forth without being per- sonally designated. Tne peculiar language seems as if it had been employed for the especial purpose of keep- ing 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 dis- crepancy between the various parts of the })oems, when closely examined, really yields to us fresh evidence of '' Od. xviii. 6. 242 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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. Mytho- logy 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. Suc'i an account I have en- deavoured 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 INIercury, that he ex- ceeds 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 limita- tion of his faculties and powers, in the low standard of The Venus of Homer. 243 his moral habits, in the abundant activity of his appe- tites, 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 inven- tion of man. He is the god of intercourse on earth; and thus he holds in heaven by mythological title, Avhat came to Iris by ])rimitive 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 njan- ner 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 worsliip 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 -^neas 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 R 2 244 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 Te/mevo?, or dedicated estate; and she bears the name of Cypris-^. But we have only the very slightest mention of her, or of any thing connected with her, in Greece proper. We bave seen much reason to assume that Cyprus Avas essen- tially Pelasgian, and ethnically more akin to Troy than to Greece. In Troy we find various signs of her in- fluence. She sent to Andromache the marriage gift of her Kpri()eiJ.vov^\ She made to Paris the fatal present of his lust^ She fell in love with Anchises, and became the mother of ^neas ^. She led Helen away from the roof of Menelaus*^, and was an object of dread to her when in Troy'^ Minerva, in taunting her bitterly about her wound, supposes she may have got it by a scratch from a o-oUlen buckle, in undressing some Greek woman that she had persuaded to elope with one of the Trojans whom she so signally loves'^. Again, it appears from a speech of Helen, that she was wor- shij)])ed in Phrygia and Ma'onia^ The only token of her influence in Greece is, that she is twice in the y II. V. 422 et alibi. '^ 11. iii. 418 ; also 395, where 2 II. xxii. 470. opiva, as most commonly in Ho- ^ II. xxiv. 30. mer, means to excite with fear. b II. ii. 820. e II. V. 422-5. ■c II. iii. 400. f II. iii. 402. Venus as yet scarcely Greek. 245 Odyssey called 'KvQepeia. Thus we see her not strictly within Greece, but rather advanced some ste))s on her way to it. And it is easy to supjioso that, in the race of corruption, her worship would run among the fastest. The negative evidence, then, thus far tends to the be- lief 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 be- longed 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 liouse of Ulysses, in the form of gifts to Penelope. For this purj)ose he arrays her in all her charms, and brings her forth in appearance like Diana, or golden Venus ^. 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 com])arison of Cassandra to Venus ^ is entirely in keeping with the Asiatic character of the deity. But the intention of the allusion here is mani- fest : 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 ^ But it is Minerva who instils this suggestion g Od. xvii. 37. xix. 54. ^ II. xxiv. 699. I think the case of Hermioue (Od. iv. 14.) is an exception. ' II. ix. 389. 246 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. into the mind of Penelope ; though in a form which con- veys no taint to her mincl^. She goes, however, be- yond tliis : 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 cestns from her on Mount Olympus ; nor is her agency or aid in any man- ner employed. Thus she is not allowed, as it were, to have to do in any manner with Penelope ; a clear indi- cation, I think, that though known, she was not yet worshipped in Greece proper. She appears, indeed, in the legend of the daughters of Pandareus ^ : 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"\ 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". In the latter, for no other offence than leading the k Od. xviii. 158-68. ^ II. xiv. 346-51. 1 Od. xix. 67, 73. " II. V. 335,348. Her advance f rout the East. 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 ^lars, 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 person- ages so handled formed a part of the established ob- jects 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 : r](TO Trap' avTov lovaa, OeSiV 8' aTro'eue Ke\ivdov°. 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 iEgean, 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, IMylitta, 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 betw^een the popular or promiscuous Venus {irav^^fxa^), and the celestial one. In Homer we find them com- pletely severed : we perceive Artemis with many traces of the older, and Aphrodite fully representing the more recent and carnal conception. There still remains one o II. iii. 406. S48 O/i/nijjus : tlie Rdiy ion of the Homeric aye. sign of correspondence ; it is the standing epithet of Xp^<^^n for Aphrodite, compared with the chister of golden epithetsP applied to Diana. We may not unreasonably, I think, take Artemis as the probable })rototype ; and A])hrodite as the sensual image, into which the old and pure conception had already dege- nerated, 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 es- timate these latter the Trojans, the Assyrians, or the Jews. The marriage viith 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 Phoenician 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 P Sup. sect. ii. p. 146. Her rank and personal character. 249 that the tnulition resj)ecting 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, a]iart from Asia, a})pears to lie among the 01ymi)ian 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 pas- sion ; 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 jEneas 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 deaths. In Venus we see the power of an Immortal reduced to its minimum. Even the faculty of self-transfor- mation seems to have been in her case but imperfectly exercised''. She does not pretend to give strength or q il. iii. 414-7. '■ II. iii. 396. 250 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. courage to her son ^neas, 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 re- bellious impulses of man : she has power to carry JEneas away, but he is folded in her mantle ^ In fact, her privileges in general appear to be like those of the inferior orders of deity, held and used for her own enjoy- ment; 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 JMars for the purpose, when in the same predicament^. It is no wonder that the ancient, probably the earliest Greek, account of her origin which is given by Hesiod", should mark her as of entirely animal ex- traction. 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 wor- shipped. Cyprus makes her Ys^virpi^ 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 infer- ences as to her origin. Nor is she less distinct from Minerva, whose name is not derivative in form when she is called 'KQrivri, and whom we must consider as the eponymist of Athens, and not its namesake. No s II. V. 31 i-i8- ^ II- V. 355-64- 363- " Thcog. 188-98. Venus unable to confer beauty. 251 indication could be of greater force, than tliis marked localism, in stamj)ing 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 fasci- nation 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 ^wpa, in II. iii, 6^, 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 t. 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". 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 Homers 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. t Od.viii. 167-77. 'I Ocl. XX. 66-75. 252 Ohjmpus : the Religion of the Homeric aye. In not a sino^le 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 ^ 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^. Again, when Diomed wounds Mars, it is because Minerva invisibly directs and impels his lance^ : 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 Mould have been an insult to any other member of the Olympian family to be pitted against her effeminacy. Accord- ingly, no antagonist is named for her. She is sometimes made contemptible, as in the fore- going instances. She is at other times silly and childish, as under the bitter taunt of Minerva and the admonition of Jupiter^, and again, when she falls into the trap cunningly laid by Juno''. 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 X II. V. 131. cf. 330. y 11. V. 818, 27. ^ II. V. 856. a II. V. 431-30. ^ II. xiv. 190-224. Never made attractive in Horner. 253 of JVIinerva. 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 shaj)e 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 descrip- tion of her in the Second yEneid^ 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 (Enone : Idalian Aphrodite beautifu], Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder : from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-branches Floated the o-lo^vino; sun-light as she moved. Upon the whole, I should confidently cite the treat- ment of Venus in the poems as being among the most c Mn. ii. 589-93. 254 Olympus : the Rdigion of the Homeric age. satisfactory indications of the state of heroic Greece, and one of the most honourable tokens of the disposi- tion of her Poet. Vtdcati. Besides Juno and Bacchus, Hepha?stus 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*^. 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 IMediterranean, 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 con- tinually fed by the history and progress of the art itself; so that he became the impersonation of that element itself, and in the phrase cpXo^ 'Hcpala-Toio it is his name which gives the distinctive force ; for (p\o^ in Homer seems to mean the flame or light of fire^, and is not used to signify fire proper, except with some other word in conjunction to it or near it. But the explana- tion of the seeming contrariety is probably to be found <1 Od. viii. 311 : and II. x\'iii. Minerva invested Achilles when 395. he went forth unarmed. The name 6 Tims, in II. x\dii. 206, it "UcpmaTos also stands alone for means that blaze without heat, as fire in II. ii. 426. from shining armour, with which J'he Vulcan of Homer. 9,55 in the liypothesis, that his worship was of Phoenician introduction ; as tlie Phoenicians 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 re- mote 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 srts in the oceanic cave. That he is thus, like the Phoenicians, for Homer, the meeting point of fire and water, appears clearly to stamp him as Phoenician or oriental in his origin, relatively to Greece. Accordingly, true to the association between Phoe- nician and Hellenic elements, he is one of the five Hellenizing deities in the Trojan war ; in which, as the element of fire, he oj^poses 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 thenceforw^ard 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, vi]urious. 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 ? s 258 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 reli- gious meaning of his Vulcan, and of the other gods of the second order, was very slight. A sufficient proof of this may bo found in the fact, that of no one of them, excepting Mercury alone, does he mention the actual worship in his own country. Vulcan in and ont of his art. fi.'^y Moreover, two things may deserve rein.irk with re- ference to the variation which makes Charis the wife of Vulcan in the TMad, and Venus in the Odyssey. First, from the plan of the Iliad, which j)laced Ve- nus and Vulcan in the sljar])est oi)])osition, the conjugal relation between them would have been, for that poem, inadmissible. The Poet coukl not have introduced Venus, where he has introduced Charis : and he must thus have given up a strikingly poetical j)icture, 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 Avider vogue in Greece when Homer composed the Odyssey, than at the period when he gave birth to the Iliad. We have seen ah'eady the signs that it was a recent worshij). 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 Cyjjris ; in the Odyssey this is exchanged for Cytherea : that is to say, she M'as known sometime before as a goddess worship- ped in Cyprus and not properly Greek ; but she was now, such is the ])robable construction, known also as a goddess worshipped in Cythera, and therefore be- come Greek. On this account, as well as because the opposition between them had disappeared, she might with poetical projiriety 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 me- tallic art in connection with it, Vulcan is nobody. But within it he is sujireme, 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- S 2 260 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. ness is propped by bronze damsels of his own manu- facture. And the lock, which he puts for Juno on her chamber-door, is one that not even any other deity can open'. 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 re- spects to the inventive, as opposed to the traditional type of deity. 'HeXtof, or the Sun. In the case of 'HeXto?, 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 Proi)het 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 discre- tion over a subject-matter where it was as yet supreme : » II. xiv. 1 68. The ^Ile'Atos- of Homer. 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 Odys- sey, 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 sliow us 'He'Afof 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'*, is inseparably wedded to a living intelligence by its combination with the function of hearinof. He is addressed as the 'HeAtds 6\ os "navr' ecpopqs Koi navr iiraKovei^. 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, Juj^iter 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, ^ II. iii. 277. 262 Oli/Dipus : the Religion of the Homeric age. and dismisses the Sun prematurely to his rest. But this, as the Poet adds, was done against his own will': 'He'Atoy 5' aKajxavTa ySowTrts -orrta "Hp?/ 7re'/x\//6r €tt 'X2Kearoto poas a^aovra vieaOai,. U])on the two words, aeKoi^ra and eTraKouei^, rests, I think, the whole case in the Iliad for the Sun's per- sonality. 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™. xVlthough 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". It is from the Nymphs, Phaethusa and Lampetie, whom he had set to watch, that he receives the intelli- gence of the slaughter of his oxen by the com})anions of Ulysses in their hunger. He immediately addresses Jupiter and the assembled gods, in a passage which proves that Homer meant to re])resent him as having a place in Olympus, for only if there could he speak to them without undertaking a journey for the purpose °. He makes his a])peal 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 chry- salis deity, not yet really worshijrped 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 1 II. xviii. 239. «! Od. viii. 270, 302. "11. xiv. 344. o Od.xil. 374-88. Is of the Oli/iiipiau Court. 26-3 watch on his behalf in Thrinacia ; lie is also the father of Circe and iEetcs, and his couch is at yEa^aP. 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 impro- bable, 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 Phoenician, 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 im- portant is this, that, as the father of Circe and ^etes, of whom the latter bears the exclusively Phoenician epi- thet 6Xo6(ppcov, and the former has her abode close by his avToXai, or })oint of rising, he is at once thrown into the Phoenician 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 chan- nels 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 p Od. xii. 4. 264 Olympus : the Reliyion of the Homeric age. poems. Particularly as the poem where he is least personal, the Iliad, is also that where he is most Pelas- gian : for we have found reason to ascribe to the Pe- lasgians 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 personce in the Lay of Demodocus. Yet there are some latent signs of sym- pathy between them. Apollo tends the oxen of Lao- medon : the Sun delights, morning and evening, in his own oxen in Thrinacie. It is difficult to avoid sup- posing some kind of relation to be conveyed by Homer between the rays of the sun, and the arrows of x\pollo 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^. 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 Mi- nerva 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, v.ho are the mere organs of external nature, are alien to the Greek genius as candidates for the higher ]iosts, and are relegated to subordinate places q Od. xii. 345. His incorporation with Apollo. 265 in the system. Only Vulcan and Ceres really api)ear with him to bear decisively the stamj) 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 pre- dominates over fire, and Ceres impersonates the vegeta- ble 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 proba- tioner in the ayoov 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 'HeXio? could not stand alone, and needed to be ab- sorbed, so he could find no ])lace 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 my- thology : 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*!.' Dionysus or Bacchus. The Dionysus of Homer, or Bacchus, has all the 1 Isaiah Ix : compare Rev. xxi. 23. 266 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. marks of a deity, whose name and worship were of re- cent introduction into Greece, and were not yet fully established there; while in connection with the Tro- jans 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 Phoenicians. 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 ena- moured) 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 Bac- chusn, which makes Semele the daughter of Cadmus. Now, Cadmus, according to every reasonable presump- tion, was Phoenician. We have thus a fixed chrono- logical 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 ■■, who was put to death by Diana q Ver. 57. «■ Ocl. xi. 322-5. The Dionysus of Homer. 267 in tlie island of Din, on her way from Crete to Athens, at the instance of Dionysus, l^iovvaov naprvplria-iv. Tiie most probable intcrjiretation of tliis passage seems to be, tliat Theseus, M hen on his voyage, lauded with Ariadne in Dia to consummate the marriage, just as Paris% on his way from Sparta, landed in Cranae with Helen : but that, since the island Mas 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 Phoenicia and Greece: and his j)OS- session of this island is in harmony with the tradition of the ITyuin, which represents him as having first been seen u[)on the sea-shored In the Tuenty-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, 'J'he 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". Her possession of a gift from him is in harmony Mitli II. 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 su])j)o- sition that Homer regarded him as a Phoenician 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 ajipear in the * II. iii. 445. ^ Hymn, ad Bacch. v. 2. " Od. xxiv. 74. 268 Olympus: the Religion of tJie Homeric age. 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 omit- ted, if his w^orship 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 ixawoixevoio Atoovvcroio TiOrjva^, the nurses of the frantic Bacchus ; they in dismay cast down their vine branches {OvcrdXa), wdiile he plunged into the sea, and Thetis gave him refuge-''. 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 doub,t, that some forty or fifty years before the Troica (for Lycoorgus was contemporary with the youth of Nestory), the introduction of the drunken worship of Bacchus w^as 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 Phoenician connection, so far sustains his Phoenician origin '■. " II. \A. 130-40. y II. vi. 132. z Hes. Theog. 947. Dionysus is of the lowest hiuentive type. 269 As Dionysus is one of the most recent of the Home- ric deities, so likewise is he one of tlie most ])urely heathenish ^ 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''. The anomaly was felt and provided for, in the later tra- ditions 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 tra- dition made him the son of a woman, and as all those with whom he is classed in Homer are probably histo- rical personages, it seems possible that he may have been one of our own race, whose discovery or exten- sion 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 in- stinct 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 * DoUinger, Heid. u. Jud. p. 80. ^ See the accounts of Pindar, Pausanias, and Apollodorus. i^70 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric aye. his beinsf 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 |)re- sumption 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 weak- ness, 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 o'uidino- hand from above, vet revolted against, or had not become familiar with, the deification of vicious pas- sion. And we seem to find the note of such a time in Homer. Only one laudatory phrase is applied through- out the poems to Dionysus ; it is the -^apixa ^porota-iu, 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 ]daces the Lycoorgus of II. vi. in Thrace, but have sim])ly fol- lowed what appears to be the suggestion of the Homeric text. SECT. IV. The Composition of the Olympian Court : and the Clamjication of the whole Stipernatural Order in Homer. In the full Olymjiian Assembly, or Great Chapter of the Immortals, we find a collection of deities, who are respectively the representatives, in the main, of Ele- mental 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 ele- ments are blended together. But we must also consider those who do not appear in Olympus, and why they are excluded. If, as is perha])s 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 ser- vants, 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* of a Nagelsbach, ii. 9. 272 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. geographical points known or conceived through mari- time, that is, without doubt, through Phoenician report. Again, we do not hear in Olympus of Destiny, Sleep, Night, Dream, Terror, Panic, Uproar, and the rest ; pro- bably because these had not attained to practical imper- sonation 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 II. xxiii.195. The different treatment which they receive in the Iliad and Odyssey, like their non- appearance in the Great Chapter^ 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, ''Arri the temptress, and 'E|Ot]/iy'e? 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. K|OoVo9 and 'Pea 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 IMatter, they are the primary ideas in the metaphysical order, which comprehended all others, and from which all '^ II. XX. 4-9. Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus. 273 others were derivative. And as they stood in the metaphysical nejms of ideas, so stood Oceaniis and his feminine, Tethys, in the terrestrial order; where Ocea- nus was the all-inclosing, all-containing ; the Form, within which every terrestrial existence was cast, and beyond which oven Thought could not pass. Hence the curious and marked exception of him from the sum- mons of Themis to the Great Assembly of the Twentieth Book«. ovTi ris ovv Y\oTa\x5iv aTrirjv, vocrcf)' ''SlKeavolu, ovT apa l^v^Jicpdoiv. 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 forma- tion ; 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 larjrijp^ to Tethys, iif a connec- tion which may make it equivalent to ' our Mother Tethys.' It is clearly on a principle that Oceanus is not sum- moned to Olympus, and not from mere defect or im- maturity 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 "Ytti'o^ like any other deity : he has a daughter, Eury- nome*^: and he is capable of conjugal quarrels^ •^ II. XX. 7. d II. xiv. 201. ^ II. x\'iii. 398. '' II. xiv. 200. seqq. 245. T 274 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 tlie framework of the visible creation, Mdiile they are parts of the picture that is within the framework. The same thing is true of K^ooVo? and 'Pea 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 with- drawn 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 invo- cations 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 Earths. 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, KjooVo? and 'Pea included. To a state of the g II. iii. 276-8. xix. 258-60. Di majores of the later tradition. 9,75 human mind not yet familiar with abstractions, Time and Place, imi)erfectly conceived, miglit be more li- mited, 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 (II. vii. 99), dAA' i/xeis iJ-ev tt6.vt(s vbap kol yata yevoiaOe. 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 com- monly represented as twelve in number; and the names are 1. Jupiter. 7. Mercury. 2. Juno. 8. Ilistie, or Vesta. 3. Neptune. 9. INIars. 4. Minerva, or Pallas Athene. 10. Venus. 5. Phoebus Apollo. 11. Vulcan. 6. Diana. 12. Ceres. But Homer knows nothing of this number or arrange- ment of the gods ; or of the distinction between Dii majores and Dii minor es. Nor does he enable us with precision to substitute any other number for it. He gives us, however, his idea, at least by approxima- tion, 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 Tpi7roSe9^\ to stand round the wall of the well-built hail, which he is carefully fitting with wheels, in order that they may ^ 11. xviii. 373. T 2 S76 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. automatically take their places in the assembly of the gods. Whatever these rpiTroSeg 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, ^vhich 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 apart- ment, along the wall : and the other is, that they were to place themselves for the divine assembly ' ; o0pa 01 avToixaroi Oelov bvaaiar aySiva^ 77S' aSris Trpos hSuxa veoiaro. This idea of the great, bowls placing themselves, one apparently for each deity to draw from, does not corre- spond w ith the classical representation of the cupbearer filling the cup of each, as he moves from the left towards the right. Nor does the word ayo^u 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 TpiTToSei as signifying the seats, it has of course a reference to the number of gods w4io constituted the ordinary Olympian family ; a reference wdiich indeed it may probably have, even if the other signification be preferred. And the text of the poems aifords sufficient evi- dence, that twenty was about the number of the Olympian gods of Jupiter. Of the Olympian tw^elve recognised in later times, ' II. xviii. 376. Deities of Olympian rank in Homer. 277 all, except Vesta and Ceres, must at once and indubi- tably be pronounced Olympian in Homer. For all take part in the Trojan war, and likewise make their appear- ance 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 {a\o^o<; Ato?, Tl.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. An- other 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 'OXu/uTria Soojuar e-yovT€^, II. V. 383. She is called in this passage ^la Oeawv : 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 '^. 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 ^ See sup. p. 156. 278 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 oflliciating as cupbearer in the 01ym])ian Court of the Fourth Iliad. Her connection with Olympus is further estabh'shed by her assisting Juno in the j)reparation of her chariot : and l>y her assisting JMars 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^ 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 fol- lows is'", ws (pdTO, Kal rian/oi;' arwyet u/frarr^at. There is no doubt therefore either of his personal, or of ' 11. iv. 2. V. 721, 905. Od. xi. 603. "1 II. V. 899. Deities of Olympian rank in Homer. 279 his Olympian character ; and none but divine persons are capable of bearing the Olympian offices. CiJanymede, for instance, though carried up to dwell among the Im- mortals 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" ; but we must probably understand this with respect to their royal family, just as the same thing is said of the Phscacians with respect to Neptune, because their kingly house had sprung from him^. 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 p. 9. The second is 'HeXio?, the Sun. His share in the episode of Mars and Venus'! does not indeed abso- lutely imply his residing on Olympus. But this is clearly involved in the account of his receiving the "» Od. iv. 232. o Ocl. xiii. 130. P See sup. sect. iii. p. 215. q Od. vlii. 270, 302. 280 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 as- sembled there'', 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 thera 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 Jem; TpaireX^a, the table of hospitality. In the hymn to Venus *^, she has become fully personified, and is cele- brated as the eldest of the daughters of Y^povo^. 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*. 3. The case of Eris is different. She is the sister and also the mistress of Mars". 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 r Ocl. xii. 374-88. f See sect. iii. pp. 269, and 223. ^ Hymn. v. 22. " II. iv. 440. The Eris of Homer. i^81 the Greeks for the contesf. The word is, indeed, the common and established word for strife in Homer, and it is apphed even to tlie conflict of the godsJ', Oewv eptSi ^vviovTwv. But this use of it is probably to be compared with that of"Apr}s for a spear, and ofAcppoSln] (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 maybe 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, ^6^0?, as he is the son of Mars% and attends him in fight against the Epliyri, is as dis- tinctly 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^ wrought in battle : and an intense eagerness is imputed to her^ of course meaning an eagerness for blood. But another form of this deity is probably exhibited to us under another name, that of the TrroXlTropOog 'Ei/Jw. Enuo is mentioned together with Pallas as being a warlike deity, in contrast with the effeminate Venus ^: 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 KvSoijUiog or Tumult. Yet the mode in which she is joined with Pallas proves her impersonation. The fundamental identity of her name with 'Ei/i^aAto?, the second name of Mars, and her join- ing him in leading on the Trojans, place her in some very close relation to him : and that close relation " II. xi. 3. y II. XX. 66. z II. xiii. 299. a i]. xi. 74. ^ II. iv. 440. c ll_ V, 333, 592. 282 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. cannot well be other than the twofold one of sister and mistress, which had been assigned to"E|0/9. 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 cer- tainly is, that she too is meant to be described as be- longing 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 man- ner 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 sub- stantially, 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 : I. Deities having their basis, and the general outline of their attributes and character, from tradition. 1. Pallas Athene, or Minerva. 3. Latona. 2. Phoebus Apollo. 4. Iris. II. Deities of traditional basis, but with develop- ment principally mythological or inventive. 1. Jupiter. 4. Diana. 2. Neptune. 5. Persephone.* 3. Aidoneus, or Pluto. Classijicittion of the Supernatural Order. JiJ83 III. Deities of invention, or mytliology proper. 1. Juno. 8. 'He'XiOf. 2. Mars. 9. Paieon. 3. Mercury. 10. Dione. 4. Vulcan, II. Hebe. 5. Venus. 12. Kris, or Enuo.* 6. Demeter. . 13. Dionysus.* 7. Themis. Those three names, which are marked with an aste- risk, appear to have only a more or less disputable title to a seat in 01ymj)us. 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 M'ho 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: I. 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. K^o'j'o? and 'Pea. 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 : Destiny, (which also has a place in the fifth class,) Dream, Sleep, Death, Terror, Panic, Rumour, Din, Uproar. 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, II. xiii. 299, ^ofto^ is the son of Mars, in an- other ^6^o<; and AeF/xo? are his horses (xiii. 119.) ; and 284 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. in a third they appear along with "E^oi?, in a shape hovering between personality and allegory. "E^i? her- self, at times fully personified, in one passage is simply a figure on the ^gis of ISIinerva, perhaps, however, as an animated work of art, II. 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 impersona- tion, is to be found in iEschylus, who makes Dust the brother of Mud d. This class was greatly augmented in the later Theo- gonies, beginning with Hesiod. 1. The minor impersonations of natural powers, such as (i) 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 pre- sumptively 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. ^ ^Esch. Ag. 480. Destiny or Fate in Homer. Ji85 These deities are : 1. Proteus. 7. Circe. 2. Leucothee. 8. (Eetes. 3. iEioliis (perhaps), 9. Maias. 4. The Sirens. 10. Perse. 5. Calypso. II. Eidothee. 6. Atlas. And several Nymphs^ 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 metaphy- sical or moral order, we have in Homer : 1. The Fates, K/J^e?, who fall within the range of ideas described by his Ala-a and his ^iolpa. 2. The 'ApTTviai. 3. The 'Eof^i/e?. 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^. Besides the OecrcpaTov, on which I shall make a ^ Od. i. 71. xii. 132, 3. with great ability by Nagclsbacli, f The subject has been treated Horn Theol., Abschuitt iii. 286 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. remark hereafter, there are five forms of speech which are employed by Homer to express the idea of Destiny ; they are, Kara/cXaJt^e?, K?/jo, Molpa, Mopog, and Ala-a : the two last ill the singular number only, the two preceding it in the singular or plural, and the Kara/cXw^e? only in the plural. Of these, the Ktjpe^ and the Kara/cXwOe? have under- gone 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 ques- tions, whether destiny is a power separate from the human will, separate from the Divine will, and su- perior to either or to both. The fundamental idea both of Moipa and Afo-a, 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 dis- tinctions obtain between the uses of the two words. And first as to Ala-a. We have in II. xviii. 327, XtjiSoi ula-a ; in Od.xix. 24, eXTTiSoi alcra ; in II. ix. 378, t/oj Se juliv ev Kapo? a'lcrr]. In all these cases it is plain, that the word means not a mere part, but a part assigned upon some given prin- ci])Ie. Hence it comes to mean either the whole share or lot assigned to a man, or the law according to wdiich 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 ata-a, as the entire destiny, of an individual man, II. i. 41 6. 'Exe/ vv toi ala-a /jLLVwOa Trep, ovri juaXa o^v. 2. A notable part of that destiny, as his death : ToJ 0/ cnre/jLvrjaavTO kul ev Quvutoio irep cuarj. II. xxiv.428. Under the form of hlaa. 287 3. The moral law for the government of conduct, as in "E/CTOiO, eTret [xe kut aiauv evtVaTref, ov& virep atcrav. II. iii.59. 4. That moral law as it is supposed to proceed from Jupiter; the Am? atcra, or dis[)ensation of Jupiter; the Sai/uovog aicra, or dispensation of Providence. 5. That same law, as it is supposed to proceed from some other source, or to speak more correctly, for Ho- mer, as the power which administers it is separately per- sonified. This we have in the passage aaa-a ol Alcra yeivo- fxiucp CTrevrjare \ivw, ore [xiv re/ce M>/t>7|0, II. XX. 1 27 ; or, again, as in Od. vii. 197; where Ala-a is assisted in the spinning process by the Kara/cXwOe? ^apeiai, as if it was felt that she was not strong enough to make a Destiny. Upon the M'hole it appears to me that there is in the word Alira only the minutest savour of the proper idea of Fate. For Fate involves these things : i. a power dominant over man : 2. a power independent of the di- vinity: and 3. a power standing ideally apart from right. Now alara does not fully answer even to the first of these conceptions, since ala-a, even when it is backed by the gods, may be overcome by the energies of man. Ju])iter in the Iliad ^ 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, II. xvi. 780. Kol t6t€ bri p vTt'kp mcrav 'A^atoi (f)ipT€^^ot rjaav. The only instances in which we find aia-a endowed with any thing in the nature of an inexorable force are such as that quoted from II. xx. 127. In this passage it is said by Juno, ' We will give Achilles glory; thereafter let him suffer what ala-a has appointed for him.' Now f II. xi. 192-4 and xviii. 455. 288 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. this refers not to a course of life that he was to pass through, but simply to the crisis of his death. Iii Od. vii. the speaker is Alcinous ; and his sentiment is, ' Let us carry our guest safe home and then leave him to what- ever attra and the KaruKXcoOes 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 ato-a, nay, that man may upon occasion surmount it. In the other case it is not so ; we must understand Juno to recognise the aiara 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 post- ponement, which is temporary : another, that of trans- lation out of the mortal state, as in the case of Ga- nymed : 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 JNIinerva about Ulysses^, as she can afterwards deliver him ; 1/ yap Kev \xiv (TTeiTa ck davdroLo aacacraL. The stress is evidently to be laid upon the word eireiTa. Another passage, which may at first sight present a dilferent 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 g Od. iv. 753. Death Ine.t'orahle to Fate or Deity. 5^TToia-ivi. A passage by which, unless its effect were modified from elsewhere, the noipai 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, ixoipa 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^ : pLOipav t' apiixopti]v re KaTa6vr]TS)V avOpdoiru)!'. 3. Or, with an epithet, it may mean ill fortune ; as in ixoipa Sv(TU)vviJL09, II. xii. 116. 4. It seems very strongly to signify death, when used simply, and without addition, as rel'v S' e-Trt ixolpav 'iB>]K€, in Od. xi. 560. 5. Or when in apposition, as fxolpa Oavdroio, Od.ii.ioo, or again as in II. iii. 101, Odvaroi Ka] ixolpa. 6. Or any thing ordained for mankind at large, as Od. xix. 592, the ixolpa v-wvov. You must sleep, says J II. xxiv. 49. ^ Cf. II. iii. 182, fiOipriyfPfi . U U 292 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Penelope ; for the gods have so ordained it, (eTrt yap TOi CKacTTU) fxaipav eOtjKav aQavaroi OvtjToicrii' eV) Tel^wpov apovpav). 7. Moipa, like alcra, may be the embodied will, de- cree, or dispensation of the gods. Thus we have fxaipa Oeov, Od. xi. 292, where 6eo^ is either Jupiter or possibly Apollo: and /noipa OeaJr, Od.iii.269, and xxii.413. Now the names Geo? and Oeol 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 fiolpa directly to any Olympian person. This testifies to its signifying some- thing larger than is conveyed by ala-a. But it also seems to indicate that, even if it were capable of being placed in antagonism to the will of one of the mytho- logical 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 /moipa means the thing ordained without reference to moral ideas, yet it is not always so. Mopa-i/uioi ordinarily means destined, while a'lcriiuLo? means right. But the ideas of right and might were not yet wholly parted. In Od. xxii. 413 it is plain that fxoipa 6eo)v, pronounced by Ulysses over the Suitors, contains a moral element : for he goes on to say, ovTiva yap tUctkov k.t.X.: and so Eurymachus, when he means to acknowledge that the death of Antinous was morally just, says, vvv 8' 6 [xev iv \xoipr\ 7re(/)aTaJ. The presence of the moral element in this word is en- tirely adverse to the theory, that it was used in the sense of fatalism. Power apart from a personal deity 1 Od. xxii. 54. Under the form of \x6po TioTaixS^v aTT€r]v voa-cjj' 'Xl/ceai'oto, oijT^ apa NviJL(pdMV, air akcrea Ka\a vijxovTai, Kol TTrjyas YloTaix&r, /cat -nCa-ea Troajet'ray. Thus the first are impersonations : the second only residences for persons to dwell in. The Harpies, 'Ap-rrviai, of Homer have been, I think, truly described as ' nothing but personified storm- winds^.' 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 un personified. The Harpy UoSapyr] is personified individually, as the mother who bears to Zephyr the two deathless horses of Achilles, Xanthus and Balius^; 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 hur- ricane may seize her, and, driving her along the paths y II. XX. 7-9. on Od. XX. 77 ; and Voss as there z Smith's Diet. art. Harpyise. quoted, whose opinion is, I think, On the same subject, see Nagels- «juite eiToneous. bach Horn. Theol. ii. 12. Fried- » II. xvi. 150. xix. 400. reich, Ilealien, p. 667. Crusius The Harpies of Homer. fJOl of air, deposit her in the channels of Ocean, that is to say, the j)lace of the dead. Then she proceeds to ilhis- trate this last mode of death, of which she has named OveWa as the instrument, by the tale of the daughters of Pandareus, who, having lost their ])arents, were in an extraordinary manner petted by the goddesses. A])hro- dite fed them, Here gave them sense and beauty, Artemis stature, Pallas endowed them with skill. And, lastly, A])hrodite M^ent 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 'Ejo^i^ue?, afiipiTroXeveiu, to be their servants, as it is sometimes rendered, but, as I should venture to construe it, ' for them, i. e. the 'Fipiuveg, to deal with.' It is evident that, in this curious legend, the Harpies are introduced to exemplify nothing more than the i)art Mhich Penelope had previously re- ferred to the OueXXa ; and these powers, who repi-esent Hurricane or Squall, and in whose agency lies the gist of the story, appear to have been in this matter the ministers of the 'Epivve?, beings of a very different order. These beings are evidently introduced, though entirely beyond the parallel of the OveWa, in order to complete the moral. The only other case in Avhich Homer intro- duces the Harpies is in a line, twice repeated, where Penelope supposes that they may have carried Ulysses off (a/cXetw?) inglo^iously^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.' '^ Od. i. 241. xiv. 371. 302 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. The 'Epivve? are of much greater importance ; and their position deserves the more careful inquiry, be- cause it has, I think, been often misunderstood, perhaps from being appreciated only through the delusive me- dium 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 crimed or that they grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of parents'^: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them as ' originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon a guilty criminal*^.' Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer. 1. In the narrative of Phoenix we find that when, at the instigation of his mother, he had sought the em- braces of a TraXXa/cJ?, for whom his father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked the 'Ejotn'e? to make him childless. 'This curse,' he says, 'the gods {6eo\) ac- complished, and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,' II. ix. 449-57. 2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her brother, invoked Aides and Perse- phone, beseeching them to slay that hero : whereupon the EriniJs, here called tjepocpoiri^, ' that walketh in darkness,' heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here the Erinus appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet against his mother. c Friedreich, Realien, (p. 677.) §. 198. f^ Ibid. (p. 220.) §. 61. e Smith's Diet. art. Eimienides. TJie Erinues of Homer. 30.'3 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 con- ferred 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, Phoenix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles to avoid. (II. ix. 565-603.) 3. In II. XV. 204, when Nej)tune seems inclined to be refractory. Iris reminds him that the Erinus will act with Jupiter, because he is the elder brother : oT(tO\ ws TipealSvTepoLaLP 'EpLvues alei> ^irovTat,. And upon this hint Neptune at once alters his tone, allows that she has spoken kutu fxolpav, and complies with the command that she has brouirht. o 4. In II. xix. Agamemnon, while he admits his an^, (v. 87), throws, we might say shuffles off, the blame of it upon Jupiter, Destiny, and Erinus : eyo) 8 ovK atrtoj elyn, aXXa Zevs koI Molpa koI rjspotpolrts ^Epcvvs. 5. In vv. 258-60 of the same Book, the same per- sonage invokes as witnesses to his asseveration con- cerning Briseis, i. Jupiter, 2. the Earth, 3. the Sun, 4. the 'Eipivve?, ' who dwell beneath the earth, and punish the perjured.' 6. In V. 418 of the same Book, after the horse Xan- thus, 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 : ws (ipa (f)(i)vi'i(TavTO'i 'Epivve^ 'icryj^Oov avh]v. 7. When, in the Theomachy, Minerva has laid Mars 304; Olympus: the Religion of tJie Homeric age. prostrate by a blow, she taunts him by telling him he may in his overthrow recognise the 'E^ofi^Jes- of his mother Juno, invoked upon him for having changed sides in the contest (II. xxi. 410-14). 8. In the Odyssey (ii. 135), Teleuiachus apprehends that, if he dismisses his mother, he will have to en- counter, among other evils, the Erinues whom she will invoke u])on him. 9. Epicaste, the mother of ffidijnis, is speedily re- moved from the face of earth for her hapless incest, ffidipus himself lives and reigns: but suffers many sorrows, which the Erinues of Epicaste {jut.t]Tpo9 'Kpipveg, as in II. 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 aV^;, which the goddess, the hard-striking*^ Erinus, brought into his mind {Od. xv. 233) : €tvf.Ka NjjAtjos Kovp-qs, aTriroceeds to say that the Erinus heard her : the Eriniis who stalks in the darkness heard her, and heard her out of Erebus'. In the case of Phoenix and Amyntor we have exactly the converse. Here the Eriniis 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 Erinues are to be considered as abstractions, having their basis only in some ulterior impersonation, Persephone and Aido- neus 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 pro- foundly connected, and although we read in the connec- tion 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 Erinues is fixed viro yalav : and it is made clear from the passage (259, 60,) that their avenging office, which is so commonly ex- ercised in this world, reaches also to the other. ' 11. ix. 569-72. 310 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. From the character of the Erinues, as vindicators of an order having dee|)er foundations than those which any volition could either lay or shake, there arises that natural association of them with Destiny, wliich \ve see expressed in the speech of Agamemnon™. 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 Erinues only punish transgression ; and that Destiny is but feebly moral, whereas the Erinues 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 Erinues are not indeed administrators of the moral laws themselves, but ad- ministrators of their sanctions. So they punish the infraction of the rights inhering* in all natural re- hitions : 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 Erinus in those cases where there has been fault on both sides. An offender is not therefore secure, because the person who invokes the Erinus upon him is an offender too. The father of Phoenix gave the original occasion to his offence, by an offence of his own : but Phoenix is punished at his instance notwithstand- ing, because the thing which he implores is not a per- "> II. xix. 87. Their operation upon man. ^11 sonal favour, but is a vindication of the uxj/iTro^e? i^oVoi", violated by the incest of bis son ; a tiling rigbt to be done, whether asked or not. The case of Althea and Meleajrer illustrates this truth in a manner still more lively. When she obtained the intervention of the Erinfis, she at once suffered by it. The city of (Eneus was all but subjected to the horrors of capture : she was brought, in bitter humiliation, to su|)i)licate 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 ful- filment 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 ''. The case of Meleager assists to illustrate that of (Edipus and Epicaste. Both of these unhappy persons had offended against the moral laws, though it was unwittingly {aiSpelrjo-i vooio) ; one, the mother-bride, was immediately put out of the way : the survivor was still pursued by the jw.riTpo'i 'E^". According to the view of them which has here been given, though I could not class the Erinues with the P Sup. sect. ii. p. 117— 9. 77te translation of mortals. 313 tratlitive 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 be- tween deity and humanity. And it was perhaps not the simple working of a fervid imagination, but also an offshoot from this ])ro- found and powerful tendency, which has tilled 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^, the son of Tros, was taken up to hea- ven 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, fl II. XX. 233. 314 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. Cleitus, one of the descendants of Melampus'". 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 ^ The course of these legends seems to stop suddenly in the Greek mytho- logy at the point where they are replaced by deifica- tion : and tlie 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 "Hco? at a distant pomt of the East, near the place where QaXacrcra communi- cates 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 ^ 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 oflSces towards man while yet in this life. Of this Ino is the only instance. She appears to be Phoenician 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 " : yet he is not all in Olympus, for his eWcoXoi/, endowed with voice and feeling, and bearing martial accoutre- •■ Od. XV. 250. * Od. V. 120. ^ Od. V. 333, 461. " Od. xi. fioi. The (leifcatiun of inortah. 315 lueiits. is tlie terror of the I^earl. 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- Ilomeric 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, en- dows the last also with personality, and gives it a reflection in the lower world of its earthly course and aspect : while the .Tove-born Hercules, as it were by a natural spring, mounts up to heaven''. At the same time there is no more conspicuous example than Her- cnles, of that counter-])rinciple of accumulation, by which legendary tradition heaps n})on favourite heroes all acts not distinctly otherwise appropriated, which ap- jiear 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^*'. 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 incon- sistencies of Homer, where he is dealing with subjects ^' I have alluded elsewhere of ehaiactcv may be exhibited in (sect. ii. p. 169) to another pes- the two images, sible (•x[>huiatioii : two aspects ^^' ad Odyss. xi. 601-4. 316 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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, wdio 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 Ely si an plain, are approximative ex- amples of deification. It ^vould be hazardous to build any opinion exclu- sively on the two verses II. 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 immedi- ately to the living, and that point the same way. Such is the promise to Menelaus'', 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. Ulyssesy 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 ^ 0(1. iv. 561. > ()(1. viii. 467. Oroivth of material for its extension. 317 cases like tlmt of Patroolus. After tlieir battle with the Cicoiics, Ulysses'' and his crews thrice invoked their slaiin^htered 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, w^ater, and flour * : but Ulysses distinctly promises that, on his re- turn 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*^ ; TToWa oe yovvovixriv i>(kvmv aixei'-qra KcipTji'a. It does not destroy the force of this proceeding, that they were supposed to need or to enjoy the thing sa- crificed ; for the Immortals of 01ymj)us did the latter at least, and there are even traces of the former. Together wath 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 jiurpose of his visit by consulting Tiresias*^. ='• Od. ix. 65. it Od. xi. 26. b 0(1 xi. 29. c Od. xi. 153, 230. 318 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. The dead tlieii 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 l)enefit on the living'. Here, gathered out of different cases, were the materials of full deifica- tion. All that was yet wanting w^as, 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 hu- manity, which Flomer has introduced in the Odyssey exclusively. These are certainly three, perhaps four ; 1. The Cyclopes. 2. The Laestrygonians. 3. The Phseacians. It may also be probable that we should add 4. ililolus riij)potades 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. Tn every point they are placed at the greatest possible distance from human society and its conventions. Man is small, tlie Cyclops huge. Man is weak, the Cyclops powerful. Man is gregarious, the Cyclops is isolated. Man, for Homer, is refilled ; the Cyclops is a cannibal. Man inrpiires, searches, de- signs, constructs, advaiices, in a word, is progressive: the Cyclo])s simply uses the shelter and the food that nature finds for him, and is thoroughly stationary. Yet, while man is sul)ject 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 : The kindred of the gods. 31 9 deixKTTiVii. oe €KaaT09 From their personal characters the moral element has been entirely dismissed. Polyi)liemus is a huge mass of force, seasoned perhajis 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 be- tween 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 grovel- ling, as well as coarse. To feed Poly])hemus, what lies nearest him, namely, the La}strygonian adventure, has, perhaps, been starved. Affain we are introduced to cruel Giants and to canni- balism, but with a great scantiness of detail. Their in- dividuality 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*'. But a too great like- ness to the Cycloj)s still suggests itself; and it is pro- bable 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 '1 Od. ix. 115. e Od. X. 105-15. 320 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. the later tradition, by further multiplication and variety, resolved into a living chaos. The Phaeacians appear to stand quite in another category. While the Cyclops has no trace of deity but in superhuman force, the Phaeacians have no pre- tensions 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 deoi pela "CwovTe^. 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 con- ducted 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 Cycloj^s, 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 Tlie kindred of the gods. 821 all that earth could suggest of bright, aud pure, and fair. Still it cannot be denied that levity and vanity are ra- ther conspicuous in the Phaeacian 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^ After the dancers have performed, Ulysses with great tact at once passes a high compliment upon them. Alcinous, delighted with the praise, cries aloud, ' Phse- acian chiefs ! this stranger appears to me to be an extremely sensible man§^.' 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, never- theless, may have intended in each case to keep un- broken the tie between his own tale, and the vovao-es of Ulysses, founded upon Phoenician geography, as reported in his time. I form this opinion partly from some singularities in the Phceacian 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'^ if he conceives the Phaeacians of the Odyssey to be strictly a portrait of the Phoenicians. Partly I draw the inference from the want of clear severance in the ideals, on which the characters of the Cyclops and the Laestrygones are severally founded. The remarkable natural characteristic of Laestrygonia which he has given us, its perpetual day, supports the same hypothesis. What would otherwise amount to f 0(1. viii. I02. 246. i Ibid. 378-88. h Lit. Greece, vol. i. p. 510. _^ y S22 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. poverty in the imagery is sufficiently accounted for, if ■\ve assume that he meant to describe two savage tribes, that inhabited the latitudes with which he Avas 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 Lasstrygonian 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 narra- tives 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 dis- missed. jEolus is (piXog aOapdroicri Oeoio-i, and is in- trusted with the charge of the winds; and his six sons are married to his six daughters, as aiSolai a.\o-)(^oi ^. The word (plXos 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) in- vested with deity^ : and the marriage of the sons to the daughters affords another absolute proof : for this, which M'ould have been incest, /ueya epyov, among men, is evidently set down as in their case a legitimate con- nection. The great example in the Kronid family would give it full sanction for the Immortals. The character of jEoIus, if he be human, is one kindly to his fellow-men ; and he inquires carefully respect- ing the fate of the Greeks and their chieftains. But it is very difficult to understand his place in the poem, ^ Od. X. 2, 21, II. i Nagelsbach, Horn. Theol. II. 1 2, holds the opposite opinion. I'he kindred of the gods. 323 and the reasons of it. The gift of Zephyr, and the folly of the crew in Icttino- out the whole pack of winds, end only in the return of Ulysses to iEolia, and in his being dismissed from thence as one hateful to the gods, which he was not. This TRolus neither seems to be re- quired for, nor to contribute to, the general ])urpose of the poem: nor to represent any ancient tradition : nor can we in any manner connect him with yEolus, the great national personage whose descendants were so il- lustrious, for that ^olus 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 Phcenician report about storms in the northern seas, where i^^^olia is evidently placed in complete iso- lation, 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 appear- ance 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 Phoenician mariners ; first, the fierceness of the gales prevailing in those outer latitudes, to deter others from attempting them ; and secondly, their successful con- test with the difficulty thus created in order to glorify themselves. Y 2 SECT. V. The Olym/pian Community and its Members, considered in themselves. The substitution of polytheism for the monotheistic principle not only brought down deity in the mea- sure 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 two- fold 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 consti- tutional. 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, The family order in Olympus. 326 who exercises in the community the double function at once of architect and artificer*'. The immediate relationship of nearly all these divini- ties 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, 'He'Aio?, 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 wliich 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 Ju- piter the head, and the ordinary assembly, its Council or Court, which answers to the /3oi/XJ/ of the Greeks, it has its Agore, a greater Assembly or Parliament called « II. i. 606-8. 326 Ohjmpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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, th^ resemblance is even closer than this. The Greek (3ov\r], and also the ayoph, have their speak- ing 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 through- out its debates. But we never hear of the Ajaxes, Ido- meneus, or chiefs like Eurypylus, as taking any active share in the proceedings. Even so the discussions of Olympus ajipear to be conducted commonly by Jupiter, Juno, Neptune '^j Minerva, and Apollo*^. Once Vulcan interposes, in his mother's interest : possibly he may have been suggested to the Poet by Thersites '^ as a terrestrial counterpart. The Sun appeals to the As- sembly in the Odyssey, as a party in his own cause : but neither he nor Venus, nor ]\Iars, nor Mercury, nor any other subordinate deity, ever appears as taking part in a discussion. The term ayoph, 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^. 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 b 11. vii. 445. <= II. xxiv. 33. fl II. i. 571. ^ II. viii. 2. and xx. 4. The jwlitical order in Olympns. 327 frequent mention, either of the banquet as proceerlinf^, or of the cup as in the hands of the deities. They ^vere standing asseniblaues of the deities, the law of whose life was leisure, with prolonged though not intem- perate feasting ; and its ordinary scene Olympus. Their correspondence with the (iovkh must not be pressed too far, for they do not, like the Greek (3ouXrjj commonly precede an Assembly. It is to be remem- bered, that the (SovXi] 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 ayopai is established in a pointed form by the Poet himself; mIio makes Themis the pursuivant or Sum- moner^ for the former; and also says of her, with re- spect to the latter, rjr avhpQ>v ayopai i)ij.ev \ve.i, ?}8e jca^t^etS. The acknovvledgment 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 pos- sessed of unbounded, or at the least of greatly ex- tended intelligence. Thus, like the individual deities, the divine Assemblies, and the entire Polity, are de- prived of the greatest moral safeguards of their coun- terparts on earth. The consequence is, that their ethical tone is much lower. Force is the only effective sanc- tion of authoritv amonc: the Immortals. This is curi- cusly 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. ^ II. XX. 4. g Od. ii. 69. 328 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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. 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 aiSco;s eKyeydixev k^Ivos Se x^P^^ovos eK 6eov eo-rtV. Though the body of Geo] serve as an unity to point a m Od. iii. 6g. n II. vi. 174. o Qd. v. 91-6. P Od. V. 169, 70. q II. xix. 386. >• II. xx. 105. Tluir unity imperfect. 831 moral in tlie abstract, there is practically a woiulerfiil want of unity and of common or corporate feeling ainonof tliem. This is fi' Ibid. 370. 2 II. xxi. 504. Force and fraud their chief instruments. 335 The general principles of government, then, among the Immortals themselves arc simply those of force and terror, on the one hand, or fraud and wheedling on the other. For example, Terror suhdues the ad- verse will of Juno a in the First Book, of Juno and Minerva in the Eighth ^ and of Neptune, not without much reluctance on his ])art, in the Fifteenth. Thetis wheedles Jupiter in the First Book^; Juno entirely beguiles him, besides outwitting Venus, in the Four- teenth ; Minerva entraps Aj)oilo 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'^. 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 con- duct by a sentiment partly of defei^nce arising out of a relationship recognised among men : atSero yap pa TTaTpoKaaiyvijTOLo pLiyi'ipL^vai. kv TtaXapirjcnv^. 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 a II. i. 568. b II. viii. 457. c II. i. 501. d II. xxi. 499. e l\)[± 468. 336 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. reminded, that he had himself volunteered the boast in heaven, that he was ready to fight against Neptnne. 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, ex- cept when troubled by human affairs, is simply in perpe- tual, 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 busi- ness, for there will be no pleasure in our banquets^ If Neptune in the Odyssey is gone among the Ethio- pians ^ 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 '^, 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'. If Ganymede is received into their company, it is that he may dis- charge for Jupiter the duty of cup-bearer'', in which it would appear that both Vulcan and Hebe were like- wise employed. Of all the phrases characteristic of the Homeric gods and their life, there is none that sits better than the Qeo\ peia Xwovre^. f II. i. 573-6. e Od. i. 22. »» II. i. 423. ' Od. xi. 602. k u XX. 234. Their doininant selfishnci': al K( 6(oi y e^eAoxTi, rot ovpavov cvpvv t\ov(TLV, ol jxev (peprepoi elcn voijcraL re Kpr\vaL re. Yet she distinctly contrasts herself with Penelojje, in the very point that she is immortal : and the reply of Ulysses recognises this as the essential difference^ ; 1] iJ.ev yap ^pOT6s. 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 con- cerned. When Otus and Ephialtes put him in chains, it seems that, but for Eeriboia, he would have perished'*: the expressions are, /cat VI) K€v evff' anokoLTo Aprjs aros TroAe'/xoto. 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 (^w? a/meuiji'o?, II. v. 887). This is not death, but it is at any rate the suspension of life, apparently with- out 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- y Od. V. 169, 70. "■ Od. V. 213, 218. ' 11. V. .1S8. E^ceiii/>tio/if'roiii other iimitat ions partial. 345 nate uccident of liis liigli j)arciitagc ; veiling the idea under tlie modest words ^ Kal Ki.v bij TiuKaL TjcrOa iveprepos OvpavL(jjvoii>. Thus then tlie divine :life, which, liowever, certainly with Ares is lodged in one of its least godlike recepta- cles, 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 |)assed. 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 inde- pendence. Every deity has some extension of personal liberties and powers beyond what men enjoy. But it is in general sucli as we should conceive to be rather cha- racteristic of intermediate orders of creation, than pro- perly attaching to the divine nature. We must how- ever distinguish between these three things: i. 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 examjile Calypso, though, as we have seen ^ 11. V. 898. 346 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. she is of inferior rank, yet exercises very high preroga- tives. 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*^. She is cognizant of events in the world be- neath, and of what will occur on the arrival of Ulysses there. She then sends a favourable breeze to impel his vessel '^; and on his return predicts to him the circum- stances of his homeward voyage e. And Proteus delivers a similar prediction to Menelaus, to which he adds a declaration of his destiny after death ^: 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 pre- dictions to men except Minerva and Apollo, the latter mediately, through Seers or through Oracles ; of abso- lute 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^. This gift of knowledge of the future is the more re- markable, when we consider that some of the Olym- pian deities were without knowledge even of what had just happened ; as Mars, on the occasion of the death of his son Ascalaphusl\ Even Jupiter, vvith the rest of the gods, was wholly unaware of the clandestine mis- sion of Iris by Juno to Achilles'. <- Od. X. 396, 490-5, 529. «l Od. xi. 7. e Od. xii. 25, 37 et seqq. <" Od. iv. 475 and 561. ? II. iii. 386. h II. xiii. 521. 'II. xviii. 165-8. Cases of III I nor deities with major poivers. 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 Plicenician 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 ujion the stage with reference to Ulysses or Menelaus, and in the Wanderings only ; thus they are adopted by Homer for this special purj^ose, 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 ])rinci])le of the mythology conducts us by another road to the same end. Every deity is libe- rally endowed within his own province. Now the pro- vince of Proteus, Calypso, and Circe, is the Outer sphere of Geography. Within the range of that sphere, the ordinary agency of the Olympian deities individu- ally is suspended. Homer prefers to leave it to be governed by the divinities, whom he can frame out of his Phoenician 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 navi- gation is the staple of its theme, and the OaXaa-a-a per- vades 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, exce])t Neptune for the reason given, the ordinary action of the deities individually is susiJonded*^, not on ^ See !>iip. seet. iii. p. 201. 348 Oli/mjyui; : the Religion of the Homeric age, account of any limitation of power, for instance in Mi- nerva, but for a poetical purpose, and with the excuse, that the whole sjihere is removed beyond common life and experience. Hence, just as Vulcan works profes- sionally 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 limita- tions upon divine capacity in Homer, to illustrate a little farther this law of special endowment. Venus is among gods what Nireus was among men : avaXKig erjv Oeoi^. Yet she overcomes the resistance of Helen"': and we have also the express record of her girdle as invincible in its oj)eration". 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 com- parison with Jupiter and Neptune, between whose names his is placed °. Neptune exhibits vast power, and on his own domain, the sea, ap])ears even to have an inkling of providential foreknowledge'': he is con- scious that Ulysses will reach Scheria. Except upon the sea, he exhibits no such attributes of intelligence, though he always remains possessed of huge force. ISIercury, again, shows in locomotion a greater inde- pendence of the laws of place, than some deities who are of a rank higher than his own : and doubtless it is 1 II. V. 331. >" II. iii. 418-20. n II. xiv. 198, 9. " II. ii. 478, 9. 1' Od. V. 378. Divine J'acuf tics ait c.rtension of hwiKiu. .'J49 because he is ])rofession.iIly an agent or messenger. Even so the journeys of Iris are no sooner begun than they are accomplished. But the ffeneral rule is, that the divine faculties re- present, in regard to all the conditions of existence, no more than an improvement and extension of the human^J. Man is the point of origin : and from this pattern invention strives to work upward ;uid outward. The great traditive deities indeed are on a different footing, and api)ear 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 "Yttj/o?, the god of sleep. We are furnished with a reason for Jupiter's not being asleep at a given momenf ; it is the special anxiety which presses on him. He had been asleep just before. Their bodies are not ethereal, but are capable of con- straint 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^. They eat ambrosia, and drink nectar. They also receive a sensible pleasure from the savour of sacrifices and libations^ Nor is this pleasure alone, it is also nourishment and strength, for Mercury speaks of it as highly desirable for su])port on any long jour- ney. He, too, practises according to his precept, for he seems greatly to relish the meal of ambrosia and nectar, whicL is afforded him by the hosj)itality of Calypso". 1 Friedreich, Realien 187. p. 599. ^ j] \\ i_^^ ^mi \ 609-11. s II. V. 416, 900-4. t 11. xxiv. 69. " Ocl. V. 100-2. 350 Olympuft : the Religion of the Homeric age. As regards the percipient organs, the Olympian gods appear to depend practically on the eye. Alinerva alone has a perfect and unfailing acquaintance with whatever it concerns her to know. For even Ju])iter, as we have seen, is not exempt from limitation in this point^. Juno sends Iris to Achilles in the Eighteenth Iliad without his knowledge, Kpv^Sa Ato? aWwv re 6eu)v. Apollo does not immediately perceive the expe- dition of Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia. Being liere 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 >': ovdi' a\ao(rK.o-u]i> elx^ apyvpoTo^os AiroWoiV. Juno, keenly alive with anxiety, perceives from Olympus the slaughter that Hector and IMars are makinof on the plain of Troy; and likewise from the same spot watches Jupiter sitting upon Ida''. 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 ; evOev yap ecfiaivero Ttacra juei' "ihrj (paivero be YlpidjjLOLo ttoAi? kol zn'je? 'A^mcoi'^' 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 ^ II. x\-iii. 166-8. y II. X. 515. z II. V. 711, and xiv. 157. a Ji xiii. 13. General prevalence of limitation. 351 raft without the knowledge of Neptune, although on the proper domain of the god, uiUil the eighteenth day. Then lie discovers him, but it is only because, coming up from the Ethiopian country, on reaching the Solyman mountains, he is sujiposed to have got within view of the hero. Being hero, without special directions, in the zone of the Outer Geograi)hy, we have no means of measuring the terrestrial distance vvith pre- cision, and the Poet has not informed us what interval of space he intended us to sujjpose. The inventive deities of the second order in Olympus are very slightly gifted in this matter. So much we per- ceive from the ignorance of ]Mars about the death of his son Ascalaphus. Vvlien Venus observes, that iEneas 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 sup- pose he means to place her immediately over the field of battle before Troy. Of the powers of Apollo or Minerva, as hearers of prayer irresi)ectively of distance, I have already spoken ; but the local idea enters more freely into the anoma- lous character of the head of Olympus. In the First Iliad, Thetis explains to her son that she cannot in- troduce 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^. This may mean either that he is too far oft' 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. Ml. i. 521-7. 352 Oli/mpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. are evident in the descriptions of the deities with re- spect to their powers of locomotion. Facility of move- ment accrues to them variously according to i. their peculiar work and office; 2. their general dignity and freedom from merely mythological traits; 3. the exi- gencies of the particular situation. As to the first, I have noticed that Mercury and Iris have a rajjidity as messenger-gods, which in their sim})le capacity as gods they could scarcely possess. Yet even Mercury fol- lows 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 '^. Minerva, on the other hand, in virtue not of any special function, but of her general ])ower 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 so poetical exceptions only. The chariots of Juno and of Neptune^', again, proceed with measured pace. Each step of Juno's horses covers the distance over which a man can see '. Neptune himself passes in four steps from Samothrace to ]¥^g?cK The driving of Jupiter from 01ymj)us to Ida is described in terms before used for Juno's journey^. Juno travels at another time from Olympus to Lemnos by Pieria, Eniathia, 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''. 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'. c Od. V. 50-57. •! II. xiii. 29. « 71 y. 770. <" II. xiii. 20. g II. viii. 41-6. h 11. xiv. 226. i II. V. 864, 355-67. Chief heads of superiority to mankind. 353 But poetical utility, so to sj)eak, enters very largely into the whole subject of Olympian locomotion, and makes it difficult to draw with rigour the proper my- thological conclusions. This may be sufficiently illus- trated 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 ra])idity that Homer illustrates by the remarkable simile of the travelling of Thought''. 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'. And, even more, Venus, whom we have seen so im- potent 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"'. This in both cases is pro- bably 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", a poetical allusion to his lameness may pro- bably be intended. Thus we see not the mental only, but also the cor- poreal existence of the mythological god hemmed in on every side. A great force of appetite, and a dis- position 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 my- thical gods the human conditions of being, besides, (i.) The one grand point of immortality, I should an- swer, in kll. XV. 79-84. 111. i. 44-8. '" Oclviii. 361-3. " II. i. 590-3. A a 354 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 2. An unlimited abundance of the means of corporal enjoyment, and a general freedom from the interrup- tions 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 be- tween Jupiter and Juno passes off naturally, and as a matter of course, into a feast that lasts all day". 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 p. 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 chiefs ; but she hastes away, when her message is delivered, to feast in pre- ference 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 Avith himself. INIars, 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 INIinerva would suffice for the soldiery of a hundred cities ; the golden tassels of her lEgis, a hundred in number, and each worth a hundred 11. i. 596-604. p II. XV. 87. q II. xxiii. 300. Their stature and beauty. 355 oxen, after every allowance for mere laxity in the use of numbers, would imply vast weight and bulk. Ac- cordingly, the axle of Juno's chariot may well groan beneath the weight of Pallas'". 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^ 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^ mortals. With the one marked exception of Vulcan, beauty is generally indicated as the characteristic of the Olym- pian deities. Among the gods, it extends even to JNIars". It is sufficiently indicated for the goddesses by their habitual epithets. Even jMinerva, in wdiom ])er- sonal charms are as it were eclipsed by the sublime gifts of the mind, is sometimes called rivKo^xo^ and ev-TrXoKUfxo^ (11. vi. 92. Od. vii. 40): and Calypso declares the superiority of goddesses to women in beauty, as a general proposition'^, eTret ovttco? ovhe eotKev 6vr]Tas aOavaTijcn b^ixas Kal eibos epl^eiv. 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 >■ II. xxi. 407. iv. 443. V. 744. ' II. V. 860. xiv. 148. ii. 448. V. 837. u Od. viii. 310. 8II.V.437. xvi. 774. XV. 361. ^0(1. V. 212. A a 2 356 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. design, she views him with disgust : crrvyepo'; Sk ol eirXero Ov/uLwy. 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 lier son for his griefs. In mere impersonations, not yet endowed with the strong human individuality of the Greek Olympus, such as Themis and Helios, we do not exj)ect to find this trait. But of all the fully personified deities of invention, Vulcan alone, privileged by Labour and Ugliness, ap- pears 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 Ho- mer 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 y Tl. xiv. 158. ^ II. xxiv. 130. Nature of their regard for sacrifice. 357 energy of their individualities, it is sacrifice Avliicli 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; TO yap Xdxoixev yipas 57//ets^. It was the bounty of Autolycus in lambs and kids which induced JNIercury to bestow on him in return the gifts of thievery and perjury''. 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 ^tolia, by the gods generally on the departure from Troas ; and Menelaus in like manner is for this offence wind-bound in Pharos^. 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 anthro- pophuism 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 inani- mate — attaches to the Homeric gods as such. Juno conveys a suggestion to the mind of Agamemnon'^, and gives, with Minerva, courage to a warrior ; but this a II. iv. 49. xxiv. 70. xxii. 170. ^ H. ix. Od. i. iv. b Od. xix. 395-8. ^ 11. viii. 218. ix. 254. 358 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 con- sider her as in the reflex use of the atmospheric powers of her husband : but the gift of a voice to the horse Xanthus, a])j)arently can lie within her reach only by derivation from the higher or traditive ele- ment in his character, as representing the idea of su- preme 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 im- mediate connection with their several specialties. Two extraordinary acts of power over nature appear, how- ever, 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 in- stance in which this power is exercised by a deity of invention in the manner in which Minerva employs it in the First Iliad % that is, under the condition of being visible only to one person out of many who are pre- sent. In that image we seem to find a figure, perhaps a traditionary remnant, of that inward and personal communication between the Almighty and the indivi- dual soul, which constitutes a high distinguishing note of the true religion. e II. V. 198. Parts of the body, how ascribed. 359 There would appear to have been certain visil)le 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^, but does not know ^vhat god. Minerva clears the vision of Diomed, that he may be able to discriminate between gods and men ^. Pandarus, eyeing Diomed, is uncertain whether he is a mortal or a god''. The recognition of Venus by Helen may, indeed, have been due to the imperfectness of her power of self-transformation' ; 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'' ; fxiya 8' e/Spax^e cj)i]yivos a$cov ^pidocrvvj]' beLvi]v yap ayev debv, avhpa t apicTTov. 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 f II. XV. 246. e II. V. 128. h II. V. 183. ' II. iii. 396. k Ibid. 838. 360 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. which He sustains, or delivers, or corrects, or crushes us. It does not therefore ajipear that we coukl justly and fully draw our conclusions as to the corporeal con- stitution of an Olympic deity from the mere circum- stance 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*; 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, II. i. 501. 2. Diomed wounds Venus on the wrist, II. v. ^^6. 3. And Mars in the abdomen, II. v. 857 ; whom Minerva likewise overthrows by a blow on the neck, II. xxi. 406. 4. Hercules wounds Juno in the right breast, II. v. 393 ; and we have her hair, flesh, chest, and feet, in the toilette of II. xiv. 170 — 86. 5. Helen discovers the neck and breast as well as eyes of Venus, II. iii. 396. See 11. xxi. 424. 6. The legs of Vulcan are weak, his neck strong, and his chest shaggy, II. xviii. 41 1 — 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, II. xxi. 489 — 91. 1 Mm-e, howevei", in his History of Greek Literature, refers the origin of the metaphor to the practice of representation by statues. Examples of n tirade in Homer. 361 9. The arrows rattle on the shoulder of Apollo, II. i. 46. I o. The arming of Minerva introduces her shoulders, head, and feet, II. v. 738 — 45. We need not, however, be surprised at failing to find in Homer any conception a])proaching to that of pure spirit, or any thing resembling that refined dis- cernment, which has led Christian Art to represent the figure of our Lord alone as self-poised and self-sup- ported in the air, Avhile 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 ab- solutely 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 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. scarcely more numerous than the following : for, under this definition, the ambrosia of Simois and the flowers of Ida are not miracles ^^. 1. The crawling and lowing of the oxen of the Sun after their death, Od. xii. 395, 6. 2. The acceleration of the Sunset, II. xviii. 239. 3. The retardation of the dawn, Od. xxiii. 241. 4. The speaking horse, II. xix. 407. 5. The ei§(x>\ov of j3i!ineas, II. 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', Od. xiii. 398, 429, and xxiii. 156-63. 8. Perhaps, also, the ei^oAov of Iphthime, Od. ix. 797. 9. The gouts of blood, shed down from the air by Jupiter, II. xi. i,^. 10. The transformation of the serpent into a stone in the sight of all the Greeks ; t]ij.eh S"" earraore^ Oav/m-d- ^o/ULev oiov eTvj(drj, II. 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 Pha;acian 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 (II. xix.386), and other works of Vulcan, might at first sight seem to belong ^ II. V. 777. xiv. 347. ' Nagelsbach, i. 10. \). 25. Their operation on the Inonan mind. 363 to the li.st, but it is doubtful whether they are not poetical rather than mythological representations, and in any case they would appear as gifts strictly j)rofes- sional, exi.Tcised in the ordinary administration of his peculiar function. Telemachus api)ears to recognise the existence of miraculous powers in the passage^S ov yap TTws- av Ov-qro^ avi]p rciSe fxr\)(av6(fTo w avTov ye I'o'o), ore fxi] deos awros eireXOiov prfibCios (OiKcov 0/]aeL v^ov T/e yepovTa. But this is spoken of the Godhead rather than of any particular deity, and cannot by Homeric analogy be ap])lied except to those of the highest natures. It will how^ever be observed, that several of these prodigies are not stated to have challenged human ob- servation when i)erformed : and unless they submit themselves to the test of the senses they are not pro- perly miracles at all. Others of them entirely comply with the condition, as especially that of II. 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', 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™ sometimes shatter vessels at sea without or against the will of the gods : deStv aiKrjTi. avuKTcov. Even man, and that without impiety, can occasion- ^ Od. xvi. 196. 1 II. xvi. 459. 11 Od. xii. 290. 364 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. ally think of resistance. When Menelaus, alone in the field, decides on retiring before Hector (who fights e/c 6e6(pLv), rather than contend -wpo'i Saljuova, he looks around for Ajax, and observes that, could he but see him, they two would fight koi -n-pog ^alixova irep, even M'ith the deity opposed to them, in order to recover the body of Patroclus". There is, however, I think, another reason, besides feebleness in his conception of the gods, which pre- vents the Greek Poet from representing them as omni- potent 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 ])ursues his work by means com- patible with it sessential 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 Tele- machus, 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^, aXXa [xkv avTos ivl (ppeal afjat L'07](Tsias fifill a real po^ver. f369 which he himself had performed. Also what they effect, they commonly effect with ease, as in botli tlic last- mentioned cases. However faulty, and however feeble, the religion of the Creeks had not yet ceased to be a religion ; for it was believed in. Men might resent or fear the com- munications 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. 1 80, 201.) the Seer stands as the faithful exponent of the will of Heaven ; and Agamemnon, even %vhen smarting under the declarations of Calchas, and revil- ing him accordingly in his individual capacity (i. io6j, 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, Agamennion and Menelaus seem to speak of the whole class of pro])het8 as if they deserved no belief. See the Iphigenia in Aulis, V. 10, II. 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 : t(.s h\ fxavTi'i (ar ; avijp OS" oAty akr]dri, TioWa be \f/evbr], keyei, Tv^coV orav 8e ju,?; Ti'xr], 8iot)(erat. 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 jHiblic, 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 B b 370 Olympus: tlie Religion of the Homeric aye. persons of its ministers, tliat scarce any human thouglit could conceive the possibility of their falsifying the awful communications of which they were the ve- hicles. 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 recofjnised 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 con- summation. 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^'. But the beginnings of mischief, so vigorous and abun- dant, 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 crimed This is in conformity with ordinary experience. The vices of the great are first passed by, as if it were pro- fane to suffer the eye to rest upon them ; then they are ^ Nagelsbach, Horn. Theol. on • DoUinger, Held. u. Jud. v. i. the case of Autolycus. p. 255. Plato Legg. i. p. 636. Corruptiom of the (jods not yet fully felt. 871 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 cha- racter of the gods, and the next and later one to break down the credit of their administration of human afTairs, which only became incredible even to the en- lightened part of the community after their moral worthlessness had been fully and long developed. The Homeric poems expose to our view two stand- ards 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 appre- ciate 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 phy- sical, though a comparatively refined, gratification from the savour and the taste"'. 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 »» Vid. II. iv. 48. xxii. 170. xxiv. 69. and 33. B b 2 372 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. you,' says Jupiter ; 'but mind that I shall be at liberty to destroy the cities which you love, when I may be so minded".' ' 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". No Homeric deity ever will be found to make a per- sonal 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 wit- ness 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, inas- much 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 wdiat we see in it is, a false religion in a state of ripeness at one particular point. Now the worship of jNIercury, 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 P. As it stands in Homer, it represents what was then the exception, though it was gradually to become the rule. " II. iv. 39. and seqq. " II. xxi. 461-7. P Od. xxiv. 574. A moral tone occasionally perceptible. 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, ' Mow could I forget Ulysses, who excels others both in his intellect, and in the sacrifices which he offers to the gods?'q 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 liberal- ity in sacrifice, is recognised as fit to be taken into ac- count 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 voa, com- monly 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 "■.' 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 consider- able difference between these two standards : and it is the latter one by which we have now to abide. q Od. i. 65. '■ Od. V. 7. and scqf^. 374 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. The deities of Homer, thus measured, are suscepti- ble 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 dis- position to punish it. 3. But they also observe any excess, or marked con- tinuity, of good fortune in the virtuous man with a kind of envy : as if they coukl not permit the human race, on any conditions, to attain to a prosperity or abundance which should have any semblance of rival- ling 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 thenl^ Prayer appeases them, as well as sacrifice*. They love not perverse deeds like those of the Suitors, but they honour justice and righteous- ness". 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 indi- viduals. 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^. A man who is hardly used may become to his oppressor a Oewv fxi']vifxa, an occasion of divine vengeance. They view iniquity with a sentiment sometimes called by Homer ott/?, an after-regard that remembers and avenges it. For this 6Vf? the wicked do not care^, and such s II. i. 2f8. t II. ix. 49y. y II. xvi. 388. Od. xiv. 82. ^ Od. xiv. 83. XX. 215. xxii. 39. ii. 66, 134. X Od. xvi. 485. iii. 132. Prevalent belief concerniny them. 375 indifference is a chief sign of their depravity. Espe- cially they watch, backed by the 'Epivve^, over wrongs done to the poor^ ; and Jiii)iter interferes by storm and flood to testify his dis])leasure at unrighteous governors, who administer crooked judgments'^ ^.gis- thus is warned and punished by them. It is Minerva who plans the vengeance upon the Suitors'^. At the same time, revenge for affronts is a much more power- ful and common motive with tliem, 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*^. 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'^ And this same ic[^a is perhaps the groundwork of the alter- native destinies of Achilles, either a long life without great glory, or transcendent glory and a short career *". 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 to Oeiov irau eov (pOovepou re kui Tupa-^wueg. In vague and general terms, the gods of Homer are represented as givers of blessings, particularly of ex- 2 Od. xvii. 475. *' J I. vi. 200. a II. xvi. 384-9. e II. ix. 410-16. ^ 0(1. xxiv. 479. ♦ Herod, i. 32, <^ Od. xxiii. 211. 376 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. teiiial goods. Sometimes they are rashly and wildly charged as the authors of calamities §■, 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 wretch- edness and shame ; the other is vicissitude, which oscil- lates incessantly between prosperity and sorrow. And there rankles in the mind of mankind a sentiment, which tells them that the gods, while they thus dis- pense afflictions upon earth which are neither sweet- ened by love, nor elevated by a distinct disciplinary purpose, take care to keep themselves beyond all touch of grief or care^^ : ws yap eireKkuxravTu deol beiXolat jSporolai, ((0€i.v axvvixevoLS' avTol be r' aK-qbies eicTLV. The best thing that can be said for theii;^ainthearted encouragement to virtue is, that the good man is cer- tainly 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 self- ishness. 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 K Od. i. 32. '' 11. xxiv. 525. It lent considerable support to virtue. 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 mar- riage bed from tlic contamination he had himself so often wrought. However, in a very aggravated instance, namely, that of ^^gisthus, his adulterous marriage with Clytemnestra' is noticed explicitly in the Olympian Council, as contributing to the enormity of his ott'ence. But in such a case many other elements, besides that purity, of 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 Pleaven. 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 re- presented in Homer, was inconsistent with respect to his religion, in the sense opposite to that in which in- consistency commonly affects that relation. He had more still remaining in him of ancient and natural mo- rality, 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 cham- pionship of duty, and the avenging of crime upon earth, are not the properties of this or that mythological im- personation, 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. ' Od. i. 37-40. 378 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Saint Augustine observes*^, that some defenders of the Pagan mythology in later times quoted the fell 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 i^neas to Anchises, and of Mars as the father of Romulus : Jilneas 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 vEgisthus with Clytemnestra, corrupted the vdfe of one of their princes. And so Hector is, I think, not quite accurately criticized by Mure^ for failing to find fault with Paris on the ground of adul- tery. 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 k De Civ. Dei, iii. 3. ' Mure's Lit. Greece, vol. i. on the character of Hector, II. iii. 46-57. Their course ivith respect to Troy. 379 the Greeks aim at avenging? Not, we sliall find, the wrong done to Menelaus in his conjugal character, but the sorrows and sullvrings of Helen were evidently the prominent and consj)icuous 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 i)artly 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"'. 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 efffc'minacy of Paris in general with a grave and marked contempt ; but this is rather his own per- sonal 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 circum- stances 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 j)arts of the system which were due to '." II- ii- 355- 380 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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" ; 0% fiCrj eiv ayopfi (r/coAta? Kpiviixn ^e'/Lttoras" 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 Eumaeus 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 ; 7rr&))(oy 8' ovk av tis Ka\eot, Tpv^ovra I avTov ; Who would be such a fool as to invite a beggar ?** 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 ; TTpos yap Aios dcriv airavTes So that, though none would invite them, yet few n II. xvi. 387. ". Od. xvii. 382-7. Bearing of the religion on social ties. 381 would take the responsibility of rejecting tbeir sup- plications for what was needful to supjily 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 mindP; 7/ jY oly v^pKJTai re koX aypioi, ovhe bUatoi, 1)^ (PiXo^etvoi, Kai crcfiLV voos iarl 6€ovbi']s ; 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 farther 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 opj)ression 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; S])ontaneous 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 1> Od. vi. T20. viii. 576. ix. 176. xiii. 202. 382 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. first is accidentally and occasionally exhibited by per- sons, who show a palpable disregard of the second. Side by side with the powerful obligation, of the in- determinate species, which binds man to man in the name of charity or brotherly kindness, stands the cor- responding 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 per- son 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, irre- spective 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 ^»fc» And on political relations. 383 found ill some power which works iu 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, it 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 su})poses, 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 re- quisite influence may be found, and can only be found, in an ajipeal to the Majesty on high, and to the sanc- tions 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 peijurer strips himself of all divine aidi ; ov yap inl \}/(vheaaL Trarrjp Zevs eVorer' apayos, and exposes himself to the most terrible penalties'"; et 8e rt t6)Z^8' kitiopKOV, fjiol Oeoi aXy^a bolev TToAAa juciA', oacra btbovaiv, oTLi ffc/)' aXiTrjTat. opioacras. Under the operation of the oath, the chances, so to speak, are dou))led in favour of the veracity of the witness : first, he may not be wicked enough to for- '1 II. iv. 235. »■ II. xix. 264 384 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 confirm- ation 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, ya/xo?, opKO?, 6e/ui(}, Oeog. 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 hu- man 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 Go- vernor of the universe was, and ever will be, an un- failing 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 rcpente Juit tur- pissimus ; 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 j^rivate life he has transgressed, so the Olympian divinities might have credit as administrators of moral govern- ment, even after they had begun to be charged with instances of immorality. But an unscrujiulous order Moral hcariiu/ of the Ii«ll': e/cffm TreVXao-Tai ttoo? €KTr\>}^iv auOpooTrwv. Or, again, it was, he says% because the name of Tv-^rj, 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 dis- closes 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 vjialvova-ai irep) Bewv So^ai Koi a\t]Oei^ : but the passages, which he cites with this view, are not passages where the deities are repre- sented 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 Oeol peta ^coovre?, the avrol Se r aKijSee^ eiaiv. Stripped of active vice, but yet not adorned with vir- tue, 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 > De Aucl. Poet. 20. z Ibid. 23. 31)2 Ohjmpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. agency among men for the original purpose becomes more and more feeble and equivocal, wliile the human intellect, sharpened by discussion, and puffed up with knowledge, or with the su})position and phantasm of it, becomes more and more exacting : so that the ab- stract 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 worship[)ed by men : and when their case be- comes 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 men- tal ease denies them any prerogative of intervention in human affairs^. The gain of more careful and compre- hensive 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 Nattird Deornm, where that sect is represented by Cotta in the discus- sion 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 equili- brium 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 '■' Lucret. i. 57-62. IlH (/loony view of liuinan destiny. S93 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 tw^o 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*' :' fxi] bri juot OavaTov ye irapavha, (fyaibifx ^Obvcraiv' ^ovXotfu^v K i'JTa.povpo'i iiov 6r}Tevefji(v aAAo) avbpl Trap" dxAr/paj, ^o p.-)] /3tOTOs Ttokvs ftr], rj Ttacnv v^Kveaac KaTa(pdLp.4voLaLif avdaaeiv. 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, ^ Od. xi. 488. 394* Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. and the other Menelaus, who, as his daughter's hus- band, 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*', this favoured mortal had formed on earth. The second passage is one spoken by Jupiter himself. As the commonest epithets used by Homer for (SpoTo), mortals, are SeiXol and oii(vpo), 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 ^ : ov ykv yap tl ttov k(TTiv oCCvpcoTcpov avbpos ■ndvTcov, oaaa re yaiav eTit itveUi re /cat epTrei. Such as we have seen, and so glorious, was the wis- dom, 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 cheer- fulness 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 be- lieved in the deities of whom he speaks so largely. <• II. xxiv. 525. fl II. xvii. 446. Compare Otl. xvii. 129, where aKiSvorepov is substituted. T'he personal belief of Homer. 39^ He may express his own childlike creed ; and such a creed by no means requires for its support in the indi- vidual mind, that it should have been visibly repre- sented 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 repre- sents 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 ea; professo. Both followed the law of their sublime art, 396 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 sub- stance of their religion may have been not very dif- ferent from that of the poor, the maidens, and the children of their day. SECT. VIT. On the traces; of an oriffin abroad for the Oh/mpian Religion. 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 uj)on 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. 4. Latona. 2. Minerva. 5. Diana. 3. Apollo. 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 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric a/je. 4. Of worship introduced to the Greek races within the memory of man. a. Brought in from Phoenicia, or through the chan- nel of the Phoenicians. 1. Hermes, or Mercury. 2. Hephcestus, 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. 'He\«o9, 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 amoufj the Greeks within Homer's lifetime. Themis was probably a pure Hellenic creation, as Vesta seems to have been Pelasgian : the latter ex- hibiting 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 esta- blishes by partial and incidental notices many traces of exterior affinity, not always the less secure and trust- worthy 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 par- ticular 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 The Olr/inpian Goda and the Ethiopians. 399 such a model, any jiresumptive 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 Ethi- opians. They are ajULVjULove? : an epithet Mhich he aj)- pears 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 apjmrently 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", as conceived by him, probably border upon Lycia, and they are on Nep- a II. vi. 184. 400 Ohimpus: the Relujlon of the Hoiiieric a(je. tune's route ^ from the Ethiopian country back to the sea, which, as I hope to show elsewhere, runs ah)no- 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 libe- rality 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 con- ceived of by Homer and the Greeks. 6. At the same time, although they are the farthest men in that direction*^, they are nowhere described as lying at a very great absolute distance. They are simply TrjXoO' eovre^. 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 tra- ditions, 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 extendino; into Persia. The liberality in sacrifice ill accords with the early Persian religion, but finds a pro- bable original in that of the Medes with their order of b Od. V. 282. c Od. i. 23. Tlic Ohjiiipian Gods and the Ethiopians. 401 Magiaiis. But upon the whole, it would seem that Homer must have had a reason for the peculiar pro- minence he has given to these South-eastern Ethiopians, in connection with the gods of Olympus; for the asso- ciation, 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 Idiran 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 sup- posing that the Achseans, as they were immediately an Hellenic, were also primarily, as well as the other Hel- lenes, a Persian race. We have seen the existence of the Persian name in Greece, and its connection, accord- ing 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 Per- sians. 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. Dd 402 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. On the one band, we seem to find here matter con- firmatory 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 refine- ments, and the crude undigested materials as they had l)een 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-geo- graphical 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 mem- bers of it, as well as merely to clothe and embellish them. Yet it a])pears well worth while to refer to the account of the Scythian religion given by Herodotus, Herodotus on the Scythian relUjiou. 408 whose ^vorks form the great depository of knowledge of this kind beyond tlie 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 sever- ance''. From the sign of feeding on milk, the Glacto- phagi and Hippemolgi of II. xiii. 5, 6, would appear to belong to them, and the peaceful habits of the Pelas- gians 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^ were : I, Vesta. 4. Apollo. 2. Jupiter. 5. Celestial Venus 3- Earth, the supposed 6. Hercules. wife of Jupiter. 7. Mars. Even in this very late picture, we find a strong re- semblance to what, from the Homeric text, would appear to have been the primitive cluster of the Pelas- gian divinities. Earth is represented in Demeter, {Vrj fxt'iTfjp,) who appears in II. 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 Avhich came to be repre- sented in the Greek 'A(ppoSiTt]. All the deities, which from Homer's text have appeared to be especially Hel- lenic, are also, it will be observed, absent from this d Mommsen, Eomisclie Geschichtc, vol. I. cli. ii. e Herod, iv. 59. D d 2 404 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. list : Juno, Neptune, Aidoneus, Persephone, Vulcan, and INIercury. But there were among these Scythians a tribe, called the 'Ra Od. xii. 352-65. lis iH'titi(j(s in tlw Oli/iiqjian rcl/'(jiuii. 413 any one avIio reads the inaiily and just speed i of Eiiry- loclius, in wliicli 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 orna- ments 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'". The terrible punishment inflicted was prefigured by extraordinary portents. The empty hides of the ani- mals crawled about", 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 M^e include the element to which the poems do not expressly refer, of the elevated sanctity attaching to the animal itself. The Homeric fiction is**, 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- m Ocl. xii. 339-51- " 394-6. ° 379-8i. 414 Oli/inj)t(s : the Relujion of the Homeric age. tially sacred lives, which might not be taken away, then the offence becomes a moral one of frightful profana- tion, and the vengeance so rigorously exacted is intel- ligible. 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 re- ligion 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, be- traying 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 p. 2. Another instance, confirmatory of the statement of Dollinger 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 *i: avhr\tVTa 8' t6r]K^ 6ea XevKcaXevos "Hpf]- 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 P Od. xii. 377, 405, 415. ^ II. xix. 407. Its vestiges in the Olympian rdigion. 415 and ji'laiices at a man as tlie ordained instrument of doom (416), aAAa ;^>??, who is certainly a moral delinquent ; and the highest honour of the afxvfxwi^ is, that men proclaim him eaOXo? (Od. xix. 329-34). Again, with respect to x^'/owi/ and its opposite Kpelcra-owf 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 compara- tive. Especially the etymology of x^'V'^^' directing us to the word x^'P ^^ i^s root, exhibits force as its most commanding and essential idea. Yet, when the aris- tocracy of Ithaca are called (Od. xxi. 325) ttoXv x^lpove^,- avSpe^, must we not admit that even in this word there inheres a strong moral element ? But as to the words ayaOog and kuko?, the case is far more clear: and here I ask, can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ayaOo? to that which is morally bad ? or the word kuko? to that which is morally good? If it can, cadit qucestio; if it cannot, then we have advanced a considerable way in proving the ethical signification. For it is on all hands admitted, that be- sides their proper sense, ayaQh and kuko?, like our good and bad, have a derivative meaning, in which they are employed to denote what is agreeable, or what is pre- eminent in its kind, and the reverse respectively ; qua- lities 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 uyaOoi, when it comes to border on what is positively bad, and in the case of kukos, 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 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 ill 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 ayaOo? and of kuko^. In one passage there is at first sight some obscurity in the meaning of the latter term, kuko? §' aiSoto^ aXi'irrj^ ^. 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 indis])utably made out from a number of passages, of which I will quote a portion. Although it is true^ that in Homer the word ayuOog very often refers more to the ideas of particular excel- lences and of power, than to that of moral \vorth ; 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^, a/j-cporepov, (Saa-iXev? T ayaOo^ Kparepo? T ai-^fU]Trj II. vi. 162. k II. viii. 360. 1 II. xi. 788. ™ II. ix. 341. n Od. iii. 266. o Od. xxii. 316. P Od. ii. 67. n Od. xiv. 284. f Tl. xxiv. 63. 424 Olympus: the Reliyion of the Homeric aye. 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. Minenva, 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 TreTrvf/xeVo? ai^rjp^ SiKuio?, and the idea is that of relative duty. Again, when she advises him for a while to let the Suitors alone, it is eirel oun i/oijuxoi/eg ovSe SiKaioi^ ; 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, Sikulos can only mean 'pious.' 'Jupiter,' says Nestor, ' ordained calamities for the Greeks on their return, because they were not all either intelligent or righteous" : CTret oijTL vot]fxov€S ovbe biKatoi TTCLVTCS €(TaV. 'Wherefore many of them perished' (he continues) 'through the wrath of Minerva, who set the two Atrida3 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 : SUaio^ 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 s Od. iii. 52. t Od. ii. 282. '< (Jd. iii. 1J2-6. Religion and morals not dissociated. 425 the Greeks of tlie 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 "A^ioi'^ as SiKaioraToi avQpwirow. 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 mytho- logy 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 be- came, therefore, a positive source of corruption. While the Scriptures of the Old Testament rigidly controlled the propensity of man to substitute perfunctory observ- ances 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 anthropo- phuism, 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, ^ II. xiii, 6. 426 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. while they undoubtedly disturb the scale of relative im])ortance 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^ ; T] p oiy v(3pLv b'' VTTobeCa-aTe [xtjvlv. That is veiuea-i?, for the self-judging conscience : alSm, for human opinion : and lastly, fear, in regard to the divine wrath. The existence of the moral standard within a man is 430 OlymfMS : the Religion of the Homeric aye. also, I tliink, very strongly implied in the word ura- a-QaXirj, 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 art] 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 cer- tainly contrary to the general and almost universal rule. The ciTaaOaXlr] is something done v*-ith 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 intro- duction into a moral code of a form of offence con- ceived 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 riohteous. o ness, supplied by the law of our nature, in the repudia- tion of which the universal and consentient voice of mankind has always jDlaced the most awful resi)onsi- bility, 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 Tele- machus 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 Regard for general opinion. 431 more open to the influence of the public senti- ment ^ : 09 p rjhr] viixicriv re /cat atcrxea ttoW av6p(>)-noiv. But upon characters less frivolous and less corrupt, this power acts with great efficacy : so much so, that Phoenix 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 Phoenix with such good effect was, not that he would be j)un- ished by the gods for the offence, but that he would become an offence and scandal among men •' : dAAd Tts aOavaTbiV Trader ev ^dkov, 6s p evl dvpiif hr][xov 6i\Ki. (pdnv, Kal oi^etbea 7i6X)C avdpu>T!o>v, 0)5 p-i] TTarpocjiouos p-er ' A^aioicnv Ka\eoip.7]V. Tlie St'jiuov (pdrt9, or public opinion, weighs even with the matron Penelope among the motives to her virtu- ous and heroic conduct ; and the maid Nausicaa, no less circumspect than artless, finds in the (piifxig aSeuKt]?, the bitter gossip, of Scheria, an apology for desiring Ulysses not to enter the city in her company^ 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 aiSws, with the cognate verb and adjec- tive, in Homer, for proof that the condition of the Greeks of his age was a condition of high civiliza- tion, in that which constitutes its most essential part, namely, that which relates to the affections and pas- sions 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 S II. vi. 349-51. h II. ix. 459-61. i Ocl. vi. 273-7. 432 Olym.'piis : the Religion of the Homeric age. pervading cliaracteristic 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 our- selves 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 apprecia- tion, 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 The force and forms of albco^. 433 standard established by adequate consent and au- thority, and owned, not set up, by the individual con- science; together with a determination that 'self shall be made to conform to it. The (pOopa of this sentiment is what we term false shame : which does evil, or refrains from good, in sub- mission 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 Ho- mer : 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 alSoog in the heroic age are a proof of the large and varied deve- lopment to which it had already attained. How fine a feeling is that according to which, as with Plomer, the bold men are also the shamefaced ones ! as in his line, aiboixevcov 8' avhpS>v nkioves (root ?)e ni^avraL. This line, as it is repeated, seems to have the character of a yvocifxri in the poemsJ. The most marked and frequent use of al^w^ is in the sense of self-respect as applied to military honour and bravery. The words al^w9,' Apyelot, which are employed as an exhortation to fight, constitute one of the Homeric formula?. Homer does not permit this use of the word to the Trojans: but once it is employed for his gallant favourites, the Lycians. (II. 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 ai§w<;, a disgrace, says iEneas, were we to let Troy be taken through our want of manhood. This is a lower signi- fication. And again, as we shall see, the established J II. V. 531. XV. 563. Ff 434 Olynvjj'iis : the RelUjion of the Houwrlc aye. formula of military incitement for the Trojans is differ- ent and less refined'^. Sometimes al^w^ 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 aiSco^ influence you : choose the best man.' Sometimes it is compassion, or ruth ; as when Achilles, before the ransom, is said to show no aiSm towards the body of Hector. But here alSm includes the idea of shame and self-respect. Sometimes it is reverence to- wards a superior, as in Od.xiv.505, and in aiSolo? applied by Helen to Priam in II. iii. 172. In this manner it becomes applicable to the sentiments a man should en- tertain towards the gods, ak\' aibeio Oeovs, 'A)(tAe{;'". 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, alho) Koi f/H\or7jra Terjv jxeToinade ^wAao-acov". It may also be felt towards an inferior among men : Agamemnon is exhorted to feel it towards Chryses", for it is not a personal sentiment, but implies an object, ^ II. vi. 112 et alibi. 1 Od. iii. 96. '» II. xxiv. 503. " Ibid. III. o II. i. 23.377. Other cognate terms. 435 outside the mere person wlio is tlie immediate oocnsion of it. So Achilles is iiitrcated to revere («'AWOa<) Ly- caon, a vanqiiislied and suppliant enemy i\ Sometimes it signifies the constitution of a special relation, over and above the general bond l)etween man and man. A person's alSoIoi are his relations, friends, gnests, and the like. Even so a wanderer is ntc^oio^ to the gods (Od. v. 447). Sometimes it means purely mental modesty, as in Od. viii. 171, o S' aar(paXeo)? ayo- pevei aiSot iuei\i-)(it] ; he speaks with that engaging bashful- ness 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 aiSm kept the goddesses at home (Od. viii. 324). Sometimes, again, simply shyness ; as when Telemachus is exhorted by Minerva to put away a/^o)? in Od. iii. 14; or as in the phrase /ca/co? S' alSoIog aX>/T>/f ; ' 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 representa- tion of Hesiod, who gives it as a characteristic of his iron, or post-Homeric, age, that aaU? along with j't'/xpo-/? had fled from the earth. There are other words, the use of which in Homer approximates occasionally to the sense of alScog. The nearest of them is (re/^a? (as in II. x viii. i 78), with its verb a-e^o/xai ; which, as we have seen, is sometimes applied simply to an internal standard recoonised by the con- P 11. xxi. 74 F t 2 436 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. science. But in II. iv. 242, ov w a-e^eaOe ; seems to be equivalent to ovk aiSeia-Oe; or ' for sliame.' The word vejueiri?, too, is sometimes used in a sense akin to that of alSdo?: as when Neptune exhorts the Greeks, ev cppea-l Oia-Qe eKacrro? alSoci ko.). vefiecriv (II. xiii. 121) : compare vi. 351. Again, in Od. i. 263, ii. 136, xxii.40. But this sentiment is usually halfway between alSoo^ 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, 'vvill prove, we shall find, greatly in favour of the former as to most parts of their morality. AVe have now to touch upon a feature in Greek manners which is unfavourable. With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordi- nary Greek morality was extremely loose : while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshed- ding 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 consi- dered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a pru- dential error, an arh TruKivi]'^, when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for pro- tection 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 ^ II. xxiv, 480. Homicide in the heroic age. 487 wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The reli Od. xxiii. 357. " Od. ix. 59. » Od. viii. 159-64. Mixed view of it in the poems. 445 might appear ; for the Phoenicians, 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 veKvla of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this description avapaioL civSpeg^. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt is mentioned as an act of v^pi9, an outrage deservedly punished by Jupiter'J. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phoenician, embraced kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the Phoenician nurse, who in her turn car- ried off the young Eumseus. 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 Goethe in Faust, Krieg, Handel, und Piraterie Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen. P Od. xxiv. III. 1 Od. xiv. 262. 446 Olympus: the Relit/ ion of the Homeric age. We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a ten- dency 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 Phoenix 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 ''. 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 Phoenix as a warning to Achilles. Bellerophon is ex- pelled from Greece by a family quarrel. iEgisthus himself i9»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 un- bridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion ; and if it is sometimes mistakenly supi)osed to have borne this character, the appearances which })roduce 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 M^orld, how much it might gain from method, order, and reserve. We have ample signs of that regard for temperance, r 11. ii. 6.29, Temperance in the heroic a(je. 447 bodily as well as mental, which Homer united witli his thoroughly convivial spirit. By the mouth of Ulysses, lie 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 ^ 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 t. 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 re- volting than those of Stephano, if not than those of Cali- ban, 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", 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 ex- cess in drink -'^. 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 8 Od. iii. 139. his hero to commit himself gross- t Od. X. 552-60. xi. 61. ly in point of mamiers, under the 1 Od. xxi. 293-304. influence of intoxication. It is X Even Scott, one of the most in Rob Roy (chap, xii.), at Osbal- refined, as well as gi'eatest, among diston House. imaginative wTiters, once allows 448 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. from the speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Aga- memnon to treat his Council to a supper, before proceed- ing to obtain their advice ; and observes to him, that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other pro- vision 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 humoury. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the ban- quet 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 ^. 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 : Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus ^. 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 com- bined 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 l^jghth 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 y II. ix. 69. z Od. iii. 335. « Hor. Ep. i. 19, 6. Self-control in the heroic age. 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 tliis quality not only deYeloi)ed powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses ; it is also stronfflv infused into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which he bears'' the chiding ofAo-amemnon 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 becrinnino; of the Ninth Book, Aoamemnon showed his own faint-heartedness by advising the abandon- ment of the enterprise, then Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon^. 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, M'hen he feels the tide of WTath 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 As- sembly 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- b II. iv. 411-18. c II. ix. 32-49. 450 Oli/mpus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 per- haps 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 diiferent from that em- ployed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the Trojans. He usually says ein S' 'iayov vleg 'A;^at«i/ for the Greeks : for the Trojans it is iwl Se Tpweg KeXd- S}]a-av. Th« Greeks shout forth their energetic ap- proval : 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 ex- treme 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 immo- lation 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, pas- sion never has to do. An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious, Savage ideas occasionally expressed. 451 is suggested by tlie passages in wliicli Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles'^, Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector^ ; and again in which Jupiter '^ 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 wild- est 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 civiliza- tion of tlie 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 ram- parts 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, digitis a inorte remotus Quatiior aut septcm ; 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 princij)le I have endeavoured to describe. So it is with Achilles : and so, too, when the wdse Ulysses, slaughtering the wretched women of his household who had erred, ^ II. xxiv. 212. e ii_ xxii. 345-8. f II. iv. 35. G on 2 452 Olympus : tJie Religion of the Homeric age. seems tinged for once with a flush of barbarism. When ive 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 succes- sive generations of mankind. We have already ^ 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 ene- mies ; 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 Eurylo- chus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before them, between dying on the one side, and the slau2:hter 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?^ has given way, and with respect to which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so succumb. f Acliaeis or Ethnology, sect. x. p. 570. % The awful ' Ugolino' of Dante ends with the line Poscia piu che '1 dolor pote '1 digiuno. I am free to oa\ii that I cannot veiled expressions is the devour- dismiss from my mind the suspi- ing of the wretched children by cion that what the poet means their parent. (Inferno, xxxiii. to convey to us in these darkly 75.) Not unfamiliar to later Greece. 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 can- nibal dicta, abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and that there are no cor- responding acts, we have to observe that the Poet is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connec- tion 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 sup- plied 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. 12,33), Xatpets vjipiQiVd' ets e/x', S navovpy^ av' and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, replies ov yap p.€ yaip^iv xphi ^^ Tijidipovnevriv ; In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he thinks of the principle of exulta- tion 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 pro- vidence, and by their own perverse deeds : for they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whom 454 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. they had to do : ^Yherefore 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 re- bellious 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 eager- ness 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 pre- sent us in his protagonists with a faultlessness w^hich would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived by him and by his age, of life either di- vine 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 vouch- safed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys. And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us ? And Wrath in Ulysses and in Achilles. 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 con- tributed 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 re- bellious subjects^. And though he never exhibits them s Oil. xxiv. 526, 37. 456 Olt/nijms : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 Agamem- non, who on his circuit accuses him of remissness in military duty'' ; and secondly to the OufxaSaKr]? /mvOog of Euryalus^ who has taken him for a TrptjKTrtp or mer- chant, 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 cha- racter of the person who is the object of it, as for in- stance, the great Ulysses*^, or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built the ships of Paris'. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascala- l^lius, in Venus about ^neas ; and these two last are h II. iv. 350. ' Od. viii. 185^ 162. ^ Qd. iii. 221. ^ II. v. 59, The Domestic affections. 457 tlie two deities whose ethical anrl intellectual standard is the loM'Cst of all™. When we come down to earth, wc find the senti- ment strong everywhere. Among the Trojan royal family, where there Js 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 ;?7r/o(^cojOo?". Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she could devour the conqueror^. Ulysses chooses for the title by which he would be known that of the Father of Telemachusi\ It is true indeed that, tlien as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself felt ; and it was then more in- genuously 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'. 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 jHit 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 ^woj/ eixy\n)-)(ov. 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 op- ]>ression, and of suffering in connection with it, or of any i)enal system directed to its maintenance, we have no trace whatever. Marriage was the honourable and y Oil. xii. 327-5 1. Points of superiority in the former. 473 single tie between man and liis helpmate'. Connections with verv near relations were regarded with horror; the wife was the representative, the intelligent com])anion and friend, of her husband ; adultery was held in aver- sion, a crime rarer then than in most after-periods : and the sacred bond between husband and wife was not h'able 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 })hilosophy 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 re- pelled 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 cor- ruption. True, sacrifice was regarded as the indispen- sable and eflective basis of religion : but in general, as between Greek and Greek, those who were most care- ful of virtue were also most regular in their oiFerings. Men were*bel levers in prayer : they thought that, if in need they humbly betook themselves to supplica- tion, they would be heard and helped. In short, they kept their hold upon a higher power, which we ^ On this and the kindred jioints, see inf. sect, ix. 474 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric a]V , (2) rov 8' iKTave voaTi]aai'Ta. The law of marriage differs from most other human laws in a very important particular. It is their excel- lence to impose the minimum of restraint, v»'hich will satisfy the absolute Avants of society : but the aim and the criterion of a good law of marriage is to impose the macvimwn of restraint that human nature can be induced bond fide to accept. Doubtless there is here also a conceivable excess : but it would be and has been indicated by the general withholdiiig 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 dis- solved. And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative : a Od. i. 36, Marriage ahvays single. 483 4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand within certain near degrees of rela- tionship. 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, thougli 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 con- tract 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 i)lace 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 I i 2 484 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. put it about that she is going to 'be married to him. They will say, ' Who is this tall and handsome stranger with Nausicaa V^ 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 PhaBacian 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 in- dignant 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 au- thority 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 ex- pression of giving away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used*^, 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'^ 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 b Od. vi. 275-88. vi. 191. Od. vii. 311. iv. 6. I!, xi. 296. xix. 29. ix. 141. '^ II. ix. 394. Od. iv. 10. Freedom of the woman. 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, contem- l)late 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*'. 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 ascer- tained. On the other hand, the pressure is a moral one : her violent removal is never thought of; and the ab- solute 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 endea- voured to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses, speak favourably of the free con- dition 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 : lience^ the beautiful expression, OaXepcx; yd/iio?, Od. vi. 66, XX. 74. It even marks of itself the age of persons ; e II. xviii. 567, 593, and xxii. f Friedreich, Realien, §.57. 126. p. 200. 486 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. Alcinoiis lias five sons, three iYiBeoi, and two oTrwoi're?, (Od. vi. 6^) : three youths or bacheloi*s, 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^. 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'\ The poems give us several instances where personal gifts and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a wife^ The drawing of the Bow affords a conspi- cuous 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 w^oman*^. 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 power- ful 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 j)oems furnish us with scanty evidence. There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The expression Saivwai yd/i/.ov, 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 g Od. ii. 132. b Od. viii. 329. i Od. xi. 287. xiv. 210. II. xiii. 363. ^ Friedreich, Healien, c. III. ii. p. 204. Perpetuity of the tie of marriage. 487 more baiKiuet that created the conjugal relation : it was doubtless the af/.cpdSio9 yuiu.09, 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 mar- ried 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 w^hich, if under any, the dissolution of the bond would have been acknowledged. In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus, his KovpiSltj a.\o)(^o9, 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^, Mene- laus, too, is described as her former husband ^ Whether k II. iii. 427. xxiv. 763. we ai'e never told that he was ' II. iii. 140. Of Deiphobus, Helen's liushand : and he could 488 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 acknow- ledged the reciprocal obligations. Nay, Hector him- self seems to describe Helen as still the wife of Mene- laus ; yuoltjg ^' o'lov (pioro? ^X'^'^^ OaXepijv TrapaKoiTiv^. 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 l">ain, 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". 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 JMenelaus. 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 only for a very short time have horse, Deiphobus followed her. had possession of her. The only Od. iv. 276. trace of the connection is that, "^ II. iii. 53. when Helen went down to the ^ II. iv. 169-75. Perpetuity of the tie of marriage. 489 the wife of Ulysses in his lifetime". But it is not less ]ilain 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 demonstra- tive evidence of the death of the original husband or Avife respectively. Probably, however, no period of the Avorld 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 neces- sity of making a new choice ; and, thus directed by her own conscience and right feeling, likewise appre- hends condemnation by the public judgment in the event of her proceeding to contract a new engagementP. 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 dis- cipline to the human character. 4. A further proof of the elevated estimate of mar- riage 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 o Od. xxii. 38. P Od. xvi. 75. 490 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. respect, as in others, from all restraint. Eris, or Enuoi, was both tlie sister and the concubine of Mars : Juno, the sister and the wife of Jupiter, y^olus^ though called ^/Ao? aQavaroiG-i Oeoia-iv, 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 loosed 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 aiSoiai a\o)(Oi, of his six SOUS*. 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 Phoenix pro- bably 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 Phoenix 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 daugh- ter of his elder brother Rhexenor^. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was apparently also his niece '^. 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,%vas married to a dauci'hter of Adrastus : and J^^ofialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called ' A(\o}]a-rLP>], was probably his aunt likewise^'. q II. iv. 441. >■ Od. X. 2. s Od. X. 20. t Od. X. 7. " Od. vii. 6^, 6. ^ See Aehasis, sect. ix. Od. xi. 235-7. y II. iy. 121. Greek ideas of incest. 491 Wc liavc also among the Trojans an example of a man's marriage \\'\i\\ his aunt. Iphidamas, son of An- tenor'^, was brought up in the house of Cisses his mater- nal 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 pro- gressive 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 jiassage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting the ixcya epyov of ffidipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them^ 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 re- markable 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 fu- ture 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 M'ife 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. z II. xi. 320-6. a 0(]. xi. 271-80. 492 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric age. That these terms were not merely formal and ceremo- nious, we may judge from the speech of Alcinous : r] Ti? TOL KoX irrjos aTTe(p6tT0 IXiodi irpo icrOXos ecbi', yaiJi^po'i ?) irevdepos, otre ixakicrTa K7]8toTot T^Xi6ov(n, p.eO^ aljua re koL yh'os avTwv^^. Now of these words we have the following ; 7rj;of, for any relative by affinity ; eKvpo9, TrevOepog, father-in-law ; €Kvpri, mother-in-law ; Sahp, brother-in-law ; ya\ou)9, sister-in-law; 7a/>ij8|0o?, son-in-law; VV09, daughter-in-law ; jULtjrpvi}], stepmother ; or the lawful wife, in relation to a spurious son. There is but one real example, Eeriboea, of a stepmother in Homer (II. v. 389). And, lastly, we have elvaTeip, husband's sister-in- law, a relationship not expressed by any word in the English and many other languages. The elva-repe^ are always separate from the yaXou). 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"^ truly observes, that the law of incest, in- stead 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 ^ Otl. viii. 581-3. c Realien, c. III. ii. Fidelity in married life. 493 was this great obligation practically observed in tlio 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'', and progressive con- tamination, 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 ven- geance upon the Suitors. Of the TraXXa/cJ?, we hear but twice in the poems ; nor can we say that this word meant more than a concubine'^. 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 ex- pression'' : TtapOevos alboCrj, VTrepco'Cov eiaavajSaaa. 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®. Nestor *^ 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- ^ Od. xxii. 37, KarevvdCecrde ^ II. ii. 514, cf. xvi. 184. jStai'wj. e II. xvi. 175. c II. ix. 449. Od, xiv. 303. f Od. xi. 254. 494 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. penthes, was born ta 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 nikv- yero^i 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 pro- bable 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^, when war had both excited passion, and provided opportunities and victims for its gratifi- cation^'. Setting these cases aside, the cases of illegi- timacy in heroic Greece appear to be rare. At the same time, instances are found ^ 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 fxt]- Tpvu], or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case of Pedasus, it was Theano, Antenof s wife, who herself educated the bastard : but it is plain that in Troas con- cubinage 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 S II. ii. 658-60. ^ Acliseis, or Ethnology, Sect, ix. p. 534. i 11. V. 69-71. Od. xiv, 203. Fidelity in married life. 495 partner of his bed, by no means treats this concubinage as being M'liat it woiihl have been with Priam, a matter of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring her to his wife Clytemncstra\ In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by the use of the word yepa?, 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 Athengeus, forms an exception's This circumstance af- fords 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 v/here 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 II. ix. 128 were concubines. Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede* for the companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment in a peculiar degree. He calls her his a\oj(ov dv[xapea^^. It is said that the word a\oj(og may mean a concubine". I do not find any passage in Homer, except this of II. ix., where it may * II. i. 112. that aXoxoi must mean wives of ^ Atlien. xiii. 3. on ov8afjLa>s the Sairv/ioyes. In Od. ix. 115, TTjs 'iXiddos "OfjLTjpos enoiTjo-e Mtve- I find no reason for departing Xaw avyKOiiMofifvrju TraXXciKi'Sa, ttckti fi'oin the plain meaning of loives. 80VS yvvaiKas. It would be giving too much 1 Ih ix. 664. credit to the Cyclopes for civili- ™ Ibid. 336. zation, were we to suppose that ^ Danim, Liddell and Scott, they x-ecognised a distinction be- In Od. iv. 623, Nitzsch considers tAveen Anfc and concubine. 496 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. not with the most obvious propriety be translated 'wife.' It has its highest force, no doubt, in such expressions as fA.v}](TTr] a\o)(o? and KoupiSu] a\o)(o? : even as we say in- tensively ' wedded wife.' But the term is the standing phrase for wife, as much as TCKva 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 concu- bines. 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": ?/ [xovvoi (piX^ova a\6)(^ovs ixepoiroiV avOpaircav 'ArpelbaL ; But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure, observe, that the whole argument of this pas- sage 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 com- l^arison with the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife to the name aXo^^^o?. Probably the explanation may be, that she was de- signated 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- II. ix. 340. Mode itj covtrdcfliKj niai'riaf/e. 497 nionial of marriage, sliould be celebrated on tlieir re- turn to PhtliJai'. I should therefore sup])Ose that we might with strict justice render aXoxo in 11. 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 ^, 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 cir- cumstances, 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 con- nections were single, the mildest and least licentious of all the forms in which the obligations of the marriage tie could be relaxed. P II. xix. 295-9. 1 II. ix. 395-7. K k 498 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. 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 disparag- ing word iraWaKh (whence the Latin pellecv) 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 iraXKaich, but (which he mentions as a departure from the general rule) regarded by his father as much as were his legitimate children ^ The other is the instance of Phoenix 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 Phoenix to cross or anticipate his father^ and win the woman to his own embraces ^ 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 be- came a fugitive instead. This legend is somewhat obscure ; but it appears to indicate plainly that concu- binao'e was not a recoo-nised institution amono^ the Greeks, as it seems to have been among the Trojans. So again, when Laertes had purchased Euryclea ^, 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 i)recinct of the Greek marriages, which was secured and fenced in the manner we have seen, ■' Od. xiv. 1 99—204. s The expression is TrdXKaKidi Tvpojiiyrivai. t II. ix. 447, and seqq. ^ Od. i. 433. Dignity of conjiKial iiiainier.'^. 400 there prevailed that tenderness, freedom, and elevation of manners, which was the natnral offspring of a system in tlie main so sound and strict. The oencral 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 ad- justed according to the j)osition of the giver and the receiver, prevails on either side. I will venture to add, it is full also of delicacy, tliough 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 ex- pression that characterized an artless age''. With this delicacy was combined a not less remark- able freedom in the Greek manners with respect to women. We find Penelope appearing in her ])alace at will, on all ordinary occasions, before the Suitors; al- though, 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 un- attended. 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 maimer in which he is to enter the city apart from her, and her regard in this ^ See Friedreich, Realien, c. ii. §. 56. pp. 196-200, where this subject in excellently treated. K k 2 500 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. matter to opinion, both rest upon the same presumption of her freedom from petty control, as does her playful demand upon Ulysses for 'C^omypta, 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 y. It is not only from this or that particular, but it is from the whole tone of the intercourse maintained be- tween 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^ 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 conclu- sions; 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 dif- ferences in the nature and constitution of the two great y Od. vii. 298, 307. z Tl. ix. 341. Social position of the wife. .'jOI divisions of the race, to be met by aclaj)tati(>i)s of treat- ment 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 Andro- mache 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 ad- dress 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 anti- cipating that Andromache might be required to per- form menial offices for a Greek mistress, and Nestor encouraging the army not to (juit Troy until they had forced the Trojan matrons into their embraces, Me are 50^ Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. struck with pity and horror. But we must separate between the danger and suffering wliich 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 thenr' : of course the purchasers put them to menial employments. Not only so, but EumiiHis, the faithful swineherd and slave of Ulysses, was by birth royal : his father Ctesios was king of two wealthy and happy cities'^. From the name Yivpvixe- Sovaa, it would appear probable that she also, the chamber-woman of the palace of Alcinous, though a captive, was of noble birth '^. 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 Ithacau 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 }>arty 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 admit- ting the superior beauty of Calyj)so as an Immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is })ining a II. xxi. 40. '^ Ofl. XV. 413. c Od. vii. 8. Force of conjiujal attachments. 503 every day for Penelope*^. Tt is the highest honour of a hero to die fitrhtins" on behalf of his wife and children. The continuance of domestic happiness, and the con- cord of man and wife, is a blessing so great, that it ex- cites the envy of the gods, and they interrupt it by some adverse dispensation t^. And no wonder; for no- thing 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*". There is here apparently involved that great and characteristic idea of the conjugal rela- tion, 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, ' IJector, nay but thou art for me a father, and a mother, and a brother, as well as the husband of my youtl^ ^.' 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^^ With the pictures which we thus find largely scat- tered 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 ter- magants, the incarnate fiends, of the later legends. ^ Od. V. 215. Fatri ; conjugi suo, ivio Fratri ; ^ Od. xxiii. 210. ancilla sua, inib Jilia : ipsius f Od. vi. 180-5. uxor, imh soror ; Ahadardo, He- ? II. vi. 429, 30. Compare Joissa. Abpel. 0pp. the following : Domino suo, irtio '> II. vi. 450-7. 504 Olympus: the Belujioii of the Homeric age. Nay, the woman of Homer never dreams of using vio- lence, 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 ^^ : (OS ovK alvoTepov Kat Kvvrepov aWo yvvaiKos, ■fJTLs br] TOiavra [xeTo. (^p^mv ^pya ^aXr]TaL. For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it become more shameful and degraded when, by a total suj)pression of its better instincts, it has been oiven over to wickedness. o 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' 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 vtickedness, too, is wholly derivative, .^gisthus corrupts her by a long 'i Od. xi. 427. ' Od. xxii. 37. Woinan-c/iaracters of Homer. 505 course of effort, for, as Homer informs us, she had been a right-minded person ; (ppecri yap Ke-)(^pt]T ayuOijaiK On the one side we have only to place her and the saucy slut Melantho ; on the other, we have Andro- mache, Hecuba, and Briseis in tlie 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 care- fully 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 tho- roughly understand one another. Again, the Homeric man, even the Homeric good man, is sometimes the sub- ject 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 uni- formity 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, i Otl. iii. 266. 506 Olymjnis : the Reliyion of the Homeric age. which they ])erform without fault, is to love and to min- ister, and their reward to lean on those v/hom 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 rela- tion 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 JNJinerva, Neptune and Apollo ; and of all these, I think, we must consider JNIinerva to have stood first in his estimation. This arrangement could not but har- monize with, while it also serves to measure, his ideas of the earthly place and character of M'oman. 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 occu|iations. Women were admitted to .sot'et'ei'jnti/. 507 Among- nations wliere war, homicide, and ])iracy so extensively j)revailed, it is certainly deserving of pecu- liar consideration, that we should h'nd any traces of the exercise of sovereignty by a woman. There are how- ever 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 (Saa-lXevei'^ . It im- plies more than being the mere M'ife 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 ])ower. It is the only instance in the Iliad, where we have any word, that has ^acriXev<; for its basis, applied to a woman. 2. The common tradition is, that Jason acquired pos- session 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 notwith- standing 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 prac- tice, is in this case named as well as the father, raises a presumption that it is because she had reigned in the island '. 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 lasid, giving large presents to obtain her hand'". The text proceeds, 7/ 8e rivKov ftacTiAeve, t^k^v 8e ol ayXaa T€Kva. k II. vi. 425. 1 11. vii. 468, 9. '" Od. xi. 254-7, 281-5. 508 Olympus: the Religion of the Homeric aye. 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. Tile 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 pre- caution to provide her with a trustworthy counsellor in the person of his Bard". As it was by inveigling Cly- temnestra that iEigisthus obtained the sovereign power, she must evidently have been its depository. In like manner it would apj)ear, that Penelope was left in charge of Telemachus by Ulysses when he went to Troy, and that JNIentor 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". But it is plain that Penelope had the indoor management ; since Telemachus speaks of the mode in which she regulated the reception of strangersP, and we hear of her rule in other matters'!. Here we see openings for the natural formation of the word ^aa-lXia-cra, 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- n Od. iii. 263-8. <» Od. ii. 225-7. V Od. XX. 129-33. coinp. xix. 317. sqcj. > Od. x. 361. ' See Pope on Od. iii. 464-8. L I 514 Olympus : the Religion of the Homeric age. of Homer and his age. Pains liave also been taken in their defence^'. 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'. What is wanted appears to me not to be de- fence, 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 ex- tremity of shameful punishment", and when even in circumstances of the utmost necessity Ulysses exhibited so much care to avoid anything of the kind", it is almost of itself incredible that habitually, among per- sons 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 thefe is no case of ablution thus performed in the Iliad. But this ai>pears 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 Xoixa and xp'^'^ '• f*^^* ^^'® k Nagelsbach, Horn. Theol. v. 34. ' Eustath. in loc. 1477. m II. ii. 260-4. " Od. vi. 126-8. E.rplnnationft of the prei^nmed difficult i/. 515 second (BaWw, with tlic names of the proper vestments atUled (Ofl. iii.467) ; afj.(}}l bi }xiv (papo^ hpS)V ovra K>]?>e Heculja, 817. Briseis his wife, and who had no ^ l]^[c\. 44. cf. ver. 358. other, has been already discussed. '^ Ibid. 724. Subsequent declension of the 'place