SECT. II. The traditive Element of the Homeric Theo-mythology.

The earliest Scriptural narrative presents to our view, with considerable distinctness, three main objects. These are, respectively, God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One. Nor do we pass even through the Book of Genesis without finding, that it shadows forth some mysterious combination of Unity with Trinity in the Divine Nature.

From the general expectation which prevailed in the East at the period of the Advent, and from the prophecies collected and carefully preserved in Rome under the name of the Sibylline books, we are at once led to presume, that the knowledge of the early promise of a Deliverer had not been confined to the Jewish nation. Their exclusive character, and that of their religion; their small significance in the political system and intellectual movement of the world; and the false as well as imperfect notions which seem to have prevailed elsewhere respecting them and their law[34]; all make it highly improbable that these expectations and predictions should have been drawn from them and their sacred books exclusively. Further, Holy Scripture distinctly exhibits to us the existence of channels of traditional knowledge severed from theirs. Thus much we learn particularly from the cases of Job, who was a prophet and servant of God, though he lived in a country where idolatry was practised[35]; and of Balaam, who, not being an Israelite, nor an upright man, was nevertheless a prophet also. Our Lord, in his answer respecting God as the God of Abraham[36], points to a great article of belief, not expressly propounded in the Mosaic books. And again, there are traditions adopted in the New Testament by apostolic authority, which prove to us that there were some fragments at least of early tradition remaining, even at a late date, among the Jews themselves, over and above what had been committed to writing in the older Scriptures. Such are those given by St. Jude respecting Balaam himself, the body of Moses, and the prophecy of Enoch[37]. Such is the record mentioned by St. Paul[38] of Jannes and Jambres, who are believed to have been the chief magicians of Pharaoh, referred to in Exodus, c. vii: and whose names are mentioned by Pliny, and, according to Eusebius, by Numenius the Philosopher[39]. But it is not necessary, and it might not be safe, to make any large assumption respecting a traditional knowledge of any parts of early revelation beyond what Scripture actually contains.

Dwelling therefore on what may be gathered from the Sacred Volume, we have seen that at the very earliest date it has set before men the ideas of God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One, and that it has spoken concerning God as in some sense Three in One. When we take the whole of the older Sacred Records into view, we may add some particulars respecting the other two great objects.

Messianic traditions of Scripture.

And first, as to the Deliverer of man. The Redeemer promised was to be human, for He was to be of human birth. As death was the type of the primeval curse, so it was from death that He was to deliver. Again, the woman became a portion of the prophecy, for He was to be the seed of the woman: and while He is thus plainly indicated to us as incarnate, He is, on the other hand, mysteriously identified with the Λόγος, the Divine Word or Wisdom, existing before the world and the race with which He was to be numbered, and invested with the attributes of supreme Deity. Although from a certain period the Wisdom and the Deliverer appear to stand visibly identified, yet the earliest forms of the traditions, as they stand in Holy Writ, are, to a certain extent, ideally separate or separable; and the personality of the former is less clearly, or at least less sharply, marked than that of the latter.

It was always the prevailing tendency of the speculative religions of the East to withdraw the Supreme Being from direct relations with the world, and to assign its ordinary government to the Wisdom, more or less directly impersonated. ‘This,’ says Dean Milman, ‘was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus: it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism: it was pure Platonism: it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian School[40].’

Neither were the traditions of the Evil One, more than those respecting the Messiah, limited to a single aspect. On the contrary, they were twofold, and they centred round two ideas: the one, that of force; the other that of fraud: the one, that of a rebellious spirit, whom the Almighty had cast down, with his abettors, from bliss to torment[41]; and the other, that of a deceiver, who lured man by the promise of what he desired, and through the medium of his own free will, away from duty, to his own harm or destruction.

Sum of the primitive traditions.

We may venture rudely to sum up these principal traditions of the first ages as follows:

First, with respect to the Deity.

1. The Unity and supremacy of the Godhead.

2. A combination with this Unity of a Trinity, in which Trinity the several Persons, in whatever way their personality be understood, and whatever distinctions may obtain between them, are in some way of coequal honour.

Secondly, with respect to the Redeemer, or Messiah.

1. A Redeemer from the curse of death, invested with full humanity, by whom the divine kingdom was to be vindicated and reestablished, in despite of its enemies.

2. A Wisdom, which is personal as well as divine, the highest and first in order, concerned in the foundation and continuing government of the world[42]. This is the Wisdom which ‘the Lord possessed from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was[43].’ ‘I Wisdom dwell with prudence; and find out knowledge of witty inventions[44].’ ‘This is with all flesh according to his gift: and he hath given her to them that love him[45].’

3. The connection of the Redeemer with our race through his descent from the woman.

Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.

1. A rebellion of great angels or powers against the Supreme Being; the defeat of the rebels, and their being cast into the abyss.

2. The going forth among men of a power who tempts them to their destruction.

A tradition of minor moment, but clearly declared in the earliest Scripture, may be added: namely,

The announcement of the rainbow, as a token which was to convey an assurance or covenant from God to man, with respect to the annual order of nature; an order on which the continuance of the human race depends.

It is impossible to survey these traditions, in their outline, without seeing how easy it was to find a way from them, by the aid of ideas on which they seemed to border, and which they brought within easy reach of wayward thought, towards the principal corruptions of heathenism. They shadow forth, as they stand, the great dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation: but from the doctrine of the Trinity, thus shadowed forth, the next step might be into polytheism; while in the doctrine of the Incarnation, similarly projected, seemed to be laid the foundation of the Greek anthropomorphism, or the reflection of humanity upon the supernatural world. Abstract truth has not been found sufficient to sustain itself among mankind: and in the dispensations of the All-Wise the promulgation of it has always been associated with the establishment of a teaching organ, which should bear living witness to its authority.

Let us now observe how these traditions severally find their imperfect and deranged counterparts in the heroic age of Greece.

First, as to the Godhead.

Its unity and supremacy is represented in Jupiter, as the administrator of sovereign power.

The combination of Trinity with Unity is reproduced in the three Kronid brothers, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto or Aidoneus; all born of the same parents, and having different regions of the material creation severally assigned to them by lot.

Next as to the Redeemer.

The first form of this tradition is represented chiefly in Apollo. But neither the various attributes which were conceived as belonging to the Deliverer, nor the twofold manifestation of his character as it appears in Holy Writ, could, we must conclude, be held in combination by the heathen mind. The character, therefore, underwent a marked disintegration by severance into distinct parts: and while it continues, in the main, to form the groundwork of the Homeric Apollo, certain of its qualities are apparently transferred to his sister Diana, and others of them are, as it were, repeated in her.

The second form of the tradition is that of the Wisdom, or Λόγος, of the Gospel of Saint John; and this appears to be represented in the sublime Minerva of the Homeric system.

Lastly, Latona, the mother of the twin deities, Apollo and Diana, appears to represent the tradition of the woman, from whom the Deliverer was to descend.

Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.

As the derivative idea of sin depended upon that of goodness, and as the shadow ceases to be visible when the object shadowed has become more dim, we might well expect that the contraction and obscuration of the true idea of goodness would bring about a more than proportionate loss of knowledge concerning the true nature of evil. The impersonation of evil could only be upheld in a lively or effectual manner, as the opposite of the impersonation of good: and when the moral standard of godhead had so greatly degenerated, as we find to be the case even in the works of Homer, the negation of that standard could not but cease to be either interesting or intelligible.

Traditions of the Evil One in Homer.

Accordingly we find that the process of disintegration, followed by that of arbitrary reassortment and combination of elements, had proceeded to a more advanced stage with respect to the tradition of the Evil One, than in the other cases.

The general form of the disintegration is this: that the idea of a rebellion, menacing the divine dominion with violence, is now clothed in a variety of detached and more or less conflicting forms: while the far more subtle idea of an influence acting immediately on the spirit of man, and aiming a blow at the glory of the Deity through his creatures, whose allegiance it seeks by the perversion of their own spontaneous agency to withdraw, remains in Homer, still indeed both visible and single, but enfeebled and obscured to such a degree, that it, as it were, stands on tiptoe, ready for its final flight from the sphere of the common perceptions of mankind.

The first, the idea of evil acting by violence, is represented, not indeed exclusively, but most conspicuously, in the Titans and Giants.

The second, or the idea of evil acting by deceit, is represented in the Ἄτη of Homer.

Lastly: the rainbow of Holy Scripture is represented 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.

Varying degrees of the traditive character.

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 particular, 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 treated as a class, subject to the same laws; and variations, 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 properties which distinguish the Homeric Immortals in common 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 different 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 tradition by supposing the existence of three deities, who were united by the bond of brotherhood, and of whom each had an important portion of the universe assigned to his immediate superintendence. But for the assignment 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 conception which the Greeks derived from elsewhere 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 provinces 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 conjunction with that class that I propose to consider them.

Again, Jupiter does not fully represent any one specific tradition: but he assembles irregularly around him the fragments of such traditions as belonged to the relation between men and the One Ruler of the universe. On the one hand he is in competition 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 this view. The traditive part of the materials is not separated by a broad and direct line from the inventive; nor has it been lodged without 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 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 personage 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 imperfect; 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 commence the inquiry with those deities in whom the propositions I maintain are best represented: for the present putting aside others, in whom the representation 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 depraved forms of human fable; thirdly, as themselves powerful inventors, working upon and adding to both 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.

Messianic traditions of the Hebrews.

There is, however, one source to which we may legitimately repair, as next in authority to the Holy Scriptures themselves with respect to the forms of primitive 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 development, and the initial tendencies to deviation.

Since that nation became unhappily committed, through its chief traditional authorities, to the repudiation of the Redeemer, a sinister bias has operated upon its retrospective, as well as upon its present and prospective theology. There are nevertheless three depositaries of knowledge from which we may hope to learn what were the views, entertained by the ancient Hebrews themselves, with regard to the all-absorbing subject 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 exposition, 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 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 Paraphrases or Targumim: and the fragments of the oldest of them, which had consisted of marginal notes, were consolidated into a continuous Targum by Onkelos, Jonathan, and others[46].

Apart from the Targumim, the sacred literature of the Jews appears, from the time of the captivity onwards, 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 traditionary 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 Talmud, which purported in part to comment on the Mischna, and which also presented a more extensive and more promiscuous collection of Rabbinical traditions. In the midst of the ordure of this work, says Schöttgen, are to be found here and there certain pearls[47].

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 Schöttgen that Simeon was himself a Christian; although, perhaps from not being understood, he was not repudiated by the Jews[48]. Upon this work was founded the Cabbalistic or mystical learning.

From these sources may be derived many Messianic ideas and interpretations that were current among the ancient Jews.

Of them I proceed to extract some, from the work of Schöttgen, 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[49].

2. Next, that introduction of the female principle into the sphere of deity, which the Greeks seem to have adopted, after their anthropophuistic 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 personified in the feminine, we regard this only as a mode of speech, though as one evidently tending to account for the sex of Minerva. But the Jewish traditions went far beyond this[50]. The two natures of our Lord would appear from the Sohar to have been distinguished under the figure of mother and daughter. The Schechina, or ‘glory 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; temporibus futuris omnes hostes tradentur in manus Matronæ, as Schöttgen renders the Sohar[51].

The Λόγος, 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[52].

4. The ideas of sonship and primogeniture[53] are likewise recognised among the titles of the Messiah, 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 represent these characteristics.

5. The Lord of Hosts, or Zebaoth[54], 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 Light[55]. This property is in immediate connection with the idea of the Λόγος. It cannot fail to be observed, how vividly such an idea is represented in the ancient name Φοῖβος attaching to Apollo, and probably also in that of Λυκηγένης or ‘light-born.’ The same idea appears in the characteristic epithet Γλαυκῶπις, as it is now rightly interpreted, for Minerva. This indeed is not merely an epithet, but it forms one of her titles: as in Il. viii. 406.

7. Again, the name Metatron[56] is one of those properly applied to the Messiah by the Jews. It is supposed to have denoted originally the sense of the Latin word metator, as having reference to the guiding of the Israelites through the desert, and the marking or measuring out of their camps there. But it appears to have acquired afterwards the sense of Mediator, as implying that the Messiah was the organ, through whom the counsels of the Most High God took effect upon man.

8. The performance of miracles was to be a peculiar mark of the Messiah[57].

9. Another was the conquest he was to achieve over Satan, and the liberation of the dead from the grave and from the power of hell[58].

With these great gifts and powers was associated an assemblage of the most winning and endearing moral qualities. ‘The Schechina (or Messiah) is the image of God; as He is gentle, so is She: as He is gracious, so is She: as He is mighty, so is She mistress over all nations: He is truth, She is faith: He the prophet, She the prophetess: He the just, She the just: He the king, She the queen: He wise, She wisdom: He intelligent, She His intelligence: He the crown, She the diadem[59].’

The central idea of these old traditions, as we conceive it, and as it stands apart from simple theism, was that of redemption by means of a person clothed in the attributions of humanity, but also invested with the nature and powers of Godhead. Of these two sides of the tradition, one was exhibited in the Word or Wisdom of God, and the other in the Seed of the woman. The first is appropriated to Minerva, and the second in the main to Apollo. But as the divine and human could not in the tradition long continue completely harmonized and united, so neither are they wholly severed. The Wisdom assumes a human configuration: the Seed of the woman does not cease to be divine. Now Pallas and Apollo preserve, relatively to one another, the place of their prototypes in these two cardinal respects. As the tradition of the Λόγος was more immediately divine, so Pallas is more copiously invested with the higher powers, prerogatives, and offices of deity. On the other hand, as the deliverance was to be wrought out by the immediate agency of the Seed of the woman, so Apollo is more human, and is invested with the larger and more varied assemblage of active endowments, appertaining to the health, welfare, safety, purification, and chastisement of mankind. And one main reason of the anthropomorphous character of the Greek mythology as a whole may very probably be found in the fact, that it was an old and a pure tradition which first gave to men the idea of God in human form; the idea which, when once more purified, became that of Emmanuel, God with us[60].

The personages of the Homeric Theo-mythology who might most reasonably be distinguished as having their basis in tradition are:

1. Jupiter.

2. Minerva.

3. Apollo.

4. Diana.

5. Latona.

6. Iris.

7. The Titans and kindred traditions.

8. Ἄτη, the Temptress.

Of these, Jupiter is so mixed a conception, and has such important relations to the whole genesis of the Greek mythology, that I place him in another class, and postpone the attempt to give a view of his person and offices until we have gone through the deities, in whom the traditional element is less disguised and also less contaminated.

Minerva and Apollo the key.

And of these I commence with Minerva and Apollo, not only because they are the most dignified, but also as they are the most characteristic representatives of the class, and because it is in their persons that we may best test the amount and quality of the evidence in support of the assertion, that a traditional basis for the religion of the heroic age of Greece is still traceable in the poems of Homer.

Again: it is the effect of this evidence in general both to separate Minerva and Apollo by many important differences from the general mass of the Olympian deities, and likewise to associate them together in a great number of common signs and properties.

For these reasons I shall begin by considering them jointly: and I believe that in a just comprehension of their position lies the key to the whole Homeric system.

The lines of description for these two deities will, however, cross and recross one another. Their strong and pervading essential resemblances do not preclude much diversity of detail; and it will not unfrequently be found to happen, either that a given sign, perhaps even one of peculiar elevation, and thus of traditive origin, is found in one of the two and not in the other, or else that such a sign is developed more fully in one than in the other, or that the properties of an idea are divided between them, as if it was felt that, where the one was, the other must in greater or less measure be.

It will also be remembered that I do not aim at including, even in this detailed discussion, all that is ascribed by Homer to his Apollo and his Minerva; but only at exhibiting, with such fulness and clearness as I can, the distinctive character which on the whole they may be said to possess in common, and which I believe to constitute both the most curious, and by far the most important feature of the whole Homeric Theo-mythology.

The signs which appear to mark these great deities of tradition, and which accompany them with a deliberate consistency through the poems, present themselves with various bearings. Some affect their position in the Olympian system, others their individual characters; and lastly, a third class appertain to their dealings with man, and to their place and power in regard to the sphere of nature both animal and inanimate. Or more briefly, we may regard them in their Olympian relations, their personal characters, and their terrestrial aspects. We will begin with the first of these three divisions.

Their rank in the Olympian system.

1. Their position in the Olympian system, if we are to adopt the common genesis of the Olympian system, is one of hopeless and unaccountable solecism.

The gods of Olympus are arranged generally in two generations. If we put Apollo and Minerva out of view, then, with the exception of a deity like Dione, introduced to serve as a mere vehicle of maternity, and inferior in weight, if not in rank, to her own offspring, the majesty and might of Olympus, following the order of nature, are entirely in the elder of these generations, and reside with Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and Aidoneus or Pluto. The greater spheres have been shared among these divinities; nothing, except what is secondary, remains for the rest. But the position of Apollo and Minerva is in no respect inferior to those of the elder gods, save Jupiter alone: in many points it is higher; it has approximations to the very summit, which they have not; nay, in particular points, Jupiter himself is exceeded. It is so entirely different as a whole from that of the other deities of the second generation, that we must seek out a cause for the difference. Now it cannot be made to depend, at least in the case of Apollo, on the paramount magnitude of any one of his functions, such as the bow, the lyre, or even the gift of divination. It would have been natural to anticipate that war, which is the business of Mars, might have made a greater deity than divination, had both started from the same point. In later times, perhaps, it did so; but in Homer the inferiority of Mars is immeasurable. Now if we cannot account for this and other cases of inferiority to Apollo in the heroic age by function, we must, I think, of necessity look for it in difference of origin.

2. Although the relation of Apollo and Minerva to Jupiter places them in the generation next to his, (all the Homeric divinities alike are subject to the condition of being conceived to have a beginning,) yet there are marked differences in antiquity between these two, and all the other deities who, like them, stand as children to Jupiter: while the simple fact, that they stand as his children, is precisely what the ancient traditions would have led us to expect, with a difference which we find represented in the respective modes of their derivation from him.

Of the other deities of the same generation, there are some so recent, as Greek deities, that their childhood is made matter of record: there is not one who bears any mark that will throw him back to the period when the Pelasgians ruled in Greece, like Jupiter as the father of the old Hellic houses and the Dodonæan worship, or Neptune as the parent of Neleus and of Actor; or indeed that in any manner suggests great antiquity. But now let us look at Minerva and Apollo. That Minerva was born from the head of Jupiter, is a legend which I apprehend signifies that, in the oldest mythology, she had no mother: that, even if not in the Olympian order, yet in the history of her worship she was prior to Juno. She would otherwise have been the daughter of Juno, or of some other mother; and the sole parentage of Jupiter is a proof, that the tradition she represented was in vogue before motherhood among the Immortals was invented. So strictly is this true, that, as the constructive process went on, a mother was found for Minerva under the name of Metis[61]; who was at the same time placed as the oldest among the wives of Jupiter. In Homer, whether Tritogeneia is to be interpreted head-born[62] or not, it is indubitable that Minerva has no mother named, and is not the child of any known female divinity: and the sole parentage of Jupiter appears to be declared with sufficient clearness in the expostulation of Mars to Jupiter[63];

This is the only sense, so far as I can see, that can properly be given to the word αὐτός.

Apollo, on the other hand, is the son of Λήτω or Latona. For her name there appears to be but one satisfactory meaning, and it is this; that her origin was before the memory of man, that is, before the period within which the Greek mythological system had been constructed.

It cannot fail to be remarked, that the relation between the mythical origin of Apollo and that of Minerva exhibit a difference entirely analogous to that found in the traditions which they represent respectively; and which would give to Apollo a mother, but to Minerva none. In both, however, we may here trace a strong resemblance to the Messianic traditions of Holy Scripture and of the Jews.

3. These deities have a great variety of functions, of which the secondary forms, or the executive applications, are delegated to others, of less power and pre-eminence, but still also in most cases strictly Olympian gods. These satellite-divinities it may be convenient to designate by the name of Secondaries.

The Secondaries of Minerva.

The Secondaries of Olympus are so important a class, that they deserve, as a class, a distinct consideration.

They are as follows:

First, for Minerva, in her great characters as goddess of wisdom, of war, of polity, and of industrial art.

In the first, Mercury is her Secondary: for both are presiding divinities or patrons of that calculating faculty applied to conduct, which, on the side of virtue, reads as prudence, and which in its degenerate form is craft (κέρδεα or κερδοσύνη).

In treating the god Mercury, with respect to this capital particular, as a secondary of Minerva, I do not mean that he is nothing else: but that the traditions about Hermes were found capable of, and were allowed to bear, such a form, that it is impossible to describe fully the function of the one deity without including something that is also annexed to the other, or to draw any clear line between them.

In later times Mercury at Athens was, according to Müller[64], a Secondary also to Apollo, charged with the exoteric and material parts of several among his functions. And in Homer it seems probable, that his office with respect to the dead ought to be viewed as ministerial to that of Apollo.

In the next of her great offices, as goddess of war, Mars is a Secondary to Minerva; and he is absolutely nothing more. It may be enough in this place to refer to what will be said of him in the next Section.

The Minerva of polity, the λαοσσόος, ἀγελείη, and ἐρυσιπτόλις, is represented by Themis as a Secondary: whose name betokens her character as a simple personification of the idea of political and social rights, reflected from earth upon the Olympian life.

In the last of the four functions, Vulcan is her Secondary. It is true that the traditions do not exactly square. He is something more, because he is the element of fire, as well as the workman who operates by it: and he is also something less, because he has no concern with tissues, which fire has no share in creating, and which in Greece, but not in Egypt[65], were exclusively the business of women. But the relation between the two is indisputable: nor is it less plain that in that relation he fills, taken generally, the place of Olympian workman, she of a presiding mind operating upon man. And again, she is the goddess of construction; he has relations only with one particular department of it.

The Secondaries of Apollo.

Next for Apollo, in his characters, first, of the Healer, and secondly, of the Bard, with that of the Seer or Prophet.

In the first of these he is, so to speak, assisted by a pure Secondary, Paieon; who disappears from the later and less refined Greek mythology, and is replaced by an Æsculapius, reflected from the purely human Asclepius of Homer. Paieon is a simply executive officer, and exercises his gift, or as we should now say practises, exclusively, as does Vulcan, except on special occasions, for the benefit of the Olympian community; while the original possession of the gift, and the power of distributing it, is with Apollo.

There is a further and more subtle relation between this deity and Apollo, indicated by the use of the name παιήων for the hymn of victory[66]. Whatever be the ground of this usage, it supplies another point, in which Paieon reflects Apollo the god of help, and so far tends to exhibit Apollo as also the god of victory. Paieon heals by the use of his hands, like an ordinary surgeon; Apollo without personal presence, and without the use of second causes, in answer to prayer[67].

In the second of his great offices, the Muses are the derivative deities, who conjointly form a Secondary divinity to Apollo.

Their relation to him, and the combination in themselves of the plural with the singular, are very curious. His immediate concern is with the lyre, theirs with the voice. They sometimes appear as one; for instance, in the first verse of each of the poems: sometimes as many; for instance, in the invocation before the Catalogue. Even their action is so combined, that what at one time they do as one, at others they do as many. It is the Muses who maim Thamyris: it is the Muse, who greatly loves Demodocus, who lays upon him the burden of blindness, but endows him with the gift of song: and again, who instructs and loves the tribe of Bards in general[68].

The Muses are, with Homer, of Olympian rank; but we can hardly deal with them as to many distinct impersonations: or at least we must not follow out that idea to its consequences. And for this reason; they were not in contact with the popular mind, and formed no part of the public religion: they were formations of the Poet for his own purposes, whom he might make and unmake at his will, and the conditions of whose existence he might modify, without being bound to any further degree of consistency than might for the occasion answer the purpose of his art. We must not, then, ask him whether he really means his Muse to be one or many, and if many, how many (it is, indeed, only in the second νεκυΐα that he mentions them as nine[69]), but must simply take them as a poetical, rather than mythological, impersonation of Vocal Music.

And here we at once perceive both the ground of their plurality, and their ministerial relation to Apollo. The former, probably, lay in the nature of harmony, or simultaneous combination of tones, requiring, of course, a combination of different voices, to effect what on the instrument is done by different strings. And if it did not spring from, it was at least suited to, that succession of alternate parts, which was, as we know, used in Israel even more anciently than in Homer’s time, and which may, though I do not, for one, feel certain that it must, have been signified by the term ἀμειβόμεναι, a name clearly relating to part-singing in one sense or another. Their subordinate relation to Apollo is represented in the combination[70] of the voice with the instrument. He, as the Original, remains in possession of the indivisible gift: they assist him in one which is essentially distributive. And as they share in his music, so also in his knowledge: but only in that which relates to the past: with the future they have no concern[71]. But as either Minerva or Vulcan can teach a smith, so either Apollo or the Muse can inspire a bard[72].

Argument from the Secondaries.

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 imaginations, distinct from those respecting their principal deity: nor are they in the same kind of subservience to them as the Eilithuiæ 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 administration, yet there still remains a clear and manifest duplication, 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 significant fact, and raises at once a serious inquiry as to its cause.

I submit that it may be referred to the joint operation 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, distinguishable 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 knowledge, reaching before and after, and identified in early times with that of Song, as well as that of healing or deliverance 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 continue to keep hold on certain great functions, in which their attributes are primarily developed.

Picture of human society in Olympus.

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 representation, in the configuration of the divine community, as to the forms of their particular employments: though the people at large bear a rude analogy to the mass of inferior deities not included in the ordinary meeting of the gods, yet summoned to the great Chapter or Parliament. Olympus must, in short, have its δημιόεργοι.

Who these were for an ordinary Greek community like that of Ithaca, we learn from the speech of Eumæus[73].

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 habitually sacrificed to Mercury[74]. But that formation was on the way; for the class was already known, doubtless as a Phœnician one, under the name of πρηκτῆρες, men of business, apt to degenerate into τρωκταὶ, 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. μάντις, the seer.

2. ἰήτηρ κακῶν, the surgeon.

3. τέκτων δούρων, the skilled artificer.

4. ἀοιδὸς, the bard.

5. πρήκτηρ, 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 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 Minerva hers of sublime wisdom. With these no one is permitted to interfere. But the ἰήτηρ is represented in Paieon: the τέκτων (into Olympus however no inferior material enters, and all work is evidently in metal, of which the celestial Smith[75] constructs the buildings themselves, that on earth would be made of wood) is exhibited in Vulcan: the ἀοιδὸς in the Muses, the πρήκτηρ in Mercury, and the man of war in Mars.

Dignity and precedence of Minerva.

3. Though Minerva cannot contest with Juno the honour 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 Il. i. 195; or through Jupiter, as in Il. 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 Minerva. Twice the two goddesses descend together from Olympus to the field of battle. Both times it is in the chariot of Juno. Now Iris, as on one occasion, at least, she acts at Juno’s bidding, and as on another we find her unyoking the chariot of Mars, might with propriety 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[76]. To be the charioteer is generally, though not quite invariably, the note of the inferior. But irrespectively of this official distinction, Minerva with her Ægis is the conspicuous, and Juno evidently the subordinate figure in the group.

In the Odyssey, again, we have a most striking indication of the essential superiority of Minerva to the great and powerful Neptune. Attending, in the disguise of a human form, the sacrifice of Nestor at Pylos to his divine ancestor, she does not scruple, on the invitation of the young prince Pisistratus, to offer prayer to that deity, in the capacity of a courteous guest and a religious 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[77]:

But at the close the poet goes on to declare that what she thus sought in prayer from her uncle Neptune, she forthwith accomplished herself:

Yet once more. The same train of ideas, which explains how Olympus is fitted with a set of Secondaries, 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: traditions, of which the whole, (except that of Paieon, who is not worshipped at all, and exists only in and for Olympus,) bear upon them, as received in Greece, the marks of modernism[78]. They naturally submit to the conditions, anterior to themselves, of the hierarchy into which they are introduced. But, on the one hand, their existence, 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 principle, which reflected on the Achæan heaven the experience 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 priesthood 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 institutions. 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.

We do not hear a great deal respecting mere ceremonial among the Olympian divinities. To Jupiter, however, and to Juno, is awarded the conspicuous honour, that, when either of them enters the assembled Court, all the other deities rise up[79]. It is plain that Homer included in the picture before his mental eye ideas relating to that external order which we term precedence: and it may be shown, that Minerva had the precedence 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 distinguished place beside the chief person, and it is Minerva who yields it up to her;

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

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

Of Apollo.

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

Intimacy of their relations with Jupiter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apollo the deliverer of heaven.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These deities are never foiled by others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trine Invocation.

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

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

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

Their worship universal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not localized as to abode.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objects of habitual prayer.

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

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

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

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

Exempt from appetite and limitations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their independent power of punishment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They use special attributes of Jupiter.

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

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

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