description, that they are the avengers of crime[567], or that they
grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of
parents[568]: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them
as ‘originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon
a guilty criminal[569].’
[567] Friedreich, Realien, (p. 677.) §. 198.
[568] Ibid. (p. 220.) §. 61.
[569] Smith’s Dict. art. Eumenides.
Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer.
1. In the narrative of Phœnix we find that when, at the instigation
of his mother, he had sought the embraces of a παλλακὶς, for whom his
father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked the Ἐρινύες to make
him childless. ‘This curse,’ he says, ‘the gods (θεοὶ) accomplished,
and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,’ Il. ix. 449-57.
2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her
brother, invoked Aïdes and Persephone, beseeching them to slay that
hero: whereupon the Erinūs, here called ἠεροφοῖτις, ‘that walketh in
darkness,’ heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here
the Erinūs appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet
against his mother. The city is assaulted, forced, and set on fire.
The family, including the mother who had cursed him, entreat Meleager
to deliver them, and attempt to attract his favour by splendid promises
of a demesne, to be conferred on him by the public. Only when the
palace itself is assailed does he consent. He repels the enemy; the
demesne is not given him: and, on account of his thus relenting only at
the last moment, Phœnix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles
to avoid. (Il. ix. 565-603.)
3. In Il. xv. 204, when Neptune seems inclined to be refractory, Iris
reminds him that the Erinūs will act with Jupiter, because he is the
elder brother:
οἶσθ’, ὡς πρεσβυτέροισιν Ἐρινύες αἰὲν ἕπονται.
And upon this hint Neptune at once alters his tone, allows that she has
spoken κατὰ μοῖραν, and complies with the command that she has brought.
4. In Il. xix. Agamemnon, while he admits his ἄτη, (v. 87), throws,
we might say shuffles off, the blame of it upon Jupiter, Destiny, and
Erinūs:
ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ αἴτιός εἰμι,
ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ Μοῖρα καὶ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐρινύς.
5. In vv. 258-60 of the same Book, the same personage invokes as
witnesses to his asseveration concerning Briseis, 1. Jupiter, 2. the
Earth, 3. the Sun, 4. the Ἐρινύες, ‘who dwell beneath the earth, and
punish the perjured.’
6. In v. 418 of the same Book, after the horse Xanthus, receiving a
voice by the gift of Juno, has given to Achilles a dark indication
of his coming fate, the Erinues interfere to prevent any further
disclosures:
ὣς ἄρα φωνήσαντος Ἐρινύες ἔσχεθον αὐδήν.
7. When, in the Theomachy, Minerva has laid Mars prostrate by a blow,
she taunts him by telling him he may in his overthrow recognise the
Ἐρινύες of his mother Juno, invoked upon him for having changed sides
in the contest (Il. xxi. 410-14).
8. In the Odyssey (ii. 135), Telemachus apprehends that, if he
dismisses his mother, he will have to encounter, among other evils, the
Erinuës whom she will invoke upon him.
9. Epicaste, the mother of Œdipus, is speedily removed from the face
of earth for her hapless incest. Œdipus himself lives and reigns: but
suffers many sorrows, which the Erinuës of Epicaste (μητρὸς Ἐρινύες, as
in Il. xx. 412) bring upon him.
10. Melampus, a rich subject of Neleus in Pylos, is imprisoned for a
whole year in the house of Phylacus, and has his property seized or
confiscated, on account of the daughter of Neleus, and of his grievous
ἄτη, which the goddess, the hard-striking[570] Erinūs, brought into his
mind (Od. xv. 233):
[570] From δα and πλήσσω: Liddell and Scott: also Schol. H. _in loc._
Or, μεγάλως ἐμπελάζουσα, Schol. V. The meaning may be close-nearing,
with formidable inward action.
εἵνεκα Νηλῆος κούρης, ἄτης τε βαρείης,
τήν οἱ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ δασπλῆτις Ἐρινύς.
But he escaped from death, and paid, i.e. accomplished, the strange
act that Neleus had imposed as the condition of obtaining the command
over his daughter’s hand. He thus procured it for his brother, termed
in the post-Homeric tradition Bias. This condition was, that he should
bring off to Pylos the cows which were the property of Iphicles (and
apparently of Phylacus). He was caught at Phylace in the attempt: but
after a year Iphicles released him, apparently in consideration of
benefit derived from his prophetic knowledge, Od. xv. 228-38, and xi.
287-97.
11. In Od. xvii. 475, 6, Ulysses, when Antinous had hurled the stool
at him, invokes upon that Suitor in return the anger of the gods and
Erinuës (εἴ πού γε εἰσὶν, if such there be) of the poor.
12. Lastly, in Od. xx. 78, as we have seen, the Harpies deliver the
daughter of Pandareus into the hands of the Erinuës.
We have thus a very copious supply of information from Homer, in no
less than twelve passages, every one of which represents the action of
these singular beings in a fresh and varied light: and the question is,
what is the one common idea, which is sufficiently comprehensive to
include them all, and is also in harmony with the purport of each?
~_Vindicators of the moral order._~
I answer, that the Erinuës are, in the Homeric system, the
never-failing champions, because they are the practical avengers, of
the natural and moral order, at all times, under all circumstances,
and against all persons whatsoever. They have nothing to do with the
prevention of crime: but they appear to be the principal instruments
for its punishment, especially here, but likewise hereafter. This,
however, is only a part of their function. They are the sworn servants
of a fixed order of the universe, apart from, anterior to, and
independent of, all volition, divine or human: and they avenge the
infraction of that order, not merely as a law of right opposed to
wrong, but as a law of order opposed to disorder; they are goddesses
themselves, but they are wholly apart from the Olympian dispensation,
sometimes put in conjunction with deities of the mythology, sometimes
apart from, sometimes in opposition to them. They are, in short, an
early and poetical expression of that philosophy, which even in
Christian times has seemed to seek a foundation for the supreme laws
more or less dissociated from, and wholly exterior to, the Divine Will:
the philosophy, not of Destiny, but of the ‘Immutable Morality’ of
Cudworth and his school: the philosophy harmonizing with the Ideas of
the Platonists: the philosophy of which we have a distant glimpse in
the words of St. Bernard, _incommutabile est, quod ne ipsi quidem Deo
mutare liberum est_[571]: and which Butler has presented to us in the
mild forms of his admirably balanced wisdom.
[571] De Præcepto et Dispensatione, sect. 8.
I will take first, as the criteria of this proposition, the remarkable
cases in which we find the Erinuës of Homer in qualified conflict
with Deity. It is commonly held, that in the Nineteenth Iliad the
Erinuës interfere to prevent Xanthus from telling too much to Achilles.
No doubt Homer effects this purpose by their means: but they never
interfere with the aim of prevention. It is the natural order which had
been broken by the act of Juno in conferring the gift of speech upon
a horse, and which they by their interposition mean to vindicate and
reestablish.
They play the same part in the case of the daughters of Pandareus.
It is plain that the goddesses of Olympus had vied with one another,
after an unprecedented and abnormal manner, in loading these damsels
with an extraordinary accumulation of gifts. Everything, even food,
came to them by the direct and immediate agency of their Immortal
handmaids: and at last Jupiter was actually besought to find them
husbands. All this lay far beyond, and was therefore in derogation of
the ordinary laws for the government of the world: it left no space for
human volition, effort, or discipline: it thus struck at the root of
the moral order; and on this ground the Erinuës interfere, apparently
employing the Hurricanes as their agents, to remove these maidens from
the earth, and to deposit them upon the Ocean stream, by the place of
the dead.
~_Their operation upon the Immortals._~
I do not know whether, over and above the infraction of natural order
which I have mentioned, there may not have been another cause for their
intervention in the special manner in which the endowments had been
conveyed: for where we find Juno granting to them ‘beauty and sense
beyond all other women[572],’ it appears as if she had travelled into
the province not only of Venus, but of the great Minerva, with whose
prerogatives I doubt whether we ever find any similar interference
allowed by Homer. It is therefore just possible that the Erinuës may
here interpose on behalf of the laws and arrangements of Olympus, as
well as of those belonging to Earth.
[572] Od. xx. 70.
The explanation which I have proposed will entirely fit the warning of
Iris to Neptune. The natural order, which assigns the prerogatives of
government to the elder, in other words, the right of primogeniture,
is a rule for the Immortals, as well as for mankind, since it is taken
to be founded upon a basis more profound than will, which was not,
and could hardly be for Homer, even when divine, either the source or
the master of creation. But while the Erinuës are thus on the side of
Jupiter, and while the recollection of them at once induces Neptune
to succumb, they are not on that account in any sense or degree his
ministers.
On the same side with him we find them, where they are invoked by
Ulysses, as the Erinuës, together with the gods, of the poor: or as
when Agamemnon lays upon Erinūs, along with Jupiter and Destiny, the
blame of errors, for which notwithstanding the Greeks rightly held
him[573], and even he could not deny himself to be, responsible. Yet
we are never told that the Erinuës move at the bidding of Jupiter, or
of any other Olympian deity. Here we seem to have a glimpse into the
deeper truths of the heroic age. Theology had already wandered from
its orbit: it was fast losing all the severity and majesty of truth;
but the deep roots which God had given to the sense of responsibility,
and the expectation of retribution, in the human mind, had not yet
been wholly plucked up; and Homer’s fine sense of truth forbade him to
connect the most practical, and at the same time, the sternest parts of
his religious system, with the gorgeous glare of his Olympus, and with
the moral delinquencies of many among its inhabitants.
[573] Il. xix. 85, 6.
As the seniority of Jupiter is upheld by the Erinuës, so in like manner
are the parental rights of Juno, which had been infringed by Mars, when
he changed sides in the war. Here again, however, it appears as if
more than the mere wish or influence of Juno had been set aside: for
Mars had given a positive promise to fight for the Greeks, and it is
probable that the breach of this engagement constituted the chief part
of the offence that they were to punish[574].
[574] Il. v. 832-4.
~_Their connection with Aides and Persephone._~
Where the Erinuës touch upon the province of other deities at all,
it is upon that of Persephone and of Aïdes. If Homer associated
Persephone, as I believe he did, with the Eastern nursery of his race,
it was natural enough that, as has been the case, this part of his
theo-mythology should remain comparatively untainted. And certainly
the Homeric relation between the Erinuës and the sovereigns of the
nether world is a close one. When, in the Ninth Iliad, Althea, grasping
the earth in her vehemence, as if to lay the strong hand upon the
object of her prayer, invoked Aidoneus and Persephone to put her son
to death, the Poet proceeds to say that the Erinūs heard her: the
Erinūs who stalks in the darkness heard her, and heard her out of
Erebus[575]. In the case of Phœnix and Amyntor we have exactly the
converse. Here the Erinūs was invoked, and it was Aides with Persephone
that answered the prayer. In both these instances it must moreover be
remembered, that the question is about present and even immediate,
not about posthumous retribution. We cannot, then, refuse to admit,
that in this manner Persephone with Aidoneus is placed in an intimate
relation with the administration of retributive justice on earth, and
during the course of human life there: and if the Erinuës are to be
considered as abstractions, having their basis only in some ulterior
impersonation, Persephone and Aidoneus offer the only objects on whom
we can suppose them to depend. It seems to me, however, that they are
not reciprocally identified, although they are profoundly connected,
and although we read in the connection a very ancient testimony to a
primitive conviction in mankind, that they must look to the powers of
the other world to redress the deranged balances of this.
[575] Il. ix. 569-72.
Conformably to these ideas, we find that, in the Nineteenth Iliad, the
abode of the Erinuës is fixed ὑπὸ γαῖαν: and it is made clear from the
passage (259, 60,) that their avenging office, which is so commonly
exercised in this world, reaches also to the other.
From the character of the Erinuës, as vindicators of an order having
deeper foundations than those which any volition could either lay or
shake, there arises that natural association of them with Destiny,
which we see expressed in the speech of Agamemnon[576]. Both have in
common this idea, that they are not dependent on mere volition. They
differ in these points; that Destiny prescribes and effectuates action,
while the Erinuës only punish transgression; and that Destiny is but
feebly moral, whereas the Erinuës are profoundly charged with ethical
colouring. They represent that side of the idea of Destiny which
alone can, after being resolutely scrutinized, retain a hold upon our
interest.
[576] Il. xix. 87.
~_Their operation upon man._~
All the residue of the threads will, I think, run out easily. It
follows from what has been said, that in their aspect towards man, the
Erinuës are not indeed administrators of the moral laws themselves,
but administrators of their sanctions. So they punish the infraction
of the rights inhering in all natural relations: the rights of the
poor, as Ulysses protests to Antinous; of a father, as in the case
of Amyntor; of a mother, as in the case of Penelope. But they do
much more than punish the infraction of the rights of persons; it is
the infraction of right as right, which they resent as a substantive
offence. Let us accordingly notice the function of the Erinūs in those
cases where there has been fault on both sides. An offender is not
therefore secure, because the person who invokes the Erinūs upon him
is an offender too. The father of Phœnix gave the original occasion to
his offence, by an offence of his own: but Phœnix is punished at his
instance notwithstanding, because the thing which he implores is not
a personal favour, but is a vindication of the ὑψίποδες νόμοι[577],
violated by the incest of his son; a thing right to be done, whether
asked or not. The case of Althea and Meleager illustrates this truth
in a manner still more lively. When she obtained the intervention of
the Erinūs, she at once suffered by it. The city of Œneus was all
but subjected to the horrors of capture: she was brought, in bitter
humiliation, to supplicate the aid of the son, on whose head she had
just invoked the stroke of doom. From this we must conclude, which
indeed is not difficult, that the Poet regarded her prayer as in itself
unnatural and cruel; so that the fulfilment of it involved immediate
suffering to herself. But, on the other hand, Meleager had offended
too, in the slaughter of a near relative. Therefore, although his pride
might well be gratified when he saw king, priest, and people, with
his humbled mother, at his feet, and proffering their choicest gift
in order to appease him, yet for that original offence, and for his
obstinately refusing to arm until fire was in the city, he must receive
his punishment likewise, in vindication of the moral laws; accordingly,
after he had repulsed the enemy, he never received the demesne[578].
[577] Soph. Œd. Rex, 866.
[578] Il. ix. 598.
The case of Meleager assists to illustrate that of Œdipus and Epicaste.
Both of these unhappy persons had offended against the moral laws,
though it was unwittingly (ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο); one, the mother-bride,
was immediately put out of the way: the survivor was still pursued by
the μητρὸς Ἐρινύες. We see here how insufficient the idea of a curse,
invoked at will, is to explain the action of these remarkable Powers;
for it does not appear that there was any mother’s curse in the case:
but, because the natural laws were broken in a matter where the mother
was the occasion, therefore, while both suffer, the sufferings of the
son are attributed to the Erinuës of the mother; the defenders, because
the avengers, of the sanctity of a mother’s place in relation to her
son.
In the case of Melampus, it appears that his undertaking to obtain
the cows of Iphicles or Phylacus was an ἄτη βαρεῖα, a grave error,
beginning in a temptation suggested to him by the Erinūs, and ending in
calamity. The seizure of these animals would probably be regarded as no
moral offence: and if so, any error that could lie in the engagement
to seize them would be, according to Homeric estimate, in the nature
of folly rather than of crime. We seem to see, then, in this place,
that the range of Erinūs, like that of Atè, embraced at a certain
point the prudential as well as the strictly moral laws: nor is there
involved in this idea any violent departure from the true standard, for
great imprudences are most commonly, and almost invariably, in near
connection with some form of moral defect.
It is however also to be observed, that in this place the Erinūs
suggests the ἄτη. The idea lying at the root of this representation
appears to be the profound one, that the exercise of an evil will is
in itself penal: and that when the mind is already disposed to offend,
retributive justice may take the form of a permission, encouragement,
or incitement, to commit the offence. We have already seen a very
remarkable development of this idea in the hardening agency of Minerva
upon the Suitors[579].
[579] Sup. sect. ii. p. 117-9.
According to the view of them which has here been given, though I could
not class the Erinuës with the traditive deities, it is clear that
they must represent, under metamorphosis, an important association of
ideas belonging to primitive tradition.
Let us now turn to the Sixth Class.
~_The translation of mortals._~
Those for whom it was a mental necessity to animate with deity even the
mute powers of nature, could not but find modes of associating man,
who stood nearer to the Immortals, with them and their conditions of
existence.
These modes were chiefly three:
The first, that of translation during life.
The second, that of deification after death.
The third, the conception of races intermediate between deity and
humanity.
And it was perhaps not the simple working of a fervid imagination, but
also an offshoot from this profound and powerful tendency, which has
filled the pages of Homer with continual efforts to deify what was most
excellent, or most conspicuous, in the mind or in the person of living
man.
The mode of translation during life was early in date, and was rarely
used, for not only are the Homeric examples of it few, but he records
no contemporary instance.
Ganymede[580], the son of Tros, was taken up to heaven by the Immortals
on account of his beauty, that he might live among them. Tithonus, his
grand-nephew, son of Laomedon, was, as we are left to infer, similarly
translated during life, to be the husband of Aurora (in Homer Eos), or
the morning: for Homer makes him known to us in that capacity, though
he does not mention the translation. In like manner, she carried up,
and placed among the Immortals for his beauty, Cleitus, one of the
descendants of Melampus[581]. A similar operation to that which was
performed upon Tithonus may have been designed in the case of Orion,
who was the choice of Aurora, and whose career, in consequence of the
jealousy of the Immortals, was cut short by the arrows of Diana[582].
The course of these legends seems to stop suddenly in the Greek
mythology at the point where they are replaced by deification: and the
connection of Aurora, as the principal agent, with three out of the
four, (the other, too, is Asiatic, as being in the family of Dardanus,)
seems to be an unequivocal sign of their eastern character. Homer
places the dwelling of Ἤως at a distant point of the East, near the
place where θάλασσα communicates with Ocean.
[580] Il. xx. 233.
[581] Od. xv. 250.
[582] Od. v. 120.
~_The deification of mortals._~
In the age of Homer the very first names have hardly been entered
in the class of deified heroes. Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, may be
said to stand at the head of the list, from the distinct assertion of
her translation, and from her being placed, as the ally of Ulysses,
in continued relations with mortal men[583]. Of her also it is said
that she had obtained divine honours; and nearly the same assertion
is made of Castor and Pollux. But they perform no offices towards man
while yet in this life. Of this Ino is the only instance. She appears
to be Phœnician rather than Greek, and thus to belong perhaps to an
older, clearly to a distinct mythology. Hercules, the only one of these
persons who entirely fulfils the conditions of a hero, is admitted to
the banquets of the gods, and united with Hebe[584]: yet he is not
all in Olympus, for his εἴδωλον, endowed with voice and feeling, and
bearing martial accoutrements, is the terror of the Dead. It is not
easy to explain fully this divided state. I cannot but think, however,
that we see here at work that principle of disintegration, which solved
all riddles of character by making one individual into more than one:
beginning, at least for earth, with that Helen in Egypt, who was made
the depository of the better qualities that post-Homeric times could
not recognise in Helen of Troy. Although the son of Jupiter, Hercules
had on earth, through a sheer mistake, been subject to a destiny
of grinding toil. His original extraction and personality stand in
sharp contrast with the restless and painful destiny of his life.
Death severs these one from the other, but Homer, contemplating each
as a whole, endows the last also with personality, and gives it a
reflection in the lower world of its earthly course and aspect: while
the Jove-born Hercules, as it were by a natural spring, mounts up to
heaven[585]. At the same time there is no more conspicuous example than
Hercules, of that counter-principle of accumulation, by which legendary
tradition heaps upon favourite heroes all acts not distinctly otherwise
appropriated, which appear to harmonize with their characters; and
thus often makes an historical personage into one both fabulous and
impossible.
[583] Od. v. 333, 461.
[584] Od. xi. 601.
[585] I have alluded elsewhere (sect. ii. p. 169) to another possible
explanation: two aspects of character may be exhibited in the two
images.
It must not be forgotten that this passage respecting Hercules was
sharply challenged by the Alexandrian critics. This challenge is
discussed, and its justice affirmed by Nitzsch[586]. Such authorities
must not be defrauded of their weight. But for my own part, I do not
find a proof of spuriousness even in the real inconsistencies of Homer,
where he is dealing with subjects beyond the range of common life and
experience. Still less can it be universally admitted, that what are
called his inconsistencies are really such. They will often be found to
require nothing but the application of a more comprehensive rule for
their adjustment.
[586] ad Odyss. xi. 601-4.
It is more difficult still to understand the case of Orion, who is at
once a noted star in heaven, and a sufferer below in the Shades. There
he appears not wholly unlike the shade of Hercules, a dreamy image
of the sufferings of earth, and at the same time he ranks among the
splendours at least of the material heaven.