2. Because, in the whole character of the Homeric Juno, and in the
whole of this proceeding, it is the political spirit, and not the
animal tendency, that predominates. Of this Homer has given us distinct
warning, where he tells us that Juno just before had looked on Jupiter
from afar, and that he was disgusting to her; (v. 158) στυγερὸς δέ
οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ. It is therefore futile to argue about her, as if she
had been under the paramount sway either of animal desire, or even of
the feminine love of admiration, when she was really and exclusively
governed by another master-passion.
3. As she has artfully persuaded Jupiter, that he has an obstacle
to overcome in diverting her from her intention of travelling to a
distance, it is not at all unnatural that Jupiter should use what he
thinks, and what, as Heyne has shown, he may justly think, to be proper
and special means of persuasion.
4. The passage is carefully and skilfully composed; and it ends with a
climax, so as to give the greatest force to the compliment of which it
is susceptible.
5. All the representations in it harmonize with the manner of handling
the same personages elsewhere in Homer.
6. The passage has that strong vein of nationality, which is so
eminently characteristic of Homer. No intrigues are mentioned, except
such as issued in the birth of children of recognised Hellenic fame.
The gross animalism of Jupiter, displayed in the Speech, is in the
strictest keeping with the entire context; for it is the basis of the
transaction, and gives Juno the opportunity she so adroitly turns to
account.
7. Those, who reject the passage as spurious, because the action
ought not at this point to be loaded with a speech, do not, I think,
bear in mind that a deviation of this kind from the strict poetical
order is really in keeping with Homer’s practice on other occasions,
particularly in the disquisitions of Nestor and of Phœnix. Such
a deviation appears to be accounted for by his historic aims. To
comprehend him in a case of this kind, we must set out from his point
of departure, according to which, verse was not a mere exercise for
pleasure, but was to be the one great vehicle of all knowledge: and a
potent instrument in constructing a nationality. Thus, then, what the
first aim rejected, the second might in given cases accept and even
require. Now in this short passage there is a great deal of important
historical information conveyed to us.
We may therefore with considerable confidence employ such evidence as
the speech may be found to afford.
Let us, then, observe the forms of expression as they run in series,
οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἠρασάμην Ἰξιονίης ἀλόχοιο[655].
οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης[656].
οὐδ’ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλείτοιο[657].
[655] Ver. 317.
[656] Ver. 319.
[657] Ver. 321.
~_Sense of Il._ xiv. 321.~
Taken grammatically, I presume the last verse may mean, (1) The
daughter of the distinguished Phœnix: or (2) The daughter of a
distinguished Phœnician: or (3) A distinguished Phœnician damsel.
_a._ Against the first it may be urged, that we have no other account
from Homer, or from any early tradition, of this Phœnix, here described
as famous.
_b._ Against the second and third, that Homer nowhere directly declares
the foreign origin of any great Greek personage.
_c._ Also, that in each of the previous cases, Homer has used the
proper name of a person nearly connected in order to indicate and
identity the woman, whom therefore it is not likely that he would in
this single case denote only by her nation, or the nation of her father.
_d._ Against the third, that, in the only other passage where he has
to speak of a Phœnician woman, he uses a feminine form, Φοίνισσα:
ἔσκε δὲ πατρὸς ἐμοῖο γυνὴ Φοίνισσ’ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ (Od. xv. 417). But Φοίνιξ
is grammatically capable of the feminine, as is shown by Herod. i.
193[658].
[658] See Jelf’s Gr. Gramm. 103.
_e._ Also that Homer, in the few instances where he uses the word
τηλεκλειτὸς, confines it to men. He, however, gives the epithet
ἐρικυδὴς to Latona.
The arguments from the structure of the passage, and from the uniform
reticence of Homer respecting the foreign origin of Greek personages,
convince me that it is not on the whole warrantable to interpret Φοίνιξ
in this place in any other manner, than as the name of the father of
Minos.
The name Φοίνιξ, however, taken in connection with the period to
which it applies--nearly three generations before the _Troica_--still
continues to supply of itself no trifling presumption of the Phœnician
origin of Minos.
It cannot, I suppose, be doubted that the original meaning of Φοίνιξ,
when first used as a proper name in Greece, probably was ‘of Phœnician
birth, or origin.’ But, if we are to judge by the testimony of Homer,
the time, when Minos lived, was but very shortly after the first
Phœnician arrivals in Greece; and his grandfather Phœnix, living four
and a half generations before the _Troica_, was in all likelihood
contemporary with, or anterior to, Cadmus. At a period when the
intercourse of the two countries was in its infancy, we may, I think,
with some degree of confidence construe this proper name as indicating
the country of origin.
~_Collateral evidence._~
The other marks connected with Minos and his history give such support
to this presumption as to bring the supposition up to reasonable
certainty. Such are,