proof is insufficient. Why should the Vulcan of Homer be limited to
a single spouse? Jupiter has three, probably four; namely, Juno,
Latona, Dione, and Ceres. No other Olympian deity, until we come down
to Vulcan, has any. The question then arises, Why should the poets,
or even the religion of the day, be limited in this case to monogamy,
which has no place elsewhere in the Olympian family? Why should the
reasons, which induced the framers of the religion to give him a wife
at all, forbid them absolutely from giving him more than one? Nay more;
why, if the original object of the Greek mind in this marriage was to
symbolize the union of manual skill and beauty, and if the materials
of the received mythology were in a state of growth and progress,
might it not happen that in the youth of Homer Charis was, all things
considered, suited to afford the most appropriate means of representing
the idea, and yet that in his later age he might amend his own plan,
and make Venus the wife of Vulcan, without at all troubling himself
to consider what was to become of the slightly sketched image that he
had previously presented in the Iliad? I say this, because the assumed
contradiction of these legends appears to me to proceed upon another
assumption of a false principle; namely, that, though the mythology was
continually changing with the progress of the country, yet each poet
was bound, even in its secondary and in its most poetical parts, to a
rigid uniformity of statement. No one, I think, who considers how the
current of the really theistic and religious ideas runs upon a very
few of the greater gods, can fail to see that with Homer the religious
meaning of his Vulcan, and of the other gods of the second order, was
very slight. A sufficient proof of this may be found in the fact, that
of no one of them, excepting Mercury alone, does he mention the actual
worship in his own country.
Moreover, two things may deserve remark with reference to the variation
which makes Charis the wife of Vulcan in the Iliad, and Venus in the
Odyssey.
First, from the plan of the Iliad, which placed Venus and Vulcan in
the sharpest opposition, the conjugal relation between them would have
been, for that poem, inadmissible. The Poet could not have introduced
Venus, where he has introduced Charis: and he must thus have given up a
strikingly poetical picture, and one most descriptive of the works of
high art in metal.
Secondly, it may not be certain, but it is by no means improbable,
that the worship of Venus may have attained to much wider vogue in
Greece when Homer composed the Odyssey, than at the period when he
gave birth to the Iliad. We have seen already the signs that it was a
recent worship. We have seen it in Cyprus and then more advanced in
Cythera, not in continental Greece. Now it was in the Iliad that Venus
had the name of Cypris; in the Odyssey this is exchanged for Cytherea:
that is to say, she was known sometime before as a goddess worshipped
in Cyprus and not properly Greek; but she was now, such is the
probable construction, known also as a goddess worshipped in Cythera,
and therefore become Greek. On this account, as well as because the
opposition between them had disappeared, she might with poetical
propriety be made to bear a character in the Odyssey, which could not
attach to her during the continuance of the great Trojan quarrel.
~_Vulcan in and out of his art._~
Beyond his own function as god of fire, and of metallic art in
connection with it, Vulcan is nobody. But within it he is supreme, and
no deity can rival him in his own kind. His animated works of metal
are among the boldest figures of poetry. Even his lameness is propped
by bronze damsels of his own manufacture. And the lock, which he puts
for Juno on her chamber-door, is one that not even any other deity can
open[496]. But this is not so much an exemplification of the power
and elevation of mythological godhead, as of the skill and exclusive
capacity of a professional person in his own art.
[496] Il. xiv. 168.
Finally, the Vulcan of Homer conforms in all respects to the inventive,
as opposed to the traditional type of deity.
_Ἠέλιος, or the Sun._
~_The Ἠέλιος of Homer._~
In the case of Ἠέλιος, or the Sun, as in various others, we appear to
see the curious process by which the Greek mythology was constructed,
not only in its finished result, but even during the several stages
of its progress. It lies before us like the honeycomb in the glass
beehive; and it tends strongly to the conclusion that the Poet is
himself the queen bee. The Philosopher did not then exist. The Priest,
we know, was not a religious teacher. The Seer or Prophet interpreted
the Divine will only for the particular case, and did not rise to
generalization. Who was it, then, that gathered up the thoughts and
arrested the feelings of the general mind, and that, reducing the crude
material to form and beauty, made it a mythology? The answer can only
be, that for the heroic age it was the Bard.
In some of the varying statements of the poems, where others have
seen the proof of varying authorship, either for the whole or for
particular parts, I cannot but rather see the formative mind exercising
its discretion over a subject-matter where it was as yet supreme:
namely, over that large class of objects which afforded fitting clay
for the hand of the artist, but which had not yet become a stamped and
recognised image for popular veneration. In the Charis, who is the wife
of Hellenizing Vulcan, so long as Venus is at war with the Greeks;
in the Winds, who, according to the Odyssey, inhabit a bag under the
custody of a living person, possibly a mortal, but who in the Iliad
beget children, enjoy banquets, and receive a _cultus_; we find Homer,
as I conceive, following the genial flow of his thought, according
as his subject prompted him, and awarding honour and preferment, or
withholding it, as occasion served. Perhaps Mercury or Vulcan, perhaps
even Juno or Neptune, may owe him some advancement: but, at any rate,
he seems almost as distinctly to show us Ἠέλιος in two different stages
of manufacture, as a sculptor shows a bust in his studio this month in
the clay, and next month in the marble.
In the Iliad we find the Sun personified, though in the faintest
manner, and by inference only. His office of vision, which he enjoys
habitually in the Odyssey, and once in the Iliad[497], is inseparably
wedded to a living intelligence by its combination with the function of
hearing. He is addressed as the
[497] Il. iii. 277.
Ἠέλιός θ’, ὃς πάντ’ ἐφορᾷς καὶ πάντ’ ἐπακούεις.
Now poetry may, under the shield of custom, make the Sun see, by a
figure which shall not carry the full consequence of impersonation; but
the representation, that he also hears, seems necessarily to involve it.
Again, Jupiter has decreed, that Hector and the Trojans shall prevail
until the setting sun. After that, there was to be no more of light
or hope for them. Juno desires on this account to close the day, and
dismisses the Sun prematurely to his rest. But this, as the Poet adds,
was done against his own will[498]:
[498] Il. xviii. 239.
Ἠέλιον δ’ ἀκάμαντα βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη
πέμψεν ἐπ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοὰς ἀέκοντα νέεσθαι.
Upon the two words, ἀέκοντα and ἐπακούεις, rests, I think, the whole
case in the Iliad for the Sun’s personality.
But in the Odyssey it is more advanced and developed. In the matter of
the intrigue of Mars with Venus, he acts as informer to the husband,
and subsequently assumes the part of spy[499]. Although thus able,
however, to discern what is passing even in the secret chambers of
Olympus, when set on guard for the purpose, he cannot see so far as to
Thrinacia, any more than he can penetrate the cloud which envelopes
Jupiter and Juno[500].
[499] Od. viii. 270, 302.
[500] Il. xiv. 344.
It is from the Nymphs, Phaethusa and Lampetie, whom he had set to
watch, that he receives the intelligence of the slaughter of his oxen
by the companions of Ulysses in their hunger. He immediately addresses
Jupiter and the assembled gods, in a passage which proves that Homer
meant to represent him as having a place in Olympus, for only if
there could he speak to them without undertaking a journey for the
purpose[501]. He makes his appeal to them for retribution; and he backs
his application with the threat that, unless it is granted, he will go
down to the Shades, and shine there. A menace which to our ears may
sound ludicrous enough; but it is perhaps well conceived in the case of
a chrysalis deity, not yet really worshipped by the Greeks: and there
is a certain propriety in it, when we recollect that on the way to the
descent into the Shades lay his place of rest. He is the father of the
Nymphs, who watch on his behalf in Thrinacia; he is also the father of
Circe and Æetes, and his couch is at Ææa[502].
[501] Od. xii. 374-88.
[502] Od. xii. 4.
During the time when the slaughter of the oxen is effected, Ulysses is
asleep: and it seems just possible that Homer may by this circumstance
have meant to signify that it was night when the catastrophe occurred,
which would save the dignity of this deity in respect to vision.
~_Is of the Olympian Court._~
The Olympian rank of the Sun is clear; but there seem to be ascriptions
made to him, which can only be reconciled by the supposition, in itself
far from improbable, that he was separately known of, as an object
of worship, through two different sets of traditions; one of them
referable to Pelasgian sources, and entailing Trojan sympathies, the
other of an Hellenic, or very probably a Phœnician, cast, and tending
to rank him with the Hellenes. For in the Iliad his unwillingness to
set, when his setting was to bring the glories of the Trojans to an
end, seems very strongly to imply that he had a Pelasgian origin. In
the Odyssey, his siding with Vulcan against Mars and Venus would show,
so far as it goes, a Hellenizing turn; but what is more important is
this, that, as the father of Circe and Æetes, of whom the latter bears
the exclusively Phœnician epithet ὀλοόφρων, and the former has her
abode close by his ἀντολαὶ, or point of rising, he is at once thrown
into the Phœnician or the Persian connection. As the Sun-worship was so
general in the East, it seems quite possible that it might come into
Greece by more channels than one: and as the process of personification
might in one set of traditions be more, and in another less complete,
we may here find a possible clue to Homer’s reason for treating it
differently in the two poems. Particularly as the poem where he is
least personal, the Iliad, is also that where he is most Pelasgian: for
we have found reason to ascribe to the Pelasgians less of lively and
creative power in the realms of the imagination, than to the Hellenes,
and to such races as had stronger affinities with them.
So distinct is the Sun from Apollo in the Odyssey, that they appear
as separate _dramatis personæ_ in the Lay of Demodocus. Yet there are
some latent signs of sympathy between them. Apollo tends the oxen of
Laomedon: the Sun delights, morning and evening, in his own oxen in
Thrinacie. It is difficult to avoid supposing some kind of relation to
be conveyed by Homer between the rays of the sun, and the arrows of
Apollo in the Plague. The extension of his sympathies to both races is
another sign of resemblance. Again, we have a promise from Eurylochus,
one of the crew of Ulysses, to build a temple to the Sun upon his safe
return to Ithaca[503]. Now we have seen that the only instances of
temples, which we can certainly declare to be named in the poems, are
temples either of Minerva or of Apollo. Thus this vow of Eurylochus
looks like another anticipation of the subsequent absorption of the
Sun into the person and deity of Apollo: and on the whole, we are
left to infer that beginnings of that process may have been already
visible. Homer, perhaps, did not care to advance it. At least, it
does not appear to me that either he or his nation were friendly to
the conception of mere elemental gods. Gods who preside over external
nature he presents to us in abundance; but gods, who are the mere
organs of external nature, are alien to the Greek genius as candidates
for the higher posts, and are relegated to subordinate places in the
system. Only Vulcan and Ceres really appear with him to bear decisively
the stamp of this character: and both of them seem as if they were
already in part detached from it, and developing in another direction.
For in Vulcan the human faculty of skill already predominates over
fire, and Ceres impersonates the vegetable product of Earth, and not
the mere dead mass.
[503] Od. xii. 345.
The connection of the Sun with Pelasgian traditions according to the
Egyptian type is, I think, strongly signified by the legend of the oxen
and sheep, in which he takes so much delight.
In the time of Homer he was, as it were, a probationer in the ἄγων of
the Grecian gods. The main facts before us are simply these: first,
his unformed separate state at that epoch; secondly, his absorption in
Apollo. The lesson taught by both is the repugnance of the Greeks to
mere Nature-worship. The signification of the second, in particular,
appears to be this, that as Ἠέλιος could not stand alone, and needed to
be absorbed, so he could find no place for his absorption so fitting
as in that deity, of whom, as well as of the more venerable traditions
that he represented, brightness was an inseparable and original
characteristic.
~_His incorporation with Apollo._~
In this view, the mythological absorption of the Sun in Apollo is a
most striking trait of the ancient mythology: and it even recalls to
mind that sublime representation of the Prophet, ‘The sun shall be no
more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light
unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and
thy God thy glory[504].’
[504] Isaiah lx: compare Rev. xxi. 23.
_Dionysus or Bacchus._
~_The Dionysus of Homer._~
The Dionysus of Homer, or Bacchus, has all the marks of a deity, whose
name and worship were of recent introduction into Greece, and were not
yet fully established there; while in connection with the Trojans we
have no notice of him whatever.
The eastern origin of this god seems in an unusual degree to have been
remembered in the later popular tradition: and from the slight Homeric
notices we may find confirmation for the common idea; inasmuch as the
poems appear both to mark him as not originally Greek nor Pelasgian,
and likewise rather faintly to connect him with the Phœnicians.
His father was Jupiter, and his mother Semele. Her name occurs in a
Catalogue, of which the first part is composed of women, the second
of goddesses; she appears among the women. The lines, in which she is
mentioned may be rendered, ‘nor when (I was enamoured) of Semele, nor
(when) of Alcmene, in Thebes; and Alcmene had stout-hearted Hercules
for her son, but Semele bore Dionysus, joy of men.’ These words appear
probably to mean that Semele, as well as Alcmene, was in Thebes: and
this supports the post-Homeric, but ancient, tradition of the hymn to
Bacchus[505], which makes Semele the daughter of Cadmus. Now, Cadmus,
according to every reasonable presumption, was Phœnician. We have thus
a fixed chronological epoch, to which the god was junior. That is, we
have a period fixed, which may be called historical, when his name and
worship had not yet been brought into Greece.
[505] Ver. 57.
The only note that we possess of the worship of Dionysus, as one
established in Homer’s time among the Greeks, is in the obscure
allusion of the Eleventh Odyssey to Ariadne[506], who was put to death
by Diana in the island of Dia, on her way from Crete to Athens, at
the instance of Dionysus, Διονύσου μαρτυρίῃσιν. The most probable
interpretation of this passage seems to be, that Theseus, when on his
voyage, landed with Ariadne in Dia to consummate the marriage, just as
Paris[507], on his way from Sparta, landed in Cranae with Helen: but
that, since the island was dedicated to Dionysus, this was punished as
a desecration.
[506] Od. xi. 322-5.
[507] Il. iii. 445.
We thus see Dionysus taking root for the first time upon the natural
line of communication, namely that by the islands, between Phœnicia
and Greece: and his possession of this island is in harmony with the
tradition of the Hymn, which represents him as having first been seen
upon the sea-shore[508].
[508] Hymn. ad Bacch. v. 2.
In the Twenty-fourth Odyssey we are told that Thetis supplied the
Greeks with a gilded urn, in which to store the ashes of Achilles,
together with wine and some unguent, probably fat. The passage to which
these verses belong is perhaps the least trustworthy in the poems: nor
is it in complete agreement with the Iliad, which mentions fat only as
used on the occasion. But I refer to it because it is stated there,
that this urn was reported by Thetis to be the work of Vulcan, and also
to be the gift of Dionysus[509]. Her possession of a gift from him is
in harmony with Il. v. 136, which represents her as having sheltered
him, when, through fear, he plunged into the sea: while his possession
of a work of art in metal is best explained by the supposition that
Homer regarded him as a Phœnician deity, since it was from that race
that such productions were commonly, though we cannot say exclusively,
derived.
[509] Od. xxiv. 74.
It is not difficult to understand why, as the god of wine and
inebriety, Dionysus does not appear in the theotechny of the Iliad;
but it would seem that the feasts of the dissolute Suitors in the
Odyssey afforded a series of occasions, upon any of which the mention
of his name would have been highly suitable. We may perhaps even say
that it could hardly have been omitted, if his worship had been general
and familiar in the country. Again, Dionysus is nowhere mentioned in
connection with Olympus.
The remaining Homeric notice of this deity which is also the most
curious, sustains what has already been advanced. The Arcadian king,
Lycoorgus, scourged, and pursued over the hill Nyseion, the μαινομένοιο
Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας, the nurses of the frantic Bacchus; they in dismay
cast down their vine branches (θυσθλὰ), while he plunged into the
sea, and Thetis gave him refuge[510]. Jupiter, in retribution, struck
Lycoorgus blind, and cut short his days. Whatever explanation may be
adopted of its details, this legend seems to signify, beyond all doubt,
that some forty or fifty years before the _Troica_ (for Lycoorgus was
contemporary with the youth of Nestor[511]), the introduction of the
drunken worship of Bacchus was resisted by the Pelasgians of Arcadia,
and was for a time, at least, expelled by them. The mention of Dionysus
as a child probably imports a further reference to the recency of his
worship: and there is something remarkable and significant in this
apparent commencement of violent opposition to it at the point when
women were beginning to be corrupted by excess of liquor.
[510] Il. vi. 130-40.
[511] Il. vi. 132.
Even the later tradition of Hesiod, which makes Dionysus the husband of
Ariadne, by thus giving him a Phœnician connection, so far sustains his
Phœnician origin[512].
[512] Hes. Theog. 947.
~_Dionysus is of the lowest inventive type._~
As Dionysus is one of the most recent of the Homeric deities, so
likewise is he one of the most purely heathenish[513]. He has not,
even in Homer, a divine maternity assigned to him, and he is the only
one of the Homeric deities who stands in this predicament[514]. The
anomaly was felt and provided for, in the later traditions at least,
by the deification of Semele after death. But perhaps another mode of
statement may be adopted. As it is evident that the original tradition
made him the son of a woman, and as all those with whom he is classed
in Homer are probably historical personages, it seems possible that
he may have been one of our own race, whose discovery or extension
of the use of wine may, by its rapid and powerful effect upon the
countries which it had reached, have led to his adoption into the
order of the Immortals, by a process more rapid than took place in the
case of Hercules or any other person. Upon this supposition, he stands
altogether alone among the gods of Homer. But, be this as it may, he
is, when considered in the capacity of a deity, the representation of
an animal instinct in its state of gross excess, and of nothing more.
He is the god of drunkenness, as Mars is the god of violence, and Venus
the goddess of lust: and there are no three other deities, from whom
Homer has so remarkably withheld all signs of his reverence.
[513] Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. p. 80.
[514] See the accounts of Pindar, Pausanias, and Apollodorus.
Though I state this as an historical possibility, I think it is certain
that, according to the Poet, Dionysus was from his birth one of the
Immortals: but it is also very doubtful whether he was one, to whom a
place belonged in the smaller Olympian Assembly. Even in later times,
he was not one of the _Dii Majores_: and his being the son of a mortal
in Homer would tend to make it probable that he was not invested by the
Poet with Olympian dignity. Again, he is only four times mentioned in
the whole of the poems; nor is a single act of his manhood recorded,
except his information against Ariadne. That information seems to
imply, that a known Greek island was sacred to him; and it was followed
by the death of Ariadne under the darts of Diana. These circumstances
may perhaps raise a presumption of his Olympian rank, equal to the
adverse one which has been stated above. So far as this inquiry is
concerned, the question must remain unsolved. But little of interest
can attach to these, the shameful parts of the Greek mythology, which
boast, as if it were our strength, of what can scarcely be excused as
our weakness, and which treat our shame as our joy. The real point of
interest is to learn whether there was a time when man, even though he
had lost the clear view of the guiding hand from above, yet revolted
against, or had not become familiar with, the deification of vicious
passion. And we seem to find the note of such a time in Homer. Only one
laudatory phrase is applied throughout the poems to Dionysus; it is the
χάρμα βροτοῖσιν, and these words are not the sentiment of the Poet, or
of any character that represents his mind; they are put into the mouth
of Jupiter, when he is speaking under a paroxysm of sensual passion.
I have not adverted to the tradition which places the Lycoorgus of
Il. vi. in Thrace, but have simply followed what appears to be the
suggestion of the Homeric text.
SECT. IV.
_The Composition of the Olympian Court: and the Classification of the
whole Supernatural Order in Homer._
In the full Olympian Assembly, or Great Chapter of the Immortals, we
find a collection of deities, who are respectively the representatives,
in the main, of Elemental Powers, of Human Passions or Ideas, and of
Historical Traditions, either single or intermixed. Among the simple
examples, we may cite the Rivers and Nymphs for the first, Mars and
Venus for the second, the goddess Themis for the third, Latona and Iris
for the last. In Jupiter, the chief of all, these elements are blended
together.
~_Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus._~