SECT. V. The Olympian Community and its Members, considered in themselves.

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

The family order in Olympus.

Accordingly, the Olympian Immortals of Homer are combined in a society. They are not a mere aggregate of beings, classed together by the mind in virtue of the possession of common properties, but they live in twofold relations: first, those of the family, or at least of descent and consanguinity; secondly, those established by a political organization, which is modelled according to the forms of the Greek polities subsisting in the Homeric age.

The government of Olympus is, though the use of the word may at first excite a smile, in principle constitutional. Jupiter is its head. Its ordinary council or aristocracy is represented by the body of such deities as have palaces there, constructed for them by Vulcan, who exercises in the community the double function at once of architect and artificer[600].

The immediate relationship of nearly all these divinities to Jupiter is recorded.

As his brothers, we have Neptune, and Aidoneus, or Pluto.

As his wives, we have Juno, the chief; Latona, Dione, and probably Demeter, secondary.

As his children, we have Minerva, Apollo and Diana, Mars and Vulcan, Venus, Mercury, Hebe.

Of the Nineteen Deities who appear to be certainly Olympian, there are only four that do not fall at once into the family order: they are Themis, Ἠέλιος, Iris, and Paieon. There may have been a relationship credited in these cases also, though it is not recorded. It should be observed, that Jupiter is expressly invested with the title of Father of the gods. And perhaps the idea intended to be conveyed is that of a family which has grown into a sept or clan, having this for its distinctive character, that all the members of it, great and small, have either a nearer or a more remote relationship to the head. Of the minor deities, in various cases it is recorded, that they are daughters of Jupiter; such as the Muses, the Prayers, and the Nymphs of most orders. But these have the appearance of belonging to Homer’s poetry, more than to his mythology. Among male deities, the sons of Jupiter are all in Olympus: those of Neptune take lower rank.

Whatever be its relation to the family nucleus, the community of Olympus is fully formed. Besides Jupiter the head, and the ordinary assembly, its Council or Court, which answers to the βουλὴ of the Greeks, it has its Agorè, a greater Assembly or Parliament called together upon crises of extraordinary solemnity, such as the decision by main force of the fate of Troy.

But as we have no example, except the factious and utterly odious Thersites, of any one of the commonalty who takes an actual part in debate among men, so the minor deities, too, are mute in heaven.

Nay, the resemblance is even closer than this. The Greek βουλὴ, and also the ἀγορὴ, have their speaking or leading personages, and they likewise have each their silent members. The leaders are Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, and Diomed; the last-named chieftain always with modesty, as a person lately come to full age. Achilles doubtless would have had to be added, if the action of the poem had permitted him to appear throughout its debates. But we never hear of the Ajaxes, Idomeneus, or chiefs like Eurypylus, as taking any active share in the proceedings. Even so the discussions of Olympus appear to be conducted commonly by Jupiter, Juno, Neptune[601], Minerva, and Apollo[602]. Once Vulcan interposes, in his mother’s interest: possibly he may have been suggested to the Poet by Thersites[603] as a terrestrial counterpart. The Sun appeals to the Assembly in the Odyssey, as a party in his own cause: but neither he nor Venus, nor Mars, nor Mercury, nor any other subordinate deity, ever appears as taking part in a discussion.

The term ἀγορὴ, or assembly, is used in Homer for the meetings of the deities only on certain occasions: namely, at the openings of the Eighth and Twentieth Books[604]. The other, or ordinary meetings, have no distinctive name. We may know them by their not depending on any summons or introduction, and by the frequent mention, either of the banquet as proceeding, or of the cup as in the hands of the deities. They were standing assemblages of the deities, the law of whose life was leisure, with prolonged though not intemperate feasting; and its ordinary scene Olympus. Their correspondence with the βουλὴ must not be pressed too far, for they do not, like the Greek βουλὴ, commonly precede an Assembly. It is to be remembered, that the βουλὴ was an Hellenic institution, and that the gods were not exclusively Hellenic, though Olympus was essentially national.

The political order in Olympus.

The analogy between the divine and the human ἀγοραὶ is established in a pointed form by the Poet himself; who makes Themis the pursuivant or Summoner[605] for the former; and also says of her, with respect to the latter,

The acknowledgment of a rule of right, extrinsic and superior to ourselves, is general in the Assemblies of men in Homer, when meeting for business. This there could not be in the Assemblies of the Olympian gods. Neither does respect for authority and for tradition well harmonize with the idea of beings, who are possessed of unbounded, or at the least of greatly extended intelligence. Thus, like the individual deities, the divine Assemblies, and the entire Polity, are deprived of the greatest moral safeguards of their counterparts on earth. The consequence is, that their ethical tone is much lower. Force is the only effective sanction of authority among the Immortals. This is curiously exhibited in the Theomachy: for that battle takes place when the fate of Troy, which formed the matter in dispute, has already been long ago decided. Whenever a difficulty arises, which will bear that mode of treatment, Jupiter resorts to the threat of using it, even against divinities so dignified and powerful as Minerva, Neptune, and Juno. Sometimes, indeed, he parades it by anticipation, even when no symptom of disaffection has yet been exhibited.[607] So, on the other hand, fraud is the resource of the weak, as violence is of the strong. Juno, unable to organize a combination against her husband, devises a trick.

The deities, then, are not under any effective ethical restraint; and the only instances in which the highly moral sentiment of αἰδὼς is mentioned as governing them in their reciprocal conduct are cases of the two great traditive divinities, Minerva and Apollo, with reference to their uncle Neptune, and of Jupiter, in whose case it is a sentiment of politeness rather than of duty, with reference to Thetis[608].

But, although moral principle and religious reverence are absent, two principles of considerable value and utility remain. One of them is a certain courtesy or comity, which prevails in the absence of strong countervailing causes. Secondly, the power of intelligence is very visible in the working of their polity. It is not the mere wish of Jupiter, it is his counsel, which is fulfilled in the Trojan war. And again, it is not his individual counsel, but it is the decision which he adopts in compliance with the general sentiment of the gods[609]. He could be well content to let Troy stand, because of the abundance of its offerings; but he sees that if he attempts to give effect to such a plan as he would personally prefer, he must encounter the stubborn resistance of the three strongest deities, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva. Perhaps this difference of opinion might issue in the shape of a war in heaven, and that war might follow the same course as the one happily arrested by Briareus: therefore he avoids the issue, makes the concession without letting himself seem to make it, and thus preserves his general position at the head of the Olympian body.

Courtesy and Intelligence among the Immortals.

Speaking of mythological deity as such, the difference of celestial from human intelligence is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The process of deliberation in the mind of a mortal, and the state of suspense before decision, are frequent subjects of Homeric description. And he sometimes places individual deities before us with the same, or nearly the same, detail, as in cases occurring among men, of doubt preceding determination. The essence and foundation of the process are similar, as we see in the case of Juno, and again in the instance of Jupiter himself. She ponders the question how she shall delude Jupiter[610]:

And then she decides;

So he[611], in his turn, considers long, before determining that Patroclus shall carry the war from the ships to the walls. Again, for the great decrees which are to have an extensive influence on human destiny, to argue and consider seem to be a moral necessity among the gods, as much as important subjects require public debate among men.

The method of reflecting Earth in the Olympian life is sometimes carried by the Poet down to the details of social intercourse. Thus it is a terrestrial custom of the heroic age, that strangers are entertained before they are called upon to give an account of their business[612]. And this hospitable practice extends even to the treatment of those who are charged with important communications; so that Bellerophon is entertained for nine full days by the king of Lycia, while he has in his pocket the roll containing a request for him to be put to death[613]. In exact conformity with this manner of proceeding, Mercury[614] is feasted by Calypso in Ogygia, before he delivers the weighty message, with which he had been intrusted by Jupiter in the name of the whole Olympian court.

Although we have found it difficult in one or two cases to pronounce with respect to certain divine personages, whether they are Olympian or not, yet in principle the line is clearly drawn, which marks off the superiority of the members of the Olympian Court. We find it in the express declaration of Calypso[615]. We find it perhaps yet more clearly noted in the comparison between Venus and Thetis: for we have seen, as to the former of these deities, her extreme feebleness and incapacity in everything, except as regards the particular impulse that she represents. Thetis, on the other hand, is full of activity and intelligence; and is gifted with bodily powers sufficient to fly like a hawk from Olympus, when carrying the celestial arms (whose inherent buoyancy, however, must not be forgotten[616]). Yet, doubtless because not Olympian, she yields the palm to Venus: for Apollo says to Æneas of Achilles[617];

Their unity imperfect.

Though the body of θεοὶ serve as an unity to point a moral in the abstract, there is practically a wonderful want of unity and of common or corporate feeling among them. This is figured in the Judgment of Paris: in the love of Neptune for the Cyclops, who renounce the authority of Jupiter: again in his aversion to the Phæacians, who are so beloved by the gods in general, that they appear in their proper shape at the religious festivals of those favoured islanders[618].

But notwithstanding this want of the genuine corporate spirit, and notwithstanding the prevalence of essentially selfish appetite as the rule of life with the greater part, at any rate, of the Immortals, it would not be just to say that the principle of unity in the Divine Government is wholly destroyed by the Homeric polytheism. The superiority of Jupiter, though it does not amount to supremacy in the stricter sense[619], is yet sufficiently decided to place him far above any other single deity in sheer power. Therefore, when considered as the executive of the Olympian system, he is upon the whole equal to his work. He may be deceived, and so baffled for a moment, as by Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad; but it is for a moment only. Or the insubordination of some particular divinity may approach to resistance, like that of Neptune in the Fifteenth: but, upon admonition, conscious inferiority soon brings the matter to a close. So much for the execution of divine behests. As to the legislative process, however, heaven strictly follows earth, with only such exceptions as are accounted for by the difference in the constituent elements.

The influence or even the menaces of a powerful leader, the moral force of persuasion, the comparison of the means of coercive action on this side and on that, and again the composition of wills and opinions to obtain a joint result, all these, the leading processes by which free institutions work on earth, with substantial identity, though with more awkwardness of form and less of genial freedom, as might be expected in transplanted ideas, are also the processes by which supreme and providential decrees are arrived at. Of the degree to which this principle of free polity prevails, we can have no better criterion than in the fate of Troy. It fell, not merely from the personal prudence of Jupiter, but because acting as a βασιλεὺς in heaven, like Agamemnon upon earth, he yielded to the preponderating influence of that section in Olympus, which was indeed apparently less numerous, but of commanding strength, influence, and activity.

Nor would it be just to Homer and his Olympus to forget, that in yielding to the powerful party led by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, Jupiter was also yielding up the vicious, and sealing the triumph of the virtuous cause.

Thus, then, while we see the spirit of anthropophuism breaking down the principle of the Unity of God, from its being too feeble and too blind to maintain the pure traditions in which it was conveyed, it is still curious to the last degree to observe the order and symmetry of the Greek mind, even in its destructive processes. For, as we have found, it arranges its groups of deities around a centre, by the principle that creates a Family: and then gives them community of counsel, and unity of action, by the principle that maintains a State. What is this, but to bring in the resources and expedients, which our human state supplied, to repair, after a sort, the havock which it had made in the Divine Idea?

The system not uniform.

But although symmetry was thus far, if not studied, yet spontaneously produced, we have ample proof that Homer neither inherited nor invented for his gods any uniform and consistent code of rules, intellectual, moral, or political. Neither, again, in the region of sense did he make any general provision to determine the conditions of divine being and action for his gods as an order, or even for particular classes of them. The want of such consistency is, indeed, among the striking proofs of the profound dualism of origin in his Theo-mythology. All that we can do is to observe his prevailing modes of treatment, and collect a general meaning from them. Proceeding thus, we shall find that the class of Immortals enjoys in various ways a marked superiority to man; but the degrees of this superiority, as they are nowhere precisely defined, so they vary greatly in the cases of the different deities: and when, striking off all the particular characteristics of individual members of the system, we attempt to embody what is common to them all, we leave but a slight and jejune residuum.

Nor is the classification of the differences a regular one. If we compare his delineations of some lower with some higher deities, we must be struck with finding considerable appearances of want of analogy between them. Some inferior persons of the same order, as we shall see, may excel in particular gifts, even those who are on the whole their superiors. Thus Circe, and even the Sirens, have powers greater apparently than, in the same subject-matter, Mercury or Vulcan. Heterogeneous origin, and imperfect assimilation, afford the true explanation of these phenomena.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that the divine life of Olympus, wherever it reproduces the human, reproduces it in a degraded form. Enjoyment and indulgence, when carried from earth to heaven, lose that limit of honourable relation to labour as necessary restoratives, which alone makes them respectable on earth.

In general, the chief note of deity with Homer is emancipation from the restraints of the moral law. Though the Homeric gods have not yet ceased to be the vindicators of morality upon earth, they have personally ceased to observe its rules either for or among themselves.

As compared with men in conduct, they are generally characterised by superior force and intellect, but by inferior morality.

They do not appear to have been governed in their relations towards one another by any motives drawn either from the law of right and justice, or from that of affection: unless—an exception which confirms the rule—where the attachment belonging to the human relation of parent and child is faintly reflected among the Immortals, as when Jupiter calls Minerva or Diana φίλον τέκος[620], and Venus τέκνον ἐμόν[621]: again, in the care taken of Venus after she is wounded by her mother Dione[622], and, more slightly indicated, in that of Diana by Latona[623]. In the conduct of Mars on the death of Ascalaphus, the impulse is momentary, and it has a strong animal tinge which seems to overpower, like a fit of drunkenness, the little reason that he possesses. The grief of Jupiter for Sarpedon is the only case of an intense affection among the Immortals. And it is remarkable, that this is felt towards, not a brother or sister divinity, but a mortal; towards one of those Lycians, whom Homer regards with such extraordinary and unvarying favour.

Force and fraud their chief instruments.

The general principles of government, then, among the Immortals themselves are simply those of force and terror, on the one hand, or fraud and wheedling on the other. For example, Terror subdues the adverse will of Juno[624] in the First Book, of Juno and Minerva in the Eighth[625], and of Neptune, not without much reluctance on his part, in the Fifteenth. Thetis wheedles Jupiter in the First Book[626]; Juno entirely beguiles him, besides outwitting Venus, in the Fourteenth; Minerva entraps Apollo in the Seventh into the plan of a single combat, which saves the Greeks from an impending defeat. And the difference of opinion respecting Troy in the divine Assembly does not at the last come to effect without a contest of main strength, although the virtual decision of the Olympian body had long ago been taken. Nay, these principles of force and fraud are the real principles of action, even when not altogether on the surface. When Mercury declines battle with Latona, it is because he fears the consequences of a contest with a wife of Jupiter[627]. In a manner still more curious, when Apollo has declined battle with Neptune, professedly on the ground that it is not worth the while of deities to fight about the affairs of wretched mortals, the Poet explains his conduct by a sentiment partly of deference arising out of a relationship recognised among men:

But here there may possibly have been some mixture of fear, because, as he withdraws, he is reproached bitterly by Diana, called a baby for his cowardice, and reminded, that he had himself volunteered the boast in heaven, that he was ready to fight against Neptune.

As these moral elements had been almost wholly eliminated from the general principles which govern the Homeric gods in their relations to one another, so likewise we look almost in vain for the traces of them in their individual conduct. They observe, when acting for themselves, neither courage, justice, nor prudence; but it is in regard to moral temperance or self-control, that they fall furthest below the standard even of human virtue. The Mahometan heaven of men was the heaven of the Homeric gods. Their standing employment, except when troubled by human affairs, is simply in perpetual, though not drunken or brutal, feasting; sometimes in grosser indulgences. If, says Vulcan to his mother, you quarrel about mortals, it will be a pestilent business, for there will be no pleasure in our banquets[629]. If Neptune in the Odyssey is gone among the Ethiopians[630], it is for a hecatomb of bulls and lambs. If Jupiter and all the gods make a journey to the same quarter in the Iliad, it is for a feast[631], which apparently was to last for eleven days. If Hercules has earned the reward of his labours by being taken up to heaven, his life there is described as a life entitling him to enjoy banquets among the Immortals[632]. If Ganymede is received into their company, it is that he may discharge for Jupiter the duty of cup-bearer[633], in which it would appear that both Vulcan and Hebe were likewise employed. Of all the phrases characteristic of the Homeric gods and their life, there is none that sits better than the θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες.

Their dominant selfishness.

Deeper, even than their collective devotion to mere enjoyment, lies their intense and profound selfishness. We cannot fail to note the absence of those sentiments of justice and self-sacrifice, and those high enthusiastic emotions, which do so much to ennoble the human life of the heroic age. There is truth in the assertion that they establish and administer a one-sided law:

But beyond this, there lies a deep meaning in the sentiment of an Italian poet, Guarini[635]:

The Greek mythology, departing from the very basis of the Divine idea in the conception of its gods, converts them, by a moral necessity, not into man, but into something which is morally beneath man. There is not among all the deities what we can call one full unbroken development of noble character. They are, as a general rule, except so far as they are modified by the traditive element, Titanic creations of intellect or power, or both, without virtue. Even where, as in the cases of Minerva and Diana, they are pure, their purity does not inspire or impress the Poet with half the force and fire which he must have felt when he drew the matron Andromache, or the maid Nausicaa. But this is not the common case. With great reservation indeed as to the traditional, in comparison with the mythical divinities, and likewise as to the female deities, in comparison with the gods, we must admit that, as a general rule, the Immortals of Homer, when brought to the bar of a cool inquiry, are in their own personal conduct impure voluptuaries, and that the laws, which formed the basis of family life, and which in Homer’s time still kept human society from total corruption, for them had no restraining power, indeed no recognised existence.

There is no sense of shame accompanying the excesses of the gods, such as Homer has marked, not without tenderness, in regard to the trespass of Astyoche[636];

On the contrary, Jupiter refers with marked self-satisfaction to his affairs of this kind in the Fourteenth Iliad; and shows the very temper, described by Saint Paul as that of the most advanced depravity, which not only yields to temptation, but seals its own offence with habitual and deliberate approval[637]: Οὐ μόνον αὐτὰ ποιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνευδοκοῦσι τοῖς πράσσουσιν.

Cruelty of Calypso in her love.

We may take Calypso as no unfair specimen of the ethics of the Immortals. In the hope of sensual pleasure, she keeps Ulysses a prisoner in her far island. She sees him pining in wretchedness for his home and family from day to day; and well knows the distress that his absence must cause to a virtuous wife and son, as well as the public evils, sure to arise from the prolonged absence of a wise and able sovereign. Yet she never relents, but still in her odorous cavern she sings to the movement of her golden distaff. (Od. v. 59.) When Hermes makes known to her the decree that she cannot resist for his return, she complains of the cruelty of the upper gods, but adds, ‘as I cannot help myself, let him perish if Zeus will.’ She promises, however, to send him off in safety, and keeps her word; but it is when she has been well warned by Mercury of the consequences of disobedience, and firmly bound by Ulysses with the oath which was terrible even to the Immortals. (Od. v. 146, 184.)

The sentiment of envy, which they had begun to entertain towards men, appears also to have been felt towards members of the divine order. It was envy with which the gods viewed the happiness enjoyed by Aurora in her union with Orion, till it ended with his death; and that moved Jupiter to destroy Iasion, the object of the choice of Demeter[638]. But this (so says Calypso) was envy of the male towards the female deities. There is no reciprocal sentiment: and it is curious here to observe the inequality of the sexes, together with so many other signs and beginnings of corruption, established among the Immortals in a manner unknown to human society at the time.

Calypso may or may not be justified in the charge she makes against the gods; but, at least, it seems clear that, though they have some regard to the prevalence of moral laws as between one man and another, they by no means impute any moral guilt to her in her cruel detention of Ulysses, even while they rectify a wrong by their decree.

The inferiority of the moral standard, which marks the order of gods, is likewise traceable in the various races which are described by Homer as claiming a special relationship to them; the Cyclopes, the Læstrygonians, and even perhaps the Phæacians. Against the last of these we can certainly charge no more than an epicurean and inglorious ease: but the two former not only do not forfeit, they even prove, their relationship to the gods by being at once more strong and more vicious than common men.

And, as it affects the kindred of the Immortals in common with themselves, so also does it extend from the sphere of morals into that of manners. While Hephæstus was ministering to them the festal cup, they laughed ungovernably at his personal deformity[639]. Now, the Greeks laugh at Thersites[640] when he has been beaten, but it is in immediate connection with his misconduct, and it has nothing whatever to do with his ugliness. Laughter at mere deformity is nowhere found in Homer: and would entirely jar with the tone of feeling that pervades Homeric manners. The action that offers the nearest approach to it confirms the spirit of this observation. It is the hurling of the stool by the Suitor Antinous[641] at the apparently decrepit Ulysses; which is sternly registered, along with the other outrages of that depraved company, for the coming day of retribution.

Olympian as compared with heroic life.

In a word, still setting aside in some considerable degree the deities of traditive origin, who enter little into the general picture, but have their own portraiture apart, there are to be found in Olympus, as well as in the lower earth, the relations of degree in power and intelligence; and the gods with whom it is peopled, on the whole, possess it in large measure; but the law and purpose of their life is summed up in self-will and self-indulgence. They do not debate their own duties, or even those of men, to one another: rarely, if ever, those of men even towards themselves, except with reference to the quantity of libation poured out, of flesh offered, and of steam reeking from the altars. There is a mixture in their enjoyments: some are refined, others sensual, but both are alike selfish, and the latter are wholly unrestrained. It is said by Heyne, and with much of literal truth, that the description of the day’s employment in Olympus, which the first Iliad supplies, is a transcript of hero-life[642]; but it is of one part of hero-life only; it is of hero-life in its moments of indulgence and relaxation, which exhibit to us its lower and less noble side, without any view of its great sentiments and great duties, its sense of honour, its fine feeling, its reciprocal affections as developed in the relations of consanguinity and affinity, of friendship, of guestship, of sovereign and subject, and even of master and serf. What a wretched spectacle would Hector, Achilles, Diomed, Nestor, Ulysses, and the rest present to us, were their existence devoted simply to quaffing goblets and scenting or devouring the flesh of slain animals, even though with this there were present the mitigating refinement of perpetual harp and song. And yet such is the picture offered by the Homeric mythology.

Upon the whole, while it remains true that the deification of heroes, or their promotion to a happy immortality, in Homer’s time, depended upon virtue and merit; those who thus obtained admission to Olympus really found themselves introduced to a new and far lower law of life, upon taking their places there, than that to which they had been accustomed upon earth. Thus, for example, it is with Hercules; he has indeed a reward beyond the grave; but it consists simply in a life divested of the virtues of patience, obedience, valour, and struggle by which it had itself been earned.

The superiority, however, of the intellectual over the material element, except in the matter of self-indulgence, is, as we might have expected, decisively maintained in the Grecian mythology. It is exhibited most clearly, perhaps, in the triumph of Jupiter and Olympus over the brute might of the Titans. It is also palpable, when we find that the strength of Mars, who represents nothing except fighting force, does not always insure his victory, even in contests of mere strength, but that he is overthrown by Minerva in the battle of the gods, corrected at will by her on all other occasions[643], and wounded, with her aid, by the hero Diomed beneath the walls of Troy. But when we speak of intellect as opposed to matter, the case stands so differently with respect to different deities, that it is necessary to attempt a stricter appreciation than we have yet aimed at obtaining, of their common character.

Their exemption from Death uniform.

The great and perhaps only essential property by which the Homeric gods are distinguished, is that expressed in their very common appellation of ἀθάνατος: they are immortal.

There is something curious in the question, why it is that they are endowed uniformly and absolutely with this gift, but not with others; why the limitation of Death is removed from them, and yet other limitations are allowed in so many respects to remain.

It seems as if we had here an independent and impartial testimony to the truth of the representation conveyed in Holy Writ, that death has been the specific punishment ordained for sin: and that therefore in passing beyond the human order we, as a matter of course, pass beyond its range.

Had the preternatural system of the Poet exhibited to us only such divinities as are the representatives of primeval tradition, it would have been easy to account for the attribute of immortality. But here are a multitude of deities, the creatures of human invention; why was this gift bestowed on them, when others were withheld? It may be, again, because that which came last into man’s condition should, in the logical and moral order, go first out of it: that in framing the conception of an existence higher than that of man, the first step properly was, before dealing with the more positive faults or imperfections inherent in his nature, to set aside that which did not belong to it, but had been set upon it as a note of shame for a special cause, like letters branded on a deserter or a slave.

In Homer it appears that every deity, great and small alike, is exempt from death. A Fragment of Hesiod[644] proceeds on a basis abstractedly different, and by an ingenious multiplication, from the term assigned to man upwards, ascribes to the Nymphs a life of 291,600 years. In all likelihood the meaning of this passage may be not to curtail immortality, but to enlarge the practical conception of it, by carrying life up to a number which would impress the minds of a generation rude in arithmetic far more, than a merely abstract assertion of immortality: just as to us the sand of the sea, or even the hairs of the head, may more impressively convey the idea of unlimited numbers than does the phrase innumerable, although in reality the effect of either figure is to limit them.

Calypso is of the lower and of the most earthy order of the Homeric divinities. She recognises in plain terms her inferiority to the Olympian gods, by stating that she will send with Ulysses a favourable breeze, which will carry him safely home, provided they permit it, who are so far her superiors, both in planning, and in executing what they plan[645]:

Yet she distinctly contrasts herself with Penelope, in the very point that she is immortal: and the reply of Ulysses recognises this as the essential difference[646];

The only cases, perhaps, in which Homer glances at the possibility of putting a period to the existence of a god, are two, in which the semi-brutal Mars is concerned. When Otus and Ephialtes put him in chains, it seems that, but for Eeriboia, he would have perished[647]: the expressions are,

And again, under the assault of Diomed, though the Poet does not bring this last extremity into view, he might, had he not fled, perhaps have been as good as dead (ζὼς ἀμένηνος, Il. v. 887). This is not death, but it is at any rate the suspension of life, apparently without limit. A third alternative is opened in the severe reply of Jupiter, who observes to him, that he might have been thrust down into Tartarus, but for the fortunate accident of his high parentage; veiling the idea under the modest words[648],

Thus then the divine life, which, however, certainly with Ares is lodged in one of its least godlike receptacles, is liable to degradation, and to abeyance, even possibly to a lingering, though probably in no case to a rapid, process of extinction. But this last is rather the limit of calamity only, in the mathematical sense; that is to say, a limit which is never actually reached, though there is nothing short of it which may not be reached and even passed.

Exemption from other limitations partial.

So much for the great gift of immortality. With reference to all the other limitations imposed upon finite being, the position of the Immortals, infinitely diversified according to the two great classes, and to individual cases, has this one feature applying to it as a whole, that it is a position of preference, not of independence.

Every deity has some extension of personal liberties and powers beyond what men enjoy. But it is in general such as we should conceive to be rather characteristic of intermediate orders of creation, than properly attaching to the divine nature. We must however distinguish between these three things: 1. The personal exemptions of a divinity from the restraints of time and place, and other limiting conditions; 2. The general powers capable of being exercised over other gods, over man, over animal or inanimate nature; 3. The powers enjoyed within the particular province over which a divinity presides.

Thus for example Calypso, though, as we have seen she is of inferior rank, yet exercises very high prerogatives. She sends with Ulysses a favourable breeze: and she predicts calamity, which is to smite him before he reaches his home. Circe transforms men into beasts, and then restores them to forms of greater beauty and stature[649]. She is cognizant of events in the world beneath, and of what will occur on the arrival of Ulysses there. She then sends a favourable breeze to impel his vessel[650]; and on his return predicts to him the circumstances of his homeward voyage[651]. And Proteus delivers a similar prediction to Menelaus, to which he adds a declaration of his destiny after death[652]: he also converts himself into a multitude of forms.

Now no Homeric deities order winds to blow, except Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and Minerva; none issue predictions to men except Minerva and Apollo, the latter mediately, through Seers or through Oracles; of absolute transformation we have no example; but Minerva, and she alone, transforms Ulysses from one human form to another. I mean absolute transformation effected upon others: all the deities, apparently, can transform themselves at will; for even Venus appears to Helen disguised, though it would seem imperfectly, in the form of an aged attendant[653].

This gift of knowledge of the future is the more remarkable, when we consider that some of the Olympian deities were without knowledge even of what had just happened; as Mars, on the occasion of the death of his son Ascalaphus[654]. Even Jupiter, with the rest of the gods, was wholly unaware of the clandestine mission of Iris by Juno to Achilles[655].

Cases of minor deities with major powers.

The great powers of these secondary deities may be accounted for, I think, by two considerations:

1. These divinities belong to the circle of outer or Phœnician traditions, and the Poet is not therefore, in treating them, subject to the same laws as those by which he regulates the Olympian order. They are brought upon the stage with reference to Ulysses or Menelaus, and in the Wanderings only; thus they are adopted by Homer for this special purpose, and endowed with whatever gifts they require for it, just as strangers, while they remain, are treated more liberally in a house than the children of the family, for the very reason that they are strangers, and have no concern with the regular organization and continuing life of the household.

2. Another principle of the mythology conducts us by another road to the same end. Every deity is liberally endowed within his own province. Now the province of Proteus, Calypso, and Circe, is the Outer sphere of Geography. Within the range of that sphere, the ordinary agency of the Olympian deities individually is suspended. Homer prefers to leave it to be governed by the divinities, whom he can frame out of his Phœnician materials for the purpose. In this way he is enabled to enlarge the circle of variety, and to draw new and salient lines of distinction between the two worlds. Neptune indeed is there perforce; for navigation is the staple of its theme, and the θάλασσα pervades it, from no portion of which can he possibly be excluded. The Olympian Court, too, oversee it, and their orders are conveyed thither by Mercury their agent. But, except Neptune for the reason given, the ordinary action of the deities individually is suspended[656], not on account of any limitation of power, for instance in Minerva, but for a poetical purpose, and with the excuse, that the whole sphere is removed beyond common life and experience. Hence, just as Vulcan works professionally the most extraordinary miracles, though he is but a secondary deity, because they are in the domain of metallic art, so Circe and the rest are empowered to do the like within a domain of which they are the rooted zoophytes and exclusive occupants.

It may be well, before passing to the general limitations upon divine capacity in Homer, to illustrate a little farther this law of special endowment.

Venus is among gods what Nireus was among men: ἄναλκις ἔην θεός[657]. Yet she overcomes the resistance of Helen[658]: and we have also the express record of her girdle as invincible in its operation[659]. The case of Mars is peculiar: for he is brought upon the stage to be beaten in his own province, as the exigencies of the poem require it: but inferior, nay pitiful, as he is in every point of mind and character, yet as to imposing personal appearance, he is made to take rank in a comparison with Jupiter and Neptune, between whose names his is placed[660]. Neptune exhibits vast power, and on his own domain, the sea, appears even to have an inkling of providential foreknowledge[661]: he is conscious that Ulysses will reach Scheria. Except upon the sea, he exhibits no such attributes of intelligence, though he always remains possessed of huge force. Mercury, again, shows in locomotion a greater independence of the laws of place, than some deities who are of a rank higher than his own: and doubtless it is because he is professionally an agent or messenger. Even so the journeys of Iris are no sooner begun than they are accomplished.

Divine faculties an extension of human.

But the general rule is, that the divine faculties represent, in regard to all the conditions of existence, no more than an improvement and extension of the human[662]. Man is the point of origin: and from this pattern invention strives to work upward and outward. The great traditive deities indeed are on a different footing, and appear rather to be the reductions and depravations of an ideal modelled upon the infinite. But the general rule holds good, in regard both to bodily and mental laws, for the mass of the Olympian Court.

Thus deities are subject to sleep, both ordinarily, and under the special influences of Ὕπνος, the god of sleep. We are furnished with a reason for Jupiter’s not being asleep at a given moment[663]; it is the special anxiety which presses on him. He had been asleep just before. Their bodies are not ethereal, but are capable of constraint by manacles. They are capable also of wounds; and they suffer pain even so as to scream under it: but their blood is ichor, and their hurts heal with great rapidity[664]. They eat ambrosia, and drink nectar. They also receive a sensible pleasure from the savour of sacrifices and libations[665]. Nor is this pleasure alone, it is also nourishment and strength, for Mercury speaks of it as highly desirable for support on any long journey. He, too, practises according to his precept, for he seems greatly to relish the meal of ambrosia and nectar, which is afforded him by the hospitality of Calypso[666].

As regards the percipient organs, the Olympian gods appear to depend practically on the eye. Minerva alone has a perfect and unfailing acquaintance with whatever it concerns her to know. For even Jupiter, as we have seen, is not exempt from limitation in this point[667]. Juno sends Iris to Achilles in the Eighteenth Iliad without his knowledge, κρυβδὰ Διὸς ἄλλων τε θεῶν. Apollo does not immediately perceive the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia. Being here opposed to Minerva, he could not but be worsted. Generally, even these great traditive deities perceive not by a gift of universal vision, but by attention[668]:

Juno, keenly alive with anxiety, perceives from Olympus the slaughter that Hector and Mars are making on the plain of Troy; and likewise from the same spot watches Jupiter sitting upon Ida[669]. These four deities, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Apollo, appear to be endowed with by far the largest range of vision. Even to Neptune no such powers are assigned, as to them; for we are never given to understand that any amount of mere distance is too great for their ken. But Neptune only sees the state of the battle before Troy by coming to Samothrace, apparently to bring it within view, and by looking from thence: nor is the Poet content without adding the reason;

a passage which seems to imply, that his vision was much the same as that of mankind even in degree.

General prevalence of limitation.

In the Odyssey, Ulysses pursues his voyage on the raft without the knowledge of Neptune, although on the proper domain of the god, until the eighteenth day. Then he discovers him, but it is only because, coming up from the Ethiopian country, on reaching the Solyman mountains, he is supposed to have got within view of the hero. Being here, without special directions, in the zone of the Outer Geography, we have no means of measuring the terrestrial distance with precision, and the Poet has not informed us what interval of space he intended us to suppose.

The inventive deities of the second order in Olympus are very slightly gifted in this matter. So much we perceive from the ignorance of Mars about the death of his son Ascalaphus. When Venus observes, that Æneas has been wounded, Homer does not name the spot from which she looked; but the general range of the powers of this divinity is so narrow, that we must suppose he means to place her immediately over the field of battle before Troy.

Of the powers of Apollo or Minerva, as hearers of prayer irrespectively of distance, I have already spoken; but the local idea enters more freely into the anomalous character of the head of Olympus. In the First Iliad, Thetis explains to her son that she cannot introduce to Jupiter the matter of his wrongs, until he returns from the country of the Ethiopians, whither he has repaired with the other Immortals to a banquet[671]. This may mean either that he is too far off to attend to the business, or that he must not be disturbed while inhaling the odours of a hecatomb.

Very great diversity in individual cases, but at the same time a general and pervading law of restraint, are evident in the descriptions of the deities with respect to their powers of locomotion. Facility of movement accrues to them variously according to 1. their peculiar work and office; 2. their general dignity and freedom from merely mythological traits; 3. the exigencies of the particular situation. As to the first, I have noticed that Mercury and Iris have a rapidity as messenger-gods, which in their simple capacity as gods they could scarcely possess. Yet even Mercury follows a route: from Olympus he strikes across Pieria, and next descending skims the surface of the sea; then at length passes to the beach of the island, and so onwards to the cave of the Nymph[672]. Minerva, on the other hand, in virtue not of any special function, but of her general power and grandeur, is conceived as swifter still. The journeys of Apollo, in like manner, are conceived of as instantaneous: the rule in both cases being subject to poetical exceptions only. The chariots of Juno and of Neptune[673], again, proceed with measured pace. Each step of Juno’s horses covers the distance over which a man can see[674]. Neptune himself passes in four steps from Samothrace to Ægæ[675]. The driving of Jupiter from Olympus to Ida is described in terms before used for Juno’s journey[676]. Juno travels at another time from Olympus to Lemnos by Pieria, Emathia, and the tops of the Thracian mountains. Here Homer seems to supply her with a sort of made road on which to tread: for the route is a little circuitous[677]. Mars, when wounded, takes wing to Olympus: but Venus, though only hurt in the wrist, cannot get thither until she obtains the aid of his chariot, which happily for her was then waiting on the field[678].

But poetical utility, so to speak, enters very largely into the whole subject of Olympian locomotion, and makes it difficult to draw with rigour the proper mythological conclusions. This may be sufficiently illustrated by the following cases. We have seen the majestic march of Juno from one hill top to another, and the measured though speedy course of her chariot. Yet, under the pressure of urgent considerations, she flies from Ida to Olympus, as the bearer of Jupiter’s message, with a rapidity that Homer illustrates by the remarkable simile of the travelling of Thought[679]. Again, where an imposing magnificence is the object, measure is introduced into the movement of Apollo himself by the clang of the darts upon his shoulder as he goes[680]. And, even more, Venus, whom we have seen so impotent on the field of Troy, after her exposure in the Eighth Odyssey, flies at once all the way to Paphos; as does Mars to Thrace[681]. This in both cases is probably because the occasion did not admit of ornamental enlargements, such as befitted the journey of a god. And when Vulcan is represented as actually engaged in falling during the whole day from Olympus down into Lemnus[682], a poetical allusion to his lameness may probably be intended.

Chief heads of superiority to mankind.

Thus we see not the mental only, but also the corporeal existence of the mythological god hemmed in on every side. A great force of appetite, and a disposition to give it unbridled indulgence, can hardly be reckoned among elevating gifts. But if it be asked, wherein does Homer enlarge and improve for his mythical gods the human conditions of being, besides,

(1.) The one grand point of immortality, I should answer, in

(2.) An unlimited abundance of the means of corporal enjoyment, and a general freedom from the interruptions of care.

(3.) A liberal dispensation of the somewhat vulgar commodities of physical strength and stature; and of the higher gift of absolute beauty, into which the idea of stature, however, materially enters.

The former of these two we learn from the fact, that the banquet is the habitual and normal occupation of the Olympian Court. In the First Book, the fray between Jupiter and Juno passes off naturally, and as a matter of course, into a feast that lasts all day[683]. And when Juno, in the Fifteenth Book, reaches Olympus with a message from Jupiter, Thetis, whom she meets first, salutes her by offering the cup[684].

There is also among the gods a kind of ‘high life below stairs.’ When Iris repairs on behalf of Achilles to the Winds, she finds them too banqueting in the palace of Zephyr, probably their chief[685]; but she hastes away, when her message is delivered, to feast in preference among divinities of her own rank upon an Ethiopian sacrifice.

Their stature and beauty.

As regards size and stature, these gifts are so freely bestowed as to be almost without measure: nor does the Poet even care in such cases to be at strict unity with himself. Mars, who in the Fifth Book, draws no very peculiar notice on the battle field from his size, in the Theomachy, when laid prostrate, covers seven acres. Eris, treading on the earth, strikes heaven with her head. The helmet of Minerva would suffice for the soldiery of a hundred cities; the golden tassels of her ægis, a hundred in number, and each worth a hundred oxen, after every allowance for mere laxity in the use of numbers, would imply vast weight and bulk. Accordingly, the axle of Juno’s chariot may well groan beneath the weight of Pallas[686]. Apollo, without the smallest seeming effort, stops Diomed and Patroclus in mid-career; and overthrows the Greek wall as easily as a child overthrows his plaything heap of sand[687]. Other signs might be quoted, such as the tread that shakes the earth, and the voices of Mars and Neptune, equal to those of nine or ten thousand[688] mortals.

With the one marked exception of Vulcan, beauty is generally indicated as the characteristic of the Olympian deities. Among the gods, it extends even to Mars[689]. It is sufficiently indicated for the goddesses by their habitual epithets. Even Minerva, in whom personal charms are as it were eclipsed by the sublime gifts of the mind, is sometimes called ἠΰκομος and ἐϋπλόκαμος (Il. vi. 92. Od. vii. 40): and Calypso declares the superiority of goddesses to women in beauty, as a general proposition[690],

The mythological or invented deities generally, but none of the strictly traditive deities, appear to be tainted with libertinism. Among the former we may, however, observe degrees. Jupiter and Venus stand at the head. Neptune, Mars, Mercury, Ceres, Aurora, follow. Juno evidently treats the passion simply as an instrument for political ends. Of this Homer has given us a very remarkable indication. For when she sees Jupiter on Ida, though she is just then conceiving her design, she views him with disgust: στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ[691]. So careful is the Poet that we shall not imagine her to have been under the gross influence of a merely sensual passion. Thetis suggests a remedy of that nature to her son for his grief[692]. In mere impersonations, not yet endowed with the strong human individuality of the Greek Olympus, such as Themis and Helios, we do not expect to find this trait. But of all the fully personified deities of invention, Vulcan alone, privileged by Labour and Ugliness, appears in Homer to be exempt. The Hellenic goddesses generally do not, however, like the more Pelasgian Venus, Ceres, and probably Aurora, debase themselves by intrigues with mortal men.

The chastity of the traditive deities, Minerva, Diana, Latona, and probably Apollo, I take for one of the noblest and most significant proofs of the high origin of the materials which they respectively embody.

There is also in the deities of Homer not merely a dependance upon physical nourishment, but even a passion of gluttony connected with it. The basis of this idea is laid in the conception which made feasting the normal occupation of Olympus. It followed that they were not only bound by something in the nature of necessity to food, but also enslaved to it by greediness as a rooted habit.

Nature of their regard for sacrifice.

Of this we find traces all through the poems, in the course which divine favour usually takes. When Homer speaks of the gods in the sense of Providential governors, it is the just man that they regard, and the unjust that they visit with wrath. But when he carries us into Olympus, and we behold them in the living energy of their individualities, it is sacrifice which they want, and which forms their share in the fruits of earth and of human labour, as we learn from the emphatic words of Jupiter himself;

It was the bounty of Autolycus in lambs and kids which induced Mercury to bestow on him in return the gifts of thievery and perjury[694].

Moral retribution in Homer lags and limps at a great distance behind the offence, but the omission to sacrifice is visited condignly and at once. Again, in the case of Troy, liberality in this particular even seems to create a party in Olympus on behalf of an offending race. On the erection of the rampart by the Greeks, Neptune immediately urges the omission of the regular hecatombs against them. It is punished by Diana in Ætolia, by the gods generally on the departure from Troas; and Menelaus in like manner is for this offence wind-bound in Pharos[695].

The reason of this preeminence of sacrifices, both as to punishment and as to reward, may lie partly in the tendency of man (though, as we shall presently see, the practice had its moral side also) to substitute positive observances for moral obedience; but partly, likewise, in the importance of sacrifices to the anthropophuism of the Olympian deities themselves.

Putting out of view what each deity can do in his particular domain, we shall find that but little of power over nature—whether human, animal, or inanimate—attaches to the Homeric gods as such. Juno conveys a suggestion to the mind of Agamemnon[696], and gives, with Minerva, courage to a warrior; but this is the whole of her immediate action, I mean action without a mean, in this department, exhibited by any passage in the Poems. Indeed, no other mythological deity ascends to agency of this kind at all.

Upon animal and inanimate nature Juno exercises the highest powers. When she thunders with Minerva, sends cloud to impede the flying Trojans, retards the sunset, and assists the voyage of Jason, we may consider her as in the reflex use of the atmospheric powers of her husband: but the gift of a voice to the horse Xanthus, apparently can lie within her reach only by derivation from the higher or traditive element in his character, as representing the idea of supreme deity.

Among the deities of invention, the general rule is, with respect to the exercise of power over nature or the human mind, that it is confined to matters in immediate connection with their several specialties. Two extraordinary acts of power over nature appear, however, to be within the competency of them all. One is the production of a patch of cloud or vapour at will; the other is that of assuming the human form for themselves, either generally or in the likeness of some particular person. I do not, however, recollect any instance in which this power is exercised by a deity of invention in the manner in which Minerva employs it in the First Iliad[697], that is, under the condition of being visible only to one person out of many who are present. In that image we seem to find a figure, perhaps a traditionary remnant, of that inward and personal communication between the Almighty and the individual soul, which constitutes a high distinguishing note of the true religion.

There would appear to have been certain visible marks which went to distinguish a god, up to a certain point, from men. Hector in the Fifteenth Iliad knows Apollo to be a god[698], but does not know what god. Minerva clears the vision of Diomed, that he may be able to discriminate between gods and men[699]. Pandarus, eyeing Diomed, is uncertain whether he is a mortal or a god[700]. The recognition of Venus by Helen may, indeed, have been due to the imperfectness of her power of self-transformation[701]; but it may also have been owing to these general traces of resemblance to the divine order, which subsisted even under the human disguise.

Homer represents Minerva as weighing down the chariot of Diomed, and making the axle creak[702];

This passage may be taken as a proof, since it applies to the most spiritual of the Homeric divinities, how far the Poet was from considering that they were endowed with the properties of pure spirit.

Parts of the body, how ascribed.

Of this he has given us farther proof by his free and constant reference, wherever occasion serves, to the parts and organs of the body as appertaining to the gods.

I think that references of this kind in Holy Scripture usually bear a mark, which yields decisive witness to the fact that their use is wholly relative and analogical: as, for example, the eye of God, namely, the instrument by which He watches us, the mouth of God, by which He instructs us, the hand and the arm of God, by which He sustains, or delivers, or corrects, or crushes us. It does not therefore appear that we could justly and fully draw our conclusions as to the corporeal constitution of an Olympic deity from the mere circumstance that we are told of the knees or lap of the gods, by which it might be figuratively expressed, that the disposal of human affairs rests with them[703]; or because of that gorgeous description, which the Poet has given us, of the head and nod, meaning the decree of Jupiter. For all these allusions are capable of explanation on the same principle with those of Holy Scripture, namely, as being relative and explanatory to man.

But he has a multitude of other references to parts of the body, which do not at all belong to the use of them as organs for communication with the imperfect apprehensions of mankind. Thus:

1. Thetis takes hold of the chin of Jupiter, Il. i. 501.

2. Diomed wounds Venus on the wrist, Il. v. 336.

3. And Mars in the abdomen, Il. v. 857; whom Minerva likewise overthrows by a blow on the neck, Il. xxi. 406.

4. Hercules wounds Juno in the right breast, Il. v. 393; and we have her hair, flesh, chest, and feet, in the toilette of Il. xiv. 170–86.

5. Helen discovers the neck and breast as well as eyes of Venus, Il. iii. 396. See Il. xxi. 424.

6. The legs of Vulcan are weak, his neck strong, and his chest shaggy, Il. xviii. 411–15.

7. Mercury attaches wings to his feet, Od. v.

8. Juno seizes the wrists of Diana, takes the bow and arrows from her back, and beats her about the ears, Il. xxi. 489–91.

9. The arrows rattle on the shoulder of Apollo, Il. i. 46.

10. The arming of Minerva introduces her shoulders, head, and feet, Il. v. 738–45.

We need not, however, be surprised at failing to find in Homer any conception approaching to that of pure spirit, or any thing resembling that refined discernment, which has led Christian Art to represent the figure of our Lord alone as self-poised and self-supported in the air, while all other human forms, even when transfigured, have a ground beneath their feet, though it be but made of cloud. Even in some of the very highest among Christian writers, such as Dante and St. Bernard, the human being, after the soul has gone through dismissal from the flesh, still appears to be invested with a lighter form and species of body, apparently on the assumption that the two elements of matter and spirit are not only essentially, but inseparably wedded in our nature.

Examples of miracle in Homer.

Full as they are of preternatural signs and operations, the poems of Homer do not, nevertheless, deal much with miracle, with the specific purpose of which he had no concern.

By miracle I understand, speaking generally, not the mere use of the common natural powers, accumulated or enlarged, but an operation involving what, I suppose, would be called medically an organic departure from her customary laws: an operation too, which must absolutely be performed, upon man himself or some other object, after some manner which shall be appreciable in its results by his faculties, and calculated to satisfy them, when in their greatest vigilance, that it is a real experience, and not a mere delusion of the senses.

Thus understood, the miracles of Homer are, I think, scarcely more numerous than the following: for, under this definition, the ambrosia of Simois and the flowers of Ida are not miracles[704].

1. The crawling and lowing of the oxen of the Sun after their death, Od. xii. 395, 6.

2. The acceleration of the Sunset, Il. xviii. 239.

3. The retardation of the dawn, Od. xxiii. 241.

4. The speaking horse, Il. xix. 407.

3. The εἴδωλον of Æneas, Il. v. 449.

6. The portents of the banquet night in Od. xx. 347–62. I feel some doubt, however, whether this is objective, or whether it is only an impression on the senses.

7. The transformation and re-transformation of Ulysses[705], Od. xiii. 398, 429, and xxiii. 156–63.

8. Perhaps, also, the εἴδωλον of Iphthime, Od. ix. 797.

9. The gouts of blood, shed down from the air by Jupiter, Il. xi. 53.

10. The transformation of the serpent into a stone in the sight of all the Greeks; ἡμεῖς δ’ ἑσταότες θαυμάζομεν οἷον ἐτύχθη, Il. ii. 320.

The first seems due to the divine power as a whole; the second and fourth to Juno; the third and seventh and eighth to Minerva; the fifth and sixth are the works of Apollo; the ninth and tenth of Jupiter. I do not add as an eleventh the conversion of the Phæacian ship into a rock, by Neptune, in the sight of the people; because this is rather of the class of marvels which appertained to other, even secondary gods, such as Vulcan, in their own particular domains, Od. xiii. 159–87.

The buoyant arms of Achilles (Il. xix. 386), and other works of Vulcan, might at first sight seem to belong to the list, but it is doubtful whether they are not poetical rather than mythological representations, and in any case they would appear as gifts strictly professional, exercised in the ordinary administration of his peculiar function.

Telemachus appears to recognise the existence of miraculous powers in the passage[706],

But this is spoken of the Godhead rather than of any particular deity, and cannot by Homeric analogy be applied except to those of the highest natures.

Their operation on the human mind.

It will however be observed, that several of these prodigies are not stated to have challenged human observation when performed: and unless they submit themselves to the test of the senses they are not properly miracles at all. Others of them entirely comply with the condition, as especially that of Il. ii. 320.

The retardation of sunset and sunrise, and the rain of blood, appear to pass wholly unobserved. Prodigies not setting out from a basis in nature, such as the tears of blood shed by Jupiter[707], are wholly beyond the scope of these observations.

On the whole, we find stringent limitation prevailing in this province, as regards the majority of the gods.

Indeed the forces of nature, which the mythological divinities in part represent, were sometimes too strong for them: for Homer tells us that Notus and Zephyr[708] sometimes shatter vessels at sea without or against the will of the gods:

Even man, and that without impiety, can occasionally think of resistance. When Menelaus, alone in the field, decides on retiring before Hector (who fights ἐκ θεόφιν), rather than contend πρὸς δαίμονα, he looks around for Ajax, and observes that, could he but see him, they two would fight καὶ πρὸς δαίμονά περ, even with the deity opposed to them, in order to recover the body of Patroclus[709].

There is, however, I think, another reason, besides feebleness in his conception of the gods, which prevents the Greek Poet from representing them as omnipotent in regard to the operations of the human mind; and that is, his profound sense of the free agency of man. This principle with him, as it were, confronts the deity on every side; who respects its dignity, and never really invades its sphere, but pursues his work by means compatible with its essential character. The idea of the deity pervading the poems is mainly that of a cooperative power, who helps us when and as we help ourselves. It is expressed with an unrivalled simplicity when Telemachus, coming as a young man into the presence of Nestor, feels oppressed with a nervous shyness; and Minerva encourages him by telling him that he can of himself find something to say, and that the divinity will prompt more to him[710],

Heavenly influence never overpowers or suppresses the will, but sometimes suggests thoughts to the mind, and sometimes diverts it, not perhaps from the thought of an object already perceived, but from the chance of perceiving it. Thus, when Euryclea, through surprise on beholding the scar, and so recognising Ulysses, oversets the foot-bath, Penelope, who is present, might naturally have observed the miscarriage; but Minerva interposes to abstract her attention from what was passing, lest she should recognise her husband prematurely:

With the exception of Juno, who in some sense reflects the majesty of Jupiter, and becomes entitled as a wife to handle his prerogatives, it may be stated generally respecting the deities of invention properly so called, that, except within the limits of their particular domain or office, they scarcely at all modify the laws of nature, never set in motion or direct her greater forces, nor act in an extraordinary manner on the mind or body of man. Each in his own province can stimulate a particular animal propensity, or improve a particular gift of mind or body: and that is all.

While therefore the strength of the Olympian deities lies in knowledge and in power, we find upon the whole that even in these particularly they are subject to manifold limitation. They could translate mortals out of this world in which the rule of Death prevails, as we see in the cases of Ganymede, and of Tithonus; but it does not appear that, if we except the traditive ideas represented in Minerva and Apollo, they could either raise men from the grave, prevent their dying in the course of nature, heal their wounds or diseases, or set their broken limbs. When even Latona and Diana heal Æneas[712], they do it apparently with greater speed indeed, but in other respects much as it would have been done by Podaleirius or Machaon.

They do not discern the thoughts.

Nor, again, does it appear that even the most exalted of their number had the knowledge of inward thoughts, otherwise than as they may be discovered by persons of particular sagacity. When Minerva detects the false accounts given of himself by Ulysses[713], no more is declared than the simple fact that she has a sufficient knowledge of his personal identity. Hence, with respect to the fraud of Laomedon upon Neptune and Apollo, Saint Augustine sarcastically wonders that even Apollo the diviner should not have known that Laomedon meant to cheat him[714]; and that one of such dignity as Neptune should have been in a like state of ignorance. With this we may compare the taunts of Elijah[715] against the priests of Baal.

While, then, the gift of anything like general foreknowledge appears to be withheld from all the deities of invention, that of the ‘discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,’ is nowhere found; nor was it believed of any member of the Olympian community, as it was said of One greater than they[716]: ‘He knew all men; and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man.’

Such, as far as I am able to present it, is the internal view of the Olympus of Homer: a scheme eminently national, and eminently poetical. Egypt, Persia, Phœnicia, the old Pelasgians, doubtless contributed materials towards its formation: but I have a lively conviction that Homer was (so to speak) the theo-mythologer who moulded these materials into system, the substitute for unity, invested them with the forms and colours of brilliant beauty, and gave them their hold in their historic shape upon the mind of his countrymen; with the sublime Olympus, so near the old Dodona, of which he probably contrived it as the rival, for their centre of life and power.