this last extremity into view, he might, had he not fled, perhaps have
been as good as dead (ζὼς ἀμένηνος, Il. v. 887). This is not death, but
it is at any rate the suspension of life, apparently without limit.
A third alternative is opened in the severe reply of Jupiter, who
observes to him, that he might have been thrust down into Tartarus, but
for the fortunate accident of his high parentage; veiling the idea
under the modest words[648],
[648] Il. v. 898.
καί κεν δὴ πάλαι ἦσθα ἐνέρτερος Οὐρανιώνων.
Thus then the divine life, which, however, certainly with Ares
is lodged in one of its least godlike receptacles, is liable to
degradation, and to abeyance, even possibly to a lingering, though
probably in no case to a rapid, process of extinction. But this last
is rather the limit of calamity only, in the mathematical sense; that
is to say, a limit which is never actually reached, though there is
nothing short of it which may not be reached and even passed.
~_Exemption from other limitations partial._~
So much for the great gift of immortality. With reference to all the
other limitations imposed upon finite being, the position of the
Immortals, infinitely diversified according to the two great classes,
and to individual cases, has this one feature applying to it as a
whole, that it is a position of preference, not of independence.
Every deity has some extension of personal liberties and powers beyond
what men enjoy. But it is in general such as we should conceive to be
rather characteristic of intermediate orders of creation, than properly
attaching to the divine nature. We must however distinguish between
these three things: 1. The personal exemptions of a divinity from the
restraints of time and place, and other limiting conditions; 2. The
general powers capable of being exercised over other gods, over man,
over animal or inanimate nature; 3. The powers enjoyed within the
particular province over which a divinity presides.
Thus for example Calypso, though, as we have seen she is of inferior
rank, yet exercises very high prerogatives. She sends with Ulysses a
favourable breeze: and she predicts calamity, which is to smite him
before he reaches his home. Circe transforms men into beasts, and then
restores them to forms of greater beauty and stature[649]. She is
cognizant of events in the world beneath, and of what will occur on the
arrival of Ulysses there. She then sends a favourable breeze to impel
his vessel[650]; and on his return predicts to him the circumstances
of his homeward voyage[651]. And Proteus delivers a similar prediction
to Menelaus, to which he adds a declaration of his destiny after
death[652]: he also converts himself into a multitude of forms.
[649] Od. x. 396, 490-5, 529.
[650] Od. xi. 7.
[651] Od. xii. 25, 37 _et seqq_.
[652] Od. iv. 475 and 561.
Now no Homeric deities order winds to blow, except Jupiter, Juno,
Apollo, and Minerva; none issue predictions to men except Minerva and
Apollo, the latter mediately, through Seers or through Oracles; of
absolute transformation we have no example; but Minerva, and she alone,
transforms Ulysses from one human form to another. I mean absolute
transformation effected upon others: all the deities, apparently,
can transform themselves at will; for even Venus appears to Helen
disguised, though it would seem imperfectly, in the form of an aged
attendant[653].
[653] Il. iii. 386.
This gift of knowledge of the future is the more remarkable, when we
consider that some of the Olympian deities were without knowledge
even of what had just happened; as Mars, on the occasion of the death
of his son Ascalaphus[654]. Even Jupiter, with the rest of the gods,
was wholly unaware of the clandestine mission of Iris by Juno to
Achilles[655].
[654] Il. xiii. 521.
[655] Il. xviii. 165-8.
~_Cases of minor deities with major powers._~
The great powers of these secondary deities may be accounted for, I
think, by two considerations:
1. These divinities belong to the circle of outer or Phœnician
traditions, and the Poet is not therefore, in treating them, subject
to the same laws as those by which he regulates the Olympian order.
They are brought upon the stage with reference to Ulysses or Menelaus,
and in the Wanderings only; thus they are adopted by Homer for this
special purpose, and endowed with whatever gifts they require for it,
just as strangers, while they remain, are treated more liberally in a
house than the children of the family, for the very reason that they
are strangers, and have no concern with the regular organization and
continuing life of the household.
2. Another principle of the mythology conducts us by another road to
the same end. Every deity is liberally endowed within his own province.
Now the province of Proteus, Calypso, and Circe, is the Outer sphere
of Geography. Within the range of that sphere, the ordinary agency
of the Olympian deities individually is suspended. Homer prefers to
leave it to be governed by the divinities, whom he can frame out of
his Phœnician materials for the purpose. In this way he is enabled to
enlarge the circle of variety, and to draw new and salient lines of
distinction between the two worlds. Neptune indeed is there perforce;
for navigation is the staple of its theme, and the θάλασσα pervades
it, from no portion of which can he possibly be excluded. The Olympian
Court, too, oversee it, and their orders are conveyed thither by
Mercury their agent. But, except Neptune for the reason given, the
ordinary action of the deities individually is suspended[656], not
on account of any limitation of power, for instance in Minerva, but
for a poetical purpose, and with the excuse, that the whole sphere is
removed beyond common life and experience. Hence, just as Vulcan works
professionally the most extraordinary miracles, though he is but a
secondary deity, because they are in the domain of metallic art, so
Circe and the rest are empowered to do the like within a domain of
which they are the rooted zoophytes and exclusive occupants.
[656] See sup. sect. iii. p. 201.
It may be well, before passing to the general limitations upon divine
capacity in Homer, to illustrate a little farther this law of special
endowment.
Venus is among gods what Nireus was among men: ἄναλκις ἔην θεός[657].
Yet she overcomes the resistance of Helen[658]: and we have also the
express record of her girdle as invincible in its operation[659].
The case of Mars is peculiar: for he is brought upon the stage to be
beaten in his own province, as the exigencies of the poem require
it: but inferior, nay pitiful, as he is in every point of mind and
character, yet as to imposing personal appearance, he is made to
take rank in a comparison with Jupiter and Neptune, between whose
names his is placed[660]. Neptune exhibits vast power, and on his
own domain, the sea, appears even to have an inkling of providential
foreknowledge[661]: he is conscious that Ulysses will reach Scheria.
Except upon the sea, he exhibits no such attributes of intelligence,
though he always remains possessed of huge force. Mercury, again,
shows in locomotion a greater independence of the laws of place, than
some deities who are of a rank higher than his own: and doubtless it
is because he is professionally an agent or messenger. Even so the
journeys of Iris are no sooner begun than they are accomplished.
[657] Il. v. 331.
[658] Il. iii. 418-20.
[659] Il. xiv. 198, 9.
[660] Il. ii. 478, 9.
[661] Od. v. 378.
~_Divine faculties an extension of human._~
But the general rule is, that the divine faculties represent, in regard
to all the conditions of existence, no more than an improvement and
extension of the human[662]. Man is the point of origin: and from
this pattern invention strives to work upward and outward. The great
traditive deities indeed are on a different footing, and appear rather
to be the reductions and depravations of an ideal modelled upon the
infinite. But the general rule holds good, in regard both to bodily and
mental laws, for the mass of the Olympian Court.
[662] Friedreich, Realien 187. p. 599.
Thus deities are subject to sleep, both ordinarily, and under the
special influences of Ὕπνος, the god of sleep. We are furnished with
a reason for Jupiter’s not being asleep at a given moment[663]; it
is the special anxiety which presses on him. He had been asleep just
before. Their bodies are not ethereal, but are capable of constraint by
manacles. They are capable also of wounds; and they suffer pain even
so as to scream under it: but their blood is ichor, and their hurts
heal with great rapidity[664]. They eat ambrosia, and drink nectar.
They also receive a sensible pleasure from the savour of sacrifices
and libations[665]. Nor is this pleasure alone, it is also nourishment
and strength, for Mercury speaks of it as highly desirable for support
on any long journey. He, too, practises according to his precept, for
he seems greatly to relish the meal of ambrosia and nectar, which is
afforded him by the hospitality of Calypso[666].
[663] Il. ii. 1-4, and i. 609-11.
[664] Il. v. 416, 900-4.
[665] Il. xxiv. 69.
[666] Od. v. 100-2.
As regards the percipient organs, the Olympian gods appear to depend
practically on the eye. Minerva alone has a perfect and unfailing
acquaintance with whatever it concerns her to know. For even Jupiter,
as we have seen, is not exempt from limitation in this point[667]. Juno
sends Iris to Achilles in the Eighteenth Iliad without his knowledge,
κρυβδὰ Διὸς ἄλλων τε θεῶν. Apollo does not immediately perceive the
expedition of Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia. Being here opposed
to Minerva, he could not but be worsted. Generally, even these great
traditive deities perceive not by a gift of universal vision, but by
attention[668]:
[667] Il. xviii. 166-8.
[668] Il. x. 515.
οὐδ’ ἀλαοσκοπίην εἶχ’ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων.
Juno, keenly alive with anxiety, perceives from Olympus the slaughter
that Hector and Mars are making on the plain of Troy; and likewise
from the same spot watches Jupiter sitting upon Ida[669]. These four
deities, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Apollo, appear to be endowed with
by far the largest range of vision. Even to Neptune no such powers
are assigned, as to them; for we are never given to understand that
any amount of mere distance is too great for their ken. But Neptune
only sees the state of the battle before Troy by coming to Samothrace,
apparently to bring it within view, and by looking from thence: nor is
the Poet content without adding the reason;
[669] Il. v. 711, and xiv. 157.
ἔνθεν γὰρ ἐφαίνετο πᾶσα μὲν Ἴδη
φαίνετο δὲ Πριάμοιο πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν[670]·
[670] Il. xiii. 13.
a passage which seems to imply, that his vision was much the same as
that of mankind even in degree.
~_General prevalence of limitation._~
In the Odyssey, Ulysses pursues his voyage on the raft without the
knowledge of Neptune, although on the proper domain of the god, until
the eighteenth day. Then he discovers him, but it is only because,
coming up from the Ethiopian country, on reaching the Solyman
mountains, he is supposed to have got within view of the hero. Being
here, without special directions, in the zone of the Outer Geography,
we have no means of measuring the terrestrial distance with precision,
and the Poet has not informed us what interval of space he intended us
to suppose.
The inventive deities of the second order in Olympus are very slightly
gifted in this matter. So much we perceive from the ignorance of Mars
about the death of his son Ascalaphus. When Venus observes, that Æneas
has been wounded, Homer does not name the spot from which she looked;
but the general range of the powers of this divinity is so narrow, that
we must suppose he means to place her immediately over the field of
battle before Troy.
Of the powers of Apollo or Minerva, as hearers of prayer irrespectively
of distance, I have already spoken; but the local idea enters more
freely into the anomalous character of the head of Olympus. In the
First Iliad, Thetis explains to her son that she cannot introduce to
Jupiter the matter of his wrongs, until he returns from the country of
the Ethiopians, whither he has repaired with the other Immortals to a
banquet[671]. This may mean either that he is too far off to attend
to the business, or that he must not be disturbed while inhaling the
odours of a hecatomb.
[671] Il. i. 521-7.
Very great diversity in individual cases, but at the same time
a general and pervading law of restraint, are evident in the
descriptions of the deities with respect to their powers of locomotion.
Facility of movement accrues to them variously according to 1. their
peculiar work and office; 2. their general dignity and freedom from
merely mythological traits; 3. the exigencies of the particular
situation. As to the first, I have noticed that Mercury and Iris have
a rapidity as messenger-gods, which in their simple capacity as gods
they could scarcely possess. Yet even Mercury follows a route: from
Olympus he strikes across Pieria, and next descending skims the surface
of the sea; then at length passes to the beach of the island, and so
onwards to the cave of the Nymph[672]. Minerva, on the other hand,
in virtue not of any special function, but of her general power and
grandeur, is conceived as swifter still. The journeys of Apollo, in
like manner, are conceived of as instantaneous: the rule in both cases
being subject to poetical exceptions only. The chariots of Juno and of
Neptune[673], again, proceed with measured pace. Each step of Juno’s
horses covers the distance over which a man can see[674]. Neptune
himself passes in four steps from Samothrace to Ægæ[675]. The driving
of Jupiter from Olympus to Ida is described in terms before used for
Juno’s journey[676]. Juno travels at another time from Olympus to
Lemnos by Pieria, Emathia, and the tops of the Thracian mountains. Here
Homer seems to supply her with a sort of made road on which to tread:
for the route is a little circuitous[677]. Mars, when wounded, takes
wing to Olympus: but Venus, though only hurt in the wrist, cannot get
thither until she obtains the aid of his chariot, which happily for her
was then waiting on the field[678].
[672] Od. v. 50-57.
[673] Il. xiii. 29.
[674] Il. v. 770.
[675] Il. xiii. 20.
[676] Il. viii. 41-6.
[677] Il. xiv. 226.
[678] Il. v. 864, 355-67.
But poetical utility, so to speak, enters very largely into the
whole subject of Olympian locomotion, and makes it difficult to
draw with rigour the proper mythological conclusions. This may be
sufficiently illustrated by the following cases. We have seen the
majestic march of Juno from one hill top to another, and the measured
though speedy course of her chariot. Yet, under the pressure of
urgent considerations, she flies from Ida to Olympus, as the bearer
of Jupiter’s message, with a rapidity that Homer illustrates by the
remarkable simile of the travelling of Thought[679]. Again, where an
imposing magnificence is the object, measure is introduced into the
movement of Apollo himself by the clang of the darts upon his shoulder
as he goes[680]. And, even more, Venus, whom we have seen so impotent
on the field of Troy, after her exposure in the Eighth Odyssey, flies
at once all the way to Paphos; as does Mars to Thrace[681]. This in
both cases is probably because the occasion did not admit of ornamental
enlargements, such as befitted the journey of a god. And when Vulcan is
represented as actually engaged in falling during the whole day from
Olympus down into Lemnus[682], a poetical allusion to his lameness may
probably be intended.
[679] Il. xv. 79-84.
[680] Il. i. 44-8.
[681] Od. viii. 361-3.
[682] Il. i. 590-3.
~_Chief heads of superiority to mankind._~
Thus we see not the mental only, but also the corporeal existence
of the mythological god hemmed in on every side. A great force of
appetite, and a disposition to give it unbridled indulgence, can hardly
be reckoned among elevating gifts. But if it be asked, wherein does
Homer enlarge and improve for his mythical gods the human conditions of
being, besides,
(1.) The one grand point of immortality, I should answer, in
(2.) An unlimited abundance of the means of corporal enjoyment, and a
general freedom from the interruptions of care.
(3.) A liberal dispensation of the somewhat vulgar commodities of
physical strength and stature; and of the higher gift of absolute
beauty, into which the idea of stature, however, materially enters.
The former of these two we learn from the fact, that the banquet is
the habitual and normal occupation of the Olympian Court. In the First
Book, the fray between Jupiter and Juno passes off naturally, and as a
matter of course, into a feast that lasts all day[683]. And when Juno,
in the Fifteenth Book, reaches Olympus with a message from Jupiter,
Thetis, whom she meets first, salutes her by offering the cup[684].
[683] Il. i. 596-604.
[684] Il. xv. 87.
There is also among the gods a kind of ‘high life below stairs.’ When
Iris repairs on behalf of Achilles to the Winds, she finds them too
banqueting in the palace of Zephyr, probably their chief[685]; but she
hastes away, when her message is delivered, to feast in preference
among divinities of her own rank upon an Ethiopian sacrifice.
[685] Il. xxiii. 300.
~_Their stature and beauty._~
As regards size and stature, these gifts are so freely bestowed as to
be almost without measure: nor does the Poet even care in such cases
to be at strict unity with himself. Mars, who in the Fifth Book, draws
no very peculiar notice on the battle field from his size, in the
Theomachy, when laid prostrate, covers seven acres. Eris, treading on
the earth, strikes heaven with her head. The helmet of Minerva would
suffice for the soldiery of a hundred cities; the golden tassels of
her ægis, a hundred in number, and each worth a hundred oxen, after
every allowance for mere laxity in the use of numbers, would imply vast
weight and bulk. Accordingly, the axle of Juno’s chariot may well groan
beneath the weight of Pallas[686]. Apollo, without the smallest seeming
effort, stops Diomed and Patroclus in mid-career; and overthrows the
Greek wall as easily as a child overthrows his plaything heap of
sand[687]. Other signs might be quoted, such as the tread that shakes
the earth, and the voices of Mars and Neptune, equal to those of nine
or ten thousand[688] mortals.
[686] Il. xxi. 407. iv. 443. v. 744. ii. 448. v. 837.
[687] Il. v. 437. xvi. 774. xv. 361.
[688] Il. v. 860. xiv. 148.
With the one marked exception of Vulcan, beauty is generally indicated
as the characteristic of the Olympian deities. Among the gods, it
extends even to Mars[689]. It is sufficiently indicated for the
goddesses by their habitual epithets. Even Minerva, in whom personal
charms are as it were eclipsed by the sublime gifts of the mind, is
sometimes called ἠΰκομος and ἐϋπλόκαμος (Il. vi. 92. Od. vii. 40): and
Calypso declares the superiority of goddesses to women in beauty, as a
general proposition[690],
[689] Od. viii. 310.
[690] Od. v. 212.
ἐπεὶ οὔπως οὐδὲ ἔοικεν
θνητὰς ἀθανάτῃσι δέμας καὶ εἶδος ἐρίζειν.
The mythological or invented deities generally, but none of the
strictly traditive deities, appear to be tainted with libertinism.
Among the former we may, however, observe degrees. Jupiter and Venus
stand at the head. Neptune, Mars, Mercury, Ceres, Aurora, follow. Juno
evidently treats the passion simply as an instrument for political
ends. Of this Homer has given us a very remarkable indication. For
when she sees Jupiter on Ida, though she is just then conceiving her
design, she views him with disgust: στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ[691].
So careful is the Poet that we shall not imagine her to have been
under the gross influence of a merely sensual passion. Thetis suggests
a remedy of that nature to her son for his grief[692]. In mere
impersonations, not yet endowed with the strong human individuality
of the Greek Olympus, such as Themis and Helios, we do not expect to
find this trait. But of all the fully personified deities of invention,
Vulcan alone, privileged by Labour and Ugliness, appears in Homer to
be exempt. The Hellenic goddesses generally do not, however, like the
more Pelasgian Venus, Ceres, and probably Aurora, debase themselves by
intrigues with mortal men.
[691] Il. xiv. 158.
[692] Il. xxiv. 130.
The chastity of the traditive deities, Minerva, Diana, Latona, and
probably Apollo, I take for one of the noblest and most significant
proofs of the high origin of the materials which they respectively
embody.
There is also in the deities of Homer not merely a dependance upon
physical nourishment, but even a passion of gluttony connected with it.
The basis of this idea is laid in the conception which made feasting
the normal occupation of Olympus. It followed that they were not
only bound by something in the nature of necessity to food, but also
enslaved to it by greediness as a rooted habit.
~_Nature of their regard for sacrifice._~
Of this we find traces all through the poems, in the course which
divine favour usually takes. When Homer speaks of the gods in the sense
of Providential governors, it is the just man that they regard, and the
unjust that they visit with wrath. But when he carries us into Olympus,
and we behold them in the living energy of their individualities, it
is sacrifice which they want, and which forms their share in the fruits
of earth and of human labour, as we learn from the emphatic words of
Jupiter himself;
τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς[693].
[693] Il. iv. 49. xxiv. 70. xxii. 170.
It was the bounty of Autolycus in lambs and kids which induced Mercury
to bestow on him in return the gifts of thievery and perjury[694].
[694] Od. xix. 395-8.
Moral retribution in Homer lags and limps at a great distance behind
the offence, but the omission to sacrifice is visited condignly and at
once. Again, in the case of Troy, liberality in this particular even
seems to create a party in Olympus on behalf of an offending race. On
the erection of the rampart by the Greeks, Neptune immediately urges
the omission of the regular hecatombs against them. It is punished by
Diana in Ætolia, by the gods generally on the departure from Troas; and
Menelaus in like manner is for this offence wind-bound in Pharos[695].
[695] Il. ix. Od. i. iv.
The reason of this preeminence of sacrifices, both as to punishment
and as to reward, may lie partly in the tendency of man (though, as
we shall presently see, the practice had its moral side also) to
substitute positive observances for moral obedience; but partly,
likewise, in the importance of sacrifices to the anthropophuism of the
Olympian deities themselves.
Putting out of view what each deity can do in his particular domain, we
shall find that but little of power over nature--whether human, animal,
or inanimate--attaches to the Homeric gods as such. Juno conveys a
suggestion to the mind of Agamemnon[696], and gives, with Minerva,
courage to a warrior; but this is the whole of her immediate action,
I mean action without a mean, in this department, exhibited by any
passage in the Poems. Indeed, no other mythological deity ascends to
agency of this kind at all.
[696] Il. viii. 218. ix. 254.
Upon animal and inanimate nature Juno exercises the highest powers.
When she thunders with Minerva, sends cloud to impede the flying
Trojans, retards the sunset, and assists the voyage of Jason, we may
consider her as in the reflex use of the atmospheric powers of her
husband: but the gift of a voice to the horse Xanthus, apparently can
lie within her reach only by derivation from the higher or traditive
element in his character, as representing the idea of supreme deity.