In speaking of the religion of the Homeric Greeks we have to draw a
distinction between the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. In the _Iliad_ the
gods play a much livelier and more human part than in the latter poem,
and it is highly remarkable that the only comic scenes in the first
and greatest of epics are those in which the gods are the chief
actors--as when the lame Hephæstus takes upon him the office of
cupbearer at the Olympian banquet, or when Artemis gets her ears boxed
by the angry Hera. It would almost seem as if there were a vein of
deliberate satire running through these descriptions, so daring is the
treatment of the divine personages.
In the _Odyssey_, on the other hand, religion has become more
spiritual. Olympus is no longer the mountain of that name, but a vague
term, like our "heaven," denoting a place remote from all earthly
cares and passions, a far-off abode in the stainless ether, where the
gods dwell in everlasting peace, and from which they occasionally
descend, to give an eye to the righteous and unrighteous deeds of men.
In his conception of the state of the soul after death Homer is very
interesting. His _Hades_, or place of departed spirits, is a dim,
shadowy region beyond the setting of the sun, where, after life's
trials are over, the souls of men keep up a faint and feeble being. It
is highly significant that the word which in Homer means "self" has
also the meaning of "body"--showing how intimately the sense of
personal identity was associated with the condition of bodily
existence. The disembodied spirit is compared to a shadow, a dream, or
a waft of smoke. "Alas!" cries Achilles, after a visit from the ghost
of Patroclus, "I perceive that even in the halls of Hades there is a
spirit and a phantom, but understanding none at all"; for the mental
condition of these cold, uncomfortable ghosts is as feeble as their
bodily form is shadowy and unsubstantial. They hover about with a
fitful motion, uttering thin, gibbering cries, like the voice of a
bat, and before they can obtain strength to converse with a visitor
from the other world, they have to be fortified by a draught of fresh
blood. The subject is summed up by Achilles, when Odysseus felicitates
him on the honour which he enjoys, even in Hades: "Tell me not of
comfort in death," he says: "I had rather be the thrall of the poorest
wight that ever tilled a thankless soil for bread, than rule as king
over all the shades of the departed."