very feebly marked with the traditional character. Again, in no deity
is the mere animal delight in sacrifice more strongly developed.
By offerings, his menaced destruction of the Phæacian city seems
to be averted. His pleasure in the sacrifice of bulls is specially
recorded[378]: and his remarkable fondness for the Solyman mountains,
and the Ethiopian quarter, is perhaps connected with the eminent
liberality of that people at their altars.
[378] Il. xx. 405.
One traditive note, however, we find upon him, when we regard him as
god of the sea: and it is this, that he is provided with a Secondary.
It seems as though it was felt, that he did not wholly satisfy the
demands of the mere element: and accordingly a god simply elemental
has been provided in the person of Nereus, who is the centre of the
submarine court, and who appears never to quit the depths. Nereus is
the element impersonated: Neptune is its sovereign, has not his origin
in it, but comes to it from without.
Neither is his command over the waters quite exclusive. He can of
course raise a storm at sea. He can break off fragments, as the sea
does, from rocks upon the coast[379]: and he threatens to overwhelm
the Phæacian city by this means[380]. In conjunction with his power
over the sea, he can let loose the winds, and darken the sky. On the
other hand, not Jupiter only, but Juno and Minerva, can use the sea
independently of him, as an instrument of their designs.
[379] Od. iv. 506.
[380] Od. xiii. 152.
Again, while not fully developed as the mere elemental sea-god, he has
clinging to him certain traditions which it is very difficult to attach
to any portion whatever of his general character. I do not find any key
to his interest in Æneas, whom he rescues from Achilles: unless it may
possibly be, that the gods, in the absence of any particular motive the
other way, took a common interest in the descendants of their race,
or of Jupiter as its head. Still less is it feasible to explain the
legend of his service under Laomedon in company with Apollo, so as to
place it in any clear relation to the other traditions respecting him.
He has, again, a peculiar relation to the horse, for though a sea-god,
he employs the animal to transport him to Troas; and it was he, who
presented Xanthus and Balius to Peleus[381]. Again, he, in conjunction
with Jupiter[382], conferred the gift of managing the horse on his
descendant Antilochus.
[381] Il. xxiii. 277.
[382] Ibid. 307.
In the legend of the Eighth Odyssey, he does not share the unbecoming
laughter of the other deities at the ridiculous predicament and
disgrace of Mars, but earnestly labours for his release, and actually
becomes his security for the damages due[383]. What was the cause of
this peculiar interest? It is difficult to conceive the aim of the Poet
in this place. Some have suggested the comic effect[384] which he has
produced by putting the petition in the mouth of Neptune, whose mere
opinion that Mars would pay was valueless, inasmuch as he was far too
powerful to be called to account by Vulcan for any thing which he might
have said. It seems to me more likely that, as being, in the possible
absence of Jupiter as well as the goddesses, the senior and gravest of
the deities, he becomes the official guardian of Olympian decorum; and
that he acts here as the proper person to find an escape from a dilemma
which, while ludicrous, is also embarrassing, and requires poetically
a solution.
[383] Od. viii. 344-59.
[384] Nitzsch in loc.
Amphitrite, the wife of Neptune in the later mythology, is not so
named in Homer, by whom she is but doubtfully personified. Yet there
is, as it were, an anticipation of the union, in the passage where he
tells us that she rears monster-fishes to do the will of Neptune. Or it
may be meant here, that she is the wife of Nereus.
~_His relation to the Phœnicians._~
The connection of Neptune with the sea naturally raises the question,
whether the introduction of his worship into Greece can have been owed
to the Phœnicians. For an auxiliary mark, we have the fact that Ino, of
Phœnician extraction, is a strictly maritime deity[385],
[385] Od. v. 335.
νῦν δ’ ἁλὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι θεῶν ἐξέμμορε τιμῆς.
The very frequent intrigues of Neptune with women may be the mythical
dress of the adventures of Phœnician sailors in this kind: such as
that which is recounted[386] in the story of Eumæus. We may notice,
too, that in the Iliad, he does not particularly love the Greeks,
but simply hates the Trojans. He, with Jupiter, we are told, loved
Antilochus[387]. Jupiter, no doubt, because he had a regard for him as
a Greek: Neptune, plainly, because he was his descendant. And in this
way perhaps we may best explain the connection between Neptune and some
abode in the East, far away from his own domain. He is absent from the
Assembly of the First Odyssey[388], among the Ethiopians: and he sees
Ulysses, on his voyage homewards, from afar, namely off the Solyman
mountains; with which we must suppose he had some permanent tie, as no
special cause is stated for his having been there. It little accords
with his character as a marine god: but it is in harmony with the view
of him as belonging to the circle of the Phœnician traditions, that he
should visit a nation, of which Homer, I believe, conceived as being
but a little beyond Phœnicia.
[386] Od. xv. 420.
[387] Il. xxiii. 277.
[388] Od. i. 22.
But we have still to consider the fragments of information which
concern Neptune, under the third of the heads above given.
~_And to the tradition of the Evil One._~
No ancient tradition appears to have been split and shivered into so
many fragments in the time of Homer, as that which related to the Evil
Principle. This was the natural prelude to its becoming, as it shortly
afterwards did, indiscernible to the human eye[389]. Among these
rivulets of tradition, some of the most curious connect themselves with
the name of Neptune, who was, in his mythological character, prepared
to be its recipient: for in that character he was near to Jupiter
in strength, while his brotherly relation by no means implied any
corresponding tie of affection.
[389] Vid. sup. Sect. ii. p. 44.
With Juno and Minerva, he took part in the dangerous rebellion recorded
in the First Iliad. He refuses to join in a combination of Hellenizing
gods against him, on the ground of its hopelessness: but afterwards,
when all others acquiesce in the prohibition, he alone comes down to
aid and excite the Greeks. The Juno of the Iliad is the active and
astute intriguer against her husband: but it is Neptune, on whom in
effect the burden and responsibility of action chiefly fall. Still, his
principal points of contact with the traditions of resistance to the
Supreme Will are mediate; and the connection is through his offspring.
In his favourite son, the Cyclops, we have the great atheist of the
poems. It is Providence, and not idols only, that he rejects, when
saying[390],
[390] Od. ix. 275.
οὐ γὰρ Κύκλωπες Διὸς αἰγιόχου ἀλέγουσιν,
οὐδὲ θεῶν μακάρων· ἐπειὴ πολὺ φέρτεροί εἰμεν.
The whole of this dangerous class, the kindred of the gods, seem
to have sprung from Neptune[391]. The Læstrygones, indeed, are not
expressly said to be his children. But they are called οὐκ ἄνδρεσσιν
ἐοικότες, ἀλλὰ Γίγασιν: and the Giants are expressly declared to be
divinely descended in a speech of Alcinous[392]:
[391] Od. x. 120.
[392] Od. vii. 205.
ἐπεί σφισιν ἐγγύθεν εἰμὲν,
ὥσπερ Κύκλωπές τε καὶ ἄγρια φῦλα Γιγάντων.
Neptune was the father of Nausithous and the royal house of Scheria,
through Peribœa: but she was daughter of Eurymedon, and Eurymedon
was king of the Giants, and was the king who led them, with himself,
evidently by rebellion, into ruin[393];
[393] Od. vii. 60.
ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ὤλεσε λαὸν ἀτάσθαλον, ὤλετο δ’ αὐτός.
Thus we have Neptune placed in the relation of ancestor to the
rebellious race, whom it is scarcely possible to consider as other than
identical with the Titans condemned to Tartarus[394].
[394] Il. xiv. 274, 9.
But we have one yet more pointed passage for the establishment of this
strange relationship. In the νεκυΐα of the Eleventh Odyssey, Ulysses
sees, among other Shades, Iphimedea, the wife of Aloeus, who bore to
Neptune two children[395], Otus and Ephialtes; hugest of all creatures
upon earth, and also most beautiful, after Orion. They, the sons of
Neptune, while yet children, threatened war against Olympus, and
planned the piling of the mountains: but Apollo slew them. Thus this,
the most characteristic of all the traditions in Homer relating to
the Evil One, hangs upon the person of Neptune, doubtless because his
mythological place best fitted him for the point of junction. It must
be observed, that Homer has, in bringing these young giants before
us, used a somewhat artificial arrangement. He does not place them in
the realm of Aides and Persephone, though he describes them to us, in
connection with the figures in that gloomy scene, as the children of
Iphimedea, who appears there in the first or feminine division. That he
does not bring them before us in conjunction with Tityus and the other
sufferers of that region, can only be because he did not intend them to
be understood as belonging to it: and it is clear, therefore, that he
means us to conceive of them as having their abode in Tartarus, among
the Titans, doubtless by the side of Eurymedon and his followers.
[395] Od. xi. 505-20.
We may perceive with peculiar clearness, in the case of Neptune, the
distinction between the elevated prerogatives of such a deity within
his own province, and his comparative insignificance beyond it. When
he traverses the sea, it exults to open a path for him, and the huge
creatures from its depths sport along his wake. Such is its sympathy
with him, that when he is exciting the Greeks to war, it too boils
and foams upon the shore of the Hellespont. And not only is maritime
nature thus at his feet, but he has the gift of vision almost without
limit of space, and of knowledge of coming events, so long as they are
maritime. He who knows nothing of the woes of his son Polyphemus till
he is invoked from the sea-shore, yet can discern Ulysses on his raft
from the far Solyman mountains, and even is aware that he will escape
from his present danger (ὀϊζὺς ἥ μιν ἱκάνει) by reaching the shore of
Scheria. This knowledge is shared by the minor goddess Leucothee: and
doubtless on the same principle, namely, that it is marine knowledge.
So he can predict to Tyro that there will be more than one child born
to her: here, too, he speaks of what is personal to himself. When we
take Neptune out of his province, we find none of these extraordinary
gifts, no sign of a peculiar subjugation of nature or of man to him. He
shares in the government of the world only as a vast force, which it
will cost Jupiter trouble to subdue. Even within his own domain some
stubborn phenomena of nature impose limits on his power: for we are
told he would not be able, even were he willing, to save Ulysses from
Charybdis[396].
[396] Od. xii. 107.
Thus it was that the sublime idea of one Governor of the universe,
omnipotent over all its parts, was shivered into many fragments, and
these high prerogatives, distributed and held in severalty, are the
fragments of a conception too weighty and too comprehensive for the
unassisted human mind to carry in its entireness.
~_His grandeur is material._~
Upon the whole, the intellectual spark in Neptune is feeble, and
the conception is much materialized. Ideally he has the relation
to Jupiter, which the statue of the Nile bears to one of Jupiter’s
statues. Within these limits, his position is grand. The ceaseless
motion, the unconquerable might, the wide extent, of the θάλασσα,
compose for him a noble monarchy. At first sight, when we read of the
lottery of the universe, we are startled at finding the earth left
without an owner. It was not so in the Asiatic religions. But mark here
the influence of external circumstances. The nations of Asia inhabited
a vast continent; for them land was greater by far than sea. The
Greeks knew of nothing but islands and peninsulas of limited extent,
whereas the Sea for them was infinite; since, except round the Ægean,
they knew little or nothing of its farther shores. Thus the sceptre of
Neptune reaches over the whole of the Outer Geography; while Earth, as
commonly understood, had long been left behind upon the course of the
adventurous Ulysses.
_Aidoneus._
~_The Aidoneus of Homer._~
There is a marked contrast between the mere rank of Aides or Aidoneus,
and his want of substance and of activity, in the poems. He is one of
the three Kronid Brothers, of whom Neptune asserts--and we are nowhere
told that it is an unwarrantable boast--that they are of equal dignity
and honour. He bears the lofty title of Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος: and he is the
husband of Persephone the Awful. It is plain that he belonged of right
to the order of Olympian deities, because Dione states that he repaired
to the divine abode, to have the wounds healed there by Paieon, which
he had received from Hercules: but it is very doubtful whether we
ought to understand him to have attended even the great Chapter, or
Assembly, of the Twentieth Iliad. His ordinary residence is exclusively
in the nether world. At the same time there is, in his position, and
in that of Persephone, a remarkable independence. This the very title
of subterranean Jupiter is enough to indicate. Neptune is never called
the Jupiter of the sea. And it is quite plain that the power of Jupiter
over the dead was limited. We cannot say it was null: for Castor and
Pollux after death are still τιμὴν πρὸς Ζῆνος ἔχοντες, and they live
accordingly on alternate days. But it was Minerva who interfered to
carry Hercules safely through the Shades, and bring him back; and it
appears that but for her Jupiter would not have been able to give
effect to his design[397].
[397] Od. xi. 302, 626. Il. viii. 366-9.
But the share of action ascribed to this divinity in any part of the
poems is a very small one. In the Twentieth Iliad, the tramp of the
Immortals, when engaged in fight, and the quaking of the earth under
the might of Neptune, cause him to tremble. And his having received
wounds from Hercules, though he shared this indignity with Juno,
detracts from his mythological greatness.
Love of symmetry has sometimes led writers on the Greek mythology to
find matrimonial arrangements for Jupiter’s brothers similar to his
own, by giving to Neptune Amphitrite, and to Aidoneus Persephone,
for their respective wives. The former of these two unions has no
foundation in Homer; and the latter bears little analogy to that of
Jupiter and Juno. For Proserpine is the real Queen of the Shades below:
all the higher traditions and active duties of the place centre around
her, while he appears there as a sort of King-Consort. There is no
sign whatever of his exercising any influence over her, far less of
her acting in the capacity of his organ. And while she has a cult or
worship on earth, he apparently has none.
Under these circumstances, we do not expect to find her exhibiting
any tokens of derivation from, or ideal dependance on him. They would
appear to be respectively derived from traditions of independent origin.
Homer has not attached marks to Aidoneus which would enable us to
trace him to any particular source beyond the limits of the Olympian
system. It would be natural to seek his prototype among the darkest
and earthiest of the elemental powers. But he appears before us in the
poems rather as an independent and Hellenic creation, metaphysical in
kind, and representing little beyond (1), a place in the trine number
of the Kronid Brothers, which appears to be the Hellenic form of a
great primitive tradition of a Trinity in the Godhead; and (2), the
consciousness that there was a city and a government of the dead, and
that a ruler must be provided for them, while the idea of the Supreme
Deity had not retained enough of force and comprehensiveness to seem
sufficient for the purpose.
As the representative of inexorable death, Aidoneus was the opposite of
the bright and life-giving Apollo: and was naturally the most hateful
to mortals of all the Olympian deities[398]. But the place in which the
idea of punishment centres is the domain of Κρόνος rather than that of
Aides: and he is the ruler over a state of the dead which is generally
neither bliss nor acute suffering, but which is deeply overspread with
chillness and gloom.
[398] Il. ix. 159.
I shall refer hereafter[399] to the peculiar relation which appears to
subsist between Aidoneus, together with Persephone, and the mysterious
Ἐρινύες.
[399] Inf. sect. iv.
_Demeter, or Ceres._
~_The Ceres or Demeter of Homer._~
The goddess Demeter, the Ceres of the Latins, though afterwards of
considerable dignity and importance, is but a feeble luminary in the
Homeric heavens. That there are in the Iliad[400] only two distinct
notices of her personality, might of itself be compatible with a
contrary supposition: for in the _Troica_ he introduces his divine
personages on account of their relation to the subject, rather than
for their general importance; and corn, which feeds man, has little
affinity with war, which destroys him. But her weight is, if possible,
even smaller in the Odyssey, where she is noticed but once[401], and
that incidentally.
[400] Il. ii. 696. xiv. 326.
[401] Od. v. 125.
The use of the phrase Δημήτερος ἀκτὴ for corn, like the φλὸξ Ἡφαίστοιο
for Vulcan, and Ἄρης for the spear, or for the battle, tends to
indicate imperfect personality; to show that the deity was indistinctly
realized; that the personal name was either recent or at least
unfamiliar; and that it was used, not so much to designate a being, as
to give life to an idea.
Homer has not asserted any connection between Demeter and Persephone:
and the idea of it in later times may have arisen simply from the
observation that in the poems Demeter stands as a mother without a
child, and Persephone as a daughter without a mother.
Possibly, however, the connection may have been suggested by the name;
which seems manifestly to be equivalent to Γῆ μήτηρ or Mother-Earth.
And though the original reference was to the production of food by
which man lives, the word might be susceptible of another sense,
connecting it with the nether world, which had a material relation to
Earth, and which, even in Homer, Tityus the son of Γαῖα, and in the
later tradition the earth-born race generally, were reputed to inhabit.
The name in its proper sense indicates first the idea, and then the
goddess of agriculture: and points to a Pelasgian, and perhaps farther
back an Egyptian, rather than an Hellenic or a Phœnician connection. In
Egypt, according to the reports collected by Diodorus[402], Isis was
held nearly to correspond with her.
[402] Diod. i. 13.
With this supposition agree the only notices contained in the poems
that tend to attach the goddess Demeter to a particular locality. Her
connection with Iasion was probably in Crete or Cyprus, or at any rate
(from the name) in some country occupied, and ruled too, by Pelasgians.
Her τέμενος[403] or dedicated lands in Thessaly, the Pelasgic Argos,
suggest a similar presumption. In Middle Greece and Peloponnesus we
never hear of her. The very solemn and ancient observance of her
worship in Attica, which was so eminently a Pelasgian state in the time
of Homer, entirely accords with the indications of the Homeric text.
[403] Il. ii. 696.
The slight notice she obtains from Homer, compared with the dignity to
which other tokens would tend to show that she was entitled, may have
been owing to the incomplete amalgamation in his time of Hellenic and
Pelasgian institutions.
Upon this goddess, as upon so many others, sensual passion had laid
hold. This is decidedly confirmatory of her Pelasgian or eastern, as
opposed to properly Hellic associations. We see Venus coming from
the east and worshipped in Pelasgian countries: of the three persons
whom Aurora appropriates, Orion is pretty evidently the subject of a
naturalized eastern tradition, and Tithonus is Asiatic: Calypso and
Circe belong to the east by Phœnicia: it is in Troas and Asia that no
less than three Nymphs appear as the bearers of children, fighting
on the Trojan side, to human fathers[404]. Whereas among the more
Hellenic deities, we have Minerva and Proserpine wholly exempt; and
Juno using sensual passion it is true, but only for a political end.
This assemblage of facts further confirms the supposition, that Ceres
ought to be set down as a Pelasgian deity. Orion and Ino, shining in
the heavens, seem to belong to the more astronomical form of eastern
religion: Ceres to that which was probably transmitted through fertile
and well-cultivated Egypt.
[404] Il. vi. 21, xiv. 444, and xx. 384.
~_Her place in Olympus._~
The title of Demeter to rank with the Olympian deities of Homer is not
so absolutely clear, as that of many among them: but it may on the
whole be sufficiently inferred from the arrangement of the passage in
the Fourteenth Odyssey, where Jupiter recites a list of the various
partners to whom he owed his offspring. The three first are women,
who bore sons never deified, Pirithous, Perseus, and Minos: the two
next are women, of whom one gave birth to Dionysus a god, the other
to the substantially deified Hercules. The sixth and seventh are
Demeter, or Ceres, and Latona; the children of neither are mentioned.
Besides that Demeter is called καλλιπλόκαμος ἄνασσα, the two seem to
be coupled together as goddesses. The structure of the passage is not
chronological, but depends upon dignity advancing regularly towards
a climax; so purposely indeed, that Dionysus, always an immortal,
is mentioned after Hercules, a mortal born, though Semele had been
named before Alcmene. All this appears to require the adoption of the
conclusion, that Demeter was reckoned as an Olympian goddess in the
Homeric system.