and that they were not originally in relation with one another;
while he justly observes, that this deity, like Apollo, has a great
and inexplicable diversity of function. She, like other deities of
Greece, has been thought to represent the Astarte of the Syrians.
Again, Herodotus[256] has given us most curious information respecting
the gods of the Scythians, whom we have found to be related to the
Pelasgi. They worship, he states, the Celestial Venus under the name
of Artimpasa. This name, it has been ingeniously conjectured[257], is
composed (1) of the name Mitra, which the Persians gave to Venus[258],
and which reversed becomes Artim, and (2) of the Sanscrit _Bhas_,
meaning _shine_, and thus corresponding with the Φοῖβος of Apollo,
and the Γλαυκῶπις of Pallas: all of them being, as it were, shreds of
the tradition fully represented in the Shechinah of the Jews, and the
‘Light’ of Saint John. This also corresponds with the cluster of golden
epithets, the χρυσηλάκατος, χρυσήνιος, and χρυσόθρονος, which Homer
applies to Diana: and the very feebleness of Diana in the Theomachy
suggests that the Eastern prototype of Venus, the Mitra of the
Persians, was originally no more than a degenerate derivation from a
higher tradition, which found a more natural, but still only a partial,
expression in the majestic and chaste, as well as beautiful, Artemis.
[256] Herod, iv. 59.
[257] Welsford on the English Language, chap. iii. p. 78.
[258] Herod, i. 131.
~_The Latona of Homer._~
We have next to consider the Homeric delineation of Latona, the mother
of Apollo and of Diana.
It is scarcely possible to avoid being struck, on turning to this
portraiture, with the contrast between the slightness of the outline
and the real dignity of the features and position. This contrast,
like the greater one relating to Apollo, seems to have its key in the
traditional origin of the representation: and there is no one Homeric
deity, whose case, when fully considered, can afford a more marked
testimony to the hypothesis of a strong element of traditive theology
in the religious system of the Poems.
Why has she a position so different from that of any other wife or
concubine of Jupiter: such, for example, as Dione or Demeter?
Why is it so much elevated above that of any among them, except only
Juno?
How comes she to have a son so incomparably superior in rank, in power,
and in the affections of his father, to any child of Juno herself, the
πρεσβὰ θεά?
Why, being thus great, is she wholly unfurnished with attributes or
functions, either general or specific?
Why, on the other hand, does so much obscurity hang about her origin,
and what are we to say as to her divinity, in answer to the question,
whether it was original or acquired?
The name of Latona appears to have been a perpetual puzzle to the
expounders of Greek mythology. It is taken to mean Night, which,
combined with Day, produces the Sun[259]; or ‘obscure,’ or ‘concealed,’
as that from which issues the visible deity, the Sun in heaven.
But surely these explanations can have no bearing upon the Homeric
mythology, where it is matter of question even whether Apollo and the
Sun have any mutual relations at all, and where it is quite clear
that the personality of Apollo is far older and riper, as well as far
higher and more comprehensive; which implies of necessity, that Latona
must have been known, and must have held her place, quite apart from
any relation to the Sun. An explanation of this kind is simply an
indication, that the problem has not yet been solved.
[259] Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. p. 71. Smith’s Dict. art. Leto.
But now, if we presume Apollo to be the representative of the Messianic
tradition, that the Seed of the woman should crush the serpent’s head,
the state of the case is entirely changed. And the explanation of
the name in particular, instead of being hopeless, becomes easy, and
even auxiliary to the general hypothesis. For now Latona stands in
the tradition as a person anterior to the whole Olympian mythology:
a person for whose extraction that mythology does not and ought not
to account. Its Jupiter and Juno are referred to a parentage, that of
Κρόνος and Ῥέα, and through these perhaps afresh to Oceanus and Tethys
as their ultimate source. Everything, again, that is connected with the
genesis of the Olympian system, properly so called, is made to conform
to anthropomorphous ideas: but here are two of its deities, one of
them among its very greatest, who have a mother that forms part of the
earliest known tradition respecting them, while that mother is herself
without an origin. What could be more natural, than that a name should
fasten itself upon her, simply importing that, illustrious as was her
motherhood, the fountain-head of her own life and destiny was lost in
oblivion? For it lay beyond the point from which all mythical knowledge
was held to spring. A certain motherhood was known of her, and that was
all.
Again, the mother of the Deliverer was to be a woman. But in the
Greek mythology it could not be, that a woman should stand as the
giver of life to one of its most august divinities. Yet the woman
of the tradition could not be transferred from the tradition as a
great substantive personage into the Greek mythology, because in the
tradition she stood an unembellished figure, wholly without attributes.
Hence invention would, on taking over the tradition, be at fault; and
could not but present to us an ambiguous and inconsistent picture, such
as now stands before us in the Latona of Homer.
Let us next set forth the facts regarding Latona, as they stand in the
poems.
In the first place, then, her divinity is beyond all doubt; for she is
one of those deities who take part in the war[260], and this although,
almost alone among them, she has no office whatever to associate
her with it, and no part to play in the conduct of it. She ranges
herself on the side of the Trojans; apparently, like Diana, drawn in
that direction by Apollo, the central and really important figure
of the group. While Venus, who appears in the first enumeration, is
omitted in the array[261] of deities for action, Latona has Mercury
assigned to her for an antagonist. And, when the crisis comes, we
observe in her case a marked instance of that care, with which Homer
preserves her, like the greater traditive deities, from anything like
discredit. Mercury declines the combat, on the ground that it is
hard to fight against the wives of Jupiter; and tells her she is at
liberty to announce that she has vanquished him. Whence has this pale
and colourless figure such very high honour so jealously asserted for
her[262]?
[260] Il. xx. 40.
[261] Ibid. 72.
[262] Il. xx. 497-501.
When Niobe, proud of her numerous offspring, taunts Latona as the
mother of only two children, summary and awful punishment follows: the
children are slain, the unhappy mother is turned to stone. Yet she
herself takes no part in the vengeance, a fact remarkably in harmony
with her place as defined by the primitive tradition of Holy Scripture.
Of the three or four suffering figures in the Shades, only one has the
cause of his punishment stated, and it is much the severest of all. It
is Tityus, whose entrails are continually devoured by vultures, because
he offered violence to Latona as she was going to the Pythian temple of
her son.
When, in the Fourteenth Iliad, Jupiter recites the mothers of certain
of his offspring, beginning with women and ending with goddesses,
Latona appears in the latter category, after Ceres and before Juno:
and, as the scale is an ascending one, she must clearly rank before the
first and next to the last named deity.
There are, however, various indications that this had not always been
so: but that, according to original tradition, she had been of the
human order, and had undergone a sort of translation into the ranks of
the Immortals.
The first of these is the taunt of Niobe. The boast of richer
fecundity is natural in a human mother’s mouth, as against another
mother reputed to be human[263]; but entirely strange and absurd, if
we suppose it directed against a deity. Dione and Demeter have but one
child each. Nor is there a marked difference in this respect between
the Latona and the Juno of Homer; for Juno’s children are but two, or
at most three[264].
[263] Il. xxiv. 608.
[264] I do not reckon the Εἰλιθυῖαι, who appear to be purely poetical
and figurative daughters of Juno, like the Muses of Jupiter; and as
Terror is the son of Mars. Il. xi. 270. 1. ii. 491. xiii. 299.
Next, we can account for the origin and parentage of all the great
Olympian deities of Homer, with the single exception of Latona. She
is no one’s daughter, no one’s sister: but is a wife (that also
equivocally), and a mother only. When, indeed, we part company with
Homer, the scene changes, and a father is found for her in the Hymns:
she is the daughter, according to one reading, of Saturn,
κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].
[265] Hymn. ad Apoll. 62.
In Hesiod she is the daughter of a Titan: but even here she retains
this mark of a most ancient tradition, that she is said to have been
married to Jupiter before the great Juno[266]: though she comes after
Metis, or Wisdom, the oldest of all his consorts; an order not at
variance with the traditional ideas.
[266] Theogon. 918-21.
~_Her anomalous position in mythology._~
But there must have been some cause or process that brought her into
the Homeric Olympus, an anomaly alike among mortals and Immortals. What
could it have been, except an illustrious maternity, to account for her
elevation, and at the same time her original womanhood to account for
the blank in the descent and consanguinity, and for her total want of
attributes?
It must be granted that there is a certain degree of resemblance
between Latona and Dione: turning mainly upon this, that Dione seems
to be in Olympus without either dignity or power, and simply as the
vehicle, through which her daughter Venus was brought into existence.
But then the want of basis is in her case immediately made evident by
results. Even in Homer she is not among the gods of the Theomachy; nor
is she named among the mothers in the Fourteenth Book; and Hesiod,
though she is invoked in the suspected Proem of his Theogony, entirely
passes her over in the body of it, and furnishes Venus with another
origin. She remains all but a cipher ever after.
Again, the epithets attached to Latona are such as to leave her, and
her alone among all deities of such dignity, wholly functionless, and
also wholly inactive. I distinguish the two, because Juno has only a
limited function, but she has power, and an immense activity. Latona
has beauty and majesty, qualities which appertain to every goddess as
such: she is καλλιπάρῃος, εὐπλόκαμος, καλλιπλόκαμος, χρυσοπλόκαμος,
ἠΰκομος, κυδρὴ, πότνια, and ἐρικύδης: and we may observe in the more
personal portion of these epithets how Homer, with his usual skill, has
avoided placing her in any kind of rivalry with Juno, who is usually
praised for her eyes and arms, not her cheeks and hair. But they all
leave her void of purpose; and she must stand as a sheer anomaly,
unless there is some better explanation of her being and place in
mythology, than mythology itself can supply.
~_Her relation to primitive Tradition._~
Even in the later tradition, Latona never gains a definite office: she
remains all along without any meaning or purpose intrinsic to herself:
she shines only in the reflected glory of her offspring, and is
commonly worshipped only in union with them[267]. If therefore it has
been shown, that the mythological character of Apollo is clearly the
vehicle of the ancient tradition, known to us in the Book of Genesis,
respecting the Seed of the woman, it seems plain that in Latona is
represented the woman from whom that Seed was to spring.
[267] Smith’s Dict., art. Leto.
I do not presume to enter into the question whether we ought to
consider that the Latona of Homer represents the Blessed Virgin, who
was divinely elected to be the actual mother of our Lord; or rather our
ancient mother Eve, whose seed He was also in a peculiar sense to be.
So far as personal application is concerned, the same arguments might
be used upon the subject, as upon the interpretation of the original
promise recorded in Scripture: and the question is one rather of the
interpretation of Scripture, than of Homer. The relation which appears
to me to be proved from the text of the poems, is between the deity
called Latona and the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis.
As to all beyond this, I should suppose it perhaps more just to regard
her as a typical person, exhibiting through womanhood the truth of
our Blessed Lord’s humanity, than as the mere representative of any
individual personage.
Backward as is the position of Latona in the practical religion
of Homer, the universal recognition of the deity is sufficiently
established: on the one hand by her place among the deities of the
Trojan party; on the other, by the punishment of Niobe for an offence
against her either in Greece, or at the least in a recognised Greek
legend; by the punishment of Tityus; and by her inclusion in the
Catalogue of the Fourteenth Iliad.
~_Her slightness of action._~
To this very remarkable deity no utterance of any kind is ever ascribed
by Homer, and with, I think, three small exceptions, nothing of
personal and individual action. Even when she takes her place among
the deities in the array of battle, it is not said that she stood up
against Mercury, but simply that Mercury stood up against her[268].
[268] Il. xx. 72.
The three cases are as follows. First, when he makes over to her the
victory in waiving the fight, she offers no reply; but simply picks up
her daughter Diana’s bow and arrows, and goes after her, apparently
with the intention of offering her comfort. The next action[269]
attributed to her is this: that when Apollo[270] has carried the
bruised and stunned Æneas into his temple on Pergamus, Latona and
Diana tend him there. Thus both of these actions exhibit her in strict
ideal subordination, so to speak, to one of her children, as though
by tradition she existed only for them. But the second is especially
remarkable, and alike illustrative of the traditional basis of the
Mother and of the Son.
[269] Il. xxi. 496-504.
[270] Il. v. 445. _et seqq._
In the first place, as it appears to me, there can hardly be a
circumstance more singular, according to the principles of the Greek
mythology, than that any one deity should be introduced as acting, not
in her own temple, but in the temple of another. Such however is here
the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo.
Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him. They do not enter
into the fray: it is he who has been there, and who, having deposited
Æneas, immediately prosecutes the affairs of the battle-field, while
they, as his satellites, give effect to his purpose in setting about
the restoration of the disabled warrior.
Lastly, the significance of this action is raised to the highest point,
when we recollect that this is a mother executing the design of her
son. Latona’s action in the Twenty-first Book, like that of Dione with
Venus, can be accounted for by her maternal character. But there is
no case in the Homeric poems besides this, where we see a parent-god
thus acting ministerially in the execution of the plans of his or her
offspring. The primeval tradition, once admitted as the basis of the
mythological group, furnishes us with the key to what would otherwise
be another great anomaly.
The third case is in entire harmony with the other two. Tityus, the son
of Earth, is tortured in the nether world for having offered violence
to Latona, and the crime was committed when she was on her way through
Panopeus to Delphi. This was probably the route from Delos to that
place: so that again the poet seems to represent Latona in close but
subordinate connection with her son, by making her travel between the
seats of his two already famous oracles.
Apollo, then, with Latona and Diana, forms a group; and the origin
of the combination is to be sought in primitive tradition. It is not
necessary to show that the personages thus associated maintained their
association in all the religions of the East. I admit that we are not
to suppose, that the idea of this combination passed direct from the
patriarchs into Greece. The most natural place in which to seek for
traces of it would be, in the religion of the Persians, anterior to
the time of Homer. Unfortunately we have no accounts of it at any
such date. But our failing to find these three deities in a company,
or to find any germ which might have been developed into that company,
in accounts later by probably five or six centuries at least, raises
no presumption whatever against the hypothesis that we may owe the
representation, as it stands in Homer, to historical derivation through
the forefathers of the Hellic tribes, from some such period as that
when, for example, Abraham dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees[271].
[271] Gen. xi. 31. Acts vii. 2.
~_The Iris of Homer._~
Iris, the messenger goddess, the last, and also by much the least
important of the personages to whom I ascribe a traditive origin, is
perhaps not the least clear in her title to it.
Her title to rank as one of the deities of the ordinary Olympian
assemblage is not subject to doubt. It depends partly on the fact that
she is always at hand there. But it is established more distinctly
still by the passage, which represents her as carrying to the palace
of Zephyr the prayer of Achilles. She finds the Winds engaged in a
banquet, and they eagerly solicit her to sit and feast with them.
She answers them, like one desirous to escape from second-rate into
first-rate company, to the effect that she has not time: the Ethiopians
are just about supplying the greater gods with a banquet from their
hecatombs; and she must repair to that quarter accordingly, as
otherwise she will lose her share of the offerings[272].
[272] Il. xxiii. 198-212.
With respect to her position generally, we have no mark of her being
foreign; and all the traditive deities, it may be observed, are
sufficiently, though not exclusively national. Again, we have no mark
of her being recent; on the contrary, she is without parents, and
this, though not conclusive, is a sign to the opposite effect.
Iris has no original action whatever, but is simply a willing servant
of other deities; nor does she disdain spontaneously to officiate
on behalf of a distinguished human object of their favour, like
Achilles[273]. Only once have we an account of her bringing an order
without the name of the sender: it is when she appears to Helen, and
exhorts her to repair to the Wall[274]. She is not, however, said even
in this place to act on her own account; and we ought probably to
understand that, according to the general rule, she comes from Jupiter.
It is added, that she inspired Helen with a longing sentiment towards
her former husband and country, but this, as is most likely, is meant
simply to describe the effect of her words in the ordinary manner of
their operation on the understanding. This ancillary character of
Iris is exactly what she would bear, if her origin really lay in the
primitive tradition of the rainbow.
[273] Il. xxiii. 198-212.
[274] Il. iii. 121.
But what seems decisively to establish her relation to that tradition
is, that she is firmly connected in Homer with two things that have
in themselves no connection whatever, and between which that ancient
tradition is the only link.
In the first place, her identity of name is the witness to her original
connection with the rainbow[275]: which, however, as a standing and
ordinary phenomenon of nature, did not bear, apart from positive
appointment, in any manner the character of a messenger: and hence we
find that by disintegration the two ideas had been entirely separated
before the time of Homer, and the name itself is the only remaining
witness in the poems to their having been at some former period
associated. The function of the messenger was kept in action by the
occasions of the Olympian family and polity. In this manner, as the
stronger of the two ideas, it held its ground, and took possession of
the personal Iris, while the rainbow, though still conceived of as a
sign to mortals[276], appears to have been regarded as separate.
[275] Il. xi. 27.
[276] Il. xi. 29.
Of the character of the messenger we find that Iris had so completely
become the model, that her name, only modified into Iros, is given to
Arnæus, the ribald and burly beggar of the Odyssey, only because he was
a go-between, or errand-carrier:
οὕνεκ’ ἀπαγγέλλεσκε κιὼν, ὅτε πού τις ἀνώγοι[277].
[277] Od. xviii. 7.
The hypothesis, then, of traditional origin is the key, and the only
key, to the position of the Homeric Iris.
~_The Atè of Homer._~
Before quitting the precinct of the primeval tradition discoverable
in Homer, we have yet one very remarkable group of impersonations to
consider, that in which the goddess Ἄτη is the leading figure. Commonly
regarded as meaning Mischief, the word is not capable of being fully
rendered in English: but Guile is its primary idea, in the train of
which come the sister notions of Folly and Calamity.
Ἄτη both wishes and suggests all ill to mortals; but she does not seem
in Homer to have any power of injuring them, except through channels,
which have been wholly or partially opened to her by their own volition.
The Ἄτη of the later Greeks is Calamity simply, with a shadow of
Destiny hanging in the distance; as in the magnificent figure of the
lion’s cub in Æschylus[278]. But the word never bears in Homer the
sense of calamity coming simply from without. This is evident even
from the large and general description, where she appears in company
with the Λιταί[279]. Vigorous and nimble, she ranges over the whole
earth for mischief. After her, slowly lag the Prayers or Λιταὶ,
honoured however in being, like her, daughters of Jupiter. These are
limping, decrepit, and unable to see straight before them. The leading
idea of Ἄτη is not force, but cunning. She is the power that tempts
and misleads men to their own cost or ruin, as they afterwards find
out. Nay, she tempts the deity also: for she beguiles even Jupiter
himself[280] when Hercules is about to be born, and induces him
thoughtlessly to promise what will, through Juno’s craft, overturn
his own dearly cherished plans. For this excess of daring, however,
she herself suffers. Jupiter seizes her by the hair, and hurls her
from Olympus, apparently her native seat. Thenceforward she can only
exercise her function among men; who, when they have yielded to the
seduction, and tasted the ashes under the golden fruit, at length set
about repentance or prayer:
[278] Æsch. Agam. 696-715.
[279] Il. ix. 499-514.
[280] Il. xix. 95 seqq.
All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost![281]
[281] Tempest, I. 1.
Now though the impersonation of Atè in Homer is one of the
indeterminate class, it is surely a mistake to treat it as representing
the mere poetical incorporation of an abstract idea. On the contrary,
we seem to find in it the old tradition of the Evil One as the Tempter;
and it may be said that the word Temptress would best represent the
Homeric idea of Ἄτη. In this sense it will supply a consistent meaning
to the fine passage in the speech of Phœnix: for we are swift, so says
the Poet, to fall into temptation, and to offend, ingenious only in
not seeing our fault, and covering it with excuses: but slow, and like
the half-hearted, decrepit Λιταί, when we have to make our entreaties
for pardon, and to think of restitution and amendment. Yet as even the
gods listen to their entreaties, ‘so,’ says Phœnix, ‘shouldst thou, O
Achilles: and if thou dost not, then mayest yet thyself fall.’ But if
Ἄτη meant only misfortune, the passage loses all its harmony, and even
becomes absurd; for surely none will say that men are slow to discern
adversity, or to offer petitions, wherever they have a prospect of
being heard, for relief from it.
There is no passage which appears to me more characteristic of the true
distinctive character of the Homeric Ἄτη, than that in which Dolon
confesses his folly[282]:
[282] Il. x. 390.
πολλῇσίν μ’ ἄτῃσι παρὲκ νόον ἤγαγεν Ἕκτωρ.