But he, turning, seized her also by the wing, as Screaming. And when he had swallowed her, and her young offspring too, Then the god made him portentous, who the dragon first had shown; For the son of wily Saturn metamorphosed him to stone; Whilst ourselves looked on in wonder at what happened, and in fear. And this in virtue of some inspiration or So the portents divine, dreadful, to the hecatombs god-possession. Of the kind of event which was considered ominous or portentous, and the method of interpretation practiced by the same Calchas, we may offer one example. The occasion is as follows: Agamemnon wishing, for various reasons, to essay the disposition of his people, gave orders, in pretended compliance with a command. from Jove, that they should all embark and voyage homewards to Greece. Nestor and Ulysses, with secret understanding of his purpose, had it in charge to stay those who seemed too anxious for flight before the purpose for which they had sailed to Troy was executed. Ulysses, after acknowledging the reasonableness of their impatience, thus proceeded to allay or to divert it: "Yet return without fruition, after so long stay, were vile; Wherefore still remain, my comrades, and be patient yet awhile, Tiil the prophecies of Calchas shall or true or false appear. For this comes within our knowledge, and ye all can witness bear, (Whom the fates and death forbearing took not captive yesterday, Or the day before.) When gathered the Greek fleet at Aulis lay, To old Priam and the Trojans, charged with freight of wo and blood, And we by the sacred altars, round the lucid fountain stood, Offering hecatombs unblemished to the deathless ones on high, Shaded by a noble plane-tree, whence a crystal stream flowed by; There a sign appeared portentous, dreadful to the wildered sight, A foul, red-backed, brindled dragon, which great Jove had sent to light, From beneath the altar gliding, to the plane-tree crawled along, Where was lodged a brood of fledgelings, a poor helpless sparrow's young, Nestling far within the foliage, where the top boughs tapered fine: เ drew near. Thereupon prophetic Calchas promptly his god-message speaks: Why hath silence thus invaded all your host, ye long-haired Greeks, When to us hath Jove, all-counseling, shown a sign Late it is, and late of issue, but of ever deathless of mighty name? fame. The priestly functions were not, by any strong line of definition, marked off from the kingly. In the sacrificial offices warriors would mingle and assist on apparently equal terms with those whose titular glory was priest, with the exception that the man who inaugurated the sacrifice by prayer would generally be of the sacerdotal order. It is not, however, our intention at present to investigate the relations and comparative duties of men with one another, or even the propitiatory and augural ceremonies they observed, further than is necessary to announce the principles of which these ceremonies were the application. Homer's own description of one of these shall be the substitute for any lengthened one which we might give, by presenting the peculiar features of a multitude. We only notice, that the sacrifice to the gods initiated a feast, in which those who had worshiped rewarded themselves for their piety by an indulgence in meat and wine. The occasion is the restitution of the daughter of Chryses, only procured a momentary or transient favor, but accumulated a store of kindly regards, which were available whenever necessity might oblige them to have recourse to the gods, for a benefit in return. In that very pathetic interview of Mercury with Priam, where the god, in the form of one of the myrmidons, conducts the old king to the tent of Achilles, that he might ransom his "only son" Hector, it appears that the care of the gods had extended even to the dead body of the latter. "You would wonder," says Mercury, "to see how dew-like (that is, fresh) he lies, the blood is washed away from around, and he is not polluted in any part. All his wounds are closed, whatever were him. Thus do the blissful gods favor thy inflicted, for many thrust a spear into son, though dead; for he was dear to them in heart." And Priam in answer declared the reason of their kindness: "O son! surely it is good to give due gifts to the immortals; for my son, while living, never in his palace neglected the gods who enjoy Olympus: therefore are they careful of him, although he is in the fate of death." And when, by the renewed good offices of Mercury, the body of Hector was brought home to Troy, Hecuba his mother ended her lamentation over him by declaring: "Now thou liest, wo is me! in the palace, dew-like and lately slain, as one whom Apollo, the god of the silver bow, hath slain with his mild of the dead hero, and so well preserved "So placid was the countenance weapons." his body, even after he had lain for twelve days, and in the interval suffered that indignity which all the world knows Achilles inflicted upon him-his body having been tied to the conqueror's chariot, and thus dragged into the camp of the Greeks. The gods tried by a standard of even greater rigor than the rules of outward religious decorum the hearts and dispositions of men; they preferred humility and self-diffidence, especially when in combination with trustfulness in themselves, to hecatombs offered ostentatiously by proud and otherwise godless men. was most likely to enjoy the assistance of the gods whose lowly estimate of himself and his own powers inclined him the most to feel his want, and to seek for their aid. The exploits of Diomede, in wounding Venus and Mars, show how far a mortal hero might distinguish himself in the one case, by the warrant and consequent assistance of Minerva, and in the other, by the presence of that goddess to give efficacy to his spear-thrust, and to fasten that weapon deep in the flank of Mars. The rationale of this matter seems to be, that the constant steady valor of the Greeks prevailed against the fitful and headstrong impetuosity of the Trojans. But we have mentioned it chiefly that we might here remark what we have left hitherto unnoticed-the liability, namely, coëxistent with their blessedness and power, of the Homeric gods to suffer pain. Mars, "brazen" fellow as he was, at receiving the wound inflicted with the spear of Diomede by the hand of Minerva, bellowed out as loudly as "nine or ten thousand men" would have done in the din and strife of battle. Speedily, and like a "dusky cloud," he made his way to lofty Olympus, and there made such a speech to Jove, as seems to have been equivalent to application for an order on the Olympian dispensary, the medicines of which, applied by the hand of the skillful Poon, afforded him happy and instantaneous relief. Notwithstanding that the Homeric faith necessitated the reference of many evil as well as good actions to the gods, it was not to be supposed that men could escape the responsibility attaching to the line of conduct they pursued. Each man's deeds must be visited upon his own head, and no impious transference of evil suggestions to the gods could save him from the consequences of these, when realized in practice. Minerva might prompt the unfortunate Pandarus to break "the solemn league and oath" which the Trojans had contracted with the Greeks, but he would still have his own private account to settle with those "Of the shades below The words in italics refer to the libations which the imprecators were in the act of pouring as an integral part of the ceremony that lent to the covenants spoken of their peculiar solemnity. The right of the gods thus to punish men was based upon the principle which Jove particularly avowed, that evil came not from themselves, but from the self-originated perverseness of the human will. In the retributive slaughter of the suitors of Penelope by the returned Ulysses, Laertes, an old, and therefore more probably a pious, man saw a convincing and comforting proof that Jove and the rest of the gods reigned in the mighty Olympus. The gods were never at a loss for ministers or instruments of vengeance. They themselves punished men directly, or worked out their plans of punishment by means of mortal agents, or again commissioned the Erinyes, or Furies, in aggravated cases of impiety, to persecute remorselessly the offenders. "These Furies, from the manner in which they are mentioned, seem to have been at first merely the impersonations of the curses which parents, when sorely irritated, vented on their unnatural children; but the idea seems afterwards to have been extended, so that even poor persons who were under the special protection of Jove were said to have their Erinyes, or avengers." So far of rewards and punishments in this life. The future life which awaited the general mass of mankind was an insipid, indefined existence, generally listless and without activity, in the dark and dreary abode of Hades. Heroes, whose valor and virtuous conduct had on earth marked them out for the discriminating and special kindness of the gods, were promoted to a state of "substantial beatitude" in heaven, or in the blessed Isles of the West; whilst those who had been preeminent in wickedness and hostility to Who upon the dead take vengeance for each broken the gods, were the objects of various plighted troth." severe, and often fantastic, punishments. ble for his cruelties, was condemned to Thus, Sisyphus, who had been remarkable for his cruelties, was condemned to spend an eternity in futile attempts to roll to the top of a steep acclivity a huge stone, which, as soon as it gained the summit, fell back again constantly, crashing and thundering, to the plains below. And Tantalus, who outraged the gods his guests, by cooking and serving up as food the body of his son Pelops, who had been killed in brutal honor of their visit, was condemned to such torment as has given to our language an adjective expressive of great, ever-recurring, teasing annoyance. The general run of mankind, who had not done so much good on the one hand, or so much evil on the other, as to preclude the idea of having their accounts squared, by compensating temporal good or evil, were kept in a dim, foggy, unrealizing, and unrealizable existence, somewhat akin to that which the ghosts of our own time, according to the doctrine of the Transatlantic Spiritualists, enter upon directly after their departure from this life. Altogether a chill, repressive, subdued life, a sort of life in death, which we may perhaps best imagine when laboring under a determined attack of influenza, especially if it happen to be combined with a heavy visitation of a squadron of azure diabolicals. ness was but the negation of pain and sorrow, (not consistently maintained as we have seen,) which good men, even here, partly enjoyed, and aspired to as their final inheritance. All the other qualities of the gods are readily resolvable into human ones; their power, wisdom, facility of locomotion etc., were human characteristics, not infinitely, only indefinitely, multiplied. It might, we think, easily be shown how the entire Olympian hierarchy sprung up, grouped around the one prime, central idea of power. This, however, involving the philosophy of the gods of Homer, involves also, to a certain extent, their mythology, from which the title of our paper warns us off. We may in one sentence, not announce, but indicate or insinuate what appears to be the rationale of the Homeric deities. Our readers must bear in mind that this is necessarily only a hard crayon sketch, which deals with outlines, and can not make pretension to the warmth and lusciousness of color. Jove was the central generic power, or, if a fastidious taste require the change, force; We will not stay to examine ethically the graduation of pain, or blessing, or insipidity, to their objects, longer than is necessary to observe, that that was not the most profound view of what constitutes the dignity of an active and intelligent being, which was taken in this arti-and this grand force was constantly strivcle of the Homeric Theology. ing to realize itself in a specific form. Thus, Minerva, the unmothered offspring of the brain of Jove, became the goddess of wisdom and strategy; and her classification will be, genus (underlying idea) power: species (particular manifestation) wisdom. So of Vulcan, Phoebus, Mars, and the rest. It is thus intelligible how it was at all times, and in all circumstances, reasonable and proper to call upon Jove; whilst only under particular circumstances was recourse to be had to particular deities. Jove was, in short, the great head of all departments. From what has been said, it will be manifest that the gods of Homer were merely, so to speak, telescopic men; conceived on a colossal scale, truly, but as truly on a human model. And this is not wonderful; for the gods of any people can never transcend that people's ideal of excellence. And when this ideal has to be evolved and shaped out of the mind of would-be worshipers, it naturally happens that the qualities of men and the phenomena of the universe are, by a strong application of what is technically called prosopopoeia, concreted and embodied It remains for us to remark, more exinto individuals, representing the highest plicitly than we have hitherto done, upon conceivable perfection of these same quali- the shortcomings of the Homeric theoloties and phenomena. Thus we under- gy; and this at once broadly and briefly. stand the gross anthropomorphism of Some of these shortcomings have already Homer. His gods are men plus immor- been directly enunciated, and nearly all tality and uninterrupted blessedness; inferentially; for it was impossible, withwhich qualities, we apprehend, exhibit out projecting ourselves out of our conthe nearest approach to creation shown in sciousness, which also is impossible, not the edification of his system. And even to be continually, though unobtrusively, these must, by a severe canon, be reduced comparing the Greek idea of the divine to the level of other qualities, which are with our own. The two qualities in which more palpably only an exaggeration of we have expressly stated that the Homeric the qualities of men. For the divine im- gods were deficient, shall on that account, mortality was but the negation of death; though not otherwise in accordance with and death did not terminate the existence a wise method, be mentioned first; of men and their uninterrupted blessed- and only mentioned that our conclusion : may be, if possible, also a synopsis. The gods were limited both in knowledge and power; wherever, or whatever that might be, whether physical or moral, that bounded the horizon of their possible, it is not necessary to determine; we shall merely assume a right, from former passages in this paper, to repeat, as a proposition, that the gods were not omniscient nor omnipotent. Neither were they omnipresent, although endowed with a facility of locomotion only short, yet still short, of ubiquity. One passage of the "Iliad" is conclusive on this point. When Achilles wished his mother Thetis to present his petition forthwith to Jove, she objected that she could not for some days do so, because Jove and all the gods had gone for a twelve days' banqueting to Ethiopia; which period of twelve days' freedom from business, being of annual recurrence, may be regarded as the Olympian long vacation. So far from the gods being self-existent, or existent from a past eternity, their genealogy was ascertained, and referred, in the first generation, to Time, and in the long run, to Oceanus and Tethys, a pair of ancient sea deities; as if in anticipation of the philosophic dogma of Thales. Throughout the whole range of Homeric theology, there is nothing comparablenothing second to that grand Mosaic formula, the highest revelation which, up to that time, God had given of himself, and contained in the two unfathomable words, "I AM." A certain beneficence displayed by the Homeric deities is the closest approximation to that love which we regard as the most precious divine quality; whilst that awful sacrifice, which we contemplate with wonder and gratitude, as the most sublime and unanswerable manifestation of the love of God, was so far from casting any shadow before upon the Greek mind of the time, that the pages of Homer present no traces of the doctrine of vicarious punishment. But it were idle to pursue further a comparison between a spark and the sun. We will, although it may be said to be a parting fling at the dead lion, complain that Jove was not only not a god, according to a monotheistic standard; but that he was not even a god whom we should, with our ideas of chivalry and delicacy, call a gentleman. He was not supremely happy in his domestic relations, and whenever his chimney smoked, he had insured to him those two things which are proverbially understood to rank amongst the greatest plagues of life. The scolding of his wife was met by harsh words, and often by harsh treatment on his part, and perhaps their periods of hearty reconciliation were not so much the rule as the exception. During one of these exceptional periods, he made love to Juno in words as delicate as that act would be, by which a man should introduce to his wedded wife the passées beauties of his late harem. A passage which occurs in the Fourteenth Book of the "Iliad" will justify what we have said; and also demonstrate plainly that purity or holiness was no necessary condition of the Homeric deities. Throughout the foregoing remarks we have made use chiefly of the "Iliad," because in that poem especially we have the gods in action, harmoniously or contentiously. We have endeavored to exhibit the gods in themselves, and in their relations to men; had our task been the converse of this, the building up of the other side of that arch which spans the chasm between the human and the divine; or the investigation of the relations which men bore to one another, we should have drawn more largely upon the "Odyssey," as furnishing the best representations of the civil and social life of man. If there is any thing further left us to do, it is to acknowledge, not thereby to cancel, the obligations we have been under to the distinguished author of a paper upon this subject in a number of the late "Classical Museum." The adjectives marked off by quotative commas are generally the epithets which Homer applied to the object under notice: for the rhythmical quotations we have no debt to pay nor acknowledgment to express. |