traditive deities, glimpses of better things, even in Olympus. When
urged by Minerva on behalf of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Jupiter half
rebukes her for having insinuated a doubt, by replying, ‘How could I
forget Ulysses, who excels others both in his intellect, and in the
sacrifices which he offers to the gods?’[732]
[732] Od. i. 65.
It may indeed be said that in this passage, if it be construed
strictly, it is mental power or intelligence, and not any moral
quality, which, as second to liberality in sacrifice, is recognised as
fit to be taken into account by the gods.
Still it is, I think, manifest that Homer, like the Holy Scripture,
includes a moral element in the idea of wisdom, which is represented by
the word νόος, commonly or always used of men in a good sense.
And in the second divine Council of the Odyssey, the moral tone rises
higher. Minerva, grown more daring, pleads plainly the discouraging
effect which the indifference of the gods, if continued, will have upon
the moral conduct of sovereigns. ‘Let them,’ she says, ‘cast away all
moral restraint: for the virtuous Ulysses is forgotten by his people,
and is detained in great affliction by Calypso[733].’
[733] Od. v. 7. and seqq.
For us, in the present inquiry, the main question evidently is, not
what are the sentiments which the Poet has represented as proceeding
from his divinities on Olympus, but what are those which the people at
large believed them to entertain. There is a considerable difference
between these two standards: and it is the latter one by which we have
now to abide.
~_Prevalent belief concerning them._~
The deities of Homer, thus measured, are susceptible of various forms
of sentiment in contemplating the fortunes and deeds of men.
1. In general, they regard virtue and obedience with approbation.
2. They regard crime with dissatisfaction and a disposition to punish
it.
3. But they also observe any excess, or marked continuity, of good
fortune in the virtuous man with a kind of envy: as if they could not
permit the human race, on any conditions, to attain to a prosperity or
abundance which should have any semblance of rivalling their own.
As respects the first, it is indeed a pale and feeble sentiment; but
still it exists. They listen readily to those who obey them[734].
Prayer appeases them, as well as sacrifice[735]. They love not
perverse deeds like those of the Suitors, but they honour justice and
righteousness[736]. Upon the whole it may be observed, that much more
just and elevated sentiments are predicated of the gods as a body, than
when they appear as individuals. For it is as a body that they still
retain a certain relation to true Godhead.
[734] Il. i. 218.
[735] Il. ix. 497.
[736] Od. xiv. 83.
As respects the second proposition, they wander in disguise to examine
the conduct of men[737]. A man who is hardly used may become to
his oppressor a θεῶν μήνιμα, an occasion of divine vengeance. They
view iniquity with a sentiment sometimes called by Homer ὄπις, an
after-regard that remembers and avenges it. For this ὄπις the wicked
do not care[738], and such indifference is a chief sign of their
depravity. Especially they watch, backed by the Ἐρινύες, over wrongs
done to the poor[739]; and Jupiter interferes by storm and flood to
testify his displeasure at unrighteous governors, who administer
crooked judgments[740]. Ægisthus is warned and punished by them. It
is Minerva who plans the vengeance upon the Suitors[741]. At the same
time, revenge for affronts is a much more powerful and common motive
with them, than zeal for the administration of justice. The latter is
lazy and doubtful; but their sentiments in regard to the former are of
keen edge, and have an irrepressible promptitude and activity.
[737] Od. xvi. 485.
[738] Il. xvi. 388. Od. xiv. 82. xx. 215. xxii. 39. ii. 66, 134. iii.
132.
[739] Od. xvii. 475.
[740] Il. xvi. 384-9.
[741] Od. xxiv. 479.
As respects the third point, the gods grudged to Ulysses and Penelope
an unbroken continuance of the blessings of their domestic life[742].
It is in like manner, as it would seem, that, after a long course of
prosperity, the gallant and good Bellerophon became odious, on account
of his good fortune only, to the gods[743]. And this same idea is
perhaps the groundwork of the alternative destinies of Achilles, either
a long life without great glory, or transcendent glory and a short
career[744].
[742] Od. xxiii. 211.
[743] Il. vi. 200.
[744] Il. ix. 410-16.
While in the later stages of heathen religion the former and nobler
ideas gradually lost ground, this less worthy one became more and more
pronounced; and Solon, in Herodotus, describes himself as knowing τὸ
θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες[745].
[745] Herod. i. 32.
In vague and general terms, the gods of Homer are represented as
givers of blessings, particularly of external goods. Sometimes they
are rashly and wildly charged as the authors of calamities[746], which
the folly of man himself has caused. But according to the more grave
and serious teaching of the day, they were conceived to enforce, as
against mortals, laws from which they were certainly themselves exempt;
and allow to mankind no alternative, except that of mixed good or else
unmixed evil. Two caskets stand upon the floor by Jupiter: one of
them is filled with wretchedness and shame; the other is vicissitude,
which oscillates incessantly between prosperity and sorrow. And there
rankles in the mind of mankind a sentiment, which tells them that the
gods, while they thus dispense afflictions upon earth which are neither
sweetened by love, nor elevated by a distinct disciplinary purpose,
take care to keep themselves beyond all touch of grief or care[747]:
[746] Od. i. 32.
[747] Il. xxiv. 525.
ὣς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι,
ζώειν ἀχνυμένοις· αὐτοὶ δέ τ’ ἀκηδέες εἰσίν.
~_It lent considerable support to virtue._~
The best thing that can be said for their fainthearted encouragement
to virtue is, that the good man is certainly understood in most cases,
though not always, to prosper in the end: let us take, for example,
Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Ajax and Agamemnon meet unhappy ends;
but Ajax was stern and sullen, while Agamemnon cannot be acquitted of
cupidity and selfishness. On the other hand, as punishers of wrong,
the gods of Olympus do not visit all wrongs and all vices alike.
Especially they take little notice, in their moral government as in
their lives, of the law of purity: there is no express notice of their
displeasure against the crime of Paris; and Jupiter, the guardian
of the judgment seat, the friend of the suppliant, the stranger, and
the poor, makes no pretension to defend the marriage bed from the
contamination he had himself so often wrought. However, in a very
aggravated instance, namely, that of Ægisthus, his adulterous marriage
with Clytemnestra[748] is noticed explicitly in the Olympian Council,
as contributing to the enormity of his offence. But in such a case many
other elements, besides that of purity, are involved: the whole social
and political order of the world is at stake.
[748] Od. i. 37-40.
Thus upon the whole there was but little more in the sentiments than
in the conduct of the Immortals, to maintain among men a sense of
piety towards Heaven. Yet a good deal of authority and support were
lent to important principles of relative duty, by the belief that the
deities would or might avenge its infraction. We must in short fully
embrace the fact that man, as represented in Homer, was inconsistent
with respect to his religion, in the sense opposite to that in which
inconsistency commonly affects that relation. He had more still
remaining in him of ancient and natural morality, than his belief could
either adequately account for in theory, or permanently sustain in
action.
It should at the same time be borne in mind, that, while the vices
of Olympus appertain to the individual deities, its obscure and
qualified virtues, in the championship of duty, and the avenging of
crime upon earth, are not the properties of this or that mythological
impersonation, but either of the deities considered as a whole with
one united will, or else of those among them in whose characters Homer
still enables us to read the vestiges of primitive tradition.
~_Their course with respect to Troy._~
Saint Augustine observes[749], that some defenders of the Pagan
mythology in later times quoted the fall of Troy as an instance of
Divine retribution coming upon the descendants of Laomedon for his
perjury, and some, to the same effect, as a punishment of the adultery
committed by Paris. To which he replies truly, that the heathen deities
had no right to punish in Paris an act which had the sanction of Venus,
as she bore Æneas to Anchises, and of Mars as the father of Romulus:
Æneas and Romulus being the two great reputed fountain-heads of the
highest Roman lineage.
[749] De Civ. Dei, iii. 3.
Now, though Homer has practically represented the gods as avenging the
pollution of the nuptial bed, it may be observed that he nowhere seems
to put prominently forward the adultery of Paris as the main gist of
his offence. In fact, the idea of adultery is very much absorbed, as we
shall see, according to the poems, in the act of violent abduction. The
Greeks on their side, with the single exception of Menelaus himself,
treat Paris as a robber, or else a coward; not as one who had, like
Ægisthus with Clytemnestra, corrupted the wife of one of their princes.
And so Hector is, I think, not quite accurately criticized by Mure[750]
for failing to find fault with Paris on the ground of adultery. Hector
does reproach his brother for having abused the friendly intercourse of
life to carry off another man’s wife, and then not having the courage
to meet the husband in the field. This seems to me in perfect keeping
with the ideas of the time, especially if I am right in the view, which
I shall endeavour to sustain by argument, that Hector himself is not
the elder, but the younger brother of the two. What did the Greeks
aim at avenging? Not, we shall find, the wrong done to Menelaus in
his conjugal character, but the sorrows and sufferings of Helen were
evidently the prominent and conspicuous idea in the mind of the Poet,
and in the mind, as he represents it, of the Greeks. So that, while
Menelaus himself is the only person who in the Iliad shows a resentment
of his own conjugal wrongs, the Greeks appear to think partly of Helen,
partly of their nation’s honour, partly of their allegiance to the
Pelopids; and partly, perhaps chiefly, of the booty which, in requital
of their arduous labours, they are to gain upon the sack of Troy[751].
[750] Mure’s Lit. Greece, vol. i. on the character of Hector, Il. iii.
46-57.
[751] Il. ii. 355.
The defence, therefore, of the heathen deities which St. Augustine
notices as having been put forward, was a late afterthought. The Poet
appears indeed to treat the lustful effeminacy of Paris in general
with a grave and marked contempt; but this is rather his own personal
sentiment, than a result directly connected with his religious belief
or system. And, more at large, I do not find it clear that in any place
of the Poems any deity appears, either as the guardian of purity, or as
the avenger of its infraction. Under these circumstances we shall have
the more cause to wonder, that that virtue could still have been held,
as it was held, by Homer and the Greeks, in partial but evidently real
admiration.
Although retribution was limited to public and social sins, and did not
touch the inner and finer parts of human conduct, it is not difficult
to trace the advantages which flowed from that sensible remainder of
religion which still subsisted in the Heroic age; not from those parts
of the system which were due to human invention, but from the elements
which it still contained of the ancient theism, and which invention had
not yet wholly smothered.
Thus, for example, it was thought that the anger of the gods might be
brought down upon a country by the misconduct of its governors[752];
οἳ βίῃ εἰν ἀγορῇ σκολιὰς κρίνωσι θέμιστας·
and the fear of the temporal calamities thus to be incurred would,
naturally, tend to the maintenance of integrity in the administration
of justice.
[752] Il. xvi. 387.
As between governors and governed, so between rich and poor. We cannot
doubt that the worthy Eumæus expresses the general sentiment of his
age, when, having been reproached by the haughty Suitor Antinous
with having invited a beggar into the palace of Ulysses, he answers,
not by denial, but by showing that the idea is self-condemned by its
absurdity. Those indeed, he replies, may be solicited to come to a
house who exercise the agreeable or the useful professions; the Seer,
the Doctor, the Artificer, the Bard, these are the people who get
invited all over the world;
πτωχὸν δ’ οὐκ ἄν τις καλέοι, τρύξοντα ἓ αὐτόν;
Who would be such a fool as to invite a beggar?[753]
[753] Od. xvii. 382-7.
With this standard of sentiment, not peculiar to that age, except in
the simple frankness with which it is avowed, it was surely of the
utmost importance for the needy and afflicted, that they should be
placed by the popular belief in the special charge of the deity;
πρὸς γὰρ Διός εἰσιν ἅπαντες
ξεῖνοί τε πτωχοί τε.
So that, though none would invite them, yet few would take the
responsibility of rejecting their supplications for what was needful to
supply their wants.
And the standing distinction in the Odyssey between a virtuous
and a vicious people is, that the former is insolent, fierce, and
unrighteous, while the latter is kind to strangers and of god-fearing
mind[754];
[754] Od. vi. 120. viii. 576. ix. 176. xiii. 202.
ἦ ῥ’ οἵγ’ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι, οὐδὲ δίκαιοι,
ἠὲ φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;
~_Bearing of the religion on social ties._~
It was thus a clear fact in the heroic age, that religious belief was
a foundation and support to the exercise of charitable offices between
man and man. I think we may further assert, that it is a fact of all
time; that in all ages and countries the strength and liveliness of
belief in God is a measure which determines the aggregate amount and
activity of mutual love. Hence, as the Olympian religion became more
and more hollow, public oppression increased, and private charity
and hospitality declined. Yet, even in its most corrupt and decrepit
period, it was on the steps of temples that the congregations of
mendicants assembled; spontaneous and unconscious witnesses to the
fact that, next to God their Friend in heaven, the reflection of God,
however faint, in the mind of man, is their best friend on earth. And
of the many great social results of Christianity, one standing in the
very foremost rank has been, that it has for the first time made the
rights of the poor a social axiom, which, though it may in practice be
evaded, none are hardy enough to deny. Perhaps the very strongest of
all the proofs of the connection between religious belief, and duties
to the needy, is to be found in the instinctive horror which is created
in the minds of men, when a prominent profession of the first is
accidentally and occasionally exhibited by persons, who show a palpable
disregard of the second.
Side by side with the powerful obligation, of the indeterminate
species, which binds man to man in the name of charity or brotherly
kindness, stands the corresponding determinate principle of truth
and justice, which aims at preserving entire to each individual the
definite rights to which he is entitled.
An important part of these definite rights belongs immediately to
the relations between the private person and the civil power. But
the capacity of any human authority to do justice, even where the
will cannot be found fault with, is of necessity defective: and no
government can do its duties for a day, irrespective of the aid which
each private person renders to it in reference to every other. Nor is
this enough; it wants, and cannot dispense with, the assistance of an
auxiliary within the breast, in order to guard itself against delusion,
and to secure the requisite conformity between thought, word, and act.
In other words, the state wants an instrument by which to induce men to
speak the truth.
No such end can be reached by force. Force, in the shape of torture,
will doubtless in the long run avail to make men asseverate that, be
it what it may, by which they may obtain release from an intolerable
suffering. But the first effect of torture is to make the sufferer
indifferent to the truth or falsehood of his confessions, so he can but
obtain relief by means of them. The second, and still more detrimental
effect, must be to undermine the very basis of inward truthfulness, and
to create a mental habit of indifference as between what is true and
what is false.
~_And on political relations._~
Hence, the _desideratum_ for the state can only be found in some power
which works in and with the will of the private person.
It has indeed been argued, and I believe with justice, that the atheist
ought on his own principles to speak the truth; that is, if he does not
shut his eyes to the testimony borne by the daily experience of life
to the existence of a moral government in the world, even on this side
of the grave. But this supposes, at any rate, some degree of mental
culture; and it is essential to public order to find the means of
operating upon those who have received no such training.
The question is how to obtain the voluntary disclosure of truth,
in cases where neither interest or inclination are of themselves
sufficient to secure it.
To this question the experience of the world, up to this time, renders
one and but one answer. The requisite influence may be found, and
can only be found, in an appeal to the Majesty on high, and to the
sanctions of a future life.
Here, then, does the Venerable Oath stand forth in all its majesty. The
act of calling the Deity in the most solemn of its various forms to
witness, has been found at once to make the word of a man the stoutest
bond of human society: for the perjurer strips himself of all divine
aid[755];
[755] Il. iv. 235.
οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ ψευδέσσι πατὴρ Ζεὺς ἔσσετ’ ἀρωγὸς,
and exposes himself to the most terrible penalties[756];
[756] Il. xix. 264.
εἰ δέ τι τῶνδ’ ἐπίορκον, ἐμοὶ θεοὶ ἄλγεα δοῖεν
πολλὰ μάλ’, ὅσσα διδοῦσιν, ὅτις σφ’ ἀλίτηται ὀμόσσας.
Under the operation of the oath, the chances, so to speak, are doubled
in favour of the veracity of the witness: first, he may not be wicked
enough to forswear himself; and secondly, if he is wicked enough, yet
he may not have the requisite amount of daring in his wickedness.
These views will, I think, receive material confirmation when we come
to consider the relative positions of the oath in Greece and in Troy.
For the present, I leave the subject with the observation, that four
short words describe the props of human society: they are, γάμος,
ὅρκος, θέμις, θεός.
All these sanctions, however partial and remote, thus given to human
duty by belief in the gods, could not but be of great practical value.
And indeed it may with truth be said, that the mere idea of the
presence of an overruling power in the world was of inestimable
advantage in repressing human passion, in moderating desire, and in
limiting the excesses of caprice, wilfulness, and violence.
But it is obvious that these beneficial results from belief in the
gods belonged not to the particular development, but to the theistical
principle which lay within and under it. The idea of a moral Governor
of the universe was, and ever will be, an unfailing seed of good
wherever it may exist. The Pagan mythology, at every step of its
unfolding into detail, enfeebled and degraded that great idea, but it
could not be destroyed all at once. _Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_;
and a system, like a man, requires time to reach the extreme of
depravation. As, among men, a judge is not supposed to lose all regard
for justice, because it may be that in some particular of private life
he has transgressed, so the Olympian divinities might have credit
as administrators of moral government, even after they had begun to
be charged with instances of immorality. But an unscrupulous order
and succession of judges, would in time put an end to the idea of
public justice; and so the continuing and growing degradation of the
Immortals, in time put an end to the sense of religion, and made even
its fanes[757] smoky, and its pomps contemptible.
[757] Propertius, El. II. v. 27. Hor. Od. III. vi. 3, 4. Sat. II. ii.
103-5.
And certainly, when we look at the evils, of which the mythological
system was the source, we cannot but be struck with their overwhelming
magnitude, and with the highly instructive fact, that in every case
they so manifestly belong, not to the original principle of belief and
worship due from man to his Creator, but to the departure from a pure,
and the lapse into an impure belief.
~_Moral bearing of the Religion on the poems._~
The credit for moral results, which has thus been allowed to the
probable operation of the Homeric Theo-mythology in the world, must
be steadily denied to its influence upon the poems, where it appears
before us as in the main a lowering and corrupting agency. In fact,
the religion and the morality of the Homeric poems appear to separate,
and to run in opposite directions. The rights of the question at
issue, in an ethical point of view, are plainly with the Greeks: they
vindicate by arms not one only, but two principles, both of them vital
to the order of society, and to individual happiness and virtue: the
sanctity, first, of the family and of marriage ties; secondly, of the
relation created by the rites of hospitality. And with the rights go
the fortunes of the cause. The capture and fall of Troy constitute a
great triumph of justice over wrong.
But the mythological elements of the question are cast in a mould
entirely different. The royal family of Troy has been all along
in singular favour with the deities, notwithstanding the perjury
of Laomedon; and that favour does not appear to be in any degree
diminished by the gross and shameful crimes that stand against Paris
in the poem, or by the unfailing and extraordinary obtuseness of his
moral sense. Ganymede, Tithonus, Anchises, as well as Paris, have all
been especial objects of divine regard. Not only did a full half of
the other deities take part with the Trojans in the war, but Jupiter
himself, apart from his concession to Thetis, was concerned for them,
and says[758], ‘They interest me even while they perish’ (μέλουσί μοι
ὀλλύμενοί περ).
[758] Il. xx. 21.
Again, in the meeting of the gods, he describes Hector[759] as dear to
them for his regular and abundant sacrifices, taking no note whatever
of his personal virtues. Of the three deities who were actively hostile
to Troy, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva, all had personal causes of
offence: the first, the fraud of Laomedon, which, however, was also an
offence against the moral law; both the others had the _spretæ injuria
formæ_, and Juno had also special predilections to gratify. The fall
of Ilios, and the death of Hector, are just: but the wonder is, with
the favourable relations that subsisted between the Trojans and the
father of gods, as well as men, which were in no respect impaired by
crime, how Hector came to die, or Troy to fall. While the fall of Troy
is justice, it does not seem to come about because it is agreeable to
justice, but rather as the result of the balance of force among the
gods, and of their remembrance of personal injuries. It appears all
along, as though it were the right-mindedness of the Poet which keeps
the wheels of the machine going, while those who should be the drivers
are at fault.
[759] Il. xxiv. 66. xxii. 170.