beyond the borders of Greece. In Lycia he, or, it may be, simply
warlike passion which he represents, slays Isander, the son of
Bellerophon and uncle of Glaucus, in battle with the Solymi. Still he
is the father by Astyoche, of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the Minyeian Orchomenus, or else farther towards the
north of Greece.
The Homeric indications, on the whole, as well as the general
conceptions of the character, represent Mars as neither a deity
indigenous to the country, nor one belonging to the Hellenic
traditions: while the Poet perhaps intends us to understand that he
had points of contact or affinity with Greece, which are represented
in his wavering attitude between the two parties to the war. It is
probable that the Poet himself may have been a principal agent in the
introduction of Mars to Hellenic worship. The machinery of the Iliad
required him to find an array of gods, who should be champions on each
side respectively. It also required that these gods should be united
round a centre, which he provided for them in Olympus and in its Court,
under the presidency of Jupiter. Both Mars and Venus may thus have made
good a title, which before was doubtful and imperfect, through the
place to which they were promoted in the Iliad, combined with the place
which the Iliad itself won for itself in the national understanding and
affections.
_Mercury._
~_The Mercury of Homer._~
The Homeric signs respecting Mercury are sufficient to fix his
character and origin. The small part, which this deity plays in the
poems, is indeed in remarkable contrast with the extended popularity to
which at a later period he attained: but his character in Homer is one
which accounts in a natural manner for the subsequent increase in his
importance.
He is the son of Maias, Od. xiv. 435; and of Jupiter, Od. viii. 335.
He is the man of business for the Olympian deities, διάκτορος. Od.
viii. 335. v. 28[439].
[439] Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. p. 74.
He is the giver of increase, δῶτορ ἐάων. Od. viii. 335. Il. xiv. 490.
He is the most sociable of deities, Il. xxiv. 334. σοὶ γάρ τε μάλιστά
γε φίλτατόν ἐστιν ἀνδρὶ ἑταίρισσαι.
The extraction of Mercury stands somewhat obscurely in Homer: his
mother Maias is but once mentioned, and then without any clue. But,
in the ancient hymn to Mercury, she is declared to be the daughter of
Atlas: and if this be so, we shall be justified in considering him as
the child of a Phœnician tradition[440]. This is also clear on Homeric
grounds. Although Homer does not expressly connect him with Atlas, he
makes Calypso, the daughter of that personage, address him as αἰδοῖός
τε φίλος τε. These expressions are usually applied by him where there
is some special relation of consanguinity, affinity, or guestship:
as between Jupiter and his adopted child[441] and particular friend
Thetis. It is therefore probable that Homer took Mercury’s mother Maias
to be, as the after-tradition made her, the sister of Calypso, and the
daughter of Atlas. All the other Homeric signs of him are in complete
harmony with this hypothesis of a Phœnician origin for Mercury.
[440] See sup. Ethnology, sect. iv.
[441] Il. xxiv. 111.
We thus understand how he becomes the general agent for the gods:
because the Phœnicians supplied the first and principal means of
communication between the several nations in the heroic age: they were
the men-of-business for the world[442].
[442] Od. ix. 124.
It thus becomes plain, again, how he can with propriety be called the
giver of comforts or blessings; because the basis of commerce is this,
that each person engaged in it parts with something which he does not
want, and receives what he does want in return.
The apparent anomaly, which makes the god of increase also the god of
thievery, is thus explained: because, from its nature, commerce is ever
apt to degenerate partially into fraud; and because, in days of the
strong hand, force as well as intelligence would often make it easy for
the maritime merchants to change their vocation, for the occasion, into
that of plunder[443].
[443] Od. viii. 161-4. and xv. 416.
His proper office in regard to the ἔργα of men seems not to be
industry, nor skill in production or manufacture; but handiness and
tidiness in the performance of services. He, says Ulysses, gives to the
ἔργα, which may mean both the deeds and the industrial productions of
men, their χάρις and κῦδος, their grace and credit or popularity[444].
[444] Od. xiv. 319.
~_Mercury the god of increase._~
This idea of increase forms the common or central element of the
various attributes assigned to Mercury. It takes two principal
forms, one that of increase in material goods, the other that of the
propagation of the race. This latter, which was elsewhere grossly
exhibited, is veiled by Homer with his almost unfailing sense of
delicacy, and may not, indeed, have been fully developed in his time.
It is perhaps however traceable in two passages of the poems: first,
that of the Sixteenth Iliad, where we are told that he corrupted the
virgin Polymele[445], though she belonged to the train of Diana. The
other is in the episode of Venus and Mars, where Apollo selects him as
the deity to whom to put the question, whether he would like to take
the place of the adulterer, and he replies in the affirmative[446].
Each of these incidents seems to appertain to something distinctive in
his character.
[445] Il. xvi. 179-86.
[446] Od. viii. 334-42.
That character, again, imports the extended intercourse with mankind,
and the knowledge of the world, which causes him to be chosen, in the
Twenty-Fourth Iliad, for the difficult office of conducting Priam to
the abode of Ulysses. Moreover, the great balance of material benefit
which commerce brings gives him, its patron, as a general rule, a
genial and philanthropic aspect. In Homer we have nowhere any sign of
his vengeance, anger, or severity. He neither punishes, hates, nor is
incensed with any one. A passionless and prudent deity, he not only
declines actual fighting with Latona, as she is a wife of Jupiter, but
spontaneously gives her leave to boast among the gods that she has
engaged and worsted him.
~_Mercury Hellenic and Phœnician._~
The Phœnician origin of Mercury will also account for his position in
the poems, in relation to the Trojans and Greeks respectively. Not
simply is he one of the five Hellenizing deities: for his talents would
naturally with Homer tend to place him on that side. But he appears
almost wholly unknown to the Trojans. The abundance of the flocks of
Phorbas is indeed referred to his love (Il. xiv. 490): and he reveals
himself to Priam by his name (Il. xxiv. 460): but it is remarkable, and
contrary to the general rule of the poems, that Priam, notwithstanding
his great obligations, takes no notice whatever of his deity, either
upon his first revelation and departure, or when a second time he
appears, and afterwards quits him anew (682-94).
On the other hand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the
Greeks. He conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: he carries the
warning of the gods to Ægisthus: sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca:
and he is liberally treated with sacrifices by Autolycus in Parnesus,
where he repays his worshipper by bestowing on him the arts of perjury
and purloining[447].
[447] Od. xiv. 435, and xix. 394-8.
Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had
much intercourse with the Phœnicians. On the other hand, the Trojans,
wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little
or nothing of maritime commerce. Their intercourse with Thrace, the
fertile Thrace that furnished a contingent of allies, required no
more than that they should have the means of crossing the Straits of
Gallipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or harbour. A Phœnician
deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achæan side during the war.
Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of
agent, have been with perfect propriety sent to Calypso: but his
mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection
with Phœnician traditions, give a peculiar propriety to his employment
on this errand.
Another passage of the Odyssey seems, however, to place this
relationship beyond doubt. Ulysses, in the Twelfth Book, recounts
to Alcinous the transaction that occurred in the Olympian Assembly
after his crew had slain the oxen of the Sun. On that occasion, the
offended deity declared that, unless he got compensation, he would
go down and shine in the realm of Aides; upon which Jupiter at once
promised to destroy the ship of Ulysses. ‘This,’ adds Ulysses, ‘I
heard from Calypso, and she told me that she had herself heard it from
Mercury[448].’
[448] Od. xii. 389, 90.
Now this was no affair of Calypso’s; none, that is, on which the gods
could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses: but it was
one in which, from her passion for the hero, she would take a natural
interest, and on which she might well obtain information from a deity
who was her relative. Nor does it appear on what other ground Mercury
should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official
report.
Again, it is probably on account of his Phœnician connection, that
the intervention of Mercury is employed in the Tenth Odyssey[449], to
supply Ulysses with the instructions that were necessary, in order to
enable him to cope with Circe.
[449] Od. x. 275-307.
For we are here in the midst of a cluster of traditions, which we have
every reason to presume to be wholly Phœnician[450]. It is the cluster,
which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey: and
it is severed from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a
geographical line, but by an entire change in mythological relations.
From the time when Ulysses enters that circle in the beginning of the
Ninth Book, until his appearance near Scheria, on the outskirt of the
known familiar sphere, his ancient friend Minerva nowhere attends him:
and there are four whole books without even a mention of the goddess,
who, except for this interval, stands prominently forth in almost
every page of the Odyssey. The divine aid is given to him, during this
period, through Circe and Calypso; while Mercury is appointed to
command the latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both
the company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus
invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phœnician importation into
Greece.
[450] See ‘Achæis, or Ethnology,’ sect. iv.
~_Mercury recent in Greece._~
There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark
that he had somewhat recently become known to the Greeks, agrees with
other indications of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures,
indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops[451]; and we do not
receive any account of his infancy, as we do of the infancy of Dionysus
and of Vulcan. But we may observe that, whenever he assumes human form,
it is the form of one scarcely emerging from boyhood. In the last
Iliad, he is a πρῶτον ὑπηνήτης, in the fairest flower of youth[452].
And in the Tenth Odyssey, where he makes his second and only other
appearance to a mortal, the same line is repeated in order to describe
his appearance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and
not merely adapted to a particular occasion. Indeed it may reasonably
be questioned, whether such adaptation exists at all. A very young
person was not the most appropriate conductor for Priam, on such an
errand as that which he had undertaken: nor the best instructor in the
mode of coping with the formidable Circe. Therefore, without laying
too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful appearance
seems to be, that he was young in the Greek Olympus.
[451] Il. ii. 104. Od. xi. 626.
[452] Il. xxiv. 348. Od. x. 279.
There is yet another sign by which I think we may identify Mercury
as, in the estimation of Homer, a deity known to be of foreign
introduction. The list given by Jupiter in the Fourteenth Iliad of
his intrigues, includes no reference to Maias, the mother of Mercury,
or to Diana the mother of Venus. Yet it is a large and elaborately
constructed list, ending with Juno herself: and the question arises,
on what principle was it constructed? I think the answer must be that,
as it was addressed to Juno, the most Hellenic of all the Olympian
deities, with whom he wished to be on good terms at the moment, so also
it was intended, if not to give a full account of his Greek intrigues,
yet at any rate that no tradition should appear in it, except such as
Homer considered to be either native, or fully naturalized. It contains
no reference, for example, to the mother of Sarpedon, the mother of
Dardanus, the mother of Amphion and Zethus, the mother of Tantalus,
(whom we have however only presumptions for reckoning as by Homeric
tradition a son of Jupiter,) or even the mother of Æolus; whom it is
possible that Homer may have regarded as Hellic, rather than properly
Greek, though the father of illustrious Greek houses. If this be the
rule, under which the Poet has framed the list, then the exclusion of
Maias and her son remarkably coincides with the other evidence that
tends to define his position as a deity of known and remembered foreign
origin.
~_His Olympian office and that of Iris._~
It may be convenient to notice in this place the statement which is
commonly made, that Iris is the messenger of the gods in the Iliad,
but that Mercury, except only in the Twenty-fourth Book of that Poem,
is confined in this capacity to the Odyssey: a statement, on which
has been founded a standing popular argument against the unity of
authorship in the two poems, and also against the genuineness of the
Twenty-fourth Iliad itself.
The statement, however, appears to rest upon a pure misapprehension;
for it assumes the identity of the character of Iris and Mercury
respectively as messengers. Whereas there is really a difference,
corresponding with the difference in dignity between the two deities:
and Homer is in regard to them perfectly consistent with himself.
Mercury is sometimes a messenger in the proper sense, and sometimes
an agent, or an agent and messenger combined. It is not true that, so
far as the Iliad is concerned, he only appears in the last Book in
one of these capacities. For in the Second Book[453] we find, that he
carried the Pelopid sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: which may mean
either simply, that he was the bearer of it, or that by a commission
he assisted Pelops in acquiring, or rather in founding, the Achæan
throne in the Peloponnesus. In the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Mercury is
not really a messenger at all[454]; but he is an agent, intrusted
by Jupiter on the ground of special fitness with the despatch of a
delicate and important business, the bringing Priam in safety to the
presence of Achilles, and afterwards the withdrawing him securely from
a position of the utmost danger. This is an office like that undertaken
by Minerva in the Fourth Book, when, as she was commissioned to bring
about a breach of the Pact by the Trojans, she repaired to Pandarus
for the purpose. But the function of Iris is simply to carry messages,
and chiefly from one deity to another; she is not only ἄγγελος, but
μετάγγελος[455]; she is not intrusted in any case with the conduct of
transactions among men, or responsible for their issue, although in the
Fifteenth Book she spontaneously advises the god Neptune in the sense
of the message she has brought. It is not for Jupiter only that she
acts: she also conveys a message, and a clandestine one, for Juno[456].
Nay, on one occasion, without any divine charge, hearing the prayer
of Achilles to two of the Winds, she spontaneously carries it to the
palace, where they were all feasting together[457].
[453] Il. ii. 104.
[454] Il. xxiv. 334.
[455] Il. xxiii. 199.
[456] Il. xviii. 165-8.
[457] Il. xxiii. 199.
Only in the Odyssey do we find Mercury unquestionably and simply
discharging the duty of a messenger; and this on two occasions: the
first, when he brought to Ægisthus the warning that his crimes, if
committed, would be followed by retribution from the hand of Orestes;
the second, when he communicated to Calypso the command to release
Ulysses.
But there is in reality no discrepancy whatever between the two poems:
inasmuch as Mercury and Iris, though both messengers, act in different
characters. Iris is in one case the spontaneous messenger, who carries
a hero’s wish to subordinate deities; but she uniformly has this
mark, that she never rises higher than to be the personal messenger
of Jupiter. On the other hand, Mercury in the Odyssey is the official
messenger, not of Jupiter individually, but in both cases of the
Assembly of the gods: and the care, with which the distinction seems
to be drawn, is very remarkable. It is true, the message to Calypso is
called Ζηνὸς ἀγγελίη: but it became the message of Jupiter, because it
was a proposal made by Minerva in the Olympian Assembly, and made on
the part of all in the plural number, which was then duly adopted by
Jupiter as the executive head of the body[458]:
[458] Od. i. 84.
Ἑρμείαν μὲν ἔπειτα, διάκτορον Ἀργειφόντην,
νῆσον ἐς Ὠγυγίην ὀτρύνομεν.
The message in the case of Ægisthus is equally well defined[459]:
[459] Od. i. 38.
πρό οἱ εἴπομεν ἡμεῖς
Ἑρμείαν πέμψαντες.
It would have been out of keeping, therefore, with the character
and rank of the Homeric Iris, to give her the charge of the messages
carried by Mercury. The only case at all analogous in the Iliad is that
of the decision in the Fourth Book: and there not Iris, but Minerva
is employed. It is not, however, true that we have in the Odyssey no
recognition of the character of Iris as a messenger. We find one,
and that the plainest of all, in the etymology of the name of Ἶρος
the beggar. His proper name was Arnæus[460]; and he was called Irus,
because he was a messenger:
[460] Od. xviii. 6.
Ἶρον δὲ νέοι κίκλησκον ἅπαντες,
οὕνεκ’ ἀπαγγέλλεσκε κιὼν, ὅτε πού τις ἀνώγοι.
There is yet another illustration of the view which has here been
given. In the Assembly of the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Jupiter, in order
to give effect to the general desire of the gods, has occasion to wish
for the presence of Thetis: and it has at first sight an odd appearance
that he does not, as in other cases where he is acting singly, call
Iris and bid her go: but he says, with a mode of expression not found
elsewhere,
ἀλλ’ εἴ τις καλέσειε θεῶν Θέτιν....
And Iris, hearing him, sets forth without being personally designated.
The peculiar language seems as if it had been employed for the especial
purpose of keeping Iris within her own province, and of preventing the
possibility of the confusion between her office and that of deities
superior in rank, which might have arisen if she had regularly received
an errand in the midst of the Olympian Court.
Thus, then, it would appear, that the apparent discrepancy between the
various parts of the poems, when closely examined, really yields to us
fresh evidence of their harmony. Nor let it be thought unworthy of
Homer thus minutely to preserve the precedence and relative dignity
of his deities. With our views of the Olympian scheme, it may require
an effort to assume his standing-ground: but when he was dealing
with the actual religion of his country, it was just as natural and
needful for him to maintain the ranks and distinctions of the gods,
as of men in their various classes. Mythology might, indeed, afford
ample scope to his fancy for free embellishment and enlargement of the
established traditions; but these processes must always be in the sense
of harmonious development, not of discord.
Another question may indeed be asked: whence came this idea of twofold
messengership, higher and lower? and would it not have been more
natural if the whole of this function had been intrusted to one deity?
This question is, I believe, just, and requires that a special account
should be given of an arrangement apparently anomalous. Such an account
I have endeavoured to supply in treating of Iris, by shewing that she
owes her place to a primeval tradition, while Mercury owes his to an
ideal conformity with the laws of the Olympian system.
And in truth there is no single deity, on whom the stamp of that system
has been more legibly impressed. It might be said of the Homeric
Mercury, that he exceeds in humanism (to coin a word for the purpose)
the other Olympian gods, as much as they excel the divinities of any
other system. His type is wholly and purely inventive, without a trace
of what is traditional. He represents, so to speak, the utilitarian
side of the human mind, which was of small account in the age of Homer,
but has since been more esteemed. In the limitation of his faculties
and powers, in the low standard of his moral habits, in the abundant
activity of his appetites, in his indifference, his ease, his good
nature, in the full-blown exhibition of what Christian Theology would
call conformity to the world, he is, as strictly as the nature of
the case admits, a product of the invention of man. He is the god of
intercourse on earth; and thus he holds in heaven by mythological
title, what came to Iris by primitive tradition. The proof must, I
think, be sufficiently evident, from what has been and will be adduced
piecemeal and by way of contrast, in the accounts of other and, for
that period at least, more important divinities.
_Venus._
~_The Venus of Homer._~
There is no deity, except perhaps Dionysus, of whom the position and
estimation in Homer are so vividly contrasted with those, to which he
or she attained in later paganism, as Venus. The Venus of Virgil, the
Venus of Lucretius, are separated by an immeasurable interval from the
Aphrodite of Homer. And the manner in which she is treated throughout
the Iliad and Odyssey is not only curious, as indicating the nature and
origin of her divinity, but is of very high interest as illustrative of
the great Poet’s tone of mind and feeling.
There is no act of worship or reverence, no sign of awe or deference,
shown to her in any part of either of the poems. Yet her rank is
indisputably elevated. It is beyond doubt that she belongs to the
Olympian family. She appears in Olympus, not as specially sent for, but
as entitled ordinarily to be there: she takes a side in the war: she
makes the birth of Æneas more glorious on the mother’s side than that
of Achilles, who was sprung from Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, and a
deity of inferior dignity to hers. Not only is Jupiter her father, but
her mother Dione is an Olympian goddess. Yet her Olympian rank is ill
sustained by powers and prerogatives: and she probably owed it to the
poetical necessity, which obliged Homer to have an array of divinities
on each side in the war, with some semblance of equality at least
between the rival divisions.
The indications of the poem may lead us to believe that her name and
worship were of recent origin. That a worship of her had begun is
obvious: for in Paphos, a town of Cyprus, and the only one named by
Homer, she had both an altar, and a τέμενος, or dedicated estate;
and she bears the name of Cypris[461]. But we have only the very
slightest mention of her, or of any thing connected with her, in
Greece proper. We have seen much reason to assume that Cyprus was
essentially Pelasgian, and ethnically more akin to Troy than to
Greece. In Troy we find various signs of her influence. She sent to
Andromache the marriage gift of her κρήδεμνον[462]. She made to Paris
the fatal present of his lust[463]. She fell in love with Anchises,
and became the mother of Æneas[464]. She led Helen away from the roof
of Menelaus[465], and was an object of dread to her when in Troy[466].
Minerva, in taunting her bitterly about her wound, supposes she may
have got it by a scratch from a golden buckle, in undressing some
Greek woman that she had persuaded to elope with one of the Trojans
whom she so signally loves[467]. Again, it appears from a speech of
Helen, that she was worshipped in Phrygia and Mæonia[468]. The only
token of her influence in Greece is, that she is twice in the Odyssey
called Κυθέρεια. Thus we see her not strictly within Greece, but rather
advanced some steps on her way to it. And it is easy to suppose that,
in the race of corruption, her worship would run among the fastest.
[461] Il. v. 422 _et alibi_.
[462] Il. xxii. 470.
[463] Il. xxiv. 30.