And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade,
it probably did not occur to him, that he was not merely altering
the poetry of Homer, but falsifying also his picture of the Trojan
religion; which had indeed its funeral rites, but so described as to
leave us no means of concluding, that they were in any degree directed
to procuring the comfort and tranquillity of the dead. The silence
observed about the spirit of Hector is remarkable from the contrast
with the case of Patroclus. Both are mourned for passionately, by
those who love them best: but the shade of Patroclus is the great
figure in the mourning of Achilles, while Hector’s existence after
death is but once owned, faintly and in the abstract. Nor, as we
see from the Odyssey, was this homage to the shade of Patroclus a
thing occasional or accidental. We there meet the souls of all the
great departed of the War, in the under-world. That region, opened
to Ulysses, had formerly been opened to Hercules. Even the dissolute
Suitors cannot be dismissed from life, without our being called to
accompany their spirits past the Leucadian rock to the place of their
destination. The warriors slain in battle with the Cicones are thrice
invoked by the survivors[343]. Nay Elpenor himself, most insignificant
of men, is duly brought before us in his last home[344].
[343] Od. ix. 65.
[344] Od. xi. 51.
We are, however, enabled to open another chapter of evidence, that
bears upon this interesting subject. It is obtained through the medium
of the oaths of the two nations respectively.
Displacing the elemental powers from their ordinary religion, the
Greeks made them gaolers, as it were, of the under-world, and gave
them this for their proper business. Hence they are paraded freely in
the Greek oaths[345]. Agamemnon before the Pact invokes, with Jupiter,
the Sun, the Rivers, the Earth, the infernal gods. In the Nineteenth
book, the same; omitting however the Rivers, and naming, instead of
simply describing, the Erinües[346]. In the Fourteenth Iliad, Juno
apparently swears by Styx, Earth, Sea, and the infernal gods[347]. In
the Fifteenth, by Earth, Heaven, Styx, the head of Jupiter, and their
marriage bed[348]. Calypso swears, for the satisfaction of Ulysses,
and according to his fashion as the _imponens_, by Earth, Heaven, and
Styx[349]. Thus the Greeks made an effective use of these earthy and
material divinities, in connection with their large development of the
Future State, by installing them as the official punishers of perjury.
Now the Trojans appear, from what we have seen, to have worshipped this
class of deities; but as super-terranean, not as sub-terranean gods.
Had they not been _thus_ worshipped at the least, Agamemnon could not
have included them in the Invocation of the Pact, where he had to act
and speak for both nations[350]. And while we see they sacrificed lambs
to Earth and Sun, still we have a curious proof that these deities were
not worshipped in Troy as avengers of perjury. For when in the Tenth
Book Hector swears to Dolon, he invokes no divinity, except Jupiter
the loud-thundering husband of Juno. There may, as we have seen here,
be a faint reference to the earthy character of the Trojan Juno; but
there is no well-developed system, which uses a particular order of
powers for the punishment of perjurors in a future state. We can hardly
doubt that this was primarily because the doctrine of the Future State
was wanting in deep and practical roots, so far as we can see, among
the Trojans. A materializing religion seems essentially hostile to the
full development of such a doctrine. And it is not a little curious to
find that in this same country, where the oath was less solemn than
in Greece, and the life after death less a subject of practical and
energetic belief, perjury and breach of faith should have been, as we
shall find they were, so much more lightly regarded.
[345] Il. iii. 276.
[346] Il. xix. 258.
[347] Il. xiv. 271-4, 278, 9.
[348] Il. xv. 36-40.
[349] Od. v. 184.
[350] Il. iii 264-75.
For the sake of realizing to ourselves the contrast between the
religious system of Troy, as we thus at least by glimpses seem
to perceive it, and the wonderful imaginative richness of the
preternatural system of the Greeks as exhibited in Homer, it may be
well to point briefly to a few cases, which are the more illustrative,
because they are the accessories, and not the main pillars of the
system. Take, then, the personifications of all the forms of Terror in
the train of Mars: the transport, by Sleep and Death, of the body of
Sarpedon to his home; the tears of blood wept by Jupiter; the agitation
of the sea in sympathy with Neptune’s warlike parade; the dread of
Aidoneus lest the crust of earth should give way under the tramp of
the gods in battle; the mourning garb of Thetis for the friend of her
son’s youth; the long train of Nymphs, rising from the depths of the
sea to accompany her, when she mounts to visit the sorrowing Achilles;
the redundant imagery of the nether world; the inimitable tact with
which he preserves the identity of his great chieftains when visited
below, but presents each under a deep tint of sadness. All this makes
us feel not only that war, policy, and poetry, are indissolubly blended
in the great mind of Homer, and of his race, but that the harmonious
association of all these with the Olympian religion was the work of a
vivifying imagination, which was a peculiar and splendid part of their
inheritance.
~_Worship from the hills._~
There is a more marked trace in the Trojan worship, than is to be found
among the Greeks, of the practice of the Persian; who paid homage to
the Deity,
To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops,
With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow[351].
[351] Wordsworth’s Excursion, b. iv.
For Hector offered to Jupiter sometimes (which may be referred to a
different cause) on the highest ground of the city, sometimes on the
tops of Ida[352]:
[352] Il. xxii. 171.
Ἴδης ἐν κορυφῇσι πολυπτύχου, ἀλλότε δ’ αὖτε
ἐν πόλει ἀκροτάτῃ.
At all events we may say, that the only sign remaining in Greece of
this principle of worship, was one common to it with Troy, and seen in
the epithet ὑψίζυγος applied to Jupiter, as well as in the association
between the seats of the gods, and the highest mountains.
On the other hand, the religion of the Trojans appears to have abounded
more in positive observance and hierarchical development, than that of
the Greeks.
This subject may be considered with reference to the several subjects
of
1. Temples.
2. Endowments (τεμένεα).
3. Groves.
4. Statues.
5. Seers or Prophets.
6. The Priesthood.
~_Troy and Greece as to Temples._~
It has been debated, whether the Greeks of the Homeric age had yet
begun to erect temples to the gods.
The only case of a temple, distinctly and expressly mentioned as
existing in Greece, is in the passage of the Catalogue respecting the
Athenians, on which there hangs a slight shade of doubt. But another
passage, though it does not contain the word, seems to be conclusive as
to the thing. It is that where Achilles mentions treasures, which lie
within the stony threshold of Apollo at Pytho[353]:
[353] Il. ix. 404. Ld. Aberdeen’s Essay, p. 86.
οὐδ’ ὅσα λάϊνος οὐδὸς ἀφήτορος ἐντὸς ἐέργει,
Φοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος, Πυθοῖ ἔνι πετρήεσσῃ.
Though there may have been treasuries which were not temples, they
could hardly have been treasuries of the gods: for in what sense could
treasures be placed under their special protection, unless by being
deposited in places which were peculiarly theirs?
In the Odyssey, Eurylochus promises to build a temple to the Sun,
on getting safe to Ithaca[354]; and Nausithous[355], the father of
Alcinous, built temples of the gods in Scheria. Now Scheria was not
Greece; yet it was more akin to Greece than to Troy.
[354] Od. xii. 345.
[355] Od. vi. 10; vii. 56.
It is, on the other hand, observable that, though under these
circumstances we can hardly deny that temples existed among the Greeks,
yet we have no case in Homer of a temple actually erected to a purely
Hellic deity.
Our clear instances are, in fact, confined to the temples of Minerva at
Troy and Athens, and the temples of Apollo at Troy, Chryse[356], and
Pytho: and when we see old Nestor performing solemn sacrifice in the
open air at Pylos, himself, too, a reputed grandchild of Neptune, we
cannot suppose that it was usual with the Hellenes to worship Hellenic
gods in temples. It is possible, though I would not presume to say
more, that Apollo and Minerva may have been the only deities to whom it
was usual in that age to erect temples, whether in Greece or Troy.
[356] Il. i. 39.
I must not, however, presume to dismiss this subject without noticing
the line, Od. vi. 266;
ἔνθα δέ τέ σφ’ ἀγορὴ, καλὸν Ποσιδήϊον ἄμφις.
This verse is often interpreted as ‘the place of assembly round about
the beautiful temple of Neptune.’ So Eustathius[357]: so one of the
scholiasts: the other interprets it to mean a τέμενος only. Nitzsch,
Terpstra[358] and Crusius take it for a temple. The word Ποσιδήϊον
without a substantive is a form found nowhere else in Homer: so that
we have only the aid of reason to interpret it. Now, this ἀγορὴ was the
place of the public assemblies for business. It is surely improbable,
that there could have been a roofed temple in the midst of it, which
would interrupt both sight and hearing. On the other hand, we know
that before Troy the altars were in the ἀγορὴ of the camp[359]: and
this would cause no inconvenience. It would seem then, that Ποσιδήϊον
means not a covered temple, but a consecrated spot, in all likelihood
inclosed, on which an altar stood.
[357] In loc.
[358] Terpstra, c. iii. 4.
[359] Il. xi. 807, 8.
I would not, however, argue absolutely upon the word νηὸν, in cases
where it is found without a word signifying to construct, or other
signs marking it as a building. For its resemblance to νήϊον raises
the question, whether it may not originally have meant the consecrated
land which passed under the name of τέμενος. If so, it may have had
this sense in a passage like that of the Catalogue; where the epithet
joined to it (ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ) is one more suitable to the idea of a
piece of ground, than of a temple; though applicable by Homeric usage
to the latter too, and though sufficiently supported by μάλα πίονος ἐξ
ἀδύτοιο. (Il. v. 512.)
2. The derivation of τέμενος is supposed, by some philologists, to be
the same with that of _templum_. And if so, there is a marked analogy
between this association and that of νηόν with νήϊον. Each would seem
to indicate the customs of a race, which had both dedicated lands and
a priesthood, before it began to raise sacred edifices.
~_As to endowments in land._~
As respects the endowment in land, which was sometimes consecrated to
the gods, and was called τέμενος, I presume we must conclude that,
wherever such an endowment was found, there must have been a priesthood
supported by it. For it is difficult to conceive what other purpose
could have been contemplated, at such a time, by such an appropriation
of land. And again we may assume that, where the τέμενος or glebe
existed, there would be if not a temple yet at least an altar,
something which localized the worship in the particular spot.
It is indeed much more easy to suppose a temple without a priesthood,
than a glebe. And here it is again remarkable, that we meet with no
example in Homer of a glebe set apart for an exclusively Hellic god.
The cases of glebes, with which he supplies us, are these: