Note (return) — Chapter IV

But in spite of all this mythological obscuration, the belief in one Supreme God is here and there most clearly recognizable. "That Zeus was originally to the Greeks the Supreme God, the true God--nay, at some time their only God--can be perceived in spite of the haze which mythology has raised around his name." 165 True, they sometimes used the word "Zeus" in a physical sense to denote the deep expanse of heaven, and sometimes in a historic sense, to designate a hero or deified man said to have been born in Crete. It is also true that the Homeric Zeus is full of contradictions. He is "all-seeing," yet he is cheated; he is "omnipotent," yet he is defied; he is "eternal," yet he has a father; he is "just," yet he is guilty of crime. Now, as Müller very justly remarks, these contradictions may teach us a lesson. If all the conceptions of Zeus had sprung from one origin, these contradictions could not have existed. If Zeus had simply and only meant the Supreme God, he could not have been the son of Kronos (Time). If, on the other hand, Zeus had been a mere mythological personage, as Eos, the dawn, and Helios, the sun, he could never have been addressed as he is addressed in the famous prayer of Achilles (Iliad, bk. xxi.). 166