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JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
JUVENTUS MUNDI 
 
 THE GODS AND MEN 
 
 OF 'THE HEROIC AGE 
 
 BV THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 
 
 -^^^v^^- 
 
 fwnlytfn 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1869 
 
OXFORD; 
 
 By T. Combe, M.A.. E. B. Gardner, E. P. Hall, and H. Latham, M,A., 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In this work, which is mainly the produce of 
 the two Recesses of 1867 and 1868, I have 
 endeavoured to embody the greater part of the 
 results at which I arrived in the ' Studies on 
 Homer and the Homeric Age,' 1858. Those 
 results however are considerably modified in 
 the Ethnological, and in the Mythological, por- 
 tions of the inquiry. The chief source of modi- 
 fication in the former has been that a further 
 prosecution of the subject with respect to the 
 Phoenicians has brought out much more clearly 
 and fully what I had only ventured to suspect 
 or hint at, and gives them, if I am right, a 
 highly influential function in forming the Greek 
 nation. A fuller view of this element in its 
 composition naturally acts in an important 
 manner upon any estimate of Pelasgians and 
 Hellenes respectively. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 This Phoenician influence reaches far into the 
 sphere of the mythology ; and tends, as I think, 
 greatly to clear the views we may reasonably 
 take of that curious and interesting subject. 
 
 I have also greatly profited by the laborious 
 and original treatise of Dr. Hahn, on Albanian 
 Archaeology and Antiquities, as well as manners ; 
 which, although published at Jena in 1854, was 
 scarcely, if at all, known in this country in 1858. 
 
 But, further, I have endeavoured to avoid a 
 certain crudity of expression in some sections 
 of the * Olympos,' which led to misconceptions 
 of my meaning with respect to the action of 
 tradition (especially of sacred or Hebrew tra- 
 dition) and invention respectively, in the genesis 
 of the Greek mythological system. 
 
 In dealing with the Third portion of the 
 ' Studies,' called Aoidos, I have contracted a 
 great deal, but added and altered little. 
 
 The immediate purpose of the former work 
 was to draw out of the text of Homer, by a 
 minute investigation of particulars, the results 
 that it appeared to me to justify. Many of them 
 were more or less new, and the process of in- 
 quiry was therefore exhibited in great, perhaps 
 in excessive or wearisome, detail. I have now 
 felt warranted to give a larger space to deduc- 
 
PREFACE. vi) 
 
 tion, and a smaller one to minute particulars of 
 inquiry, in a work which aims at offering some 
 practical assistance to Homeric study in our 
 Schools and Universities, and even at convey- 
 ing a partial knowledge of this subject to per- 
 sons who are not habitual students. Of what 
 appeared directly useful for this end, I have 
 consciously omitted nothing. 
 
 I am anxious, then, to commend to inquirers, 
 and to readers generally, conclusions from the 
 Homeric Poems, which appear to me to be of 
 great interest, with reference to the general 
 history of human culture, and, in connection 
 therewith, of the Providential government of 
 the world. But I am much more anxious to 
 encourage and facilitate the access of educated 
 persons to the actual contents of the text. 
 The amount and variety of these contents have 
 not even ydt been fully appreciated. The 
 delight received from the Poems has possibly 
 had some influence in disposing the generality 
 of readers to rest satisfied with their enjoyment. 
 The doubts cast upon their origin must have 
 assisted in producing and fostering a vague in- 
 stinctive indisposition to laborious examination. 
 The very splendour of the poetry dazzles the 
 eye as with whole sheets of light, and may often 
 
 b2 
 
Vlll P R E F A C E. 
 
 seem almost to give to analysis the character 
 of vulgarity or impertinence. 
 
 My main object, then, in this, and in the 
 former work, has been to encourage, or, if I 
 may so say, to provoke, the close textual study 
 of the Poet, as the condition of real progress in 
 what is called the Homeric question, and as a 
 substitute for that loose and second-hand 
 method, ' not yet wholly out of vogue in this 
 country, which seeks for information about 
 Homer anywhere rather than in Homer him- 
 self. 
 
 In further prosecution of this purpose, I have 
 begun, and carried forward at such intervals as 
 I could make my own, another task. With 
 patient toil, which applied to most authors 
 would have been drudgery, I have tried to 
 draw out, and to arrange in the most accessible 
 form, resembling that of a Dictionary, what may 
 be termed the body, or earthy and tangible 
 part, of the contents of Homer. To a dis- 
 section of such a kind, the ethereal spirit 
 cannot be subinitted. This analysis will be 
 separately published, so soon as other calls 
 upon my time may permit. It must not be 
 supposed that so homely a production aspires 
 to exhibit Homer as a poet. Yet it exhibits 
 
preface: IX 
 
 him as a chronicler and as an observer ; it 
 helps to give an idea of his power by showing, 
 some part at least of the copious materials 
 with which he executed his great synthesis, the 
 first, and also the best, composition of an Age, 
 the most perfect ' form and body of a time,' that 
 ever has been achieved by the hand of man. 
 
 Like Colonel Mure, I am convinced that the 
 one thing wanted in order to a full solution of 
 what is called the Homeric question is know- 
 ledge of the text. In an aggregate of 27,000 
 lines, as full of infinitely varied matter (to use 
 a familiar phrase) as an egg is full of meat, 
 this is not so commonplace an accomplishment 
 as might at first sight be supposed. I have 
 striven to attain it ; yet, as I know, with very 
 partial success. And I do not hesitate to say, 
 with the productions of some recent writers 
 and critics on the Poet in my mind, that the 
 reading public ought to be very wary in accept- 
 ing unverified statements of what is or is not 
 in Homer. I eschew the invidious task of 
 illustrating this proposition from the pages of 
 others : possibly it might receive some illus- 
 tration from my own. 
 
 I have felt great embarrassment, in common 
 I suppose with many more, in consequence of 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 the unsettled and transitionary state of our 
 rules and practice with respect to Greek names, 
 and to the Latin forms of them. 
 
 Upon the whole, not without misgiving, but 
 not without consideration, I have acted upon 
 the belief that we cannot permanently fall 
 back into the system which we were content 
 until half a century ago to follow, and which 
 Mr. Mitford and Mr. Grote assailed in com- 
 mon ; that we cannot well stand where we 
 are ; and that we should, if possible, in this 
 as in all matters, try to make preparation for 
 the future, and make approaches at least to- 
 wards a durable system. 
 
 First, then, I follow many high authorities 
 in adopting generally the names of the Greek 
 deities and mythological personages, instead of 
 the Latin ones. 
 
 Secondly, with respect to names which have 
 in no way become familiar to our ears or been 
 domesticated in the English tongue, instead of 
 the Latin forms and terminations, I adopt 
 commonly the Greek ; and say lasos, Acrisios, 
 Eurumachos, instead of lasus, Acrisius, Eury- 
 machus : as also Achaioi, Hippemolgoi, Loto- 
 phagoi, Phaiakes, instead of Achaians, Hippe- 
 molgi, Lotophagi, Phseacians. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 But I have usually followed the old custom 
 in cases where Greek words have been, so to 
 speak, translated, so that the English ear has 
 become thoroughly accustomed to the render- 
 ing, whether it be effected by the Latin form, 
 as Cyprus for Kvnpos, or by an English one, 
 as Rhodes for Rhodos. 
 
 Yet a case like the first of these exhibits the 
 practical mischief of a somewhat degenerate 
 system ; for the name Kupros would, more 
 readily than Cyprus, have suggested the fact, 
 that copper owes its name to that. island, which 
 first afforded to Europe and the Mediterranean 
 a plentiful supply of so primitive and important 
 a metal. In this matter of names I am less 
 consistent than Mr. Grote ; and less bold, for I 
 have not the same title to expect obedience. 
 I can only say that my practice is accommo- 
 dated, as far as I am able, to a state of transi- 
 tion, and that I have no doubt it is open to 
 criticism in detail, even from those who may 
 accept the general rule. 
 
 Lastly, I have in many cases written a Greek 
 word in Roman type. I know not whether it will 
 or will not, at some time, be found practicable to 
 serve the purposes of all languages by one and 
 the same character. But the general knowledge 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 of the relationship of tongues, and of particular 
 languages, is increasing; and it may be both 
 of interest and of use to the English reader, 
 though unacquainted with Greek, to know the 
 form and body of the words discussed in the 
 text, when this advantage can be given without 
 seriously distorting the words themselves. 
 
 Ha WARDEN, North Wales, 
 October, 1868. 
 
2 b»d^V 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Popular appreciation of the Homeric works ... i 
 
 Viewed too much through later traditions ... i 
 
 The Author unknown as a Person ^ 
 
 Date at which he lived 3 
 
 Place of his birth and residence ..... 6 
 
 The poetry of Homer historic 7 
 
 Theurgy of the Poems self-consistent .... 9 
 Important internal evidence as to the historic character 
 
 of the Poems 10 
 
 Uncertainty respecting them 11 
 
 The ' Hymns ' 12 
 
 Arguments of those who support a dual authorship dis- 
 cussed 13 
 
 \/ Iliad and Odyssey compared 17 
 
 Text of the Poems discussed 18-26 
 
 Comparative antiquity of Homer and Hesiod ... 26 
 Evidence of Homer in relation to his age . . . 27 
 Discrepancy between Homeric and Post-Homeric tra- 
 dition 28 
 
 Conclusion concerning the Text of the Poet ... 30 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Three Great Appellatives. 
 
 The • Greeks ' of the Troica were Achaians . . . 32 
 
 Pre-Hellenic races— Pelasgoi 32 
 
XIV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Designations of the Greeks of the Iliad . . . . 33 
 
 Instances of chronological succession of Homeric names 34 
 ' Argeioi ' used as a national designation and in a local 
 
 sense 35 
 
 The Danaoi 36 
 
 Derivation of Homeric national or tribal names . . 37 
 Homer's unwilling testimony to the foreign origin of 
 
 Greek Houses 38 
 
 Genealogy of the race of Danaos 40 
 
 Post-Homeric tradition with regard to Danaos . . ^ 40 
 
 Conclusions as to the Danaoi 42 
 
 Argeioi 42 
 
 Local use of the word 43 
 
 Poetic and archaic uses of it 44 
 
 Application of the territorial name Argos ... 45 
 
 Common term in three distinct territorial names . . 50 
 
 Four uses of in Homer 51 
 
 Derivation of Homeric names of countries and places . 52 
 
 Uses of the word ' argos ' 53 
 
 The derivative Argeioi 55 
 
 This name belongs properly to the commonality . . 59 
 
 The third Appellative : Achaioi 59 
 
 Epithets applied to the name Achaioi . . . . 61 
 
 Force of the word ' dios ' 62 
 
 Instances of the use of the appellative Achaioi ... 63 
 
 The Myrmidons 65 
 
 Epithet ' Panachaioi ' 69 
 
 Conclusion respecting the use of the Three Appellatives . 70 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Pelasgoi. 
 
 Classification of the Homeric testimony concerning the 
 
 Pelasgoi 72 
 
 Wide extension of the Pelasgoi 72 
 
 ' Pelasgjc Zeus ' 73 
 
 Thessaly a Pelasgic country 73 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Thracians 74 
 
 Kaukones 75 
 
 Epithets given to the Pelasgians 75 
 
 The Larisse of Homer 77 
 
 Other heads of Homeric evidence concerning the Pelasgoi 77 
 
 Connection between Arcadians and Pelasgoi . . . 78 
 
 The lonians 80 
 
 Local, not personal, relation between Athene and Athens 82 
 Erectheus probably a Pelasgian . . . . . 83 
 Evidence as to the Pelasgian character of Attica in early- 
 times (lonians) 84 
 
 Pelasgian element in Thessaly 86 
 
 ' lason Argos ' 87 
 
 Marks'of a Pelasgian character in the population of Crete 89 
 
 The Five Races domesticated in Greece .... 89 
 
 Eteocretes and Kudones 89 
 
 The Leleges 9° 
 
 Pelasgian occupation of Epiros 91 
 
 Etymology of the Pelasgian name 92 
 
 Difference of race and rank among the Greek population 94 
 The Pelasgian element in the Greek language . . . 95 
 Lists of words (supposed to be of Pelasgian origin) com- 
 mon to the Greek and Latin languages ... 96 
 
 I. Objects of Inanimate Nature .... 96 
 
 II. Trees, Plants 96 
 
 III. Animated Nature 97 
 
 XV. Objects connected with Food .... 97 
 
 V. Related to Out-door Labour . . . . 97 
 
 VI. Navigation 97 
 
 VII. Dwellings 98 
 
 VIII. Clothing 98 
 
 IX. The Human Body 98 
 
 X. The Family 98 
 
 XI. Society 98 
 
 XII. General Ideas 99 
 
 XIII. Adjectives of Common Use .... 99 
 Scant stock of words relating to religion . . . .100 
 Words relating (i) to war, (2) to navigation, (3) to metals 100 
 
XVi CONTENTS. 
 
 Distinction with regard to names of persons, &c. . . loz 
 Extra-Homeric evidence of tlie wide extension of tlie 
 
 Peiasgoi io6 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Hellas. 
 
 Tlie word ' Hellas ' and its derivatives . . . , . 109 
 Phthie ; the phrase ' Pelasgic Argos ' . . . .111 
 
 The designation ' Panhellenes ' 113 
 
 Kephallenes 114 
 
 Helloi or Selloi: the Aspirate and Sigma interchangeable 115 
 
 Route of the Hellic tribes into Greece . , . . 117 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Phcexicians and the Egyptians. 
 
 Minos 118 
 
 His Phoenician character 119 
 
 Phoenician tongue probably spoken in Crete . . .120 
 
 Daidalos — Kadmos 122 
 
 Important works of art obtained from the Phoenicians . 123 
 
 Dependence of the Greeks on the Phoenicians (ship Argo) 124 
 
 The Egyptian Thebes 125 
 
 Conclusion respecting the significance of the word • Phoe- 
 nicia' in Homer 129 
 
 Art of writing introduced by Phoenicians . . . .130 
 Art of building with hewn stone probably introduced by 
 
 them 131 
 
 The people of Scherie (Corfu), of Phoenician stock . . 132 
 
 Their games 132 
 
 Fine Art, in Homer, proceeded from a Phoenician source 133 
 Respective contributions of Pelasgians and Hellenes to 
 
 the aggregate Greek nation 13^ 
 
 Possible personal medium between Greece and Phoenicia . 134 
 
 Were the Aiolids Phoenician ? 135 
 
 Achaian invasion of Egypt 144 
 
CONTENTS. XVll 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 On the Title 'Anax Andron.' 
 
 Substantial distinction between titles and epitliets descrip- 
 tive of station or office 149 
 
 Title ' Anax Andron,' to whom applied . . . .151 
 
 I. Agamemnon 153 
 
 His extraction: passage concerning the Sceptre 154 
 Simultaneous rise of the Achaian race and of the 
 
 House of Pelops 156 
 
 Tantalos 156 
 
 Niobe; Pelops 157 
 
 Achaians a Thessalian race . . . .159 
 Title (' Anax Andron ') anterior to the constitu- 
 tion of Achaian society 160 
 
 II. Anchises, and iii. ^neas . . . .160 
 
 Position of the Helloi and Dardanians severally . 16 1 
 Why the title is applied to Anchises and ^neas, 
 
 but not given to Priam or any of his family . 161 
 Absence of Anchises from the Trojan Council; 
 
 his sovereignty 162 
 
 ^neas : jealousy between him and the house of 
 
 Priam 163 
 
 Pointed use of the phrase 'Anax Andron' . . 164 
 
 IV. AUGEIAS 165 
 
 Ruled over Elis 165 
 
 His extraction and descent 166 
 
 Ephure, a town of Elis 166 
 
 V. EuPHETiis ■ .167 
 
 King of Ephure : distinction between the towns 
 
 so named 168 
 
 VI. EUMELOS 169 
 
 Rules at Pherai ; an Aiolid 169 
 
 Summing up of the Homeric evidence concerning 
 
 the phrase 'Anax Andron' 170 
 
XViii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 Homer the maker, not of poems alone, but of a language, 
 
 a nation, and a religion 174 
 
 Contrast between Homer and the Hesiodic Theogony . 175 
 
 Variegated aspect of Hellenic religion ; reasons for this . 176 
 
 Instances 177 
 
 Modes of reconciliation or adjustment .... 178 
 Debasement of the Olympian system . . , .180 
 
 Its specific principle humanitarian 181 
 
 It wanted the supports of a hierarchy and of sacred books 181 
 Actual operation of the Hellenic Theo-mythology . . 182 
 The later religion in relation to philosophers and legis- 
 lators 182 
 
 Plato's reproaches against Homer's treatment of the gods 
 
 unfounded; cases in point 185 
 
 Materials supplied as the base of Homeric religion . . 1 86 
 
 The five great deities 187 
 
 Homer's mode of dealing with the elder gods . . . 187 
 
 Vestiges in the Olympian system of Elemental Worship . 188 
 
 Nature-gods generally treated as subterranean . . . 190 
 
 River- worship local 191 
 
 Olympian system appropriates the materials of the older 
 
 elemental one 192 
 
 Homeric mythology ought to be severed from the schemes 
 of (i) Nature-worship; (2) Roman mythology ; (3) 
 
 scheme of classical Greece 103 
 
 Homeric polity framed on the human model . . . 193 
 
 Instances of ig. 
 
 Functions of the deities 
 
 195 
 
 Classification of the Olympian personages in Homer . . 198 
 
 Limitations and liabilities of the subordinate gods . . 199 
 Correspondence between certain features of the Olympian 
 
 system and the Hebraic traditions . . . .200 
 
 The Messiah 203 
 
 Theories as to the origin of heathen religions . , . 204 
 
CONTEi^TS. 
 
 XIX 
 
 other Homeric correspondences with Hebrew tradition . 
 The highest conception of deity does not exclude the 
 
 element of fraud . 
 
 Grand distinction between the Homeric and the later 
 
 systems 
 
 Homer's wide notion of the gods-as-governing-afl mankind 
 nnllPTtivP irti"n-f f th^ Olympinn dpitiei .... 
 No instance of a married deity, save Zeus 
 Element of deontology ; iwill and ought .... 
 Classification of the X)< »j«/or« 216 
 
 207 
 
 208 
 
 211 
 212 
 213 
 213 
 215 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS, 
 
 Section i. Zeus 
 
 Five different capacities ascribed to Zeus 
 
 1. The Pelasgian Zeus 
 
 2. the Di-vine Zeus .... 
 
 His universal supremacy . 
 His limitations and Habilities . 
 
 3. 4. The Olympian Zeus, and the Lord of the Air 
 
 Omnipotence not conceived of by Homer 
 Headship of Zeus ; the arbiter among the godi 
 His sole and supreme responsibility . 
 Aristocratic character of the Olympian polity 
 5. Zeus the type of anthropomorphism . 
 
 Individual character of Zeus of a low order 
 Not, however, devoid of affections . 
 The masterpiece of Homeric mythology with 
 regard to the humanising element 
 
 Section 11. Here 
 
 Of all deities the mogt national . 
 
 Special characteristics of; she disappears from the 
 
 Odyssey 
 
 Called 'Argeian Here ' . . . 
 Her rank in Olympos .... 
 Interpretation of the myth of the deposition of Kronos 
 
 219 
 
 220 
 221 
 223 
 224 
 225 
 227 
 22S 
 229 
 230 
 231 
 232 
 
 233 
 234 
 
 234 
 234 
 234 
 
 235 
 236 
 
 337 
 
 238 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 The function of Here as regulator of birth . . 239 
 
 Vestige of the prerogative of Here as a Nature-Power 241 
 
 Section III. Poseidon 241 
 
 His position and rank 242 
 
 Not an elemental deity ; Nereus the true sea-god . 243 
 
 Special functions of Poseidon 245 
 
 Legends relating to him ; their character . . . 246 
 His province in the Outer-World . . . .246 
 His supremacy in the Odyssey working, rather than 
 
 abstract 248 
 
 Prevalence of Poseidonian worship among the Phoe- 
 nicians 249 
 
 The Trident ; relation to some tradition of a Trinity 250 
 
 Cyclops, children of Poseidon 250 
 
 The Phoenician origin of Poseidon supplies a key to 
 
 his position and attributes 251 
 
 Section IV. Aidoneus 252 
 
 Probably a Nature-Power of an older Theogony . 253 
 
 His character and functions 253 
 
 The ' Zeus of the Underworld ' .... 254 
 
 Section v. Leto 257 
 
 Epithets given to her 257 
 
 Her circnrascribed action 257 
 
 High ascriptions of her dignity 258 
 
 Etymology of the name 259 
 
 Probable record of the Hebrew tradition respecting 
 
 the Mother of the Deliverer . . . .260 
 
 Section vi. Demeter 261 
 
 Homeric evidence respecting her . . . .261 
 
 Her share in the old tradition of Nature- worship . 263 
 
 Section vii. Dione 264 
 
 A wife of Zeus ; mentioned in one passage only . . 264 
 
 Testimony of Hesiod 264 
 
 A Nature-Power 265 
 
 Section viii. Athene and Apollo .... 266 
 Their position in Olympos a hopeless solecism, if 
 
 viewed apart from Hebrew traditions . . . 267 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XXI 
 
 Relation of rank between Here and Athene 
 
 Dignity of Apollo 
 
 Correspondence of Homer with the Messianic tradition 
 
 of the Logos and the Son of the Woman . 
 Superior lanctitas of Athene and Apollo 
 They are the two great Agents . 
 Uniform identity of will between Zeus and Apollo 
 Apollo the defender of heaven and dehverer of the 
 
 immortals 
 
 Functions of these two deities encroach upon the pro 
 
 vinces of other divinities .... 
 
 Jointly invoked 
 
 No local limit to their worship .... 
 They are independent of limitations of place 
 Omnipresent; prayer addressed to them from all places 
 Exempt from physical infirmity or need in general 
 Attributes of bulk ; locomotion 
 Apollo and Athene administer powers otherwise re^ 
 
 ferred to Zeus 
 
 Both exercise vast power over external nature . 
 Both possess lofty moral excellence and purity . 
 Distinctive functions of Apollo, severing him from 
 
 Athene 
 
 The ministry of death 
 
 Hellenic preservation of the element of Hebrew 
 
 tradition 
 
 Section ix. Hephaistos 
 
 One of the seven astral deities of the East 
 Dual course of tradition relating to Hephaistos . 
 
 The Charites 
 
 Matchless deity of Hephaistos .... 
 The architect of the palaces of the gods . 
 
 Section x. ARi;s 
 
 ' In point of strength divine, in point of mind and 
 
 heart simply animal ' 
 
 Represents the idea of raw courage . . C 
 Instances of his action 
 
XXll CONTENTS. 
 
 Section xi. Hermes 299 
 
 His part in the Iliad secondary 299 
 
 Instances of his agency 299 
 
 Idea of concealment inheres in his character . . 300 
 
 His probable connection with the Phoenicians . . 301 
 
 An agent rather than a mere messenger . . . 302 
 
 His name Argeiphontes 302 
 
 Section xii. Artemis 303 
 
 In the main a reflection of Apollo .... 303 
 Relation of, to the Moon-goddess . . . .304 
 
 Shares with Apollo the ministry of death . . . 306 
 Her agency ubiquitous in character . . . .307 
 
 Confers beauty (of figure) 308 
 
 Epithet ayvij and its significancy .... 308 
 
 Section xiii. PersephonS; 309 
 
 Epithets applied to her 309 
 
 Represents a mixture of Pelasgic and of Eastern 
 
 traditions 309 
 
 Co-ruler with A'idoneus 309 
 
 Etymology of the name 310 
 
 The Persian race 310 
 
 Section xiv. AphroditS 311 
 
 Her position and several functions in the Homeric 
 
 mythology . . . . . . . .311 
 
 Local indications of her worship . . . . 315 
 
 Etymology of the name 316 
 
 Section xv. Dionusos 317 
 
 Obscurity of traditions concerning him . . . 317 
 
 No clearly divine act assigned to him . . . 317 
 
 Recital concerning Lucourgos 317 
 
 Probable sign of his worship in the Odyssey . . 318 
 Worship of Dionusos recent ; and opposed on intro- 
 duction Jig 
 
 He is placed within the Phoenician circle . . . 320 
 
 To be regarded probably as a deified mortal . . 320 
 
CONTENTS. XXUl 
 
 Section xvi. Helios, or the Sun . . . . 321 
 
 His personality 321 
 
 His appearance in (<j) the Iliad, (A) the Odyssey . 321 
 
 Theft of the Oxen of the Sun 322 
 
 This legend of Phoenician origin . . . .322 
 
 The Sun an Eastern deity 323 
 
 Incorporation of the traditions of Apollo with those 
 
 of the Sun 324 
 
 Section xvii. HebS 325 
 
 Character of her offices 325 
 
 Expresses the idea of youth 326 
 
 Section xviii. Themis 327 
 
 A member of the Olympian court . . . .327 
 
 Signification of the name 327 
 
 Section xix. Paieon 328 
 
 His function as healer 328 
 
 Relation between Paieon and Apollo . . . 329 
 
 The paian or hymn to Apollo 330 
 
 Section xx. Iris 330 
 
 Instances of her office as Messenger . . . .330 
 The name of the rainbow; and the Hebrew 
 
 tradition 331 
 
 Her agency 332 
 
 Section xxi. Thetis 334 
 
 Her origin elemental 334 
 
 Her vast influence 334 
 
 Her prayer to Zeus 335 
 
 Etymology of the name 335 
 
 Character of her marriage to Peleus . . . .336 
 
 Pelasgian worship of Zeus ; double relation of Thetis 337 
 
 Instances of her agency 338 
 
 The reconciler between the conflicting creeds . . 338 
 
 Her influence with the gods grounded on obligation 339 
 
 Principal particulars respecting her .... 340 
 
 Epithets appHed to her 341 
 
 Later traditions appear but arbitrary comment . . 342 
 c 2 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Further Sketch and Moral Aspects of the 
 Olympian System. 
 
 I. Various Orders of Preternatural Brings . 344 
 
 1. The Nature-Powers 344 
 
 2. The Minor Nature-Powers 345 
 
 3. Mythological Personages of the Outer or Phcenician 
 
 Sphere 346 
 
 4. The Rebellious Powers 347 
 
 5. Ministers of Doom 347 
 
 6. Poetical Impersonations 348 
 
 II. The Erinues 348 
 
 The three chief recognised descriptions of preter- 
 natural force 348 
 
 Action of the Erinues 350 
 
 Their functions 351 
 
 Etymology of the name 354 
 
 III. AtJ: the Temptress 354 
 
 Her place in Homer 354 
 
 Character of her temptations 355 
 
 IV. Fate or Doom 356 
 
 Distinction between the words conveying the idea — 
 
 Ker, Moira, Aisa, &c. 356 
 
 V. Animal Worship 359 
 
 Sanctity attaching to the Oxen of the Sun . . 359 
 
 Other traces of animal worship .... 360 
 
 Animal Sacrifice 361 
 
 VI. On the Modes of Approximation between 
 
 THE Divine and the Human Nature . 361 
 Elements of the system of deification of mortals 
 
 discernible in Homer 362 
 
 Divine filiation 365 
 
 ' Zeus-born ' princes 368 
 
 Explanation of this title 369 
 
 Four channels of approach between the human and 
 
 divine natures 370 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XXV 
 
 VII. The Homeric View of the Future State 
 Three-fold division of the Future World . 
 
 371 
 372 
 
 374 
 
 VIII. The Olympian System in its Results . 
 
 History of the human race before Christ is the history 
 
 of a preparation for His Advent .... 374 
 Character and vitality of the Olympian system . . 375 
 A precursor of Christianity 377 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ethics of the Heroic Age. 
 
 Section I. General outline of the moral character of the 
 Homeric Greeks 
 
 Heracles 
 
 Moral force of Religion .... 
 Voice of Conscience .... 
 
 Homicide 
 
 The \yeak point of tenderness for fraud 
 Idea of sin implied in Homer 
 The Homeric vievsr of patience . 
 
 Virtue of justice 
 
 Virtue of self-restraint .... 
 The model spirit of moderation, the to uca-ov 
 ImplacabiUty regarded as unequivocally vicious 
 Extremest forms of depravity unknown 
 
 Domestic relations 
 
 The Poet's admiration for Beauty 
 
 The delicacy of Homer .... 
 
 Sketch of Greek life in the heroic age 
 
 Section 11. Position held by women 
 No trace of polygamy 
 Concubinage 
 
 Relations of youth and maiden 
 Picture of Greek marriage 
 Employments of women 
 
 378 
 380 
 381 
 383 
 384 
 
 385 
 387 
 389 
 390 
 
 391 
 393 
 393 
 395 
 396 
 398 
 400 
 402 
 
 405 
 406 
 407 
 408 
 410 
 411 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 the Assemblies 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Polity of the Heroic Age. 
 
 Similitude between Homeric and British ideas 
 
 Reverence for kings 
 
 No 'balance of forces' 
 
 The kings .... 
 
 Personal attributes of the king . 
 
 His fourfold character 
 
 Agamemnon a ' King of kings' . 
 
 Transactions of the Army decided in 1 
 
 Ranks traceable in the army 
 
 Composition of the Council 
 
 Importance of Power of Speech 
 
 Majority and minority 
 
 The Tts, or Public Opinion 
 
 Chief component parts of Greek society . 
 
 Representation of the state of society in Ithaca 
 
 Absence of written ' law' — The Oath 
 
 The Xeinos or Xenos 
 
 Sources for supplying slaves .... 
 The medium of exchange .... 
 
 Leading political ideas of the Poems 
 Bonds cementing Greek society 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Resemblances and Differences between the Greeks 
 AND the Trojans. 
 
 Double ethnical relation . 
 
 Religion 
 
 Prevalence of Nature-worship in Troy 
 Sacerdotal institutions and ritual forms 
 Superior morality of the Greeks 
 Trojan tendency to sensual excess . 
 Polygamy of Priam .... 
 Relation of Priam to subordinate countries 
 Trojan Assembly 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XXVll 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Geography of Homer. 
 
 Section i. The Catalogue 
 
 Genealogies of the Greeli Catalogue 
 
 The Greek territory divided into three circles and 
 
 a fourth irregular figure 
 Greek and Trojan Catalogues . 
 
 Section ll. The Plain of Troy 
 Leading topical points , . 
 Discussion of Homer's description 
 
 Section ill. The Outer Geography 
 
 Data for an Homeric map of the Outer Geography 
 Indications of Homer's belief in a great sea occupy- 
 ing the heart of the European continent 
 Stages of the Voyages of Odysseus 
 
 466 
 467 
 
 467 
 468 
 
 470 
 470 
 472 
 
 474 
 477 
 
 479 
 483 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Plots, Characters, and Similes. 
 
 Section i. The Plot of the Poems; especially of the 
 
 Iliad ........ 490 
 
 Section 11. Som^ Characters of the Poems. 
 
 I. Achilles 495 
 
 aw Odysseus 497 
 
 3. Agamemnon .! 501 
 
 4. Diomed and Ajax 503 
 
 5. Helen 1. 504 
 
 6. Hector 508 
 
 7. Paris 510 
 
 Section ili. The Similes of the Poems . . . 512 
 
xxvm 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 Section i. The Idea of Beauty in Homer . 
 Personal Beauty, and Beauty of Landscape 
 
 Section il. The Idea of Art in Homer 
 
 Works of Art 
 
 Material of Art 
 
 Homer's delineation of Art 
 Egyptian and Assyrian schools of Art 
 
 Section ill. Physics of Homer 
 
 Section iv. Metals in Homer 
 
 Section v. Measure of Value 
 
 Section vi. Use of Number in Homer . 
 
 Section vil. The Sense of Colour in Homer 
 
 516 
 518 
 
 520 
 520 
 521 
 
 523 
 524 
 
 525 
 528 
 
 533 
 535 
 539 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 If, as the general opinion holds, the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey are the works of an individual poet 
 (whom we term Homer), they are probably, as a con- 
 nected whole, the oldest in the world; though a few 
 of the Books of Scripture, and, in the opinion of 
 some, a portion of the Vedas, may perhaps lay claim 
 to a higher antiquity. They unquestionably contain 
 a mass of information respecting man in a primitive 
 or very early stage of society, which has not even 
 yet been thoroughly digested, and such as is nowhere 
 else to be found. They have also, through the inter- 
 vention of the Greek and then of the Roman civilisa- 
 tion, for both of which they form the original literary 
 base, entered far more largely than any other book, 
 except the Holy Scriptures, into the formation of 
 modern thought and life. 
 
 A main reason, which has prevented mankind 
 from profiting to the full by these invaluable works, 
 appears to have been this ; that, except for the purposes 
 of purely poetical appreciation, they have been viewed 
 
3 yUVENTUS MUNDJ. [cHAP, 
 
 far too much through the medium of later traditions, 
 of the productions of the classic ages of Greece and 
 Rome, and especially of the great epic of Virgil ; and 
 the multiform features of the picture which he draws 
 have thus been confounded with the representations 
 of much later^ and in many respects very different 
 ages. 
 
 While the works of Homer have exercised an in- 
 fluence which has been greater than those of any 
 other poet, and which is rising apparently at the 
 present time, nothing is known , of his person. His 
 blindness, but only in mature and late life, is allow- 
 ably conjectured from the fact that he has drawn a 
 careful and sympathising picture of the blind minstrel 
 Demodocos in Scherie i (now Corfu), and has made 
 him more conspicuous than any other Bard mentioned 
 in the Poems. Absorbed in his subject, the Poet never 
 refers to himself: in half-a-dozen passages the personal 
 pronoun is used — ' Tell, me, O Muses ^,' and the like ; 
 but it is a mere grammatical form, never specially 
 pointed to his own individuality. Of his character 
 we can only judge as far as different passages of the 
 Poems may enable us to trace his personal sympathies 
 in their tone and colour. The conjecture as to his 
 blindness is indeed in accordahce with a passage 
 which Thucydides * quotes as his from the Hymn to 
 Apollo, and which mentions it: but the weight of 
 this evidence depends much more on the beauty and 
 pathos of the verses, than on the fact that the great 
 historian treats it as by Homer; since he does not 
 3peak in the character of a witness, and the reference 
 
 ^ Od. viii. 64. = Od. i. I. s iii. 104. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to Chios as the place of his residerxce is a circumstance 
 calculated to excite strong suspicion. 
 
 With respect to the date at which Homer lived, 
 nothing is known, except it be by recent and as yet 
 scarcely recognised discovery i, from sources extrinsic 
 to the Poems. Herodotus places him at four hHndred 
 years before himself, in the ninth century before Christ. 
 This would bring him nearly to the epoch of Lycurgus. 
 But the state of society and manners in Greece de- 
 picted by him is far anterior to all that is connected 
 with the name of that legislator j and betokens not 
 only priority, but long priority, to the historic period, 
 which is commonly said to begin with the Olympiad 
 of Corcebus, B.C. 776. The date of 1183 e.g. is 
 fixed by Eratosthenes for the fall of Troy : but it has 
 long been known to be no more than conjectural^. 
 In my opinion, that event is quite as likely to have 
 been older, as to have been more recent. But there 
 are in reality no fully acknowledged measures of time 
 applicable to the decision of the question. Homer 
 alone seems to afford us, for his own age, any means 
 of estimating, however rudely, the lapse of years. 
 His only chronology is found in genealogies, given 
 by him in considerable numbers, and in singular cor- 
 respondence with one another. But this knowledge, 
 if authentic, stands as an island separated from us by 
 a sea of unknown breadth. We have as yet no mode 
 of establishing a clear relation of time between it and 
 the historic era. 
 
 The Poems afford, however, partial means of esti- 
 mating the date of Homer, relatively to the War of Troy. 
 
 ' See Chap. V. on Phoenicia and Egypt. 
 ^ Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, i. 123. 
 B a 
 
4 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 He virtually states, that he was not an eye-witness 
 of the War^. Poseidon ^ prophesies that the grand- 
 children of iEneas shall reign in Troas; and it is 
 fairly argued that the Poet would not have ventured 
 on the prediction, if he had not lived to see its entire 
 or partial accomplishmeiit. A grandson of ^neas 
 may well have reigned in Troas withiri fifty or even 
 forty years of the fall of the city ; and a son within a 
 much shorter period. Arguments for a greater interval 
 have indeed been founded on the passages, in which the 
 Poet contrasts the might of the Troic heroes with the 
 lower standard of his own time. But a ready answer 
 is surely found in the fact that Nestor, in the First 
 Iliad ^, draws a somewhat similar contrast between 
 the heroes of his youth, and those of the Greek army 
 before Troy. Figure is, in truth, the main element 
 in all such comparisons. A third argument has been 
 founded on the passage, in which Here observes to 
 Zeus that he is free to destroy the cities she loves 
 the best — Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae*. Hence, it is 
 thought. Homer must have lived after the Dorian 
 conquest. But (i) we do not find that any of these 
 cities were destroyed at that epoch; and {%) had 
 Homer lived in an age posterior to that great revo- 
 lution, he must have betrayed his knowledge of it not 
 in one equivocal passage, but in many^ and by a mul- 
 titude of signs of later manners. (3) The Dorian con- 
 quest had the immediate effect of reducing Mycenae to 
 obscurity, while it left Argos and Sparta at the head of 
 Greece ; and it would be strange indeed that Homer, 
 if he had witnessed it, should join the three in a single 
 
 ' Il..ji. 486. ^ II. XX. 307. 
 
 ^ II. i. 260-272. * II. iv. 51. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 
 
 category, and take no notice of the distinction. From 
 the manner in which the cities are mentioned, we may 
 indeed rather say, that the passage affords an argu- 
 ment to show that the Poet lived before that epoch, 
 and not after it. (4) It is urged also that Homer 
 mentions riding on horseback, and the trumpet, as in 
 use, but not as in use during the War. But in the 
 Tenth Iliad, Odysseus and Diomed ride the horses of 
 Rhesos ; and the trumpet appears to be mentioned only 
 as used to summon a beleaguered place on the arrival 
 of the enemy 1. On the other ha:nd, Homer seems again 
 to glance at his own case in the words addressed by 
 Odysseus to Demodocos, respecting his Trojan lay: 
 'You have sung the Achaian woe right well, as if 
 you had yourself been a witness, or else had heard it 
 from one^.' The idea seems here to be conveyed with 
 distinctness, that either actual experience or, at the 
 least, the evidence of those who had possessed it, was a 
 condition of true excellence in historic song. Again, 
 the elaborate plan by which, in the Twelfth Iliad, Homer 
 accounts for the disappearance of the defensive work 
 of the Greeks, seems to show that the interval since 
 the War must have been short, for if it had been long, 
 natural causes would have done more to account for it. 
 A cardinal argument for placing the date of the Poet 
 near that of his subject is, that he describes manners 
 from first to last with the easy, natural, and intimate 
 knowledge of a contemporary observer. He is in 
 truth in visible identity with the age, the altering but 
 not yet vanished age, of which he sings, while there is 
 a very broad interval of tone and feeling between him 
 and the very nearest of all that follow him. And even 
 
 ' II. xviii. 219, 220. ^ Od.viii. 489-491. 
 
6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 the difference to be observed in the shade of style and 
 of manner between the Iliad and the Odyssey, is just 
 such as would be fairly due, in part to the difference of 
 the subjects, and in part to the shock of those altera- 
 tions, which were evidently caused in Greece by the 
 absence of its kings and leaders, during a prolonged 
 period, at the War. I conjecture, without pretending to 
 do more, that Homer may well have been born before, 
 or during, the War; and that he probably was familiar, 
 during the years of his maturity, with those who had 
 fought in it. For treating Homer as an Asiatic Greek, 
 who lived after the migrations eastward, there is really 
 neither reason, nor trustworthy authority. 
 
 As to the place of Homefs birth and residence, 
 we are yet more in the dark than about his date. 
 The testimony of the Poems is both slight and equi- 
 vocal; and no other testimony is authentic. In one 
 passage he says the Locrians dwell beyond, or it may 
 mean over against, Eubceai, on the East of Greece; 
 in another, the Echinades and Doulichion ^ are beyond, 
 or over against, Elis, on the West of Greece. The 
 second passage seems to destroy any such inference as 
 Wood, in his ingenious Essay 3, drew from the first. 
 On the other handj morning comes to Homer over 
 the sea*; an expression which seems to contemplate 
 a ' whereabout ' on the West of the ^gean. The cha- 
 racter given to Zephuros, the North- West wind, varies 
 according as it is a sea-wind, which it is in the descrip- 
 tion of the Elysian Fields ; or a mountain-wind, when 
 it is described as charged with snow ^ ; and no inference 
 
 1 II. ii. 535. 2 II. ii. 626. " p. 8. (First Ed. in 1775.) 
 * II. xxiii. 237. = Od. iv. 566-568; xix. 206. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 
 
 can be drawn from it to show that Homer lived on 
 any particular coast. Every line of the Poems bears 
 testimony to the fact that Homer was not derivatively, 
 but immediately and intensely, Greek. Contented with 
 accumulated evidence of nationality in the highest 
 sense, we must leave the question of the precise birth- 
 place and dwelling of the Poet in the darkness in 
 which we find it. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly affirmed, that the song 
 of Homer is historic song. Indeed he has probably 
 told us more about the world and its inhabitants at 
 his own epoch, than any historian that ever lived. 
 
 But the primary and principal meaning of the asser- 
 tion is, that he is historical as to manners, customs, 
 ideas, and institutions : whereas events and names are 
 the pegs on which they. hang. It is with respect, not 
 to the dry bones of fact, but to all that gives them 
 life, beauty, and meaning, that he has supplied us with 
 a more complete picture of the Greek, or, as he would 
 probably say, Achaian, people of his time, than any 
 other author, it might almost be said than any number 
 of authors,, have supplied with reference to any other 
 age and people. 
 
 There are however very strong presumptions that 
 Homer is also historical with respect to his chief 
 events and persons. For, i. It is the chief business 
 of the Poet or Bard, as such, in early times to record 
 facts, while he records them in the forms of beauty 
 supplied by his art. 2. Especially of the Bard who 
 lives near the events of which he professes to sing. 
 3. It is plain that Homer so viewed the Poet's office, 
 from the nature of the lays which he introduces ; from 
 his representing to us Achilles engaged in singing the 
 
8 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 deeds of heroes ^ ; and from his saying that the gods 
 ordained the War of Troy that it might be sung to 
 all posterity^; with other like sentiments. 4. The 
 Poems were always viewed as historical by the Greeks. 
 5. If fictitious in their basis, they would have been 
 far less likely to acquire and maintain such com- 
 manding interest. 6. The structure and tenour of the 
 Poems throughout indicate the highest regard to na- 
 tional tastes and prepossessions : and these tastes were 
 manifestly very strong as to all matters of tradition 
 and hereditary fame. Of this we have an indication 
 which may be taken by way of example, in the question 
 usually put to a stranger, who are his parents? 7. The 
 number, and the remarkable self-consistency of the 
 Genealogies given in the Poems, appear almost of them- 
 selves to prove an historic design. 8. The Catalogue 
 in the Second Iliad implies a purpose with reference 
 to the nation, much the same as that indicated by the 
 Genealogies with respect to particular persons or fami- 
 lies. 9. The Aristeia of the greater chieftains re- 
 spectively, in the intermediate Books of the Iliad, are 
 thought to load the movement of the Poem j but they 
 receive a natural and simple explanation from the 
 tendency of a Poet at once itinerant and historical 
 to distribute carefully the honours of the War between 
 the different States and Heroes. ,10. A considerable 
 number of the minute particulars given, especially in 
 the Iliad, are of a nature to derive their interest wholly 
 from recording matter of fact j such for instance as the 
 small stature of Tudeus, the mare driven by Menelaos, 
 and many more. 11. Homer often introduces curious 
 legends of genealogy and race, in a manner which is 
 
 ' II. ix. 186-189. 2 Od. viii. 579. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 
 
 palpably inopportune for the purposes of poetry, and 
 which is, on the other hand, fully accounted for by 
 the historic aim. These legends are not to be ex- 
 plained by the garrulity of Nestor; for, even if the 
 character of Nestor admitted of a garrulity wholly 
 apart from good sense, still these legends are not con- 
 fined to him. Nor are they shared with him only by 
 Phoenix, who is likewise in years ; they are spoken by 
 ^neas, Glaucos, and others, and this too even on the 
 field of battle : and, by means of them. Homer has sup- 
 plied us with a great mass of curious knowledge, highly 
 interesting to his auditors, and eminently illustrative 
 of the first beginnings of the Greek nation,, as yet in 
 embryo. His intermixture of supernatural agency with 
 human events must be judged on its own grounds ; but 
 cannot by the laws of historical criticism be held of 
 itself to overthrow his geiieral credit. 
 
 We must not however attempt to define with rigour 
 the limits, within which the Poems are to be considered 
 historical. The free intermixture of the supernatural 
 need not indeed constitute a serious difficulty. For the 
 theurgy of the Poems is, so to Speak, self-subsistent. It 
 represents in the main a parallel and concurrent action, 
 rather than a mere ornament, or a simple portion of 
 one and the same narration with the War ; and it lies 
 upon the human and visible tissue like a continuous 
 pattern of rich embroidery. But several points of the 
 story are presented to us in a dress apparently mythical ; 
 for example, the distribution of the time into three 
 periods, each of ten years : and many of the names of 
 persons appear to have been invented, especially in 
 cases where they carry an etymological meaning calcu- 
 lated directly to serve the purpose of the Ppem. Again, 
 
10 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 if we suppose an historical existence for the persons indi- 
 cated by the names, for example, of Achilles and Helen, 
 it remains open to doubt, how large a proportion of the 
 remarkable and characteristic features, with which they 
 are invested, may be due to the imagination of the Poet. 
 In the case of Achilles, whose qualities everywhere 
 border on the superhuman, this question is especially 
 relevant. Nor is the circumstance to be overlooked, 
 that a goddess is assigned to him as a mother, and is 
 stated to have sat commonly, or oftentimss, as queen 
 in his father's palace ^. 
 
 It must also be fully admitted that, although the 
 Troad may afford some physical indications favourable 
 to the historic character of the Poems, yet the proof of 
 that character chiefly, nay almost wholly, rests upon 
 internal evidence 2. But internal evidence, when 
 carried to a certain point, is the very best we can 
 desire in a case where we are obliged to travel back 
 into the mist of ages, far beyond the limits of historical 
 record. 
 
 Of all the features of the Homeric Poems, perhaps 
 the most remarkable are the delineations of personal 
 character which they contain. They are not only in 
 a high degree varied and refined j but they are also 
 marvellously comprehensive and profound. The proof 
 of their extraordinary excellence as works of art is to. 
 be found in this, that from Homer's time to our own, 
 with the single exception of the works of Shakespeaa;e, 
 they have never been equalled. 
 
 Homer is also admirable, when the specialties of 
 his purpose are taken into view, in the arrangement 
 of incidents : in keeping interest ever fresh : in his 
 
 ^ II. i. 326. ^ Mure, Literature of Greece, vol. i. 
 
I.} INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 precise and copious observation of nature : in his 
 power of illustration, his use of epithets; in the free- 
 dom, simplicity, and power of his language ; and in a 
 versification perfect in its application to all the diver- 
 sified forms of human action, speech, and feeling. 
 
 It may probably have been the combined and in-r 
 tense effort of the Trojan War by which the Greeks 
 first felt themselves, and first became, a nation. At any 
 rate, from that epoch appears to date their community 
 of interest and life. Homer, then, was hardly less won- 
 derful in the fortune of his opportunity, than in the 
 rarity of his gifts. In speaking of his theme, the two 
 Poems may be taken as virtually one. He supplied to 
 his country thenceforward, and for all periods, the bond 
 of an intellectual communion, and a common treasure 
 of ideas upon all the great subjects in which man is 
 concerned. He was not only the glory and delight, 
 but he was in a great degree the wotTjr^y, the maker, 
 of his nation. 
 
 I have spoken of the darkness which, as far as direct 
 testimony is concerned, envelopes the person of the 
 Poet. The same is the case with the Homeric Poems, 
 distinguished from every other work of the first rank 
 in these among other particulars : there is not one, of 
 which so little has been told us by contemporary or 
 early testimony; while there is not one which tells us 
 so much. Gf their origin, their date, and their first 
 reception, we know nothing, except so far as we can 
 gather it from themselves. The Cyclic Poems, which 
 aimed at completing the circle of events with which 
 they deal, never attained to an equal or competing 
 fame, and have long ago perished. Periods of dark- 
 ness, the length of which we cannot determine, both 
 
I a jvvENTVs MUNbi. [chap. 
 
 precede and follow the two great productions. At the 
 dawn of trustworthy tradition, we find them holding a 
 position of honour and authority among the Greeks, for 
 which, with respect to works professedly secular, his- 
 tory affords no parallel i. The Greeks had no sacred 
 books, properly so called : and it is probable that the 
 Poems of Homer filled in some particular respects the 
 place of Sacred Books ^ for that people. 
 
 By the Poems of Homer, I mean the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey. I can find no adequate reason for assigning 
 to him any other of the larger compositions of the early 
 Greek Bards. Of the other works more or less reputed 
 to be Homeric, not one can now be ascribed to him 
 with confidence, or has been shown ever to have been so 
 ascribed by the general and unhesitating opinion of the 
 Greeks. The Hymns contain very few passages of 
 such mark as even to allow the supposition that they 
 could have proceeded from him. Nor do they carry, so 
 to speak, his physiognomy. No writer of, any period 
 has borne stronger and more characteristic notes of 
 style. We have seen that one beautiful passage is 
 quoted from the Hymn to Apollo, by Thucydides. . He 
 describes that Hymn as a Hymn of Homer ; and doubt- 
 less he represents a tradition of his day. There are 
 also one or two fragmentary verses ascribed to Homer : 
 one passage, in particular, is given by Aristotle 3, and 
 said to have been taken from a poem termed The 
 Margites. It may be observed that besides their 
 general inferiority, the Hymns in general embody 
 
 ^ The case which comes nearest to this is perhaps that of the 
 Divina Commedia of Dante. 
 " Milman, Life of Horace, p. i ; Grote, Hist, of Greece, vol. i. 
 ^ Eth. Nicom. vi. 7 
 
I.] ' , INTRODUCTION. • I3 
 
 mythological traditions, evidently of a later stamp than 
 those of the two great Epics. ;• 
 
 The Iliad and Odyssey give a picture of the age to 
 which they refer, alike copious and animated^ compre- 
 hensive and minute. The Iliad represents that age in 
 its vigour; the Odyssey paints it in the beginning of 
 its decline, when Greece had been unsettled and dis- 
 organised by the prolonged absence of its chiefs at 
 Troy. The. Iliad gives us what it had been ; the 
 Odyssey indicates what it was about to be. The de- 
 lineations embrace jointly all the materials that human 
 life and society could then in their simplicity supply : 
 when writing was either unknown or unavailable, when 
 civil rights had not begun to take the form of law, and 
 when visible Art, in its higher sense, was an exotic 
 not yet naturalised in Greece, In a manner chiefly 
 incidentalj there is supplied to us a mass of informa- 
 tion on history and legend, religion, polity, justice, 
 domestic life and habits, ethnical and social relations, 
 the conditions of warfare, navigation, industry, and of 
 the useful arts, exceeding in amount what has ever at 
 any other period been brought for us into one focus 
 by a single mind ; except possibly by the philosophical 
 works of Aristotle, if we possessed them entire. 
 
 It has been doubted ^ at various times whether 
 . either Poem, and especially whether the Iliad, was the 
 work- of a single author; and also whether the two 
 were due to the same hand. The Chorizontes, so 
 called because they separate the authorship of the Iliad 
 from that of the Odyssey, found themselves mainly, 
 
 ^ See the account of the controversy from its earliest phase 
 among the Alexandrian Critics, in Mure, Hist.' of Greek Lit. 
 vol. v.ch. ii.,iii. iv. 
 
14 yuvENTUs MUNbi. [chap. 
 
 {a) On supposed discrepancies in the mythology of 
 the two Poems respectively : 
 
 (^) On differences of manners and institutions : 
 
 (c) On differences in the language. 
 
 Those who destroy the unity of the Poems, and espe- 
 cially of the Iliad, altogether, contend, 
 
 (a) That the art of writing did not exist at the time 
 of their composition, and that poems of such length 
 could not have been orally transmitted. This was the 
 famous argument of Wolf. 
 
 (^) That there are such discrepancies, anomalies, and 
 defects of plan, in the Iliad, as to preclude the belief 
 that it could be the work of a single mind. 
 
 With respect to the argument of Wolf, it is now 
 commonly admitted that no such art of writing existed, 
 as could be available for the transmission of the 
 Poems : but his second proposition, that they could not 
 be transmitted orally, is also very commonly denied. 
 Quintilian says, ' Invenio apud Platonem obstare 
 memoriae usum literarum^.' Even in the period 
 when the exercise of the memory had become subject 
 to this disadvantage, Niceratos, according to Xeno- 
 phon^, stated that he knew the Iliad and Odyssey by 
 heart: and Athenasus^ states, that Cassanderi, king of 
 Macedon, could do nearly as muchj he could repeat 
 the chief part of the Poems. Even now, it would not 
 be difficult to select youths, of strong memory, aided 
 by poetic feeling, who, if they made it a profession, 
 would be able to acquire by heart the whole of them : 
 which however need not have been done by all those; 
 who recited them under a system apparently organised 
 with a view to recitation in parts. 
 
 ' xi. 2. * Syrapos. iii. 5. ^ xiv. p. 620. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. J^ 
 
 As respects the other heads of argument against the 
 unity of the Poems generally, it may be sufficient for 
 the present to reply as follows : — 
 
 {a) The plot of the Iliad (as will be shown) is ad- 
 mirably constructed for its purpose. 
 
 {h) Its internal discrepancies are both very few, and 
 very insignificant. 
 
 (c) Some of the cases of alleged discrepancy are only 
 such when the' canons of modern prose are applied pre- 
 cipitately as the criteria of the oldest poetry. 
 
 As regards the arguments of the Chorizontes or 
 separators of the authorship of the two Epics, let it be 
 observed : — 
 
 {a) If the mythology of the Odyssey, in that region 
 to which the voyage of Odysseus belongs, shall be shown 
 to be Phoenician 1, the whole argument from discrepancy 
 in that mythology will thereupon disappear. 
 
 {!>) The differences in manners or institutions are 
 not greater than may be explained by the action of 
 a revolutionary crisis, like the crisis caused by the 
 prolonged absence in Troas; and are really such 
 as may be taken rather for an evidence of unity 
 in authorship than the reverse. 
 
 (c) Some differences of language between the two 
 Poems is required by the diflFerent character of the 
 subjects: and the actual diflFerences seem not to be 
 thought by scholars in general to betoken their be- 
 longing to different ages. 
 
 {d) A careful comparison of style between the 
 Odyssey and the Iliad, and of a number of particulars 
 of turn and manner, will be found to supply a con- 
 
 ^ See infra, Chap. V. on the Phoenicians; and Chap. VII. on 
 Mythology, sect. Poseidon, 
 
l6 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 siderable amount of very specific evidence for the unity 
 of authorship. No such resemblances could be shown 
 to the works of any other author, or to the Pseudo- 
 Homeric compositions. 
 
 (e) Those characters of the Iliad, which are also 
 found in the Odyssey, reappear in the later Poem 
 with a perfect preservation of identity, confirmed, not 
 impaired, by the altered shading which belongs to their 
 altered positions. 
 
 (/) The testimony of the Odyssey to facts, es- 
 pecially those connected with the War, is in no 
 case discordant with that of the Iliad. For if the 
 manhood of Neoptolemos^ creates a certain amount 
 of difficulty, we should bear in mind that the 
 adjustment of time with reference to the Poem, 
 appears to be one of the points in which Homer 
 has allowed himself a certain licence, with a view 
 probably to poetical effect. 
 
 [g) But the overwhelming proof of the unity 
 of authorship, both for each Poem, and as between 
 the two, is really supplied by the innumerable par- 
 ticulars of manners, institutions, and ideas, which 
 pervade both the Iliad and the Odyssey with a mar- 
 vellous consistency ; and by the incommunicable 
 stamp, of an extraordinary genius whicli they carry 
 throughout. If discrepancies exist, the difficulty they 
 present is not only small^ but infinitesimal^ compared 
 with the difficulty of that hypothesis which assumes 
 that Greece produced in early times a multitude of 
 Homers, and all of them with the very same stamp 
 of mind. Whether in short we consider these works 
 as poetry or as record, the. marks of their unity are 
 
 ^ Od. xi. 506. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. Tj . 
 
 innumerable and ineffaceable. A part of their force 
 is sensible to the ordinary reader; but it will be felt 
 constantly and immensely to increase in proportion as 
 the reader becomes the student, by virtue of a patient, 
 constant, and thorough examination of the text. 
 
 Of the two Poems, it seems to me thatj while both 
 are wonderful, the Iliad is without doubt the greater. 
 The plot of the Iliad, we shall find, is a marvellous 
 combination of poetical skill with national spirit and 
 practical prudence. The plot of the Odyssey, at first 
 sight mgre organised and symmetrical, is in the first 
 place of far easier construction, and in the second, 
 is wound up in a manner which is feeble if not 
 slovenly. The suspicions of the genuineness of the 
 Twenty-fourth Book appear to me on the whole 
 to be tolerably met by a general conformity of 
 turn and handling, though with diminished force; 
 and by many minute particulars of correspondence 
 which, here as elsewhere, the text supplies. But they 
 have perhaps been reasonably suggested by a percep- 
 tible inferiority of workmanship in this and, with 
 some exceptions, in several Books preceding it. The 
 vigour of the Iliad, on the other hand, continues quite 
 unabated to the end. Again, in the Odyssey there is 
 not a mere decline of vigour : the plan of the ending 
 may be called degenerate and incomplete. The ends of 
 some of the threads are dropped. If ever a peace was 
 patched it is that which is announced in the closing 
 passage. The intervention of Mentor, even though his 
 exterior conceals a deity, is not what the dignity of 
 the Sovereign or the grandeur of Odysseus would require. 
 And the unexplained as well as unfulfilled prophecyJ of 
 
 ^ Od. xi. 127 ; xxiii. 275, 
 C 
 
:l8 yUVENTVS MUNPI. [CHAP. 
 
 the war, suggests that Homer had poetical intentions to 
 which it was not permitted him to give effect. 
 
 Generally speaking, the Odyssey displays the same 
 powers as the Iliad, but in less energetic manifestation, 
 A faculty of debate, never surpassed if ever equalled in 
 human history, is found in both j but though the flight 
 of Odysseus in the Seventh Odyssey is^ like that of 
 the contention in the First Iliad, a lofty one, it cannot 
 be compared with the wonderful speech of Achilles in 
 the tent-scene of the Ninth, Again j no man but 
 Homer could have reproduced in the Odyssey to the 
 life the characters of the Iliad, or could have added the 
 specific shading of their altered circumstances. But 
 though Homer in each is stronger than any. other of 
 the Ancients, yet Homer of the Iliad^ is Homer at the 
 height and maximum of his power in this transcendent 
 quality ; while in the Odyssey the great luminary 
 seems to have just begun his descending course.' 
 
 Next, comes the question how far we may reckon on 
 having substantially the same text as that of our 
 author J not as to any minor detail, nor even so as to 
 •exclude occasional interpolations, but as to the style, 
 diction, and language generally, 
 
 Mr. Paley ^ says (not that the Greek of the Iliad is 
 greatly different from that of the Odyssey, but) that we 
 find in the Poems two distinct and separate phases of 
 the Greek tongue: first, the language of the earliest 
 Trojan Epics, and secondly, the ordinary Ionic of the 
 time of Herodotus, with a mixture of Attic, idioms. 
 The question is one evidently requiring minute ex- 
 amination ; but it is beyond my competency to decide. 
 J w(^uld observe, however, 
 
 * JM^hensBum, Aug..io, 1867. 
 
.1.] . INTRODUCTION.: t'9 
 
 , (a) That in an author who composed at a period of 
 crisis, when all the elements of the Hellenic nation^ that 
 was to be, were settling down, we should look for, or 
 at least should not be startled by, some mixture of 
 older 'and -younger forms. 
 
 (^) That considerable changes of the minor order 
 might be made in the text of the Poems without 
 seriously affecting the substance, if there was a great 
 and constant anxiety to abide by the true sense of 
 Homer. 
 
 (f) That if we find the internal evidence as to 
 manners, institutions, and facts, singularly self-con"- 
 sistent, this goes far to show that alterations of the 
 text have been generally confined within merely verbal 
 and narrow limits. 
 
 [d) The' antiquity of. the present text is iiot over^^ 
 thrown by the fact that the later poets in many 
 instances have followed other forms of legend in regard 
 to the Troica: for they would Necessarily consult the 
 state of popular feeling from time to time; and 
 tradition, which, as to religion, altered so greatly after 
 ;the time of Homer, -would, as to facts and persbns^ 
 it is evident, vary materially according to the sym- 
 pathies of blood and otherwise at different 'periods of 
 Greek history. ;The displacement of the Achaians, 
 and the rise of the Dorians and lonians, must have 
 occasioned ' great : changes in this respect. It is also 
 surprising, if such diflFerence in the language- really 
 exists as is. alleged . by Mr. Paley,. that ' it was not 
 perceiveid by the Greeks of the classic period, who must 
 surely be allowed to have known their own tongue.. 
 
 There are passages of ancient writers^ which tend 
 to the disintegration of Homer. But they are late, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and of small authority. Josephus ^ says it was reported, 
 or thought, that from want of the aid aflSbrded by the 
 art of writing there were many discrepancies in the 
 Poems. This was merely a current opinion, not of 
 himself but of others, on the state of the text; an 
 opinion which we can for ourselves see to have been 
 erroneous. The Scholiast on Pindar ^ reports, and only 
 reports, that Kunaithos and his school had made large 
 interpolations. The Latin authors, such as Cicero or 
 Paterculus, must be considered as giving their opinions, 
 which cannot from the circumstances be of great 
 critical weight, rather than as witnesses in the case. 
 
 The external evidence to a contrary effect, though 
 fragmentary, is more considerable, and for the most 
 part of much earlier date. Heraclides Ponticus^, a 
 pupil of Plato, declares that Lycurgus obtained the Ho- 
 meric Poems from the descendants of Kreophulos, and 
 was the, -first to bring them into Peloponnesos. ^lian* 
 makes the slight but material addition, that he brought 
 this poetry in a mass (aOpoav). Plato states in the Re- 
 public^ that Kreophulos was a companion of Homer; 
 Strabo^, that he was a Samian; Diogenes Laertius'^, 
 that Hermodamas, the master of Pythagoras, was his 
 descendant. Plutarch s states that some portions of 
 Homer were known in Greece before Lycurgus brought 
 the whole from Crete. 
 
 Herodotus 9 states that Cleisthenes, the tyrant of 
 Sicyon, when he had been at war with Argos, put 
 
 ^ Contr. Ap. ii. 2, 2 Ngm. ii. i. 
 
 " Fragm. Trepi woXiTftSy. * Var. Hist, xiii, 14. 
 
 ^ Rep. X. p. 600 B. « xiv. p. 946. 
 
 ^ viii. 2. 8 Ly.p_ p_ _^j_ 
 ' V. 67. 
 
1.] INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 a stop to the competitions of the rhapsodists in 
 Sicyon, because the Homeric songs turned chiefly upon 
 the Argeians and Argos {on 'ApydoC re koI 'Apyos to, 
 iroWa TrdvTa vp.vf.aTai). Also, that he sought to banish 
 from Sicyon the memory of Adrestos, as being an 
 Argive hero. Now the Iliad describes Greece not 
 ssldom under the title of Argos, and the Greeks 
 frequently as Argeians; and it represents Adrestos 
 as the first king of Sicyon, while at the same time 
 it represents him as the father-in-law, or grandfather- 
 in-law, of Diomed the Argive chieftain. 
 
 From this passage it appears — 
 
 {a) That there were at Sicyon, six centuries before 
 Christ, State - recitations of the Homeric Poems, 
 attended with prizes. 
 
 {b) That they are not named as peculiar to Sicyon, 
 but rather as a customary institution, set aside in 
 that place at a certain epoch on special grounds, 
 
 {c) That the recitations depended chiefly on the 
 Homeric Poems j for they ceased when these were 
 prohibited. 
 
 Dieuchidas of Megara, an author placed by Heyne 
 after the time of Alexander the Great, is quoted by 
 Diogenes^ as stating that Solon provided by law for 
 the recitation of the Homeric poems e^ inro^oXrjs, one 
 reciter taking up another ; and therefore that Solon did 
 more than Peisistratos to throw light upon the Poet. 
 And Lycurgus the orator, who was contemporary with 
 Demosthenes 2, tells the Athenian people that their 
 forefathers thought of him so highly as to provide by 
 law for the recitation of his songs, and his alone, 
 quinquennially at the Panathenaica j and such, he adds, 
 
 ' Diog. Laert. i. 57. ^ In Leocritum, 104-8. 
 
aa yuvENTUs mundi. [chap.' 
 
 viras then the valour of their ancestors, that the Spartans 
 took Tjrt£eus ^ from among them to be their general. 
 
 Hence it appears that — 
 
 (a) According to Lycurgus, Homer was recited at 
 Athens in the time of Tyrteus, nearly seven cen- 
 turies before Christ. 
 
 (^) Just when Athens begins to rise, Solon appoints 
 by public law competitive recitations of Homer, to be 
 taken in turn by the reciters. 
 
 (c) And of Homer alone, 
 
 {J) It appears negatively that probably there were- 
 recitations at Athens before Solon, but without regular 
 turns. 
 
 (e) If public authority thus established the recita- 
 tion of the Poems, we may rest assured that care was 
 taken, as far as possible, to preserve their text from 
 corruption. 
 
 (/) The vanity or carelessness of a particular rhapso- 
 dist would tend to corrupt them ; but the matches were 
 free and competitive, and each reciter would be watched 
 and checked by the vigilant jealousy of his rivals. This, 
 element of competition would in all likelihood have 
 a highly conservative effect, before the art of writing- 
 had come into use. Andit is plain, from. II. ii. 594-600, 
 that the practice prevailed from before the time of 
 Homer himself; as he tells" us that Thamuris had 
 challenged the Muses to compete with him, and was 
 punished accordingly for his audacity. Hesiod wit- 
 nesses to the matches, and says that in Aulis he himself 
 won a tripod 2. Thucydides also finds proof of them in 
 the Hymn to Apollo ^. 
 
 ^ Smith's Diet., art. Tyrtseus. ^ Opp. 654-657. 
 
 _' Hymn ApoU. 146-150, J66-I73, ' 
 
1.] ' . INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 {g) In a word, while there were at work what may 
 be called centrifugal forces, tending to impair and 
 vitiate the text of the Poems, there were also 
 centripetal forces tending to restore it ; in the rivalry 
 of States as well as of Bards, in the intense love of 
 the song of Homer felt by every Greek, and in the 
 great value set by the whole people upon it as a record. 
 
 When we come down to the historic period, we 
 find in it full evidence of the standing anxiety both of 
 States and persons to preserve the text of Homer, 
 It appears probable that a common text was more or 
 less recognised, while many even of the Greek Colonies 
 had their public or State Recensions. Individuals of 
 eminence, or of literary taste, had their editions also. 
 The Venetian Scholiast constantly refers to these two 
 descriptions of copies, and while the references prove 
 that there were in this, as in every ancient document, 
 many variations of text, they also show that such 
 variations were confined within narrow limits, and 
 did not affect the body of the work. The State 
 editions were called al iroXtrtKoJ, aX eic rwv "nokeuiv, 
 ai avo iroXeav. those prepared for individuals at kot 
 avbpa : and a third class, got up apparently for public 
 sale, and of very variable quality, . were at Koival, ai 
 briiMOTUal, al Srj/nc^Sets. 
 
 Among the public or State Recensions, we hear of 
 those of Argos, Crete, Sinope, Marseilles, Chios, 
 Cyprus ; of the Aiolis or Aidike, a name which may 
 perhaps indicate the recognised text of what is called 
 Homer's ^olian Greek; the Recension of the Mou- 
 seion, or depository near the School at Alexandria; 
 and the Kuklike, which is supposed to mean an edition 
 wherein Homer appeared with other poems of the Cycle. 
 
24 yVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 It seems very probable, that the work of Peisistratos 
 was in substance a critical recension of the text effected 
 by a comparison of different versions, and a complete 
 publication by authority of the several portions of the 
 Poems in the order in which we now have them • in 
 fact that it was an early and notable example of the 
 reactive tendency to preserve the text by recurrence 
 to a standard, and to check its variations, which I have 
 mentioned as the natural counterpoise to disintegrating 
 agencies. 
 
 We have no clear account of the proceedings of 
 Peisistratos j but we know that when, at a later period, 
 the Alexandrian School of Zenodotos, Aristophanes, 
 and Aristarchos brought the best critical power of 
 the time to bear upon the Poems, they found com- 
 paratively little to question. Nor have the suspicions 
 they entertained of particular passages since received 
 anything approaching to an unanimous approval. 
 
 As to more general reconstructions, it is allowed that 
 the Odyssey does not admit of themj and such as 
 have been proposed with regard to the Iliad have 
 manifestly failed to obtain any sensible, much more 
 any permanent, amount of assent. 
 
 But the strongest argument for the soundness of 
 the text, as well as that for the unity of the Poems, 
 hangs upon internal evidence. I do not hesitate to 
 say that no work known to me presents, in any degree 
 equal or approaching to these Poems, the proof, in 
 kind among the strongest of all, which arises out of 
 natural unstudied self-consistency in detail. The 
 particulars in which the text confirms at one point 
 what it conveys at another may be counted by many 
 thousands,: those where it appears to be inconsistent 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 are but a few units to be reckoned by the primitive 
 process of Proteus upon the fingers. Errors undoubtedly 
 tliere must be. Still, if they were Very serious, it is 
 impossible but that a far greater number of them must 
 have been tracked out, and their detection established 
 to the general satisfaction of cultivated men. On one 
 portion only of the Forty-eight Books, namely the 
 close of the Odyssey, has there been thrown what 
 may be termed grave or recognised doubt; and even 
 here doubt is all that can be reasonably sustained. 
 Indeed over and above correspondence of tangible 
 particulars there is what I must call an unity of at- 
 mosphere in the Poems, such as I believe has never 
 been achieved by forgery or imitation. 
 
 In this chapter I have not relied upon the tradition 
 according to which Lycurgus, the great Spartan law- 
 giver, brought the Poems into use in Lacedsemon, 
 because it is one belonging to the Roman rather 
 than the Greek period. On the other hand I cannot 
 attach great weight to the statement in the Hippar- 
 chos^, which assigns to that Sovereign the original 
 introduction of the Poems into Attica. It appears 
 simply incredible that the Poems should have been 
 unknown in Attica, when we learn from Herodotus 
 that they had long before been recited in Sicyon. 
 
 On the whole, then, we are not in every case dog- 
 matically to assert that each line of the Poems as they 
 stand is the work of Homer ; but while fairly weighing 
 the evidence in the comparatively few cases where doubt 
 sustained by argument has been raised, we may, as a 
 general rule, proceed to handle the text with a 
 reasonable confidence, that the ground is firm under 
 
 1 Sect. iv. 
 
25 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 our feet ; a confidence^ which experience in the work 
 will, I think, be found progressively to confirm. 
 
 Thus far we have seen reason to suppose that the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of a Poet who lived 
 at a date that we are unable to define otherwise than by 
 its nearness to the Trojan War^ an event which, if we 
 attempt to measure its distance from the historic era 
 by manners and institutions, we must hold to be of 
 a high antiquity. 
 
 At times it has been questioned, whether Homer or 
 Hesiod was the older poet. We know of Hesiod that 
 while the reputed authors of the Cyclic Poems belong 
 to the historic era i, he is pre-historic j and we must 
 seek, therefore, in his works, as in those of Homer, 
 for the means of estimating his probable * whereabout ' 
 in the deep mist of ages. He gives us no sign that the 
 instrument of writing^ had become available, at his 
 epoch for the preservation of poetry ; and if his com- 
 positions, as being much shorter, taxed the memory 
 more lightly, on the other hand we have no reason 
 to believe that they were watched with the same 
 jealous care to preserve, or to recover, the genuine 
 text. But if the episode of the Five Ages be genuine, 
 they are decisive of the question. For the composer of 
 it had ■ been witness to an iron age • and iron, as 
 compared with copper, had in his time come to be 
 the inferior, that is to say the cheaper, metal. The 
 use of it therefore must have grown common , as, from 
 remains still extant, it had evidently come to be 
 common in Assyria at a period supposed to be about 
 the eighth century before Christ. Homer lived at a 
 period, as defined by economic laws, much earlier ; at 
 
 ' Mure, Lit. of Greece, ii. 282. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. ' 47 
 
 a time when the use of iron was but just commencing, 
 when the commodity was rare, and when its value was 
 very great. This argument appears to me so conclusive 
 as to the comparative dates, that I forbear to dwell 
 on other particulars, or upon the considerable difference 
 in the manners of the Hesiodic, as compared v/ith the 
 Homeric, Poems. 
 
 We have also seen that in the state of primitive 
 society it was essential to the business of the Epic 
 Bard to commemorate, in poetic forms, actual events ; 
 and that the works of Homer prove how he kept this 
 property of his art constantly in mind. 
 
 Viewing then his position in human history and his 
 profession, we find that he is an original and a solitary, 
 as he is also a most copious, witness to the condition 
 of mankind, and especially of the Greeks, at a period 
 to which we have no other direct literary access. 
 Traditions there are in abundance, reported by Apol- 
 lodorus in mass, or scattered here, and there through the 
 works of earlier writers j and these traditions may, in 
 any given case, contain matter relating to the age of 
 Homer, or to what preceded him, and may even in some 
 cases be true, or nearer the truth than his. But they 
 carry as a general rule no attestation ; and their con- 
 fused and promiscuous nature marks them as a miscel- 
 lany gradually accumulated in many ages and from many 
 lands. I submit then that we ought to make the 
 evidence of Homer in relation to his age and to what 
 had gone before, a separate study, and to assign to 
 it a primary authority. The testimony of later writers 
 should be handled in subordination to it, and in general 
 even tried by it as by a touchstone, on all the subjects, 
 which it embraces. It will be seen, as we procepd 
 
28 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 to deal with the contents of the Poems, that this is 
 a proposition fruitful of important results as regards the 
 religion, the polity, and the manners of early Greece. 
 
 In asking for the testimony of Homer a primary 
 authority, I refer only to those cases where it stands 
 in competition with other, and in truth inferior, 
 literary evidence. The evidence of fact, whether in 
 geography and topography, in language, or in archas- 
 ology, stands upon its own ground, and Homer, like 
 every other author, must yield, if a conflict arise, to 
 its more cogent authority. 
 
 I will give a single example of the discrepancy 
 between the Homeric, and the later, representations 
 of the early Greek ethnology. According to a tradition 
 founded in part upon Apollodoros ^, in part upon a 
 fragment ascribed by Tzetzes to Hesiod^, Deucalion 
 was the son of Prometheus, and a certain Hellen was 
 the son of Deucalion. Hellen had three sons, Aiolos, 
 Doros, and Xouthos j and Xouthos again had two sons. 
 Ion and Achaios. 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck with the convenient 
 adaptation, speaking generally, of this tradition to the 
 reputed descent and succession of the various Greek 
 races, so as to give to each its share of fame and its 
 order of seniority. All Greeks were Hellenes, so 
 Hellen is made the father of them all. The oldest 
 among these names in the Greek tradition is Aiolos ; so 
 an Aiolos is made the eldest son of Hellen. The great 
 dominant race of the first historic ages of Greece was 
 the Dorian; accordingly, Doros is the second son of 
 Hellen. The lonians, represented by Attica, came later 
 to their repute and power ; so they, and the Achaians 
 
 ' Lib. vii. 2, 3. ^ Fragm. xxviii. ap. Tzetz. ad Lye. 2S4. 
 
I.] INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 to whom they gave a refuge after the Dorian conquest, 
 appear as the children of the third and youngest son. 
 This tradition may be properly viewed as a pretty piece 
 of joinery. But Mure ^ has with justice observed that 
 the name Hellen bears witness against itself, being ap- 
 parently derived from the territorial name Hellas, and 
 that in its turn from the Helloi. When we bring this 
 tradition, thus discredited by internal evidence, to the 
 bar of Homer, we find him in discord with it on every 
 point. Of Hellen as a person he knows nothing : the 
 name would to all appearance have meant in bis ear 
 most properly an inhabitant of Southern Thessaly. 
 Aiolos, if named by him at all, is named as a foreigner j 
 while only particular families, not a tribe descended 
 from him, are indicated as having borne or bearing rule 
 in parts of Greece. Doros is wholly unknown to him ; 
 and the Dorians are a portion, apparently an obscure 
 portion at the time, of the inhabitants of Crete. Of 
 Xouthos we have no trace whatever ; in fact this whole 
 family is, as such, utterly non-existent. There is no 
 Ion ; and the laones who appear as settled in the Attica 
 of Homer, are without any tribal eponymist. Again, 
 there is no trace of an Achaios ; but the name Achaioi 
 is the dominant name of the period, and the crown 
 of its celebrity. 
 
 Such, exhibited by an example, is the contrariety 
 between Homeric and post-Homeric tradition. We 
 shall see in due time what materials the text of Homer 
 can contribute towards the construction of the eth- 
 nology of Greece in the heroic age. 
 
 In the following pages I endeavour to give to the 
 testimony of Homer what I have described as its due 
 
 * Lit. of Greece, vol. i. p. 39 n. 
 
30 yVVENTUS MUNBI. 
 
 place. They are based upon a wide collection of 
 particulars from the text. And, as far as possible, I 
 have supplied the reader with means of judging where 
 it is Homer that speaks, and where it is an illustrative 
 tradition, or an indication drawn from some other than 
 a literary source j as also of distinguishing in all cases 
 between evidence, and the inference or conjecture 
 which I may have presumed to found upon it. 
 
 Upon the whole, I trust enough has been said to 
 show that in the text of the Poet we may find solid 
 materials to work upon for the handling of the Homeric 
 question. With this encouragement, let" us commence 
 our inquiries. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 The Three Great Appellatives. 
 
 The name of Greeks, as the modern equivalent of 
 the several appellatives by which Homer describes the 
 army engaged in the siege of Troy, is too firmly 
 established to be changed. But it is not a correct 
 name. The Greek equivalent of the word is. TpaLKoL 
 The name rpaia^ is found in the Iliad, but it is only 
 a local name of a settlement of Boiotoi or Boeotians. 
 The name applied to themselves by the Greek people 
 throughout the historic times, as at the present day, 
 was not Graikoi, but Hellenes. And even this name, 
 as Tliucydides^ observes, had not come into vogue in 
 the time of Homer. It was indeed, as we shall find, 
 creeping,, so to speak, into use: but the. standing ap- 
 pellations of the army in the Iliad are these three, 
 Danaoi, Argeioi, and Achaioi; and it is sufficiently 
 plain that the most proper jnational name for the 
 Greeks of ±he peiiiod was that of 'Axatoj, Achaians. 
 We call them Greeks, conventionally: but with no 
 more accuracy than we should render the Galli of 
 
 ' II. ii. 498i. . ' i, 3. 
 
33 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Caesar by the word 'French.' We should bear in mind, 
 then, that in strictness the Greeks of the Troica were 
 Achaians. 
 
 We find in Homer traces, as of a religion, so of a 
 race, or group of races, who inhabited the Greek 
 peninsula before the Achaians, or any other tribe of 
 the blood afterwards classed as Hellenic. These in- 
 habitants passed in different places under a variety of 
 designations; of which the most comprehensive and 
 wide-spread^ appears to have been Pelasgoi. They 
 seem to have formed the base of the Greek army, and 
 of the people subject to the sway of Achaian and other 
 great families. 
 
 There is no trace in the poems of their having used 
 a language different from that of their superiors in 
 station, although the tradition of a difference in blood 
 subsisted down to the historic time, and although the 
 Pelasgian language, where the people using it had not 
 been blended with the Hellenes, had then come to be 
 accounted as a distinct, if not a foreign, tongue. 
 
 The relation between this older race and the Hel- 
 lenic tribes leads to the conclusion that both were alike 
 derived from the Aryan stem. And there is no reason 
 to believe that there were any earlier occupants of 
 the Greek, or of the Italian Peninsula^, than the group 
 of tribes that was called Pelasgian. Neither of these 
 countries presents us with remains belonging to what 
 is called the stone period of the human race, when im- 
 plements and utensils were made of that material, and 
 the use of metals was unknown. The first emigrants 
 from the East may probably have worked their way by 
 
 ^ Thirlwa'I, Hist, of Greece, vol. i. chap. ii. 
 ' Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, chap. i. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 53 
 
 land to and along the comparatively level and easy 
 countries of Central Europe, and seem not to have 
 penetrated through the masses of mountain, which 
 inclose on their northern sides both Greece and Italy. 
 The boast of autochthonism, or birth from the soil, so 
 rife in the historic ages of Greece, was therefore not 
 irrational, if we consider it to betoken only the claim 
 to firot occupancy. And it seems to have been prin- 
 cipally in vogue among the people of Attica and 
 Arcadia, the former of which had long been impressed 
 with a markedly Pelasgian character, while the latter 
 retained that character even through the historic 
 period. The particulars which have been embraced 
 in this slight survey are partly suggested by, and are in 
 all cases accordant with, the Homeric testimony. 
 
 The Greeks of the Iliad are ordinarily called by 
 Homer 
 
 1. Danaoi. 
 
 2. Argeioi. 
 
 3. Achaioi. 
 They are also called 
 
 1. Panhellenes, 11. ii. 530. 
 
 2. Panachaioi, II. ii. 404; vii. 73, 159, 327; 
 
 ix. 301 ; X. I ; xix. 193 ; xxiii. 236. Od. i. 
 239 i xiv. 369 ; xxiv. 32. 
 
 With respect to the three first, which may be called 
 the Great Appellatives of Homer, it is manifest that 
 the Poet frequently uses them as interchangeable and 
 synonymous. Yet, upon examination, important dis- 
 tinctions will be found to exist between them. 
 
 The various legends interspersed through the Poems, 
 carry back the Homeric tradition to a period several 
 generations earlier than the War of Troy : which War^ 
 
34 yUVENTUS MUNDl. [OHAP. 
 
 together with the attendant group of circumstances, I 
 shall commonly call the Troica. But we shall find that 
 Homer does not also carry backwards the use of these 
 appellatives indifferently through the pre-Troic period : 
 and thus we shall obtain pretty clear evidence of a 
 chronological succession among them. 
 
 This rule applies likewise to other Homeric names. 
 For example ; when reference is made, in the narra- 
 tive of the Iliad, to the soldiers belonging to the 
 country afterwards called Boeotia, he describes them as 
 BoiotoL But where Agamemnon and Athene .intro- 
 duce the legend 1 of Tudeus, which touches the people 
 of the same district at a prior epoch, they are, called 
 not Boiotoi but Kadmeioi and Kadmeiones. More- 
 over, in this same legend appear the people of Argos, 
 and the people of Mycenae. They are both called 
 Achaioi, a name never given to the Kadmeioi. 
 
 In the legend of the birth of Eurustheus^, the scene 
 is laid in 'Apyos 'AxauKov. This name we shall find 
 still attached perhaps to the Peloponnesos, and cer- 
 tainly to the Eastern Peloponnesos, in the time of 
 Homer. Its inhabitants, who are described as we 
 have seen, in the time of Tudeus, that is to. say one 
 generation before the War, as Achaioi, are called, in 
 the time of Eurustheus, and therefore before the period 
 of the Pelopids, not Achaioi but Argeioi^, It seems 
 impossible to treat these very marked usages as acci- 
 dental. 
 
 About the same period Proitos, whom the post- 
 Homeric tradition represents as a brother of Euru- 
 stheus, expelled Bellerophon from Ephure*. The text, 
 
 ^ II. iv. 385, 391 ; V. 800-7. ^ II. xix. 95 seqq. 
 
 ^ II. xix. 122, 124. * II. vi. 158* 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 35 
 
 true to itself, describes the people over whom Proitos 
 ruled, not as Danaoi or Achaioi, but as Argeioi. In 
 the same manner the Poet here describes as Ephure 
 what in the Catalogue he calls Corinth^. 
 
 Homer then appears to point to Argeioi as the more 
 ancient, and Achaioi as the more recent, name. But, 
 moreover, he uses the two designations with marked 
 respect to place as well as time. 
 
 In the Eleventh Iliad ^, Nestor details to Patroclos 
 the legend of the war between the Pulians, and the 
 Epeians who inhabited Elis. He calls the Pulians dis 
 tinctively Achaians, where he is speaking of them as 
 the conquering party. He seems to withhold that 
 name from the conquered : and he gives it to the 
 Pulians at a period which must have been within 
 the life and reign of Eurustheus, that is to say, the 
 period when the name of Argeians was attached to 
 those who inhabited the ruling quarter of Greece, or 
 the Eastern Peloponnesos. 
 
 But the word Argeioi, used freely by Homer as a 
 national designation, has also a marked local sense in 
 the poems. It is a standing epithet, in the singular, 
 of Helen, and this too in the mouth of Greeks, arid of 
 deities, whose use of it gives it a force quite different 
 from that which it might have had among the Trojans. 
 The purely national name would in such a case have 
 been void of distinctive meaning j but now we natu- 
 rally interpret the epithet as referring to the part of 
 Greece with which Helen was especially connected. 
 According to the .post-Homeric tradition, confirmed by 
 the Iliad, which makes Lacedaemon the country of 
 Castor and Poludeukes ^, Tundareos, her father, was 
 ^ II. ii. 570. ^ II. xi. 670-761. ^ II. iii. 244. 
 
 D 2, 
 
36 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 king of Sparta. Till the Pelopid House acquired it, 
 and thus the Achaian sway began, this would be an 
 Argeian kingdom; _and thus Helen, though the wife 
 of Menelaos, represents by her descent an Argeian 
 title to it, so that the epithet thus acquires a full 
 significance. 
 
 Thus far I have cited some examples to illustrate 
 the practice of Homer. Let us now consider the 
 leading particulars connected with the use of the 
 three Great Appellatives. 
 
 The name Danaoi is used in the Iliad 147 times: 
 in the Odyssey thirteen. Once it is combined with 
 Argeioi, in Od. viii.578, and appears to serve as an epi- 
 thet. It is never used in the feminine. It is never 
 tised in the singular; and never locally. It seems 
 never to signify the people inhabiting the Greek pen- 
 insula and islands, nor their ancestors in prior his- 
 tory : but invariably and only the Greeks of the army. 
 It has therefore all the appearance of being an heroic 
 and poetical rather than an historical appellation, and 
 thus it is well adapted to describe men engaged in a 
 military expedition surrounded with the most romantic 
 associations. 
 
 Accordingly, the epithets applied to Aoi'ao^ are ex- 
 clusively of a military character. They are 
 
 I. rjpaes, II. ii. 1 10, 256; xv. 733 (heroes). 
 
 a. BepdirovTis ' Aprjos, II. vii. 383; xix. 78 (comrades 
 of Ares); 
 
 3. (^iXowrdXejoioi, II. xx. 351 (war-loving). 
 
 4. alxiJ-riraC, II. xii. 419 (spearmen). 
 
 5. acnuaral, II. xiii. 680 (shielded, heavy-armed). 
 
 6. i<p6ifjtoi, II. xi. 290 (stalwart). 
 
 7. TaxvirwKot, II. viii. 161 (of swift steeds). 
 
II. J THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 37 
 
 It being then plain that Danaoi was not the proper 
 contemporary name of the Greeks, it is also plain that 
 it could not have been applied to the Greeks as an 
 army before Troy, unless it had had some root lying 
 deep in the history or legends of Greece. 
 
 National or tribal names in Homer usually come 
 
 1. From an eponymist or founder of a state, directly 
 as Dardanoi or Troes, or Kadmeioi; or indirectly, 
 when they proceed from the name of a country, which 
 name has been acquired from an eponymist. Such is 
 Ithakesioi from Ithake, Ithake itself being derived 
 from Ithakos, who is mentioned in Od. xvii. 307. 
 
 2. In like manner a name may come mediately 
 from a race instead of an individual. Thus it seems 
 that Hellas is derived from Helloi, and is in its 
 turn the source of the great national name Hell en. 
 
 3. From the physical character of the country inha- 
 bited, as Threkes (Thracians), from dpfj^, describing a 
 rough highland country^: or Aigialeis, from AlyiaXos, 
 the district of coast to the south of the Gulf of 
 Corinth. 
 
 4. In the single case of the Athenians, we find the 
 name of a population derived from that of a deity. 
 
 Besides the Homeric names which can be traced to 
 one or other of these sources, there are names of which 
 the connection with any of them is not established, or 
 even where it is improbable. 
 
 The text of Homer affords very slender aid for 
 tracing the name Danaoi up to its source. But we must 
 combine the fact of its application, limited as it is, to 
 the nation, with the negative evidence afforded by this 
 fact, that Homer nowhere uses the name as a domestic 
 1 Cf. Od. ix. 27. 
 
38 - yVVENTlTS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 name, either for his own, or for the immediately pre- 
 ceding generations. This seems to throw back the 
 origin of the name to a period comparatively re- 
 mote. 
 
 And when we reach such a period, we find, at least 
 a clue. In II. xiv. 319 we hear of the amour of Zeus 
 with a beautiful Danae, of the royal house of Acrisios, 
 from which union sprang Perseus and his line. The 
 presumption then arises, that this Danae, being the 
 daughter and mother of princes, was of the lineage of a 
 Danaos, that this Danaos was himself a real or reputed 
 prince of celebrity, and that he gave his name to the 
 people with whom, and among whom, he effected a 
 settlement in Greece. 
 
 This may be the proper place to observe that, on the 
 subject of the foreign origin of Greek races or houses, 
 Homer is what is termed an unwilling witness. In- 
 tensely national in feeling, he represents the first form 
 of that peculiar sentiment which, in the historic period, 
 divided mankind into Greeks and Barbarians ; much 
 as the Hebrew race, upon grounds of a more definite 
 character, made their division of the world into Jew 
 and Gentile. There can be little doubt that Homer 
 could, if he would, have told us much respecting immi- 
 grations and settlements in Greece, which now remains 
 the subject of comparatively dark conjecture. But it 
 may be broadly laid down that he systematically eschews 
 tracing either a family or a tribe to an origin abroad. 
 It seems to be his intention that we should assume all 
 Greek families and races, and further all Greek man- 
 ners and institutions, to have sprung out of the soil. 
 The sources of silver and copper and some other com- 
 modities, and moreover of works of art, he is willing, or 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 39 
 
 even careful, to point out. But not so as to man and 
 his highest operations. Though he tells us sometimes 
 of foreign persons and events, he never, I think, con- 
 sciously supplies, but seems habitually to keep back, the 
 link between them and his own beloved Greek nation. 
 
 All this seems to be conformable to the course of 
 natural feeling. Arrivals from abroad, in the earliest 
 periods of the life of a nation, usually indicate either 
 the conquest, or at least the superiority, in one form or 
 another, of foreigners over natives, of what is strange 
 to the soil over what is associated with it. In this 
 there is some violation of that feeling of simple rever- 
 ence for the past, which is so conspicuous among the 
 Greeks of Homer, and which is jarred by the memory 
 of all disturbances of its even tenour. It can hardly be 
 that, in any country, such narratives should be popular 
 at or near the time of the events. Even the process by 
 which Hellenes mastered Pelasgians, or by which Pelo- 
 pids put themselves in the place of Perseids, is nowhere 
 disclosed to us by Homer : whose purpose it was to unite 
 more closely the elements of the nation, and not to 
 record that they had once been separate. 
 
 When Homer tells us of descendants of a Tantalos, 
 or an Aiolos, and of a people called Kadmeiones, but 
 gives us no clue to the extraction, or to the habitation, 
 of any of these personages themselves, we may conclude, 
 without much risk of error, that none of them were 
 native Greeks, and that their names mark the point of 
 transition from a foreign to a Greek domicile for their 
 respective families. He never even names the connec- 
 tion of Kadmeiones with Kadmos, or of Pelopidai with 
 Pelops : both these great personages are only named by 
 him incidentally, in remote portions of the Poems ; and 
 
40 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 as to Aiolos, the ancestor of the Aiolids, it has not yet 
 been generally recognized that the Poet names him at all. 
 
 Without, then, calling in the aid of extraneous tra- 
 ditions, it appears highly probable that the Danaoi bore 
 the same relation to a Danaos, as the Kadmeioi ob- 
 viously bear to a real or imaginary Kadmos. 
 
 It is also probable, that Danae stands in the genera- 
 tion next to Danaos. For Danae herself stands, as we 
 shall see, in the sixth generation before the Troica^ 
 and the knowledge and traditions of Homer nowhere go 
 back beyond the seventh generation. But as Danae is 
 the daughter of Acrisios, not of Danaos, it is probable 
 that Acrisios was a younger brother of Danaos j and 
 that the genealogy stands as follows : 
 
 1. Danaos = Acrisios. 
 ■£, Danae. 
 
 3. Perseus. 
 
 4. Sthenelos. 
 
 5. Eurustheus. Contemporary with Heracles and Pelops. 
 
 6. Atreus = Thuestes. 
 
 7. Agamemnon = Aigisthos. 
 
 It will here be perceived that the text of Homer is 
 altogether at variance with those later legends, which 
 throw back the first Greek dynasties into a very remote 
 comparative antiquity. There is, I apprehend, an in- 
 trinsic improbability in such legends as affect to trace 
 prolonged lines of sovereigns through ages of darkness 
 and barbarism, not possessed of the ordinary means of 
 record j but there is also this strong presumption in 
 favour of the Homeric text, that his genealogies, ga- 
 thered indiscriminately as they are from different parts 
 of the Poems, are in singular, if not absolutely un- 
 varying, accordance with each other. 
 
 According to the post-Homeric tradition, Danaos 
 
11.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 4I 
 
 ~was an Egyptian, and was brother of Aiguptos. He 
 migrated into Greece, and became king of Argos. 
 Proitos was his great-grandson; and as, according to 
 the legend of the Sixth Iliad 1, Proitos stands at two or 
 two and a-half generations before the war, there is here 
 an apparent agreement with Homer; but as Acrisios 
 also is made the brother of Proitos, a much greater 
 antiquity is in effect claimed for the immigration of 
 Danaos. So far, however, as respects his personality, 
 the seat of his kingdom, and his being of foreign origin, 
 the later tradition sustains the presumptions arising 
 from the text of Homer. 
 
 The early disappearance of the name from the roll of 
 tradition would be easily accounted for by that change 
 of the dynasty in the male line which takes place at 
 the time of Danae. 
 
 From what country Danaos came, we shall hereafter 
 have occasion to consider. For the present we may 
 take him to have been one of the personages who arrived 
 in Greece as a stranger, and who there founded such a 
 dynasty, among the primitive or Pelasgian population, 
 as became naturalised. This foundation seems to have 
 taken place at the very commencement of what we 
 may call the traditionary, as opposed to the merely my- 
 thical, period, about two hundred years before the Trojan 
 War. 
 
 Even this is considerably older than the date of 
 any family which we can connect with the Achaian 
 name, or with the Hellenic stock. It seems, however, 
 quite possible that Perseus and his race may on the 
 father's side have descended from an Hellenic ancestry, 
 and that the fable of Zeus and Danae may be no more 
 Ul.vi. 158, 
 
4a JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 than a veil employed to cover the transition, and to 
 dignify the origin of the incoming family. 
 
 Hesiod^ terms Perseus both Danaides, and son of 
 Danae, and states that Danaos relieved Argos from 
 drought, ^schylus in the Supplices^ represents the 
 whole Greek Peninsula as having been originally sub- 
 ject to one and the same sway under Pelasgos. Euri- 
 pides^ says that Danaos changed the name of the 
 Peloponnesians from Pelasgiotai to Danaoi. These re^^ 
 ports are in no way at variance with the Homeric text. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, the probable conclusions are : 
 
 I. That the Danaan name was dynastic. 
 
 3. That the dynasty was pre-Hellenic. 
 
 3. That it stands next in chronological succession to 
 ' the Pelasgic time ; and 
 
 4. That it makes its appearance at about two cen- 
 turies, more or less, before the War of Troy. 
 
 We have next to deal with the name Argeioi. And 
 first as to the facts connected with its use in the 
 Poems. 
 
 It is found 177 times in the Iliad, and seventeen 
 times in the Odyssey. I speak of the plural form. The 
 singular is also used eleven times in the Iliad, and 
 seventeen times in the Odyssey. 
 
 Of the seventeen passages in the Odyssey, not one 
 refers to the Greeks as a nation, or as contemporary 
 with the action of the Poem. In two of them, Od. 
 iii. 309 and xv. 240, the word signifies the inhabitants 
 of Argolis or the North-Eastern Peloponnesos. In the 
 other fifteen, it is always applied to the Greek army 
 before Troy. 
 
 * Fragm. 58, and Scut. Here. 216, 229. ^ ^_ ^62. 
 
 ' Ar. Fr. ii. 7. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 43, 
 
 In the Iliad, we have certain cases of the local use, 
 Proitos^, who was nearly contemporary with Euru- 
 stlieus, ruled over Argeians. From the text it would 
 seem as if he were a neighbour to Sisuphos, of Ephure 
 or Corinth : and if so, his subjects may have been Ar- 
 gives of Argolis, taken largely; of the Eastern, or Eastern 
 and Northern, Peloponnesos. Such is evidently the 
 meaning of Argeioi in the legend of the birth of Eu- 
 rustheus^. On the other hand, the name of Proitos 
 was attached to one of the Gates of Thebes. It was 
 plainly therefore a Phoenician name. It is far from 
 clear that he reigned in Thebes ; but, if he did so, then 
 the name Argeioi is applicable to the inhabitants of 
 Boeotia. This slender probability is the only presump- 
 tion afforded us of the use of the name Argeioi be- 
 yond the limits of the Perseid or Pelopid dominions in 
 Peloponnesos, except as a designation for the army 
 before Troy. Again, in the chariot race of the Twenty- 
 third Iliad, Diomed is described as ^tolian by birth, 
 but as ruling among Argeioi ^. 
 
 These, it seems plain, must be the Argives of Argos, 
 who formed his contingent. Still, upon this local name 
 there had supervened, since the accession of the Pe- 
 lopid dynasty, as we shall find from the legend of 
 Tudeus, the paramount and wider name of Achaioi *. 
 
 The name of Argeioi, then, appears to stand par- 
 tially in the same category with Danaoi, as a name 
 rather poetic and archaic, than actually current ; and 
 as one of which the common application to the Greeks 
 in general, at any period, is uncertain ; but which had, 
 several generations before, been the proper designation 
 
 ■■ II. vi. 159. '^ II. xix. 122. 
 
 ^ II. xxiii. 470. * II. iv. 384 ; v. 803. 
 
44 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 at least of the inhabitants of the ruling portion of the 
 peninsula. 
 
 This name is, on the other hand, so far unlike the 
 Danaan name, that we find it in the singular number 
 and the feminine gender. But it is only thus applied 
 to two persons; Helen, and the goddess Here. It is 
 plain, as we have seen, that, for the former, it means 
 not Greek Helen, but Argive Helen. It is but twice 
 given to Here: both times where she is acting with 
 Athene in the fifth Iliad i; in the first passage Zeus 
 cites them as helpers of Menelaos, in the second, as 
 having restrained and baffled Ares on the field. The 
 meaning of Argeie, when applied to a goddess, accord- 
 ing to analogy, must be, ' worshipped in Argos,' as 
 Aphrodite is called Kuthereia, and Apollo Smintheus. 
 The local worship of Here continued, as is well known, 
 to characterize Argos throughout the historic period. It 
 was to this local point in particular that her tenacious 
 attachment was constantly directed. It survived dy- 
 nastic changes ; watched over Eurustheus ; reappeared 
 in hatred of Heracles; and protected Agamemnon. 
 Three cities, we know, she loved beyond all others^: 
 Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta; and her attachment to the 
 Greeks in the War possibly may have its root in this 
 more special and local aflFection ; or may, on the other 
 hand, be due to the representative character of that 
 district as the political centre of the whole of Greece. 
 
 If in one point of view, as has been suggested^ the use 
 of the Argeian.name by Homer was poetic and archaic, 
 on the other hand, we may compare this employment of 
 the designation of the ruling part to signify the whole 
 with the cases of more extended empires. All the races, 
 
 ' II. V. 8, 908. ^ II. iv. 51. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 45 
 
 that served under Xerxes and Darius in their expedi- 
 tions against Greece, were regarded as Persians. The 
 Roman name was applicable to the people of Cam- 
 pania or Calabria, as forming parts of the Roman do- 
 minion ; while in any domestic or Italian matter their 
 local name would naturally revive. So it may be that 
 while all the Greeks of Homer are Argeians on the 
 field of Troas, a portion of them may also be Argeians 
 in the local sense afterwards given to Argives ; with 
 regard, like Kadmeians, ^tolians. Arcadians, or Lo- 
 crians, to their own local habitation. 
 
 We have thus traced back this, the second of the 
 Great Appellatives for the Greek army, to a more 
 ancient and also more limited use for the inhabitants 
 of the ruling part of Greece ; but we have still to ask, 
 how came it originally to be so applied in either way, 
 and what is the root and meaning of the name ? 
 
 Plainly its root is that of the word Argos ; and plainly 
 also, as we shall find, the application of the territorial 
 name Argos is wider than that of its derivative. 
 
 There are several forms of geographical expression 
 under which Homer appears to signify the entire terri- 
 tory inhabited by Greek races, or subject to Greek sway. 
 
 {a) The only word which manifestly, without addition 
 of any kind, suffices with the Poet for this purpose is 
 Achaiis. It is used either substantively, or adjectively 
 with yota or ata, in eight passages. It will suffice to 
 quote one in which Nestor describes the gathering of 
 the army, a process that manifestly included the whole 
 dominion : 
 
 Xaov dyeipovTfs kot 'AxaitSa TrovXv^oreipav^. 
 
 ^ II. xi. 770. . ' Collecting an army through fertile AchaiisA 
 Cf. II. i. 254; vii. 124. 
 
46 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 In a line twice used, indeed^ it is combined with Argos : 
 
 "Apyos e's iTTiro^orop Koi 'Ap^aiiSa KaWiyvvaiKa '. 
 
 But there is no reason why in this line the word should 
 not follow what we have seen to be the ruling sense, 
 Argos meaning the more famous part, and Achaiis 
 meaning the whole, 
 
 {i) A second and compound form of expression, 
 evidently conveying, as a compound, the same sense, 
 is found in the combination of Argos with Hellas : 
 
 avSpis, ToC xXfOs evpi Kaff 'EXXdSa Kol fiitrov "Apyos^, 
 
 The meaning of the line plainly is, a reputation reaching 
 over all Greece* It is not conceivable that Penelope, who 
 uses the phrase more than once, could mean to assign 
 to her husband's fame a limit narrower than the Greek 
 nationality. But we shall find that the name Hellas 
 evidently has a special affinity with the north of Greece. 
 Presumably, then, this line may mean, 
 
 * Through Northern and through Southern Greece.' 
 
 (c) But we find also a third form of expressionj in 
 which the word Argos, with the affix vav, appears to 
 cover the whole, at least, of continental Greece, and 
 thus to be equivalent, or nearly so, to Achaiis, and 
 also to Hellas combined with Argos : 
 
 ieoXKjj<Ttv VT)<Toun (cal "Apyei jravrl dvatraeiv^. 
 
 For this line, joining Argos with the islands, describes 
 the range of the whole empire, or (to use a modern 
 phrase) suzerainty, of Agamemnon. 
 
 ^ ' Horse-feeding Argos and Achaiis with beautiful women.' 
 " Od. i. 344. 'Whose fame extends through Hellas and mid- 
 Argos.' 
 
 ^ II. ii. 108. ' To rule over many islands and all Argos.' 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 47 
 
 {d) Next it appears that we have the word Argos, with 
 particular ethnical or tribal affixes, used distributively 
 for each of the chief parts of Greece. 
 
 In the Catalogue, after Homer has enumerated all 
 the contingents drawn from the Islands, as well as 
 from Southern and Middle Greece, he opens a new 
 division with the line : 
 
 Nuv av rovs oaraot to XleXaayiKov ''Apyos evatov^- 
 
 And he then proceeds to reckon nine contingents, all 
 of which were drawn from Greece north of Mount 
 Othrus, or, in other words, from Thessaly. 
 
 It appears, then, that by Pelasgic Argos Homer 
 meant Thessaly. 
 
 {e) Next we have an Achaiic Argos mentioned in 
 five passages. 
 
 In the first 2 (of which the words are repeated in 
 the second), Agamemnon is speaking of the return to 
 Greece. While the phrase therefore might carry the 
 sense of that country at large, it may also very 
 properly mean the seat of the Pelopid power, or the 
 Eastern Peloponnesos. 
 
 In the third. Here goes to Achaiic Argos ^ to hasten 
 the birth of Eurustheus. The meaning appears to be 
 that she went to the kingdom of Sthenelos his father, 
 which again will mean the Eastern Peloponnesos. 
 
 In the fourth, Telemachos asks where was Menelaos 
 whilst Aigisthos was engaged in the work of treachery 
 and murder. ' Was he away from Achaiic Argos, and tra- 
 velling abroad'' ?' Here, while Sparta only might (as far 
 
 ^ II. ii. 681. 'But now (recount) those, as many as inhabited 
 Pelasgian Argos.' 
 ^ II. ix. 141, 383. ' II. xix. 115. * Od. iii. 249. 
 
43 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 as the meaning goes) be signified, the sense of ' Eastern 
 Peloponnesos,' or the ' Pelopid dominion/ is perfectly- 
 suitable, and appears to be the true sense of the plirase. 
 (/) Further we find an lason Argos. Eurumachos, 
 the suitor, pays a compliment to the beauty of Penelope 
 by saying, ' You would have more suitors than you now 
 have,' i. e. than these islands yield you : 
 
 f I irdvTfs (T€ 'iSoLev av "laaou "Apyos 'A}(aioi . 
 
 He evidently goes beyond the dominions of Odysseus. 
 But then he probably speaks only of the territory lying 
 nearest to them, and in habitual intercourse with them. 
 Now this was Western Peloponnesos: as we know 
 from the limited range of Greek navigation ; from the 
 direct testimony of the Poems, which tell us of the 
 journey of Odysseus to Ephure^, and of the debt which 
 Odysseus went to Messene^ to recover; and (not to 
 mention other circumstances) from the apprehension 
 of the Suitors that Telemachos would at once repair to 
 Elis, or to Pulos^, for aid. In the same manner the re- 
 lations of Crete were with Eastern Peloponnesos ; and 
 therefore Helen at Troy easily recognizes Idomeneus, 
 because, as she says, she has often seen him in Sparta^. 
 So far, then, lasian Argos would seem to consist of 
 Western Peloponnesos, including therein the dominions 
 of Elis, Pulos, and perhaps parts at least of Messene. 
 
 We have other means of connecting the name of 
 lasos with Western Peloponnesos. For Amphion, the 
 king of the Minueian Orchomenos, was the son of 
 lasos. He was also the father of Chloris, whom 
 
 ^ ' If all the Achaians of lasian Argos could see you.' 
 
 2 Od. i. 260. =* Od. xxi. 15. 
 
 * Od. xxiv. 431. ^ II. iii, 232. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 49 
 
 Neleus married, and who became queen of Pulos. Now 
 there was a river Minueibsi between Pulos and Elis;- 
 and not only is there an Orchomenos included in the 
 places which supplied the Arcadian contingent 2, but 
 also Agamemnon asks of Odysseus, in Hades, whether 
 his son Orestes is at Orchomenos, or at Pulos, or at 
 Sparta'; as if it were some considerable seat of power 
 where a prince might find refuge. Thus Amphion, the 
 son of lasos, is placed in close connection both with 
 Boeotia and with Western Peloponnesos. 
 
 Further, Homer acquaints us that he and his brother 
 Zethos first founded and fortified Thebes ; for, says the 
 Poet, not even they could hold it unfortified*. As his 
 daughter married Neleus, this fortification must have 
 been effected from four to five generations before the 
 Troica. But he founded no dynasty in Thebes. On 
 the contrary, we find from Homer that CEdipus ruled 
 there, apparently in succession to his father, two genera- 
 tions before the War 5. And, according to tradition, 
 he was the descendant of Kadmos, who had colonised 
 Thebes from Phoenicia. It seems very possible that 
 Amphion, like so many others^, was expelled from the 
 fat soil of Boeotia ; that he passed into Western Pelo- 
 ponnesos; and that he carried thither both the names 
 of Orchemenos and Minueios, which we find undeniably 
 existing in that region, and the name lasos, which thus 
 receives a probable and natural application, 
 lasian Argos then is the Western Peloponnesos. 
 And thus moreover we find Argos, with adjuncts, 
 running over the three most famous portions of Greece. 
 It is the common term in three distinct territorial 
 
 > II. xi. 722. ^ II. ii. 60s. ' Od. xi. 459. 
 
 * Od. xi. 264. ^ Od. xi. 273-276. ^ Thuc. i. 2. 
 
 £ 
 
go JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 names, as if it meant ' a settlement/ and as if they 
 respectively signified 
 
 I. Thessaly, the settlement named from the Pelasgoi. 
 
 3. Eastern Peloponnesos, the settlement named from 
 the Achaioi. 
 
 3. Western Peloponnesos, the settlement named from 
 lasos. 
 
 (^) Further, it is incontestable that Argos sometimes 
 means the city known in history by that name, or rather 
 that city with its immediately contiguous territory: 
 for example, in the Catalogue^, where it is mentioned 
 with Tiruns and other places, as making up the contin- 
 gent of Diomed j and where it is named with Mycenx 
 and Sparta as being together the favourite cities of 
 Here (iroArjes). The word polls does not indeed in- 
 variably include a district ; for in certain cases we find 
 it used for the town, in opposition to agros, the 
 country^. But this seems to be the only case where 
 the word is applied to Argos. We have a similar use, 
 when, as Telemachos is quitting Sparta, he is joined 
 by Theoclumenos, 'a fugitive from Argos ^.' 
 
 On the other hand, the signification, though still 
 local, must be enlarged where Agamemnon says that 
 Briseis shall pass her life at his palace 'in Argos*,' 
 since the city of Argos was under the sway of Diomed, 
 and the residence of Agamemnon was at Mycense. 
 The same will hold good of the passage in which 
 Ephure, afterwards Corinthj is described as situate in a 
 nook of horse-feeding Argos, /n^xu "Apyeos lirno^oTow^. 
 
 The epithet ' horse-feeding' has the effect of showing 
 that the country designated is a plain country. Thus 
 
 , ' 11; ii. 559. ^ Il..xxiii. 832, 835; Od. xvii. 182. 
 
 ' Od. XV. 223. * II. i. 30. ^ II. vi. 152. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. :5l 
 
 the island of Ithaca is described as a goat-feedingi 
 spot, and more beautiful than a horse-feeding district. 
 Of course the phrase is to be understood by comparison. 
 [h) Lastly, there are one or two passages in which the 
 name' Argos- may be held to stand alone for Greece at 
 large : as when Nestor declares it shameful for the army 
 to return to Argos ('Apyoo-Be Uvai.^) before the mind of 
 Zeus is known. And Poludamas, speaking of the pos- 
 sible destruction of the Greek army in Troas, thus de- 
 scribes that contingency: 
 
 vavvfivovs anokiaBat an "Apyeos iv6d&' 'Ap^aious^. 
 
 Paris, too, says he brought home property from Argos. 
 This may mean from Sparta as part of the Pelopid 
 dominion ; or it may mean from Greece at large. But 
 perhaps we cannot be sure that in these passages Argos 
 stands for more than a description of the whole by its 
 capital part. 
 Argos, then, with Homer has these four uses : 
 
 1. It may be held to mean, alone or with -nav, Greece 
 at large ; but, if so, it is rarely thus used. 
 
 2. It may mean the Pelopid dominions, or, taken 
 roughly, the Eastern Peloponnesos. 
 
 3. It may mean the city of Argos, with the imme- 
 diately surrounding district attached to it. In this 
 sense it accepts the epithet irokvbiyjri.ov: and the epithets 
 huo^oTov, troK-uTTvpov, and oWap dpoi)pjjs, appear to apply 
 to it both in this and in the last-named sense. 
 
 4. When joined with distinctive epithets of an 
 historical, not a physical, character, it seems to be ap- 
 plicable to most portions of Greek territory, as if a 
 
 1 Od. iv. 606. ^ II. ii. 348. 
 
 " II. xii. 70. ' That the Achaians perish inglorious away from 
 
 Argos.' 
 
 E a 
 
52 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 radical signification, such as settlement, or colony in 
 the original sense of the word, still adhered to it. 
 
 When we proceed to examine the etymology of the 
 word, we find that, as it is but once combined with 
 polls, so the epithets attaching to it (as above),' all of 
 them indicate a tract of country j like 'land' among the 
 Scotch, as in the expression ' landward parishes.' And 
 again, on comparing it with agros, the proper term for 
 describing a rural tract, this latter appears to be the 
 very same word with the middle consonants transposed. 
 So far, then, the meaning may be that of a tract of 
 land suited for, or brought under, cultivation. 
 
 The Homeric names of countries and places, as far 
 as we can trace them, appear to be derived — 
 
 I. From an individual founder: as Ithake from Itha- 
 kos, Dardanie from Dardanos^. 
 
 3. From a race in occupation or in ascendancy : as 
 Achaiis from Achaoi, Cret6 or Cretai, from 
 Cretes^. 
 
 3. From a race in occupation, which race has itself 
 derived its name from features or circumstances of the 
 country: as Threke from Threkes, Thracians; the 
 race in turn taking a name related to the rough character 
 of a highland country, and probably proceeding from 
 the same root with rpr\yys. So again, Aigialeia from 
 the Aigialeis, these being named from Aigialos, the 
 strip of coast afterwards called Achaia, 
 
 4. From these local features or physical incidents 
 directly, like Aigialos: or like Euboie, which ap- 
 parently signifies the adaptation of that fertile island 
 to tillage ; an adaptation which afterwards made it the 
 granary of Athens. 
 
 * Od. xvii. 207 ; II. xx. 236. 2 Od. xiv. 199. 
 
n.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 53 
 
 It is plain, negatively, that the word Argos has no 
 connection with any of the three first-named sources. 
 The suggestion already made would attach it to the 
 fourth. It would then apply to ■ Argos of the Eastern 
 Peloponnesos, as the Argos /cor' ^^0x171'. 
 
 The word argos is used adjectively by Homer for 
 dogs, II. i. 50^ for oxen, II. xxiii. 30; and for a goose, 
 Od. XV. 161. And we have these compounds into which 
 it enters : 
 
 1. apy^s (^Kepavvos). 5. dpyivoets (Kdpeipos). 
 
 2. apyiKtpavvos, 6. apyi6SovT£s (i'es). 
 
 3. dpyea-rfis (NoVor). 7. dpymobis (jcives). 
 
 4. dpyevvai otes, 6d6vai. 8. Hobdpyris, a horse of Achilles. 
 
 The sense of whiteness or brightness may apply to 
 every one of these uses, both primitive and derivative : 
 but whiteness or brightness could only be applicable to 
 such districts of country as might be chalky or sandy j 
 and this sense therefore will in no way assist us towards 
 an explanation of the territorial name Argos with its 
 very wide application. 
 
 If Argos have a connection with ipyov, then it at 
 once admits the sense of an extent of land tilled or 
 suitable for tillage, a sense nearly akin, though not 
 similar in etymology, to that of the word ' lowlands.' 
 For ergon in Homer, while it is applicable to indus- 
 trial operations generally, is primarily and specially 
 applied to agriculture 1. 
 
 We can, then, conceive how, out of many districts, 
 all fitly described as lowlands, in one, from being 
 merely a description, it would become a proper name ; 
 and how, at the next stage in the process, it would 
 
 ' Od. vi. 259. 
 
54 ' jUVENTlfS Mt/NDI, [cHAP; 
 
 give a designation to its inhabitants. In accordance 
 with this supposition, we have more than one Argos 
 in Homer: and in the historic period we have Argos 
 of Orestis in Macedonia, Argos of Amphilochia in 
 Western Greece, and Argos near Larissa in Thessaly. 
 But only one Argos is inhabited by Argeioi. Just as 
 there are Highlands of SaXony no less than of Scotland, 
 but only the Scotch mountaineers acquired the name of 
 Highlanders, as a standing and ordinary name. 
 
 In referring Argos to a common root and significance 
 with Ipyov, we are not bound to hold that it attains its 
 initial vowel by junction with the particle a in its in- 
 tensive, or in any other, sense. For we have the word 
 ergon, and also its derivatives, in this form, handed 
 down from very ancient Greek. Among the four tribes 
 of Attica, which suHfeisted until the time of Cleisthenes, 
 one was that of the husbandmen, called Argades. And 
 in the Elian Inscription, supposed to date about the 
 fortieth Olympiad, or more than six hundred years be- 
 fore Christ, we have the word ergon, in the form argon 
 with the digamma, as follows — 
 
 aire fenos aiTf fapyov^. 
 
 Another probable example of the exchange of these 
 vowels is in aroo, to plough, compared with era, 
 the earth. In the Latin tongue we find both forms 
 preserved, in aro, to plough, and sero, to sow, re- 
 spectively. 
 
 We need not here inquire what is the common root 
 of ipyov and of Argos. But, if labour be the idea con- 
 veyed, this may perhaps suggest a meaning for the 
 
 ^ Museum Criticum, i. 536 ; and Marsh, Horse Pelasgicae, 
 p. 70. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. ^^ 
 
 Homeric adjective argos and for all its compounds. 
 The groundwork of that meaning may be conveyed by 
 the word ' strenuous.' Sometimes this takes the form of 
 keenness, and then follows the idea of swiftness : some- 
 times it takes the form of a persevering patience, and 
 then slowness is not less appropriately suggested. The 
 labour of a dog is swift, that of an ox is patient: 
 hence we have laborious oxen, moving slow ; laborious 
 dogs, moving fast. The sense of whiteness legitimately 
 attaches to the effect of rapid motion on the eye. 
 This explanation will perhaps be found to suit all 
 the diversified phrases which have been cited above. 
 
 And (reverting to the fountain-head}, we perceive 
 that the notion of strenuous labour will adapt itself to 
 other uses of Argos. We may consider the name of 
 the ship Argo as meaning possibly ' swift,' but preferably 
 "■ stout,' able to do battle with the waves, as we now say 
 a good or a gallant ship. Again, this sense suits, far 
 more fully than the mere idea of speed, the noble dog 
 Argos of the Odyssey ; for whom mere whiteness would 
 be a vapid description. Once more, we have in the 
 'Apyfi(j)6vTr]i of Homer a glimpse of the tradition of 
 Argos the spy, to whom we naturally ascribe a 
 strenuous vigilance. The epithet apyiKeos, 'hard or 
 difficult to cope with,' follows in the train: while 
 the later word apyovvres \ ' idle,' takes up the idea of 
 slowness at the point where it passes into inertness. 
 
 When we turn from Argos to its derivative Argeioi, 
 we find subsidiary evidence to the effect that the word 
 properly meant a husbandman, a rustic. In Suidas^ we 
 have the provei'b "Apydovs opas, "-You see Argeioi,' 
 with the explanation napoinia km t&v drerfis koI Kara- 
 
 ' Soph. Fr. 288. ' Suid. in voce. 
 
56 yVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 irXriKTiK&i opdi'Twv ^. Now we know nothing of the 
 Argives as inhabitants of Argolis, which would lead 
 to the belief that they stared hard, or conveyed 
 alarm by their looks. But if the word Argeioi 
 meant husbandmen, then, as the population, instead 
 of living dispersedly in hamlets (k(b/x?j8o'i') gathered 
 into towns, the rural part of the community would 
 gradually become also the ruder part, and from this 
 point the transition is easy to the sense of a wild 
 and savage aspect. 
 
 The Latin word agrestis stands to ager as Argeios, 
 according to the foregoing argument, stands to Argos. 
 The agrestis, or countryman, was opposed to the ur- 
 banus, or townsman. The latter, with its Greek cor- 
 relative d(T7eto9, came by degrees to mean a person of 
 polished manners; but agrestis, following the move- 
 ment I have supposed in the case of Argeios, came to 
 mean coarse, wild, barbarous. Thus Ovid says of the 
 River Acheloos, when mutilated by the loss of his horn 
 in the combat with Heracles, 
 
 ' Vultus Achelous agrestes 
 Et lacerum cornu mediis caput abdidit undis'^.' 
 
 And Cicero, after describing the battles of the Spartan 
 youth, carried on with nails and teeth as well as fists 
 and feet, asks, ' Quae barbaries Indica vastior atque 
 agrestior^?' 
 
 Again, Suidas gives us the expression 'Apyetoi*, which 
 he says is used for sheer villains, because the Argeioi 
 are held up in plays as noted thieves; for which he 
 refers to a lost play of Aristophanes. According to the 
 
 ^ 'A proverb concerning people who stare hard and whose 
 looks cause alarm.' ^ Ov. Met. ix. 96. 
 
 ^ Cic. Tusc. Disp. v. 27. * In voc. "Apyeiot ^Sptj. 
 
n.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 57 
 
 view I have given, the word may well mean robbers, 
 since theft in the early stages of society always fre- 
 quents solitary places. 
 
 Again, ^schines^ charges Demosthenes with gross 
 offences, which had brought upon him disparaging 
 nicloiames. One of these was Argas; which Suidas 
 and Hesychius explain as the name of a snake, signify- 
 ing sharp and crafty. But ^schines says he was called 
 Argas, each of his guardians having suits against him 
 to recover money. So that the meaning would be 
 ' crafty in getting hold of the money of others/ homo 
 trium literarum^ a sharper. 
 
 Once more. Hesychius on the name Argeioi says, 
 €K T&v EUcaruy ot Tnarevoixevoi ovras eKeyovTO, rj Xa/xTrpol, 
 'those Helots distinguished for fidelity are so called.' 
 Why was it that select and confidential Helots thus 
 received the name of Argeioi ? That name may have 
 retained its local force, as applicable to the whole Pelopid 
 dominion, long after Homer : and it may also, apart from 
 its use as a proper name, have borne the meaning of a free 
 or ordinary agricultural settler. The Helot was a serf by 
 the fortune of war ; but he was a serf whose forefathers 
 had, according to this view, been Argeioi. If then a 
 Helot made himself conspicuous, and acquired the con- 
 fidence of his lord by fidelity and smartness, it would 
 seem a very natural reward to efface from him the 
 brand of his captivity, and give him the old name of 
 the free countryman of that part of Greece. In this 
 case Argeios might mean a libertus, without a defined 
 formula of emancipation. 
 
 It is worth remark that the cognate word agrios 
 appears to have gone through the same process as 
 ^ De Falsa Legat. p. 41, 1. 14. 
 
58 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHiP. 
 
 agrestis and Argeios. For there was an ^tolian 
 prince Agrios^, a grand-uncle of Diomed, two genera- 
 tions before the War of Troy. In the contemporary 
 language of the Poet, Agrios had come to mean savage 
 and cruel, and is so applied to Poluphemos^. The in- 
 termediate meaning probably was that of a dweller in 
 a wild and unsettled place. The word is never used to 
 describe the passion, or the cruelty, of Achilles. 
 
 It should also be noted that Argeioi, where applied 
 to the Greeks at large, never means the chiefs, 
 but always the mass; whereas the word Achaios has, 
 as we shall see, in many places a decided leaning 
 towards the aristocracy. Epithets are scarcely ever 
 given by Homer to the Argeian name. Only in four 
 passages do they appear. In II. iv. 242. they are Utiapoi 
 and e\eyx«Sj 'dishonoured:' inll. xiv. 479 Wjuwpot^, and 
 aireiXdmy aKoprjToi. These are in each case, not descrip- 
 tive epithets attaching to or indicating general character j 
 but reproaches growing out of the occasion. In II. xxi. 
 429 they are dapriKToi, clad in breastplates, which, 
 from the context, seems to do no more than state 
 a fact: the phrase is equivalent to 'the Greeks in 
 arms.' In II. xix. 269, the Argeioi are called (piKomo- 
 Ae/xoi, lovers of battle j and this appears to be the 
 sole passage in which an epithet of description, pro- 
 perly so called, is attached to the word. But the 
 Danaan name, though more rarely used, has epithets 
 in twenty-two passages j and the Achaian name in 
 
 ^ II. xiv. 117. ' Od. ix. 215, 494. 
 
 ' I render lufimpoi, not archers, a sense neither suited to the 
 passage nor to the general armament of the Greeks, who were 
 not as a rule archers ; but braggarts, loud talkers, in close har- 
 mony with the sister-phrase d7r«Xda)caK<>p';Toi= insatiate of boasts. 
 
II.] ' THE THREE GREAT APPEL'LATIVES. 59 
 
 nearly 130. This circumstance tends to show, that 
 the Argeian name properly belongs to the commonalty 
 or masses, rather than to the chiefs. 
 
 We have assumed above, in accordance Afrith the 
 general Greek tradition, that the Pelasgoi were the 
 first agricultural settlers of the peninsula; but that 
 their name, and any other cognate names, were sup- 
 pressed or thrown into the shade by the dynastic 
 name, which a Danaos probably gave to his people. 
 That name, again, naturally disappearing with the acces- 
 sion of another line to his throne and dominions, the 
 name Argeioi, taken either from the occupation of the 
 people (like Argades), or from the settlement they 
 had made, would take its place with great propriety, 
 in lieu of reverting to the Pelasgic name, which would 
 silently pass out of use, as that of a race conquered and 
 therefore comparatively depressed. 
 
 The third and most weighty of the Great Appella- 
 tives is Achaioi. 
 
 The evidence of the Poems will I think suffice to 
 show — 
 
 1. That this is the most familiar designation of the 
 Greeks of Homer. 
 
 2. That the manner of its use indicates, among the 
 Greeks of Homer, the political predominance of an 
 Achaian race over other races ranged by its side in the 
 War, and composing along with it the nation which 
 owned Agamemnon for its head. 
 
 3. That, besides its national use, the name of the 
 Achaioi has a local use in many parts of Greece. 
 
 4. That the manner of this local use points out with 
 sufficient clearness, that the rise of the Achaian name 
 was contemporary with that of the family of Pelops. 
 
6o JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP, 
 
 The first proposition may be at once settled by the 
 r,ude, but not inconclusive, test of numbers. While the 
 Danaan name is used about 160 times, of which thirteen 
 are in the Odyssey; and the Argeian 205 times, of 
 which twenty-eight are in the Odyssey; the Achaian 
 name is used about 597 times in the Iliad, and 117 
 in the Odyssey, making 714 in all. This frequency 
 of use in the two poems of itself goes far to determine 
 that the Achaian designation was the most modern 
 of the three. 
 
 It is also worth observing, that in the opening of 
 the Iliad the word Achaioi is used five times, before 
 Danaoi or Argeioi are introduced at all. 
 
 We have seen that the Danaan name is never used in 
 the singular; and that the Argeian name is so used only 
 in its local sense. But the Achaian name, and that 
 only, is used in the singular to designate an individual 
 as belonging to the nation ; with the reserve, however, 
 of a separate shade of meaning, sometimes ^ tending 
 to attach it to a class. So the Poet uses AapSavos avrip ^ 
 for a Trojan or a Dardanian. 
 
 Again, Homer has worked this name into the female 
 forms Achaiides, Achaiiades, Achaiai, to signify 
 the women of Greece ; but has made no such use of 
 the Danaan or Argeian ^ names. 
 
 Also the phrase ules 'AxatS:', sons of the Achaians, 
 has no correlation with the Danaan or Argeian names, 
 and further helps to show the predominant familiarity 
 of this designation. What the patronymic was to the 
 individual, this form of speech was to the nation — an 
 appeal to a standard of honour, an incentive under 
 the form of an embellishment. 
 
 ' II. iii. 167, 226. "^ II. ii. 701. ' Supra, pp. 36, 44. 
 
II. J THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 6l 
 
 Epithets are given to the name Achaioi in 130 
 places, besides eight or ten more in which they are 
 used either for the women, or for the word in its 
 territorial sense. And the familiar use of the word 
 Achaiis for the country is a proof of the prevalence, 
 ascendancy, and familiarity of the name, which was 
 thus applied on its own merits, so to speak, and not, 
 like Argos, because it was the proper designation of 
 the most eminent part of the country. 
 
 When we look to the character of these epithets, 
 we find them such as point to the Achaians in the 
 character of a dominant race or aristocracy. 
 
 In one or two cases we have epithets of reproach, 
 such as were addressed to the army at critical mo- 
 ments: ayaAxiSe?, II. XV. 326; aweiXrjrjjpes, II. vii. 96, 
 and in the same passage 'AxatiSes. In a few others we 
 have them as simple descriptions of circumstances of 
 the moment 1- But the pointed epithets, descriptive 
 of character, are as follows : — 
 
 1. Slot, worthy or noble: II. v. 451; Od. iii. 161, 
 et alibi. 
 
 2. iXiK&Ttis, from the rapid motion of the eye giving 
 brightness : II. iii. 389, et alibi. 
 
 3. kvKvi\[i.iUs^ stoutly-greaved : II. iii. 304 ; Od. iii. 
 149, and in thirty-two other places. 
 
 4. ^'pmesj heroes : II. xii. 1 65, et alibi. 
 
 5. KaprjKOjjiowvTfs, with flowing or abundant hair : II. 
 ii. II ; Od. i. 9c, and in twenty-seven other places. 
 
 6. fieyd0j;/Lio I, high-spirited: II. i. 123, 135; Od.xxiv.57. 
 
 7. [ifvea ■nvdovTss, ardent: II. iii. 8. 
 
 8. xoA.KOKi'TjViSes, with greaves of x'^'^k^^ "r copper : 
 II. vii. 41. 
 
 ^ II. xii. 29 ; xiii. 15 ; xv. 44. 
 
,6a yuvENTus mundi. [chap. 
 
 9. x^^tox'™^^'? ^it'^ armour for tunics: II. i. 371 i 
 Od. i. a86, and in twenty-two other places. 
 
 I o. VTtfpKvhavTs^, exulting : II, iv. 66, 7 1 . 
 
 II. apr)i(j)iKoi, lovers of war: II. vi. 73 j xvi. 303; 
 xvii. 319. 
 
 13. ^ikonsToXifioi., lovers of battle: II. xvii. 224. 
 
 These epithets are very marked in character j they 
 describe courage, personal beauty, well-made and well- 
 finished arms, or excellence generally. 
 
 The epithets given to Danaoi are exclusively those 
 of a soldiery: those of Achaioi are more extended, and 
 seem to extend to nobility of race. 
 
 The epithet dios is, in my opinion, wrongly trans- 
 lated 'divine ;' and much confusion arises from the 
 attempt to apply that sense to the various uses of the 
 word. But if we understand it to mean a limited or 
 special excellence, excellence in its own kind, we have 
 no difficulty in understanding how Eumaios ^ and Cly- 
 temnestra ^ can both receive it, the one for his trusty 
 character, the other, the sister of Helen, for her beauty. 
 There is, however, one other sense which might be given 
 to it, that of high-born, well-descended, which perhaps 
 would not be less adapted to all the cases of its use. 
 
 In the plural. Homer applies it to Achaians and 
 Pelasgians only. This rare use supplies a presumption 
 of some peculiar meaning ; and it may be thought that 
 the Achaians are 8101 because both of their blood and 
 of their power and predominance, the Pelasgians be- 
 cause of their antiquity. 
 
 It is Thersites, who io the Second Iliad attempts 
 .to stir up the soldiery by calling them Achaiides, or 
 she-Greeks. It is to be noted, that in his short speech, 
 ^ Od. xiv. 48, Jind in ten other places. 2 od. iii. 266. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 63 
 
 of which an inflated presumption is the principal 
 mark, the Achaian name is used five times within 
 nine lines, and neither of the other names is used 
 at all. In two of these cases, the speaker pointedly 
 calls himself an Achaian. Probably the upstart and 
 braggart uses this name only because it was the most 
 distinguished or aristocratic name, as an ill-bred person 
 always takes peculiar care to call himself a gentleman. 
 There are, however, numerous single passages, in 
 which the simple term Achaioi appears from the 
 context to have a special, sometimes perhaps even 
 an exclusive reference to the chiefs and leaders, or 
 to the officers and higher class, of the army. And 
 if this be so, then we must consider the national use of 
 the name as derivative like that of Argeioi, the whole 
 being named from the prime part ; but with this dif- 
 ference, that in the case of Achaioi it is the prime 
 blood of the country, in that of Argeioi the prime 
 seat of power. 
 
 The injured priest, Chruses, solicits all the Achaioi, 
 and most of all the two Atridai. All the Achaians 
 assent, except Agamemnon i. There is no sign that 
 he solicited the army. In truth, this could only be 
 done in an Assembly j and there was no Assembly. It 
 follows, that the Achaioi here mean the chiefs. But 
 when Chruses invokes the vengeance of the god upon 
 the army at large, the phrase alters to Danaoi ^. 
 
 The actual division of booty is, from the nature 
 of the case, a matter that must have rested principally 
 or wholly in the hands of the chiefs. When this 
 matter is referred to, Agamemnon says. Do not let me, 
 alone of the Argeians, that is, of all the Greeks, go 
 
 1 II. i. 15, 22, 26-32. ^ II. i. 42. 
 
64 JVVENTirS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 without a prize ^ j and Nestor uses the same word, 
 when he stimulates the army at large by the hope of 
 booty 2. But Achilles replies to Agamemnon that the 
 Achaians have no means of compensating him^ there and 
 then, since they hold no common stock in reserve. The 
 phrase is the same in subsequent passages*. So far then 
 the Achaian name seems to fall especially to the chiefs. 
 
 The same leaning may be observed, when reference 
 is made to other governing duties. Achilles, in his ad- 
 juration by the staff or sceptre, the symbol of governing 
 power, describes it as borne by the sons of the Achaians, 
 obviously the kings, chiefs, or persons in authority. 
 
 When Priam on the wall of Troy inquires from 
 Helen the names of two prominent commanders, he 
 both times asks, who is that Achaian^ ? and in the 
 second case, the king describes him as out-topping the 
 Argeians by his head and his broad shoulders. Here 
 the Achaian seems to mean the prince or noble ; the 
 Argeians, the soldiery at large. Indeed, the words are 
 hardly susceptible of any other construction ; and they 
 seem almost to warrant of themselves the conclusion 
 that the Achaian name is properly that of a dominant 
 race, grown, generally speaking, into a class, and pos- 
 sibly including others of that class, although not of 
 Achaian descent. 
 
 In the historic ages of Greece, the Achaian name 
 acquired a local force, similar to that of the Argive 
 name, in exclusive, or almost exclusive, connection 
 with one particular district. We cannot say that it 
 
 ' II. i. 1x8. 2 II. ii. 350-356. ^ II. i. 123. 
 
 * II. i. 135, 262, 392 ; ii. 227. In II. ii. 256 the giving is by the 
 ijpafs iiavaoti The passage has the obelos; but, it is not out of 
 harmony with my argument. ° II. iii. 167, 226. 
 
II.J THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 65 
 
 has in this sense, if strictly taken, a local use in- 
 Homer. Yet we find the Achaians in many parts of 
 Greece mentioned in such a way, as to distinguish 
 them from other inhabitants of the country, either in 
 the same or in neighbouring tracts. 
 
 1. We have already seen that the name Achaioi 
 had come into use among the people of Mycense and 
 of Argos a generation before the War ; and that it is 
 used of them in contradistinction to the Kadmeioi of 
 Boeotia^. At earlier epochs they are called Argeioij 
 but we are not to suppose that this name had fallen 
 into local desuetude, even though the other might be 
 more in vogue. We shall see that the Myrmidons of 
 Achilles afford us an example of a race, or body, who 
 bore more names than one. 
 
 2. It has also been shown that, in the legend of 
 the Eleventh Iliad about the Epeian War, the Pulian 
 party are called Achaians at the period of the youth of 
 Nestor; and this in apparent contradistinction to 
 their opponents, who therefore were not Achaian at 
 all at that time, or not Achaian in the same eminent 
 sense. 
 
 3. The troops of Achilles, always called Myrmidons 
 among the other divisions of the army in the field, 
 inhabited, as we find from the Catalogue, Hellas and 
 Phthie^, and bore, evidently with some distinctive 
 force, the name of Hellenes, and likewise that of 
 Achaioi 3. In the Ninth Iliad, Achilles describes 
 the women of the same tract of country asAchaiides*. 
 On the origin of the name 'Myrmidon,' which this 
 
 ' II. iv. 384; V. 803; vi. 223. ^ 11. ii. 683. 
 
 ' II. ii. 624. * II. ix. 395- 
 
 F 
 
66 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 division of the army had wholly to itself. Homer 
 throws no light. Hellenes they were, as inhabitants 
 of Hellas ^ in the special sense of the word. And as 
 the Achaian name in Homer is not territorial, we 
 must suppose them to have borne it in virtue of their 
 blood, the Myrmidons being probably a subdivision 
 of the great Achaian family. 
 
 4. Of the five races 2 who inhabited Crete at the 
 time of the Troica, four were named Eteocretes, 
 Pelasgoi, Kudones, and Dorieis: the fifth, which is 
 named first, perhaps by reason of political predomi- 
 nance, was Achaian. The appearance in this passage 
 of the Dorian name together with the Achaian, _ sub- 
 divides, more pointedly than any other passage in 
 the Poems, the Hellenic family. 
 
 5. Again, a portion of the force of Diomed is de- 
 scribed as composed of those 'who held ^gina and 
 Mases, Achaian youths ^.' The site of Mases appears 
 to be unknown. But tradition, according to Pausanias, 
 gave the name of Pelops to the small islands ofiF the 
 coast of Troizen*. Such a tradition corresponds 
 remarkably with the indirect testimony of the verse 
 I have quoted, if there be a relation, as I suppose, 
 between the rise of the family of Pelops and the 
 predominance of the Achaians. 
 
 6. On turning to the dominions of Odysseus, we 
 find that three names are used to describe their in- 
 habitants: Kephallenes, Ithakesioi, and,Achaioi. , 
 
 The first is used four times in the Odyssey^, and 
 is the distinctive name in the Iliad of the military 
 
 ' See infra, Chap. IV. . ^ Od. xix. 175-177. ' II. ii. 562. 
 * Paus. ii. 34. 4, p. 191. = Od. xxi. 210; xxiv. 354, 377, 428. 
 
II.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 67 
 
 contingent led by Odysseus. We shall find that it 
 appears to indicate the predominance of the Hellenic 
 element \ 
 
 The Suitors^ are ordinarily called 'Axatot, never 
 'Apyeioi or Aavao(. They constituted the aristocracy 
 of the islands. It appears that either they were an 
 Achaian race, or else they were called Achaian because 
 they were an aristocracy. 
 
 The sway of Odysseus appears to have depended 
 upon his personal qualities. Like his father Laertes ^, 
 he was both a conqueror and an economist. Accord- 
 ingly, his long absence is fatal to his power 5 though 
 Menelaos, after an absence almost as long *, resumed 
 his throne without impediment. When Odysseus 
 re-appears, his final proceedings against the Suitors 
 are attended with precautions, evidently dictated by 
 his fear of the people. And in the Assembly of the 
 last Book, whilst more than one half take up amis 
 against him % the rest simply remain neutral : he has 
 no positive aid to rely on, except that of his father, 
 his son, and a mere handful of immediate dependants. 
 During his absence the Suitors are ruining him, but 
 are not said to oppress the people. All this looks as 
 if his family was perhaps of foreign or extraneous origin, 
 and in any case had recently attained to power. 
 
 Autolucos, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, 
 resided at Parnesos in Phokis « : Penelope has no 
 trace of connection with Southern Greece : her sister 
 Iphthime was married to Eumelos, heir-apparent of 
 
 1 Infra, Chap. IV. ^ Od. ii. 51 ; xvi. iz2. 
 
 ' Od. xxiv. 205-207, 377. * Ot^- '^' ^^• 
 
 = Od. xxiv. 463. ' Od. xix. 394. 
 F 2 
 
68 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Pherai in Thessalyi. Of Arkeisios, the father of 
 Laertes, with whom the genealogy begins, we have 
 no trace in Ithaca. But we do hear of an eponymist 
 or founder, Itliacos ^, who, with Neritos the eponymist 
 of the chief mountain of the island, and Poluctor, 
 constructed the fountain, from which the city was 
 supplied with water. A descendant of this Poluctor, 
 probably his son, by name Peisandros^, appears, with 
 the title of anax, among the leading Suitors. He 
 may not impossibly have represented a family, dis- 
 placed by Laertes from the sovereignty of this island 
 dominion. I say by Laertes, because if Arkeisios 
 had founded the sovereignty in Ithaca, it appears 
 probable that Odysseus would have taken his patro- 
 nymic from that personage, and not from his father. 
 
 But, apart from the question to what root the 
 family of Odysseus is to be referred, it seems plain 
 that either the Suitors, being the aristocracy, were 
 Achaian in blood; or, because they were the aris- 
 tocracy, they fell under the designation of Achaians. 
 
 When the mass of the people are gathered in 
 Assembly, they are invariably addressed, not as 
 Achaioi, but as Ithakesioi*. And when, instead 
 of the inhabitants of the island, the subjects through- 
 out the dominion are spoken of, they are called 
 Kephallenes, the name always given to the military 
 division in the Iliad ^. 
 
 When the Suitor Eurumachos expresses a misgiving 
 lest, in lieu of Penelope, it should prove he would 
 have done more wisely in courting some other dame, 
 
 * Od. iv. 798. * Od. xvii. 203-207. ' Od. xviii. 299. 
 
 * Od. ii. 25, 161, 229; xxiv. 453, 531. ° Od. xxiv. 354. 
 
11.] THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. 69 
 
 he says there are many (other) Achaiidesi in Ithaca, 
 and in the other territories. This must surely refer 
 to women of noble birth. 
 
 It is true that, in the Second Odyssey, Telemachos 
 summons 'the Achaians' to the Assembly^. But we 
 find in Scherie that principal persons only seem to 
 have been summoned man by man ^, though all classes 
 usually attended. Again, in the Ithacan Assembly 
 of the Twenty-fourth Book, Eupeithes complains 
 of the harm Odysseus has done the Achaians*. The 
 Suitors, whom he has slain, were (he says) far and 
 away, the apiaroi, the aristocracy, of the Kephallenes. 
 This is exactly conformable to tlie view I have taken. 
 When Eupeithes ceases, we are told that pity seized 
 all the Achaians 5. This seems to mean the party 
 of the Suitors, those allied with them by blood or 
 interest, or near them in station. For, shortly after, 
 the Assembly divides, part taking arms against 
 Odysseus, and part, by the advice of Halitherses, 
 remaining neutral. 
 
 We have also to consider the word Panachaioi. 
 It is used eleven times in Homer. We cannot take 
 it for a mere synonym of Achaioi. Seven times 
 out of the eleven, it appears in the expression apKrrrjes 
 Uavaxai&v- In conformity with the sense of the word 
 Ttav, we may assign to the compound a cumulative 
 and collective force: so that Panachaioi would mean 
 the entire body of the Achaians, or all classes of the 
 Greeks. In the other passages ^ where the word 
 occurs, this sense is very suitable, and especially in 
 
 1 Od. xxi. 251. ^ Od. ii. 7- ' Od. viii. 11. 
 
 * Od. xxiv. 426. * Od. xxiv. 438. 
 
 « II. ix. 300 ; Od. i. 239 ; xiv. 369 ; xxiv. 32. 
 
70 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the passage of the Iliad where Odysseus, interceding 
 with Achilles, says, ' If you do not care for Agamemnon, 
 yet pity the Panachaioi,' or the Greeks at large i. 
 
 I have now collected the particulars connected with 
 the use of the three Great Appellatives in Homer, and 
 presented them to the reader sufficiently, as I hope, 
 for certain purposes. These purposes are, first to 
 establish in their due order the succession of the 
 periods at which they had respectively obtained some 
 root in the country: next to show that the most 
 proper national name of the Greeks at the time of 
 Homer, the name most nearly approaching to what we 
 mean by a national name, was that of the Achaioi: 
 thirdly, to exhibit, as the specific shades of meaning 
 attaching to the three Appellatives respectively, (i) for 
 Danaoi, the soldiery, the people in warfare j (a) for 
 Argeioi, the masses, the people engaged in tillage j 
 (3) for Achaioi, the chiefs or aristocracy, the people 
 regarded through the governing class. 
 
 This class, and the race that formed it, appear to me 
 to be entitled to a more separate and concentrated 
 attention than it has as yet received in the investi- 
 gation of Greek history. It forms a distinct type of 
 Hellenic character, the earliest in time, and certainly 
 not the least remarkable in grandeur or in complete- 
 ness. The Greek of Homer is neither the man of 
 Athens nor the man of Sparta; he is neither cast in 
 the Dorian nor in the Ionian pattern : he is the 
 Achaian Greek. Simple, and yet shrewd; passionate, 
 and yet self-contained ; brave in battle, and gentle in 
 converse ; keenly living in the present, yet with a ' large 
 discourse' over the future and the past; as he is in 
 ' 11. ix. 300. 
 
II.J THE THREE GREAT APPELLATIVES. >] I 
 
 body ' fhll-limbed and tall,' so is he in mind towering 
 and full-formed. His portrait could never have been 
 drawn but from the life : and, disregarding what 1 
 conceive to have been the figments of the first renais- 
 sance after the wild and rude Dorian revolution, I set 
 down Homer himself as the Achaian painter of his 
 own kith and kin. 
 
 It will however be requisite to inquire, 
 
 1. What light can be thrown on the origin of the 
 Achaian name through the growth of the power that 
 brought it into vogue. 
 
 2. How it was superseded; and what place the 
 three Appellatives respectively occupy in the later 
 tradition and literature. 
 
 But this will best be done after we have examined 
 and illustrated, as far as may be, the Homeric use of 
 other national and tribal names, especially four of 
 them, which, though of much rarer occurrence, are 
 of an importance scarcely second to the names already 
 discussed. These are — 
 
 I. Pelasgoi. 
 
 a. Hellenes. 
 
 3. Phoinikes. 
 
 4. Aiolidai. 
 
 We may then sketch in outline the relative posi- 
 tion of the families or races respectively embraced by 
 these Appellatives, and consider what they severally 
 contributed to the formation of the great Greek 
 nationality. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Pelasgoi. 
 
 Respecting the Pelasgoi, we have some direct and 
 some indirect testimony from Homer. And we have 
 also certain supplements to this Homeric infor- 
 mation — 
 
 (i) In the later Greek and classical tradition ; 
 
 (3) In the results of modern ethnological and archae- 
 ological research. 
 
 The direct testimony of Homer establishes^ — 
 
 The wide extension of the Pelasgoi. 
 
 The country afterwards called Thessaly bears in the 
 Iliad the name of Pelasgic Argos ^. It furnished to the 
 Greek army nine contingents, and 280 ships, or about 
 one fourth of the entire fleet. And this seems to be 
 the only name which it bears as a whole. The line, in 
 which this name is given, is evidently prefatory to 
 the g;reat Thessalian division of the Catalogue ^. Pe- 
 lasgic Argos appears to be included with other countries 
 in the wider name of Hellas ; a name which probably 
 may also have had an especial application to the part 
 
 ' II. ii. 681. ^ Studies on Homer, vol. i. pp. 100-105. 
 
THE PELASGOI. 73 
 
 of Thessaly ruled by Peleus, and inhabited by the 
 Myrmidons. 
 
 It further appears, from the Odyssey, that the Pelas- 
 goi were one of the five nations of Crete i. 
 
 And we learn from the Trojan Catalogue in the 
 Second Iliad, that the Pelasgoi of Larissa served in 
 the War among the allies of Troy ^. 
 
 The facts thus exhibited, though few and simple, 
 indicate the wide extension of the Pelasgoi, who 
 thus appear on both sides, in a war which draws the 
 armies engaged in it from so considerable an extent 
 of country. 
 
 But further j Zeus, the Zeus of Dodona, the Zeus 
 served by Hellic interpreters of his will, is, in the most 
 solemn invocation of the Iliad, addressed as Pelasgic 
 Zeus 3 by Achilles, the greatest representative of the 
 Hellenic mind and life. 
 
 This was at a period of complete and well estab- 
 lished Hellenic predominance. The name Pelasgicos 
 is, then, evidently an archaic name of Zeus ; and it is 
 not easy to see how he could have received it, unless 
 the inhabitants of the country from Dodona, at least as 
 far as the kingdom of Peleus, had been known as 
 Pelasgoi. The concurrent evidence of this passage 
 with that of the line in which all Thessaly is called 
 Pelasgic Argos, appears to demonstrate that Thessaly 
 had formerly been known as a country of Pelasgoi, 
 and that these Pelasgoi were worshippers of Zeus. 
 
 Accordingly, of the nine Thessalian contingents, 
 seven are described by the places they inhabit, without 
 any national or tribal name. It is probable that in 
 
 1 Od. xix. 177. ^ II. ii. 840. ^ II. xvi. 233. 
 
74 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 these districts the Pelasgian name had not yet been 
 superseded by any other designation for the purposes 
 of familiar use. The only territorial name used in this 
 part of the Catalogue, besides Pelasgic Argos, is in the 
 case of the eminently Hellenic dominions of Peleus. 
 
 When Homer names the Pelasgoi of the Trojan 
 Catalogue, he describes them as those Pelasgoi who 
 inhabited the deeprloamed Larissa^. He therefore dis- 
 tinguishes them from other Pelasgoi. But he cannot 
 possibly mean, in composing for a Greek audience, 
 to distinguish them from the only other Pelasgoi 
 mentioned by him, those of Crete, who are not named 
 in the Catalogue or in the Iliad at all. It is likely, 
 then, that he refers to other Pelasgoi of the Trojan 
 army j of which the two contingents immediately pre- 
 ceding this one are described without any national or 
 tribal designation. 
 
 Again, the Poet does not simply say, ' Hippothoos 
 led Pelasgians,' but, ' he led tribes (<^S\a) of Pelasgians,' 
 thus pointing again to a variety of tribes comprised 
 under that name. This has been observed by Strabo ^. 
 
 If in general the Achaians were paramount, and the 
 Pelasgoi were subordinate members of one and the 
 same community, it is not difficult to see why Homer 
 should nowhere apply the Pelasgian name to any 
 portion of the Greek army ; and again, why the same 
 scruples should not bind him as to a portion of the 
 Trojan force. 
 
 He has pursued an exactly similar course with 
 respect to the Thracians. He mentions them in the 
 Trojan Catalogue, and again in the Trojan army^. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 841. 2 xiii. 3, p. 620. =* II. ii. 844 ; x. 434. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 75 
 
 They have no recognised place among the Greeks, 
 and yet Thamuris, evidently a Greek, is described 
 as Thracian^. And the word Threx seems to mean 
 Highlander, in opposition to Pelasgos as Lowlander. 
 Probably Thracians existed diffusively, like Pelasgians, 
 among the Greeks ; but were absorbed in designations 
 more prominent and splendid. 
 
 We have yet a third example. The Kaukones appear 
 in the Tenth Iliad as part of the Trojan force ^. They 
 are nowhere found in the Greek host, or in the Greek 
 Catalogue. But in the Odyssey, where there was no 
 reason for keeping the name in the background, as 
 the same national distinctions did not require to be 
 kept in view. Homer mentions the Kaukones appa- 
 rently as a people dwelling on the west side of Greece, 
 for the Pseudo-Mentor^ is going among them from Ithaca 
 to claim payment of a debt. They were probably, then, 
 near neighbours. He distinguishes them as high- 
 spirited, (LteyaOi/jLiot : which reminds us of the reverence 
 he has shown for the ancient possessors of the country 
 by calling the Pelasgians dioi. 
 
 Again, Homer, in the three passages where he names 
 Pelasgians, names them each time with a laudatory 
 epithet 5 a circumstance deserving some notice, when 
 we observe to how small a proportion of his national 
 or tribal names epithets are attached. 
 
 Once he calls them eyx^'riiJ.utpoi'^, addicted to the 
 spear. He elsewhere uses this epithet but thrice; 
 once for the Arcadians^, whom, in the only other 
 place where they are named, he describes as skilled 
 in fight i once for two royal warriors individually 6; 
 
 ' II. ii. 594-600, ^ II. X. 4^9; XX. 329. ' Od. iii. 366. 
 * II. vii. 134. ° II. ii. 611. ° II. ii. <592. 
 
76 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and once for the Myrmidons^. This epithet then is 
 of high rank as describing valour. 
 
 On the other two occasions he calls the Pelasgians 
 dioi ^- This epithet implies, sometimes perhaps a nar- 
 row, but always a special and peculiar excellence. And 
 it is one which Homer allows to no race except only 
 the Pelasgians and Achaians ^. There is no difficulty 
 in explaining the latter use of it. The former is also 
 appropriate, if we suppose the Pelasgoi to be the 
 ancient and primary base of the Greek nation. 
 
 The leaders of the Pelasgoi before Troy are 
 themselves the sons of Pelasgos, who was the son of 
 Teutamos. 
 
 Only then in five places altogether does Homer 
 give us traces of this name or its derivatives. But 
 this affords no presumption adverse to the hypothesis 
 that the Pelasgians were the base of the Greek nation j 
 because it is his uniform practice to throw into the 
 background whatever tends to connect the Hellenic 
 race with foreign origin or blood; and the currency 
 of the Pelasgian name beyond the limits of Greece, 
 and among its foes, evidently had this tendency in a 
 marked degree. 
 
 The Larisse* mentioned in the Trojan Catalogue 
 appears once more^; and on both occasions it has 
 an epithet denoting fertility. The tendency of this 
 epithet is to show that the Pelasgoi were an agri- 
 cultural and settled people. Of this we shall find 
 other signs. 
 
 When we come to the historic age, we find many 
 
 ' Od. iii. i88. ^ II. x. 429; Od. xix. 177. 
 
 ^ II. V. 451, et alibi. * II. ii. 841. ° II. xvii. 301. 
 
III.J THE PELASGOI. 77 
 
 Larisses ^ ; and the mere name is commonly believed 
 to indicate a seat of the Pelasgians. But in Homer 
 we have only one Larisse. A possible explanation is, 
 that Larisse was properly the name of a fort or place of 
 refuge, somewhat like the bell-towers of Ireland and 
 other countries, to which the people of the district be- 
 took themselves for refuge on an emergency, from their 
 dwellings in the surrounding country. Around these 
 forts, as happened in our own country about the feudal 
 castles, towns would gather by a gradual process. 
 And so the application of the word Larisse to the 
 town conjointly with the district ^, of which we seem 
 to have this single example in Homer, might by degrees 
 become common. That which was an Argos, or settle- 
 ment for tillage, in the original or Pelasgian stage, 
 might, after wars had taught the necessity of defence, 
 become in some cases a Larisse; while in others the 
 old name might continue : or the one name might be 
 applied to the part for habitation, the other to the part 
 for defence. This hypothesis is supported by the fact 
 that the citadel of the historic Argos, which stood 
 upon an eminence, was called Larisse ^. 
 
 Such are the direct notices of the Pelasgoi in 
 Homer. They are scanty in amount. But there are 
 tliree other heads of Homeric evidence relating to 
 them. 
 
 J. The signs of alliance between the Pelasgoi and 
 the inhabitants of particular parts of the country : 
 
 2. The signs of a difference of race, pervading the 
 
 ^ Cramer's Greece, vol. iii. p. 244. 
 
 " Comp. eipixopos Orj^rj, and the passage Od. xi. 260-265. 
 
 ' Strabo viii. 6, p. 370. 
 
78 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 population, and more or less running parallel with 
 differences of rank: 
 
 3. The signs of an occupation of the country prior 
 to that by the Hellenic tribes : 
 
 Independently of another head of inquiry, to be dealt 
 with at a later stage, namely the relation of the Trojan 
 to the Greek race: 
 
 And, again, independently of evidence supplied by 
 the later tradition. 
 
 I. The Arcades^ of Homer show signs of connection 
 with the Pelasgoi. 
 
 In the Catalogue the Arcades are described as dyxtjua- 
 XTjrat, or heavy-armed ^ • and we are also told that they 
 had no care for maritime pursuits. In both respects, 
 their relation to the people of Troas is remarkable. 
 Homer nowhere else uses the epithet except for the 
 Dardanians, whose position in Troas resembled that of 
 the Arcadians in Peloponnesos. . And the Trojans were 
 so destitute of vessels, that the shipwright who built 
 for Paris is mentioned as on that account a notable 
 character^. Nor do we hear of a Trojan ship in any 
 case but his. Heavy-armed troops are furnished by 
 a settled peasantry, light-armed by a population of 
 less settled habits. The absence of maritime pursuits 
 tends to imply a pacific character, in an age when 
 enterprise by sea was so intimately connected with 
 kidnapping and rapine. Arcadia was not a poor 
 country. In historic times it was, next to Laconia, 
 
 ' Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 29, sets down as Pelasgian 
 the Arcadians, the Argives, probably all the original inhabitants 
 of Peloponnesos, the lonians, and the people of Attica and 
 Thessaly. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 604, 614. 3 ji_ y 54-64. 
 
III.J THE PELASGOI. 79 
 
 the most populous province of Peloponnesos 1. In the 
 Troica it supplied sixty ships with large crews ^. Ail 
 this is accordant with Pelasgian associations. 
 
 Again, the Arcadians were commanded by Agapenor^ 
 the son of Ankaios. But Ankaios was of iEtolia. 
 Ships supplied by Agamemnon *, and a chief not indi- 
 genous, tend to mark the Arcadians as politically sub- 
 ordinate, therefore as Pelasgian. 
 
 At the funeral games of Amarunkeus there were 
 present Epeians, Pulians, and ^tolians ^ ; that is to 
 say, all the neighbouring tribes except the Arcadians. 
 Now the Homeric indications respecting the origin of 
 games, in a marked manner tend to connect them, as 
 we shall find, with sources other than Pelasgic '. 
 
 In the Seventh Iliad, Nestor relates that in his youth 
 the Pulians and Arcadians fought, near the river lar- 
 danos. The former seem to have been victorious; 
 which accords with the military inferiority of Pelasgoi 
 to an Hellenic force. Clearly, when Nestor killed 
 their king Ereuthalion ', it was by . the aid Of Pallas ; 
 and Pallas, we shall find, is always a Hellenising deity 
 against Pelasgians. The Pulians, as we have seen, are 
 Achaian in a special degree. 
 
 In marked accordance with this indirect testimony, 
 the later tradition places Lucaon son of Pelasgos in 
 Arcadia ; represents the people as autochthonous ; and 
 makes the district compete with Argolis for having 
 given them their first seat in Peloponnesos. 
 
 We have here, too, some aid from philology. The 
 
 ^ Xen. Hell. vii. 1. 23. Cramer, iii. 299. " II. ii. 610. 
 
 ^ 11. ii. 609; xxiii. 630-635. * II. ii- 612- 
 
 ^ II. xxiii. 630-635. « See infra, Ch. V, ' II. vii. 154. 
 
8o JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Arcadians called themselves UpoaiXrivoi, which is com- 
 monly rendered 'anterior to the moon.' Now it is 
 difficult to see why the moon, which continually waxes, 
 wanes, and disappears, should be selected as the type of 
 stability and longevity among natural objects. But if 
 we refer the origin of the word to irpo and SeAXot 
 or "liWr^ves, then it becomes the appropriate form in 
 which the Arcadian, or Pelasgian^ people assert their 
 priority in the Peloponnesos to the Hellic or Sellic 
 races. 
 
 Until very late in the historic period, the Arcadians 
 remained an undistinguished people. But they were 
 the Swiss of Greece ; and they supplied a hardy soldiery 
 to any state in want of mercenary assistance, without 
 reference to attachments of race as between Dorian 
 and Ionian. With the Lacedaemonians they invaded 
 Attica : with the Thebans they invaded Lacedasmon ^ : 
 in the great siege of Syracuse, one contingent fought by 
 the side of the invaders, the other along with the be- 
 sieged 2. 
 
 2. The lonians (laones) are but once mentioned in 
 Homer, They are one of five divisions appointed, in 
 the Thirteenth Iliad s, to meet the attack of Hector, 
 when that attack is destined to prevail. The others 
 are the Locrians, Phthians, Epeians, and Boiotians. 
 The same spirit of nationality, which prevents Homer 
 irom allowing any eminent Greek chieftain to be slain 
 or wounded in fair conflict with the Trojans, appar- 
 ently leads him in this place to select, (perhaps with the 
 exception of the Epeians*^) some of the less distin- 
 
 ^ Xen. Hell. vii. i. 23. ^ Thuc. vii. 57. ' v. 635. 
 
 * They have laudatory epithets in II. xi. 732 and xiii. 636. 
 They were, however, worsted by the men of Pulos. 
 
III.] THE PELASaOI. 8l 
 
 guished portions of the army to resist the Trojans, on 
 an occasion when the resistance is to be inefiFectual. 
 The Myrmidons are of necessity absent : but he might 
 have placed in the post of danger those troops whom 
 he pointedly commends, the troops of Agamemnon, or 
 the Abantes^^. Our finding the lonians among un- 
 distinguished contingents tends to fix upon them a like 
 character. 
 
 Further, they are called kXKexircaves^, men with long 
 flowing tunics. As Homer has nowhere else used the 
 epithet, he gives us no direct aid in illustrating it. 
 But it clearly has more or less of disparaging effect, 
 since such an habiliment is ill-suited for military pur- 
 poses. And it is in direct contrast with the. epithet 
 ajxiTpoykt^ves of the valiant Lukioi or Lycians, whose 
 short and spare tunic required no cincture to con- 
 fine it. 
 
 These lonians were, as it would seem, the ruling 
 class of the Athenians, the 'Adrivaiwv TrpoXeAeyfiSj-ot^ ; 
 or, it may be, their picked men. The praise awarded 
 to Menestheus in the Catalogue, even if th^ passage be 
 genuine, is only that of being good, to use a modern 
 phrase, at putting his men into line*. The Athenian 
 soldiers, indeed, are declared in II. iv. 328 to be valiant, 
 fiTjoTtopes aiJr^s ; but the character of the commander is 
 less than negative. Though of kingly parentage, he 
 nowhere appears among the governing spirits of the 
 army, nor is he called one of the kings, although his 
 father Peteos had enjoyed the title ^ ; and on the only 
 occasion when we find him amid the clash of arms, 
 namely, when the brave Lycians are threatening the 
 
 ^ II. ii. 577, 542. ^ II. xiii. 685. ' II. xiii. 689. 
 
 . * II. ii. 554. " II. iv. 338- 
 
 G 
 
8 a yuvENTUs mundi. [chap. 
 
 part of the rampart committed to his charge, he shud- 
 ders, and looks about him for aid^. The inferiority 
 extends to the other Athenian chiefs, Pheidas, Stichios, 
 Bias, and lasos^ ; of whom all are undistinguished, and 
 two, Stichios and lasos, are ' food for powder,' slain by 
 Hector and ^neas respectively. Here then there 
 seems to have been bravery without qualities for com- 
 mand ; and all this tends to exhibit the Athenians as in 
 a marked degree Pelasgian at this epoch, stout but 
 passive, without any of the ardour or the Kt/cvs^ of the 
 Hellenic character. 
 
 Something will hereafter be added to this evidence 
 from an examination of the etymology of names in 
 Homer. 
 
 The close relation between Athene and Athens, 
 however, is a sign that Seems to tell in the opposite 
 direction. But upon examining into it, we perceive that 
 it is a local and not a personal relation. Ever active in 
 the protection or guidance of Achilles, Agamemnon, 
 Diomed, Odysseus, Athene says and does nothing what- 
 ever in th§ War for any Athenian. Yet Athens has 
 the epithet 'sacred*,' the unfailing mark in Homer of 
 special relation to some deity ; and, as far as Athene 
 has any favourite place of earthly residence or resort, it 
 appears to be Athens, to which, seemingly as matter of 
 course, she repairs from Scherie^, in the Odyssey. There 
 is something remarkable, and not easy to explain, in 
 this combination of strong local connection with a total 
 absence of personal care and patronage. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that Athene appears to 
 
 ' II. xii. 331. * 11. xiii. 691 ; xviii. 329, 332. 
 
 ^ Od. xi. 392. * Od. xi. 332. * Od, vii. 30. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 83 
 
 have been a deity of universal worship 1. She was 
 regularly adored by the Trojans 2, whom she laboured 
 to ruin. 
 
 On both the occasions when Athens is placed in 
 direct connection with the goddess, the name of Erech- 
 theus is introduced: in the Catalogue he is stated to 
 have been nursed by Athene^ and he was the child 
 of Aroura^. She (probably Athene) set him in Athens, 
 in her (or his) rich or well-endowed temple (eu ivl 
 
 Ttiovi J'lJcS). 
 
 It is impossible wholly to shake off the apprehension 
 of forgery in dealing with this passage, which falls short 
 in the grammatical clearness usually so notable in 
 Homer. On the other hand, the objections which have 
 been taken to it seem insufficient to condemn it; to 
 condemn at any rate the part of it I have cited, which 
 remarkably corresponds with Od. v. 8i : there she enters 
 the well-built house (tivkivov boixov) of Erechtheus. 
 
 Erechtheus appears in the Catalogue to be described 
 as an autochthon ; and therefore probably as Pelasgian. 
 The wealthy temple may perhaps mean a temple with 
 a re/xevos or glebe for a priest, which we shall find to 
 be a sign, not of Hellenic, but of Pelasgian nation- 
 ality. On the whole, we cannot ignore the existence of 
 Pelasgian signs, while we cannot find in the text of 
 Homer any full explanation of the fact that Athene is 
 the eponymist of Athens. 
 
 The type of Athene, however, is far too high to allow 
 us to view her as a deity merely national. She is not 
 circumscribed by any limits either of blood or place. 
 This does not exclude specialties of attachment; but 
 
 1 Infra, Ch. VIII. ' II. vi. 300. = II. ii. 547-549. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 her special attachment to the Greeks is one apparently- 
 having reference to great qualities of mind and cha- 
 racter. The Pelasgianism of the Trojans does not, 
 before the great quarrel, cut them off from her. She 
 singularly loved Phereclos, who built the ships of 
 Paris 1 ; and she aided the Trojans in erecting the 
 rampart which sheltered Heracles from the pursuing 
 monster^. 
 
 There is, however, very powerful evidence outside 
 the text of Homer to show the strongly Pelasgian 
 character of Attica in early times. Her subsequent 
 greatness was evidently connected with a remarkable 
 mixture of blood, arising from her having been, during 
 long periods, a place of refuge for fugitives, and for 
 the worsted party expelled from other portions of 
 Greece. 
 
 Thucydides^ states that, from early times, Attica was 
 inhabited by one and the same race, because the poverty 
 of the soil offered no temptations to an invader. Hence 
 it is, without doubt, that we find the Athenians of 
 history ever claiming the character of autochthons. 
 But this is in effect to call them Pelasgians. 
 
 Herodotus* declares the Athenians to have been 
 Ionian, and the lonians to be Pelasgian. Having 
 been Pelasgians, he says, the Attican people became 
 Hellenic, apparently by the reception of immigrants, 
 and by a gradual amalgamation. Evidently, according 
 to this historian, the change did not take place by an 
 arrival of lonians, for he declares that which Homer 
 only suggests, that the lonians were Pelasgian. 
 
 Some conflict, however, there was, apparently, be- 
 
 ^ II. V. 59, " II. XX. 146. ' 1. 2. * i. 56. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 85 
 
 tween the urban and the rural population. The Pe- 
 lasgians complained, said Hecatseusi, that the Athenians 
 drove them from the soil, which they had improved in 
 such a degree as to excite envy. The Athenians alleged 
 that their children, when they went forth to draw 
 water, were insulted by the Pelasgians. The Dorian 
 Tau, Herodotus^ adds, was the Ionian Sigma. 
 
 Thucydides^ says the Athenians were the first among 
 the Greeks to lay aside the custom of bearing arms, 
 and to cultivate ease and luxury. We may naturally 
 connect this fact with the undisturbed condition and 
 pacific habits of the people : and perhaps it is partially 
 indicated by the word kKMyJiTu^ves, 'tunic-trailers,' 
 already cited. 
 
 The Hesiodic tradition of Hellen and his sons does 
 not mention Ion. It is remarkable that Euripides does 
 not represent Ion as Hellenic, but as the adopted son 
 of Xouthos, the real son of Creusa, an Erechtheid ; in 
 entire conformity with what, as I conceive, the text of 
 Homer suggests. 
 
 Peisistratos and his family claimed a Neleid, that is, 
 a non-Pelasgian descent; recognising as it were the 
 difference of the ruling blood. 
 
 According to Herodotus *, there remained in the 
 Athens of history a portion of the wall called Pelasgic ; 
 and the primitive Athenians were called Pelasgoi Cra- 
 naoi, and were reputed to be autochthonous. 
 
 Eleusis, in Attica, was the chief seat of the worship 
 of Demeter — a deity, as we shall find, of eminently 
 Pelasgian character and associations. . 
 
 Strabo declares that ancient Attica was las, with an 
 
 ' As quoted in Herod, vi. 137, 138. ■' i. 139. 
 
 3 i. 6. * i. 56 ; iii- 44 1 v. 64. 
 
86 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP» 
 
 Ionian people, who supplied Asia Minor with the colo- 
 nists of the Ionian migration^. 
 
 The careful researches of Dr. Hahn in Albania have 
 accumulated much evidence of the Pelasgian character 
 of the population. It includes remarkable coincidences 
 with the institutions of Attica : for example, the four- 
 fold division of the tribes^. 
 
 To us the origin of the Ionian name remains in 
 great obscurity. It is probably related to the Pelasgian 
 stock. It certainly appears not to be Hellenic. 
 
 3. In the Thessaly of the Greek Catalogue, not only 
 does the paucity of tribal names leave us to suppose 
 that the population of the districts generally had not 
 yet distinctly emerged from what may be called Pelas- 
 gianism, and not only is this supposition confirmed by 
 the name of Pelasgic Argos, but there are other con- 
 firmatory signs. 
 
 One of them is the worship of the River Spercheios^ ; 
 which, though offered by Achilles for a special purpose, 
 was also practised by Peleus, and is probably due to 
 a strong local tradition of a Pelasgian character. His 
 Te/xevos, or glebe, also connects him with the Pelas- 
 gians*. 
 
 Another sign is the Te/^ei'os or sacred glebe of De- 
 meter at Purasos''. Possibly the name may be related 
 to Ttvpoi, wheat. Apart from this, the associations of 
 Demeter in Homer are never Hellenic^. The appear- 
 ance of a re'^eros in this case is also a Pelasgian sign. 
 
 ^ Bk. viii. p. 333. 
 
 ^ Hahn, ' Albanesische Studien/ Abschn. ii. pp. 43-46, and 
 note 19, p. 130. 
 3 II. xxjii. 144. * See infra, Ch. VII. ; also p. 106. 
 
 » II. ii. 696, « See infra, Ch. VIII. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 8f 
 
 The historical growth of the Graian^ (Greek) name 
 out of the Greek settlements in Italy connects it with 
 communities highly Pelasgian. In Homer we find that 
 name only in Boiotia, a land of rich cultivation, like the 
 Italian colonies. But Aristotle^ places the Graicoi in 
 the ancient Hellas, a portion of Thessaly, about Dodona 
 and the Acheloos, which, he says, was inhabited by 
 them and by the Selloi. Thus the Graian name serves 
 further to associate Thessaly with the Pelasgoi. 
 
 4, The name lasos has an early and important place 
 in the Homeric tradition. 
 
 (a) The phrase ' lason Argos,' which means Western 
 Peloponnesos^, appears to indicate a dynasty, or domi- 
 nion, of an lasos in that country. 
 
 {&) Demeter (in Crete, according to Hesiod) gives 
 way to her passion for lasion *, a son or descendant of 
 lasos, in a tilled field. 
 
 (c) Demetor lasides, a son, or rather a descendant, of 
 lasos, is represented by the pseud- Odysseus as reigning 
 in Cyprus^ at the period of his return to Ithaca, and 
 as being in xenial relations with Egypt, the people of 
 which, he says, made a present of him to Demetor. 
 This clearly shows that there had been an lasid domi- 
 nion in Cyprus. 
 
 (d) Amphion and Zethos,who first founded and walled 
 in the city of Thebes, were lasids'': Amphion at one 
 time (Tiore) reigned in Minyan Orchomenos. 
 
 (e) lasos', son of Sphelos and grandson of Boukolos, 
 
 1 The name Graicos, according to K.O.Miiller, came back into 
 use with the Alexandrian poets, through the old common tongue 
 of Macedonia. MuUer's Orchomenos, p. 119. 
 
 2 Meteorol. i. 14. ^ See above, Ch. II. p. 48. * Od. v. 125- 
 = Od. xvii.442. « Od. xi. 262, 283. ^ II. XV. 337- 
 
88 yuvENTUs munht. [chap. 
 
 was one of the Athenian commanders, and fell by the 
 hand of ^neas; this too without any commemora- 
 tion : from both which circumstances we perceive that 
 he was in no great esteem, and was most probably not 
 of Hellenic, but of Pelasgian blood. 
 
 The attachment of Demeter to Crete was plainly 
 connected with the Pelasgian period. The secondary 
 place given to lasos in the war, and the etymology 
 of the names of his ancestry, seem to establish his Pe- 
 lasgian extraction. If Amphion and Zethos were, as 
 it appears probable, displaced from Boeotia by Kadmos 
 and the Phoenicians, they were probably of a Pelasgian 
 family: and indeed it would be very difScult to give 
 evidence of any Hellenic race or family at their epoch, 
 which is between four and five generations before the 
 Troica. Lastly, Cyprus, distant as it was from 
 Greece, was evidently in some position of qualified 
 subordination to its ruling house j because, when the 
 expedition to Troy was meditated, Kinures^, its ruler, 
 sent a beautiful gift to Agamemnon, probably more as 
 an apology for non-appearance, than as a disinterested 
 token of good-will. 
 
 All the several indications then converge upon this 
 point, that the name of lasos appears to bear no Hel- 
 lenic character. It has certain points of contact at 
 least with some of the races that dwelt in Egypt ; and 
 likewise with Phoenicia through the city of Thebes, 
 and through the indubitable presence of a Phoenician 
 influence in Cyprus. Anterior to, and apparently reach- 
 ing beyond the Hellenic name, its most marked asso- 
 ciations appear to be Pelasgian. 
 
 ^ II. xi. 19-23. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 89 
 
 5. There are abundant marks of a Pelasgian character 
 in the population of Crete. 
 
 We know that the ruling family in Crete was Phoe- 
 nician; but the wealth of the hundred-citied island^ 
 was just what might be expected to arise from the early 
 combination of Phoenician enterprise with Pelasgian 
 industry. 
 
 There were many races in Crete, and there was a 
 mixture of tongue^. Tliis appears to indicate the pre- 
 sence of the Phoenician element in considerable force 
 with its Semitic form of speech, as we have no reason 
 to suppose, among the races actually named, any radical 
 difference of language. In this passage the speaker 
 is addressing Penelope, and it is in accordance with 
 the uniform usage of the Poems, that he should mention 
 only races which had been domesticated in Greece. 
 
 Those races are, i. Achaioi, a. Eteocretes, 3. Ku- 
 dones, 4. Dorieis, 5. Pelasgoi. Of these, the first 
 and fourth may at once be classed as Hellenic. With 
 respect to the Eteocretes, we may most naturally sup- 
 pose them to have been part of the Pelasgian family, 
 whose date of arrival was more remote, in relation to 
 whom all the other races had thus been strangers, and 
 to whom therefore is given a name that is the equi- 
 valent of autochthons. The Kudones appear to be of 
 similar origin. They lived on a Cretan river larda- 
 nos^. This was the name of the river in Peloponnesos, 
 on the banks of which the Pulians fought the Arca- 
 dians. The battle*, as being one between Achaians 
 and Pelasgians, was probably on Arcadian ground j and 
 
 ' II. ii. 649. In Od. xix. 174, ninety. ^ Od. xix. 175. 
 
 ^ Od. iii. 292. * II. vii. 134 ^ xi. 735, 752 (?). 
 
90 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 the name of rapid Keladon^ given to the stream, also 
 shows that it was on the high land. 
 
 This Pelasgian population, with its less warlike, pos- 
 sibly also less energetic, habits, appears to have sunk 
 at a later period into servitude. According to Ephorus, 
 as quoted by Athenseus^, there were in Crete festivals 
 of the slave population, during which freemen were not 
 permitted to come within the town walls, while the 
 slaves were supreme, and were competent to flog the 
 free. These festivals were held in Kudonia, the city 
 of the Kudones. 
 
 Fifthly, the name of Pelasgoi speaks for itself. 
 
 6. The Leleges have a place on the Trojan side, ap- 
 parently more important than that of the Kaukones. 
 They appear, with the Kaukones and Pelasgoi^, as 
 part of the force which was encamped upon the plain 
 during the period when the Greeks were shut up within 
 their entrenchment. Priam had for one of his wives 
 Laothee, daughter of their king Altes^. He calls them 
 lovers of battle. jEneas says * that Pallas ' incited 
 Achilles to make havock of Trojans and Leleges.' 
 Homer can hardly mean, under the name of Leleges, 
 to speak of the whole body of allies, which included 
 both Pelasgians and his favourite Lycians. The name 
 may be one covering some of the allied contingents ; 
 or it may signify the fourth and fifth divisions of the 
 Trojan army, which appear in the Catalogue^ without 
 any national or tribal designation, immediately before 
 the Pelasgoi and the rest of the allies. 
 
 We have abundant instances in Homer of double 
 names attaching to the same population. The people 
 
 ^ vi. p. 263. ^ II. X. 429. 2 II. xxi. 25. 
 
 * II. XX. 96. = II. ii. 828, 839. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 9 1 
 
 of Elis are Eleioi and Epeioi. The Dolopians are 
 included under the Phthians; perhaps under Achaians 
 and Hellenes 1- Five races in particular are named as 
 inhabiting Crete j but all, possibly with others, are 
 included in the Cretes^ of the Second Iliad. The 
 Ionian name, with that of the Kaukones, and of Le- 
 leges, not to speak of the Temnikes, Aones, Huantes, 
 Telebooi, of whom we do not hear in Homer, are most 
 probably subdivisions of the great Pelasgian category. 
 On the whole, it seems safest to adopt the conclusion 
 of Bishop Thirlwall, that in all likelihood ' the name 
 Pelasgians was a general one, like that of Saxons, 
 Franks, or Alemanni ; but that each of the Pelas- 
 gian tribes had also one peculiar to itself ^.' The evi- 
 dence directly deducible from Homer tends to this 
 conclusion ; and it is powerfully sustained^ as we shall 
 see, by more copious indirect testimony. 
 
 The work of Dr. Hahn affords ample evidence of 
 their occupation of Epiros, which was also recognised 
 by the tradition of the ancients*. 
 
 The belief that the Pelasgoi were the original inha- 
 bitants of Greece, appears to be held undoubtingly by 
 the modern Greeks, if we may trust the recent work 
 of Petrides^ upon the ancient history of his country. 
 
 We are in no way obliged to suppose that tribes 
 of so wide a diffusion came into Greece by a single 
 route. The prevailing opinion ^ of the ancient writers 
 was that their first seat was in the Peloponnesos. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 683; ix. 484; xvi. 186. ^ Od. xix. 175; II. ii. 645. 
 
 ' History of Greece, vol. i. ch. ii. 
 
 * Strabo, bk. V. p. 221. Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, 
 vol. iv. p. 174. 
 ° Chap. i. pp. 2, 3 (Corfu, 1830). ^ Cramer's Greece, i. 17. 
 
92 JUVENTUS MUNbl. [cHAP. 
 
 Homer gives abundant signs of them in Thessaly, but 
 also in Crete and in Cyprus. It seems probable that 
 they may have arrived both by the landward route of 
 the Thracian coast, and by the stepping-stones, so to 
 speak, which the southern islands afforded them. 
 
 If there has been presented reasonable ground for the 
 conclusion that the Pelasgians formed the base of the 
 Greek nation, it is interesting to observe, by the light 
 of history, how the most durable vitality of a people 
 resides in the mass, while the energies of mere class^ 
 or of any branch socially separate from the trunk, are 
 liable to exhaustion if they are not refreshed by popular 
 contact J as water taken from the sea grows foul, while 
 the sea itself is ever fresh. The astute Aiolid, the 
 high-souled and fiery Achaian, the Dorian with his iron 
 will and unconquerable tenacity — each for a time enjoys 
 ascendancy and disappears ; and the districts which suc- 
 cessively attain to military pre-eminence in the later 
 historic ages, are Boeotia, Macedonia, Arcadia, Epiros, 
 none of which had been the early depositories of power- 
 ful Hellenic influences. Lastly, Achaia emerged into a 
 late celebrity. It is probable that we ought to consider 
 this name, not so much in connection with the old and 
 famous Achaian race, as with the party worsted in the 
 great Dorian conquest : and if this be so, we shall be safe 
 in concluding that, in all likelihood, the province had 
 retained throughout a dominant Pelasgian character. 
 
 The etymology of the Pelasgian name has been long 
 and variously discussed without any conclusive issue. 
 Some draw it from Peleg of the tenth chapter of Ge- 
 nesis, a name said to mean ' partition,' that is, of the 
 earth: this opinion is questioned by Marsh i, and re- 
 
 ' Horae Pelasg. c. i. sub fin. 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. 93 
 
 jected by Clinton 1. Again, it has been derived from; 
 pelargoi, the Greek name for storks. This, according 
 to some, because the Pelasgians were wanderers, and 
 the stork is migratory. But the periodical movement 
 of the stork seems to have no great correspondence 
 with an irregularly roving habit in a people. Aristo- 
 phanes ^ appears undoubtedly to make the name of* 
 storks a vehicle for a jest on the Pelasgian origin of 
 the Athenians. Another plea seems to me more plau- 
 sible. The stork is a social bird : in the East it settles 
 on the roofs of houses ; it freely follows the ploughman 
 along his furrow ; and its habits thus, in both points, 
 supply links of association with the first appearance of 
 a people of husbandmen. The stork was one of the 
 sacred birds of the Egyptians. 
 
 Some have derived the name from pelagos, a word 
 used in Greek for the sea. And this, either because 
 the Pelasgians came by sea, or because they came from 
 beyond sea. It seems doubtful, however, whether 'sea' 
 was the proper or only the second meaning of pelagos. 
 We have the phrases, SlKos iv ■KeK6.ye(T(Ti. (Homer), ttov- 
 riov Ti-eAayoj (Pindar), &\s TteXayia (^schylus), Trikayo^ 
 daXdaa-ris (Apollonius), all of which seem to show that 
 pelagos, like aequor, may mean 'a plain,' and may 
 thus come to mean the expanse or level of the sea. 
 Strabo tells us of a people called Pelagones in Mace- 
 donia, and in Homer we find the names Pelagon and 
 Pelegon. Hesychius renders the word ireAayos as mean- 
 ing greatness or depth, or the breadth of the sea. If 
 the name of Pelasgoi be related to the word pelagos, 
 it may be either because they were great and numerous, 
 or because they were settlers upon plains. So Threx, 
 
 ^ Fasti Hellenici, i. 97. '' Aves, 1354. 
 
94 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 its counterpart, akin to rprjxvs, meant the inhabitant 
 of a rough or rocky place, a mountaineer i. 
 
 Of the signs of a difference of race among the Greek 
 population more or less in correspondence with a difFer- 
 
 ' ence of ranks, some have been exhibited in the exami- 
 nation of the Achaian name, which appears properly to 
 
 , have designated an aristocracy formed from a conquering 
 or dominant race, and placed amid a population of dis- 
 tinct and less aspiring blood. 
 
 Yet the difference must not be overstated. By com- 
 mon consent we are dealing with different branches 
 from the Aryan stem: and the distinction of Hellic 
 and Pelasgic finds a correlative classification in the 
 Italian races, where the Oscans hold the place of the 
 Helloi. It is represented indeed in our country by 
 the distinction among Normans, Scandinavians, Saxons, 
 (or the group of tribes collectively so called with no ' 
 great propriety), and Celts ; though it may be more or 
 less doubtful at which point of division we should draw 
 the line among these several races. 
 , I shall endeavour to show that the Trojan War may 
 
 .in some sense be considesed as the conflict of Hellic 
 with Pelasgic elements. But it is remarkable, i. that 
 Homer nowhere represents the Trojans as speaking 
 a tongue different from that of the Greeks j 2. that the 
 Trojan soldiery are nowhere represented as generally 
 inferior to the Greek force ^ it is the superiority of the 
 chiefs which determines the fate of battle throughout 
 the Poems. 
 
 ^ K. O. Miiller (Orchomenos, p. 119), assuming Pelasgos to be 
 identical with Pelargos, derives the word from jrAo), ' to be,' ' to 
 be wont to be,' and so ' to frequent ' or ' inhabit,' together with 
 'Apyos, 
 
III.j THE PELASGOI. 95 
 
 With respect indeed to tongue. Homer tells us that 
 the Trojan public called the son of Hector by the name 
 of Astuanax, which is of Greek etymology; and we 
 have in Troas^ examples of that double nomenclature 
 which is commonly interpreted as referring to the 
 epochs of two different nationalities, the second of 
 them corresponding, for all we know, with the con- 
 temporary Greek tongue, though we are made aware 
 that a variety of languages were spoken among the 
 allies of Troy^. A long list of names, common to 
 Greek and Trojan personages, may be drawn out from 
 the Poems. 
 
 But while we greatly lack positive information in the 
 case of Troas, we possess it in the case of Italy. Care 
 indeed must be taken to exclude from any comparison 
 those words which were transported bodily out of the 
 Greek into the Latin tongue after literary communion 
 had begun, and according to the practice which Horace^ 
 has described and recommended. 
 
 Niebuhr* laid down these propositions, which appear 
 to be reasonable. 
 
 I. That the words truly common to the Greek and 
 Latin languages are Pelasgian : 
 
 3. That they chiefly relate to tillage and to peaceful 
 life: 
 
 3. That, accordingly, the Pelasgians were given to 
 peace and to husbandry: 
 
 4. Conversely, that the words in which the two 
 tongues differ are due to another race, and indicate its 
 pursuits. 
 
 1 II. ii. 813 ; XX. 74. ^ II. iv. 438 ; x. 420. 
 
 ' De Arte Poet. 53. 
 * Hare and Thirlwall's TransI, vol. i. p. 65. 
 
96 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 [ckAP. 
 
 Speaking generally, those words of the Latin and 
 Greek which most closely correspond, are 
 
 I. First elements of the structure of a language, such 
 as pronouns, prepositions, numerals. 
 
 a. Words relating to the commonest objects of per- 
 ception, and the primary wants of life, and forms of 
 labour. 
 
 Under the second head the following lists are pre- 
 sented, by way not of exhaustion, but of example. 
 
 I. OBJECTS OF INANIMATE NATURE. 
 
 aiP 
 
 aWrip .... 
 oKsj BaXafytra 
 avrpov .... 
 atTTTip .... 
 avpa .... 
 AtOf (Zeis) • . 
 dpoaos .... 
 
 eap 
 
 iviavTOS) ijvts . 
 
 epa 
 
 eairepos 
 
 ^X(or .... 
 KoZXov .... 
 \aas .... 
 
 XaKKOC "1 
 
 \d)(vs f ' ' ' 
 \ev(T(Ta) . . 1 
 livKt] in XuxajSas j 
 M" 
 
 aer 
 
 aether 
 
 salum 
 
 antrum 
 
 astrum 
 
 aura 
 
 dies 
 
 ros 
 
 ver 
 
 annus 
 
 terra 
 
 vesper 
 
 sol 
 
 ccelum 
 
 lapis 
 
 lacus 
 
 lux 
 mensis 
 
 vi(l)os nebula 
 
 (vi^) vi.(j)6s . . . nix 
 
 vu^ nox 
 
 jTevKTi pix 
 
 noKos polus 
 
 TTopTos pontus 
 
 plyos frigus 
 
 o-eXiji/i; luna 
 
 CKOTreXoff . 
 
 scopulus 
 
 spelunca 
 
 vda>p sudor 
 
 , , r fluvius 
 
 VfTOS .... ^ , . 
 L pluvius 
 
 uXi/ sylva 
 
 <j)iiKos fucus 
 
 (t)vWov .... folium 
 
 Xa/«"' humus 
 
 Xfip-iiv hyems 
 
 apt] hora 
 
 LOV . 
 
 pohov 
 
 II. TREES, PLANTS. 
 
 viola 
 rosa 
 
 <f>riy6s 
 
 fagus 
 
m.J 
 
 THE PELASGOI. 
 
 97 
 
 III. OF ANIMATED NATURE. 
 
 aXcBTTi)! .... vulpes 
 
 afiMos agnus 
 
 ^oCr bos 
 
 iyx^^^' .... anguilla 
 
 Brtp fera 
 
 HTTTOs equus 
 
 lx6is . . ! . . piscis 
 
 Kwirpos aper 
 
 Kpios aries 
 
 Kvav, Kvvos . . . cams 
 
 Xe'o)!/ leo 
 
 XvKos lupus 
 
 Sis ovis 
 
 ovdap uber 
 
 TT&Xos puUus 
 
 ravpos . . . . . taurus 
 
 Ss sus 
 
 aKimrepas .... accipiter 
 
 IV. OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH FOOD. 
 
 OKTOS 1 
 
 pampmus 
 lac, lactis 
 
 afiireXos 
 •yoiKa, yaKoKTos 
 yXayos 
 
 dais dapes 
 
 eXaia olea 
 
 TKawv oleum 
 
 Kokaiios .... calamus 
 
 Koivrj ccena 
 
 Kpeas caro 
 
 fiiXi mel 
 
 fiifXov malum 
 
 Oil/OS vinum 
 
 (7iroy . . . . . cibus 
 
 a-vKov ficus 
 
 rpij-yi; fruges 
 
 a-Tpvyeros . . • triticum- 
 
 a>6v ovum 
 
 aypos • 
 apOTpov 
 apovpa . 
 
 V. RELATED TO OUTDOOR LABOUR. 
 
 ager 
 
 aratrum 
 
 arvum 
 
 lyos T 
 
 ^evyos 
 fuyoV 
 
 KrjirOS, OTJKOS 
 
 opxaros 
 
 jugum 
 
 sepes 
 hortus 
 
 ayKvpa . . 
 
 ipiTjlOV 
 
 VI. NAVIGATION. 
 
 . ancora Xi^i7i' limen 
 
 . remus vavs navis 
 
 . gubernator irois pes 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 [chap. 
 
 VII. DWELLINGS. 
 
 al6d\iri fa villa 
 
 aiXrj aula 
 
 fio/uos domus 
 
 eSoj sedes 
 
 6aKap,os 
 
 Sipai fores 
 
 kXtju clavis 
 
 Xe\oj lectus 
 
 oiKog vicus 
 
 thalamus 
 
 tBtjs 
 
 VIII. CLOTHING, 
 vestis ^^XaiKa 
 
 laena 
 
 IX. THE HUMAN BODY. 
 
 yow genu 
 
 heiKvvp,i .... digitus 
 
 eXicoi ...... ulcus 
 
 ei/repov .... venter 
 
 ^irap jecur 
 
 Kap 
 Keap 
 
 KfC^aXiy caput 
 
 Kopi} coma 
 
 Xa^ calx 
 
 XaTTTCD labrum 
 
 taphir) \ 
 (dap J 
 
 P-ripos femur 
 
 p.ve\6s medulla 
 
 680VS dens 
 
 ooreov OS (ossis) 
 
 iraXapr) .... palma 
 
 -n-ffa (comp.) I 
 
 , y . pes, pedis 
 
 novs ... J 
 
 aXfvrj ulna 
 
 &/UOS armus 
 
 ml/' OS (oris) 
 
 X. THE FAMILY. 
 
 ycvos . . 
 fKvpos . . 
 
 . . gens, genus 
 . . socer 
 
 <j)pfiTrip I 
 ^pfjTpri J 
 
 . frater'i 
 
 fiTjTTJp . . 
 
 waTTjp . . 
 
 . . mater 
 . . pater 
 
 x^ipn \ 
 
 Xqpaa-nf i 
 
 . heres 
 
 vUs . . . 
 
 . . filius 
 
 
 
 
 XI. 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 
 iXevSepos . 
 TraXXoKij . 
 
 . . liber 
 . . pellex 
 
 TCKTCOV ((TTcya) . 
 
 / tectum, 
 ltego 
 
 pefa (pe|ffl)- 
 
 . • . - rex 
 
 fp^p . . . • . 
 
 . fur 
 
m.J 
 
 THE PELASGOI. 
 
 99 
 
 XII. GENERAL IDEAS. 
 
 aiav 
 nKyos . . 
 
 . . aevum 
 . . algor 
 
 X>55, ■ 
 Ar]Tat J 
 
 , . letum 
 
 avefjios * * 
 
 . , animus 
 
 fievos , . 
 
 . mens 
 
 av8r] 
 
 . . audio 
 
 fiopos . . 
 
 . . mors 
 
 fiios . . 
 
 . vita 
 
 liopcpr) . . 
 
 . . forma 
 
 /3lOTOS . . 
 
 . victus 
 
 VfVCO . , 
 
 , . numen 
 
 ■yfutt), yev(ra> 
 
 . gustys 
 
 voos . . 
 
 . nosco 
 
 86<Tis . . 
 
 , dos 
 
 dSfir) , . 
 
 . odor 
 
 butpov . . 
 
 , , donum 
 
 oBvvri , . 
 
 . odium 
 
 ClSlU . . 
 
 . video 
 
 ovopa . • 
 
 . nomen 
 
 6(6s . . 
 
 . deus 
 
 P&P.7, . . 
 
 . Roma, robur 
 
 diyyavat . . 
 
 . tango 
 
 vnvos . . 
 
 . somnus 
 
 0vfi6s , . 
 
 . fumus 
 
 (pans, (JJOTOV 
 
 . fatum 
 
 IS . . . 
 
 . vis 
 
 <t>rjiiri . . . 
 
 . fama 
 
 Kvia-<Tr) 
 
 . nidor 
 
 <l>vyrj, <l>iCa 
 
 . fuga 
 
 XIII. ADJECTIVES OF COMMON USE. 
 
 ayKOs . . 
 
 . uncus 
 
 jiieyaj . . 
 
 , . magnus 
 
 oXXoy . . 
 
 . alius 
 
 IliitOV . . 
 
 . . minor 
 
 0pa&is, |3ap8i 
 
 'is . tardus 
 
 peos . . 
 
 . novus 
 
 Ppax^s . 
 
 . . brevis 
 
 S\os , . 
 
 . solus 
 
 ycvvatos . 
 
 , . gnavus 
 
 opdos . . 
 
 . ordo 
 
 ypavs . . 
 yvpos . . 
 
 . gravis 
 . curvus 
 
 navpos 
 
 ' parvus 
 ' I paucus 
 
 Senior . . 
 
 . . dexter 
 
 Traxvs . . 
 
 . pinguis 
 
 cpv6p6s 
 
 . ruber, ruftis 
 
 TTlKpOS . . 
 
 . acris 
 
 ijbvs . . 
 
 . suavis 
 
 TtXaTvs 
 
 . latus 
 
 Kvpros . . 
 
 . curvus 
 
 wKfos . . 
 
 . plenus 
 
 \fios . 
 
 . Isevis 
 
 jwppos 
 
 . fiirvus 
 
 XcTTTOJ ■( 
 
 "Kiyvs ) 
 
 ^ lentus 
 'llevis 
 
 TepTjV , . . 
 
 . tener 
 
 vTmos . . 
 
 . supinus 
 
 liatraav . . 
 
 . major 
 
 Xaos . . 
 
 . cavus 
 
 For such a people as we have supposed the Pelasgians 
 
 H 2, 
 
lOO 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 [chap. 
 
 to be, here is no inconsiderable equipment of words. 
 But there are exceptions. 
 
 .[. In regard to religion, the stock is scanty. We have 
 deus related to 5eo's, numen to vevia, rex to p^C'^j i"! 
 virtue probably of the sacrificial office of a primitive 
 king: and we may add, as correlatives, Xoi/Jtj to libo, 
 and apaofiai, ap-qr-qp to ara, orare, orator. But this is 
 little : and there is a great lack of correspondence in 
 the principal words, such as, on the Greek side, Upos, 
 S,ytos, dv<a, ^mp,6s, vrjps, ayaA^a, riiievos, eixpfJiaL, and on 
 the other, sacer, sanctus, plus, templum, preces, 
 vates, macto, mola. In one case, or in both, there 
 must have been a great displacement of the Pelasgic 
 vocabulary. And as the Roman religion was far more 
 Pelasgian than the Greek, it is probable that this dis- 
 placement, if it occurred in one only of the two penin- 
 sulas, occurred in Greece. 
 
 a. The words relating to war are almost without ex- 
 ception irreducible to agreement. 
 
 <"XW • • • 
 
 "Aptjs . . . 
 apiia, 8i<j>pos , 
 
 danis, trcucos , 
 
 BeKoi , , , 
 /Sidsj To^ou 
 Sopv, €y}(OS 
 Oapt]^ , , 
 
 rcuspis . 
 .< mucro 
 
 L acies 
 . Mars 
 
 rcurrus 
 ' I rheda 
 
 r scutum 
 
 I clypeus 
 . telum 
 . arcus 
 . hasta 
 . lorica 
 . tabemaculura 
 
 fcXicriai 
 
 KVt]p,ls . 
 
 KoKeos . 
 kvkXos 
 Kvver) . 
 
 pAxri, iapivr] 
 
 oiaros, 16s 
 TToXf/xos , 
 pvfios . . 
 
 castra 
 
 ocrea 
 
 vagina 
 
 rota 
 , galea 
 r pugna 
 ' I proelium 
 . sagitta 
 . bellum 
 . temo 
 rtuba 
 ' I classicum 
 
 <j)aayavov, ^iipos ensis. 
 
 ^ Csesar, De Bell. Civil, b. iii. c. 96. 
 
IH.'J THE PELASGOI. lOl 
 
 Here the most striking correspondence is that of 
 Ares with Mars, both used to signify war itself, as well 
 as to mean the god of war. But Ares, though he is not 
 easy to trace, appears to be a deity whose origin would 
 assign him exclusively neither to the Pelasgian nor to 
 the Hellenic family i. The relationship of /3e'Aos to 
 telum appears clear enough. Except a rather faint 
 similarity of loAe/iios to bellum, and of edJprj^ to lorica, 
 there is no apparent connection between any other 
 words in the list. 
 
 It is also worth observing that, while the Greeks de- 
 rive the important ethical words /3e'\repos, better, from 
 /3«'\os, and &pi(rros, best, from aprjs, the Latins are con- 
 tent with optimus, obtained from a common root with 
 opes, wealth; possibly, however, as we, not much to 
 our honour, say that one man is worth more than 
 another. 
 
 With respect to the terms belonging to navigation, 
 it is remarkable how they bear upon rowing, its rudest 
 form, and do not include the names for mast, yard, or sail. 
 
 Again, the use of metals is slight in the earliest stage 
 of society. Even with the Greeks of Homer only one, 
 XoAko's, or copper, was at all common; and we may 
 observe a great want of correspondence between the 
 Greek and the Roman names for these invaluable com- 
 modities. 
 
 4. o-iSrjpos .... ferrum 
 
 5. KaaaiTepos . . . stannum 
 
 6. poXi&os, poKvP&os . plumbus. 
 
 The Greek bovXos, again, is in marked contrast with 
 ^ See infra, Chap. VIII. 
 
 I. xpva-os . . 
 
 , . aurum 
 
 2. apyvpos . . 
 
 . argentum 
 
 3. ^oKkSs . . 
 
 , . aes 
 
( 
 
 102 yUVENTUS MUNDJ. [CHAP* 
 
 the Latin ser vus. We might on the whole plausibly sup- 
 pose that slavery was not a Pelasgian institution at the 
 ': time when the Greek and Italian branches of the race 
 . parted company. War and maritime adventure were the 
 * chief feeders of that institution j and the Pelasgians, 
 1- as we see, were not of themselves addicted to either, 
 , however good the materials they afforded for a soldiery. 
 Nearly all those Greek words which are in close 
 affinity with the Latin are found in Homer. 
 
 It seems then, in sum, that the Pelasgian tongue 
 supplied both peninsulas with most of the words relating 
 to the primary experience, and to the elementary wants 
 and productions, of life ; but not with those of a more 
 arduous range, such as war, art, policy, and song. And 
 the religious vocabulary of the Greeks was probably 
 supplied from Hellenic sources. 
 
 There is also a very traceable distinction in the 
 names of persons throughout the Iliad, I am far from 
 contending, that we are to suppose them to be in general 
 authentic. But the elements, out of which Homer has 
 constructed them, will indicate a marked difference 
 of character and pursuits. Homer gives his Phaiakes 
 names generally connected with nautical habits, in ac- 
 cordance with his picture of the people. It is probable 
 that he proceeds on a similar principle in other cases. 
 The evidence which names, analysed according to this 
 hypothesis, will supply, tends to show the strength of 
 the Pelasgian element — i. among the Trojans; a. in 
 the inferior class of Greeks; 3. particularly in certain 
 portions of Greece ; while 4. the Lycian names, though 
 on the Trojan side, appear to fall into an opposite 
 class. 
 The test of a Pelasgian leaning in the names I 
 
III.J THE PELASGOI. I03 
 
 suppose to be their connection with rural, pacific, or 
 industrious habits, and the like. ' The opposite class 
 express ideas belonging to glory, policy, mental powers, 
 martial vigour and operations. 
 
 We must not apply the rule too closely to slaves: 
 such as Eumaios, Eurucleia, Eurumedousa, Alkippe ; for 
 high-born slaves were frequently obtained by policy 
 and by the chances of war^. 
 
 It is also to be observed that the names etymologic 
 cally related to the horse are almost exclusively on the 
 Trojan side. Such are Hippasos, Hippothoos. Hippo- 
 lochos (Lycian), Hippodamas, Hippodamos, Hippocoon, 
 Hippomachos, Hippotion, Melanippos, Euippos, Eche- 
 polos. Hippodamos, too, will be remembered as one of 
 the stock or staple epithets of Hector, On the other 
 ' side I have only noticed Hipponoos^. In Homer, the 
 /horse-feeding country is the plain country 3. And 
 ■ Thessaly had already begun to obtain the pre-emi 
 nence in its breed of horses, which distinguished it in 
 I the historic period; for the two best teams 'by far 4,' 
 in the Greek army, were Thessalian. This may per- 
 haps be the link of association between the horse and 
 our Pelasgian lowlanders. 
 
 Again, the names connected with gates are generally 
 of the Trojan party. There are Pulaios, Pulon, Pu- 
 lartes, and Pulaimenes. Of the Greeks we have Euru- 
 pulos. But all these appear to be the names of leaders 
 or prominent personages. 
 
 Among Attic names we find Pheidas, Stichios, Sphe- 
 los, Boucolos. These names belong to prominent per- 
 sonages. But an etymology relating to such ideas as 
 
 ^ Od. XV. 413. '*. II. xi. 303. 
 
 ^ Od. iii. 263. * II. ii. 763, 770. 
 
104 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 parsimony and tillage is such as we do not find among 
 the Hellenic races in a corresponding rank. 
 
 Among Trojans slain, without much note of distinc- 
 tion, we find Amphiteros, Echios, Puris, Polumelos, 
 Argeas (compare Argeioi), Dresos, Opheltios, Bouco- 
 lion, Melanthios (compare Melanthios and Melantho of 
 the Odyssey, both servants). Many of the names ac- 
 companying these are of doubtful etymology : compara- 
 tively few relate to high qualities or pursuits. 
 
 In the Eleventh Iliad, Hector slays in a mass nine' 
 persons^, who are called ^ye/nwes, or leaders, as opposed 
 to the -nX-qdvs or common soldiery: But as none of these 
 are anywhere else even mentioned, and as Homer never 
 allows Greeks really distinguished to fall wholesale by 
 the Trojan sword or spear, we cannot render this as 
 meaning more than that they were officers. Accord- 
 ingly we find a mixture of names ; Aisumnos, Autonoos, 
 Agelaos, are of the Hellenic class: Dolops, Opites, 
 Opheltios, Oros, and perhaps Hipponoos, of the Pelasgic. 
 Dolops, however, is the son of Clutos, a name belonging' 
 to another order. 
 
 When we turn to the Lycians, whose affinities are 
 plainly not Pelasgian^, we find that Odysseus slays in 
 succession Koiranos, Alastor, Chromios, Alcandros, Ha- 
 jios, Noemon, Prutanis. These names are all probably 
 of the Hellenic class ; for Halios means maritime, 
 and we find no presumably Pelasgian names which 
 point to maritime pursuits (Astualos^ is simply local) ; 
 while Chromios seems to mean bright-coloured (xpmjua), 
 i. e. beautiful. All the others are clearly of a patrician 
 casti 
 
 We find in the Iliad ten legitimate sons of Antenor, 
 
 1 II. xi. 304. 2 II. V. 677. 3 ii_ ^i^ 29. 
 
ni.] THE PELASGOI. XQij 
 
 and one bastard. Eight of the ten have names palpably 
 of the Hellenic order : Agenor, Acamas, Archilochos, 
 Demoleon, Echeclos, Iphidamas, Laodamas, Laodocos. 
 Nor can the other two. Coon and Helicaon, be referred 
 to the Pelasgian class. The bastard is Pedaios, II. v. 
 70 : he was brought up on the same footing as the rest. 
 It will be remembered that Homer expressly declares 
 the Myrmidons to be Hellenic and Achaian. Now 
 we have named among them Patroclos, Menoitios, 
 Menesthios, Eudoros, Peisandros, Maimalos (juatiuaw), 
 Alkimedon, Laerkes, Automedon. Every one of these 
 names is of what I have described as the Hellenic 
 character. 
 
 Upon the whole, and without any allegation of a 
 rigid uniformity, indeed with a confessed inability to 
 assign an etymology for many of the Homeric narneSj 
 still it may be held that, where we have already on 
 other grounds found reason to presume Pelasgian blood, 
 there the names are frequently related to peace, in- 
 dustry, wealth, and are not of a soaring character : 
 whereas in cases of high station generally, and of clear 
 Hellenic blood, they refer to valour, ^ame, command, 
 mental power, and the like. 
 
 The chief of all the Homeric signs that Greece had 
 been occupied, before the Achaian period, by a non- 
 Hellenic race, is to be found in the sphere of religion. 
 I will not anticipate what there will be an opportunity 
 of unfolding in detail hereafter^. It may suffice for the 
 present to observe, that while the genius of the Olym- 
 pian system of Homer is intensely human or anthropo- 
 morphic, we can trace, especially outside of that system, 
 
 ^ Infra, Chap. VII. 
 
Io6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP< 
 
 f^but partially as adopted into it, the remains of a reli- 
 
 ,; gion. of a different order, based, principally at the least, 
 
 upon the worship of Nature-Powers, that is to say, of 
 
 >~the powers discerned in material and sensible nature. 
 
 I now turn to glance at some of the extra-Homeric 
 
 evidence of the wide extension of the Pelasgoi at an 
 
 early period i. 
 
 Besides associating Dodona both with Hellic and 
 Pelasgic races, Hesiod may be interpreted as personi- 
 fying Pelasgos : a testimony legendary in itself, but 
 betokening the importance of the race 2. 
 
 Asios, a very ancient poet, as quoted by Pausanias, 
 represents Pelasgos to have been the child of Earth, 
 born upon the mountains that he might be the father 
 of men^. jEschylus, in the Supplices-', makes him the 
 son of the earth-born Palaichthon; from him the Pe- 
 lasgians take their name: his dominion reaches from 
 the Strumon northwards to the Peloponnesos. In the 
 reign of this Pelasgos, Danaos comes to Greece. Of 
 Pelasgos, Argos in the historic period professed to show 
 the tomb, Arcadia held the tradition that he taught 
 the use of dwellings and clothes, and to eat chestnuts 
 instead of roots, grass, and leaves^. Thessaly had its 
 separate tradition of him. 
 
 According to Herodotus, Greece was anciently called 
 Pelasgia: the Peloponnesian women under Danaos 
 were Pelasgiotides : the Arcadians and people of Aigia- 
 leia (afterwards Achaia) were Pelasgian; the case of 
 Attica has already been mentioned: recollections of 
 the Pelasgian worship were preserved in his day at 
 
 ^ See Bishop Marsh, Horoe Pelasgicae, Cambridge, 1815. 
 ^ Has. Fragm. x. ^. ' Paus. viii. i. 2. * v. 247. 
 
 ° Paus. viii. 2. 2, 
 
III.] THE PELASGOI. I07 
 
 Dodona: the Pelasgian race subsisted in Samothrace 
 and Lemnos, and in Plakie and Skulake, settlements 
 on the Hellespont 1. He writes ^ that they use a foreign 
 tongue; and at this we need not wonder, when they 
 and the Pelasgians of the Greek peninsula had moved 
 for so many generations on separate and diverging 
 lines. 
 
 Thucydides places the spot, or building, called Pelas- 
 gicon, under the Acropolis at Athens; and states that 
 the Pelasgian race was the race principally diffused over 
 Greece in early times. He also calls the Pelasgians 
 of his own day barbaroi; the name then applied by 
 Greeks to everything not Greek. He adds that they 
 were of the same family, the Tursenoi, who anciently 
 occupied Athens^. 
 
 Theocritus, early in the third century before Christ, 
 describes the Pelasgians as the principal race in Greece 
 before the Troi'ca; and ApoUonius, two generations 
 later, calls Thessaly their country. The Scholiast on 
 this passage quotes Sophocles in the Inachos as declaring 
 that Pelasgoi and Argeioi were the same: which, 
 for those within the limits of Greece, is very nearly 
 the conclusion suggested by the text of Homer as a 
 whole*. 
 
 Strabo states that the Pelasgoi were the earliest lords 
 of Greece ; that the oracle of Dodona was a Pelasgian 
 foundation; that Thessaly was called Pelasgic Argos; 
 that, according to Ephorus, Pelasgia was a name of 
 the Peloponnesos ; and he gives us the fragment of 
 
 ' Herod, i. 146 ; ii. 52, 56, 171 ; vii. 94. 
 ^ Herod, i. 57. ^ Thucyd. i. 3 ; v. 109. 
 
 * Theocr. Idyll, xv. 136-140; Apoll. Argonaut, i. 580; and 
 Schol. Paris. 
 
I08 yUVENTUS MVNDI. 
 
 Euripides, which reports that Danaos changed the name 
 of its inhabitants from Pelasgiotai to Danaoi^. 
 
 Dionysius looks upon Peloponnesos as the first seat 
 of tlie race, and affirms that it was Hellenic : meaning, 
 probably, that it entered into the composition of the 
 Hellenic body^. 
 
 Niebuhr^ shows the wide range of Pelasgian occu- 
 pancy in Italy : Cramer, in Greece and Asia Minor-*. 
 
 ' Strabo, vii. p. 327 ; v. p. 321. ^ Dion. Halic. i. 17. 
 
 ^ Hist. chap. iii. * Geogr. of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 15. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Hellas. 
 
 The name which the Greeks have given their 
 country for a period approaching three thousand years, 
 and which foreign countries have incorrectly rendered 
 by the term Greece, is Hellas. It has a secondary 
 place in Homer ; and yet there are indications of its 
 coming greatness. With Hellas as a territorial name, 
 we meet not unfrequently in Homer ; but we likewise 
 have the derivatives of that word, — • 
 I. Hellenes, II. ii. 684. 
 3. Panhellenes, II. ii. 530. 
 3. Kephallenes, II. ii. 631 et alibi. 
 
 And we have also the primitive tribal name from 
 which it is itself derived, Helloi, or Selloi, II. xvi. 234. 
 
 We first make acquaintance with the Hellas of 
 Homer in the Catalogue. He takes unusual pains 
 to fix in his picture, as it were with fast colours, 
 the contingent of Achilles. In four lines he represents 
 them, — 
 
 I. As occupying a part of Pelasgic Argos or 
 Thessaly. 
 
no JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 2. As occupying Alos, Alope, Trechin, with Phthie 
 and Hellas. The three places named are probably the 
 chief or only towns ^. 
 
 3. As bearing the designations (i) of Myrmidons, 
 (a) of Hellenes, (3) of Achaioi. 
 
 In Homer, great part of Greece is wholly without 
 territorial names; and, when such names appear, we 
 must not at once assume that they are employed with 
 the same precision as in later times, when they came 
 to signify districts of fixed and known delimitation. 
 
 Hellas is named ten times in the Poems ; four times 
 together with Argos, in the set phrase Kaff 'EKKaba kol 
 fii(Tov 'Apyos^, 'throughout Hellas and mid-Argos:' 
 four times obviously in the same sense as in II. ii. 
 633; and three of the four times in immediate con- 
 nection with Phthie, and with reference to territory 
 under the dominion of Peleus ^. 
 
 But, in II. ix. 447, Phoenix says that he left Hellas 
 to enter the dominions of Peleus, and in II. v. 478, that 
 he left Hellas, and entered Phthie. Yet the Catalogue, 
 and three other passages, show us, that a part at least 
 of the dominions of Peleus was called Hellas j and the 
 Myrmidons were also called Hellenes, and are indeed 
 the only people to whom that designation is expressly 
 given. 
 
 Now, when Phoenix thus took refuge, he was flying 
 from his father Amuntor, who dwelt in Eleon*; and 
 this Eleon, as we find from the Catalogue, was in the 
 land of the Boiotoi^ Consequently the name Hellas j 
 
 ^ See the Catalogue, II. ii. 603 seqq., 615 seqq. 
 
 ^ Od. i. 344; iv. 724, 816 ; xv. 80. 
 
 ' II. ii. 683 ; ix. 395 ; xvi. 595 : Od. xL 494. 
 
 * II. X. 367. « II. ii. 500. 
 
IV. j HELLAS. Ill 
 
 besides designating at least a part of the kingdom of 
 Peleus, embraced the country as far as to include 
 Boeotia. 
 
 Accordingly, it must have included the country of 
 the Locroi, afterwards called Locris. So that, when 
 Homer says the Oilcan Ajax excelled, in the art of 
 casting the spear, 'the Panhellenes,' that is, all the 
 Hellenes, 'and the Achaians,' it is pretty plain that 
 the name Hellenes in his view embraced the Lo- 
 croi. 
 
 We find, then, that the two passages, where Hellas 
 is named by Phoenix in contradistinction to Phthie, 
 are in general harmony (according to the results of our 
 previous inquiry i) with those where it is mentioned 
 with Argos ; and that, in both, it 15, without any rigid 
 definition of boundary, a general name for the parts of 
 Greece north of the Peloponnesos. 
 
 And the four passages, in which the name Hellas , 
 is applied to territory under the sway of Peleus, do \ 
 not compel us to give a second sense to the term; ' 
 for. they do not imply that Peleus ruled all Hellas, ) 
 but only that his dominions extended beyond the / 
 territory specially called Phthie, and included part , 
 of what had Hellas for its ruling appellation. 
 
 Phthie itself is remarkable as the only territorial 
 name, denoting a district of country without reference 
 to a town, which we find in the Greece of Homer 
 north of the Isthmus of Corinth. We may regard it 
 as carved out of Hellas, and so distinguished from 
 it when mentioned alone; yet included in it when 
 Northern Greece is named as a whole. The phrase 
 'Pelasgic Argos' is hardly an exception, since that 
 1 Supra, Ch. II. 
 
Iia JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 appears rather to be a description given by the Poet 
 of the great Pelasgian Lowlands^ than a recognized 
 and current title. So ' the plain of York ' is a dei- 
 scriptive phrase, not an established territorial name. 
 
 It is plain that Phthie was the principal part of the 
 dominions of Peleus, since it is used for the whole 
 of them^, like England for the United Kingdom. It 
 was a rich and fertile country. 
 
 Yet its inhabitants are never called Phthioi. This 
 name is given to two other Thessalian contingents, the 
 second under Podarkes, and the fourth under Medon 2. 
 And here we have a remarkable indication of the 
 distinction between the Hellenic and the Pelasgian 
 races. We cannot doubt that the kingdom of Peleus 
 had been inhabited by Phthioi, since they had given 
 it the name Phthie. We have no reason to suppose 
 these Phthians were displaced by the Myrmidons, since 
 we find Phthians and Myrmidons side by side in the 
 same army. But the more distinguished title effaces 
 the more obscure; and while the Phthian name con- 
 tinues to attach to the population of other less Hellen- 
 ized parts of Thessaly, in Phthie itself the people have 
 in lieu of it the three designations of Myrmidon, 
 Hellene, and Achaian; Achaian, as a great and lead- 
 ing branch of the illustrious Achaian family; Hellene, 
 as inhabiting a country included under the overriding 
 name of Hellas ; and Myrmidon, probably as a subsept 
 of the Achaians. 
 
 It is plain, that Homer has made use of special 
 means to mark the Hellenic and Achaian character 
 of the kingdom of Peleus, and to exclude it in a marked 
 
 ^ II. i. 155, 169; ix. 363; xix. 299. 
 ^ II. xiii, 68s, 693 ; cf. II. ii. 704, 727. 
 
IV.] HELLAS. 113 
 
 manner from the category of Pelasgian influences. 
 This observation, however, opens up another subject, 
 to which we may revert. 
 
 The word Panhellenes, though only once used, in the 
 description of the Oilean Ajax, is of great importance. 
 'In spear-casting he excelled the Panhellenes and 
 Achaians^.' These two names cannot refer to the 
 inhabitants of different territories. Even if they did, 
 the former would include the inhabitants of all Hellas, 
 that is, of all Northern and Middle Greece. But we 
 know (1) that there were Achaians there ; (a) that 
 these Achaians were also, in the case of the Myrmi- 
 dons, called Hellenes. Homer may seem, then, to 
 designate, though not as by absolute and well-under- 
 stood synomyms, but rather with a certain vagueness, 
 substantially the same persons, namely all the Greeks j 
 but to give them both their territorial name, and their 
 blood-name. 
 
 Though Thucydides ^ is right in saying Homer does 
 not call the Greeks Hellenes, yet it thus appears not 
 improbable that, once at least, he calls them Pan- 
 hellenes. Yet the verse ought hardly to attract sus- 
 picion on account of the word, since independently of 
 it we have sufficient proof that the territorial name of 
 Hellas might be applied without impropriety to 
 describe the range at least of Northern and Middle 
 Greece. Nor do I broadly deny that this may be the 
 meaning of the word Panhellenes. If such be the true 
 construction, then the use of Panhellenes and Achaians 
 to signify all Greeks, may be compared with the use 
 of ' Hellas and the breadth of Argos' in the Odyssey 
 to describe all Greece. It is also just possible that, as 
 
 1 II. ij. 530. ' i- 3. 
 
 I 
 
114 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the Achaian name has a leaning to the dominant class 
 or aristocracy, the Hellenic name may in this passage 
 have a similar leaning, and may, like the other, be 
 used to denote the community, as the part supposed 
 more excellent often is used to denote the whole. 
 
 There is another designation in Homer which seems 
 probably, if not certainly, to be a derivative from the 
 same stock — the name Kephallenes, a name still 
 engraved on the island of Cefalonia. This word is 
 used in the Iliad to describe the subjects of Odysseus. 
 It however appears but twice. It might be expected to 
 recur frequently in the Odyssey. But it is employed 
 only five times, and never for the inhabitants of Ithaka, 
 taken alone, who are always called either Ithakesioi, 
 or Achaioi. In Od. xx. aio it refers specially to 
 those who inhabited the continental pasture lands of 
 Odysseus. In Od. xxiv. 355, 377, 428 it seems to be 
 capable of no meaning except the subjects of Laertes 
 and those of Odysseus generally, as in the Iliad. 
 Generally, I mean, as opposed to any narrower territorial 
 limitation; for I do not exclude the belief that the 
 name of Kephallenes may imply the better blood of the 
 community. It may moreover be conjectured that 
 this was a word, like Hellenes, creeping into use, 
 but not as yet fully established. 
 
 It appears to be formed from the word Hellenes, 
 with the prefix Keip-, meaning ' head,' which appears in 
 Ke^6Xr], in the Sanscrit kap^la, the Latin caput, and 
 the German kopf 1, not to mention other words. 
 
 Let us now ascend to the word from which Hellas 
 itself is derived; since it obviously means, according 
 to a regular Greek formation, the country which had 
 
 • ■ ^' Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 291. . . ' 
 
IV.] HELLAS. 115 
 
 been occupied by, and which had come to be named 
 ffom, the Hello i. These Helloi appear to be the 
 Selloi of U. xvi. 234. They seem also to be a people 
 of the rudest habits, dwellers in the mountains ; having 
 prophets or interpreters, it is said, not priests, of Zeus, 
 and being especially devoted to him in that capacity. 
 We have other vestiges of this race in Homer; in 
 the name of a river Selleeis, which we find in or near 
 Troas 1, as well as (probably) at more than one point in 
 Greece; and especially in the name Hellespontos, 
 which in Homer means not the narrow strait merely, 
 but the whole sea between Troas and Thessaly at the 
 least, or the northern iEgean '^- 
 
 Iridependently of the grammatical connection be- 
 tween Helloi, Hellas, and Hellene, there can be little 
 doubt that in his solemn invocation, Achilles, himself 
 described as a Hellene, means to invoke Zeus by the 
 tie of race. This, then, is signified in the recital 
 concerning the Selloi, or Helloi, the slgma and the 
 aspirate here representing one another as in many 
 other cases; for example, hex, hepta, hudor, hus, 
 and sex, septem, sudor, sus. The one form reappears 
 in Selleeis, and in the Proselenoi^ of Arcadia; the 
 other in Hellespont, and in the Hellopia of Hesiod. 
 
 The Scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes ■* informs 
 us that braggarts were called Selloi ; and that the word 
 o-eAX/^teti' meant to vapour or brag. He derives this 
 sense of the word from Sellos, the father of one 
 ^schines, satirised by the dramatist. Now it seems 
 very little probable that the name of the obscure father 
 of an obscure man should thus have given by metaphor 
 
 1 II. ii. 839. =* II. ix. 360, 
 
 " See supra, Chap. II. p. 80. * v. 824. 
 
 I 3 
 
Il6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 a word to the Greek tongue ; and again, that the 
 explanation should have been handed down from the 
 time, of Aristophanes to that of the Scholiast. Such 
 _ words as 'hectoring' and ' rhodomontading ' presuppose 
 a great celebrity in the personage on whose name they 
 are based, as without this they would not be intelligible. 
 But if we refer this phrase to the ancient Selloi, the 
 explanation is easy. In Greece, and especially in 
 Attica, to be autochthonous or indigenous, and conse- 
 quently to be of a very ancient race, was notoriously 
 matter not only of credit but of vainglory, and thus to 
 play the Sellos would be a natural and effective way of 
 describing the manners of a vainglorious person. 
 
 The great Greek chieftains of the war are supplied 
 as follows : Achilles, from a district of which the 
 whole military class is expressly described as Hellene 
 and Achaian ; Idomeneus, from Phoenician ancestry ; 
 Odysseus also, from a region in which the upper class 
 is Achaian j Agamemnon, Menelaos, Diomed, Nestor, 
 from districts in which Pelasgianism is wholly sub- 
 merged. The greater Ajax is the near kinsman of 
 Achilles, and we must therefore suppose the Tela- 
 monian race to be strongly marked with Hellenism. 
 
 It may reasonably be asked, how it happens that if 
 Southern Greece, meaning the Peloponnesos with the 
 adjoining islands, thus abounds in Hellenic elements, 
 we should be entirely without traces of the name of 
 Hellas in that portion of the country. 
 
 We find indeed its kindred there; the name Selleeis 
 for a river, and Kephallenes for a people. But these 
 are not very prominent. The proper answer seems to 
 be that, as the name Hellas took a natural precedence 
 over names of Pelasgian associations, so the Achaians 
 
IV. J HELLAS. ' 117 
 
 were probably the flower and the ruling order of Hel- 
 lenes. Consequently, their name, where they were 
 largely spread, might tend to suppress that of Hellas ; or 
 to prevent its formation, by filling already the place it 
 would occupy with the territorial name Achaiis. This 
 Achaian name is here found prevailing in the domi- 
 nions of Agamemnon, of Diomed, of Nestor, of Odys- 
 seus : the same must be presumed of those of Menelaos. 
 And at least much the larger part of the Peloponnesos 
 seems to be included in the Achaic Argos, besides that 
 the word Achaiis unquestionably includes the whole 
 country from north to south. 
 
 There may however be an inference drawn from the 
 local concatenation of names. Beginning at or near 
 Troas, and moving towards the west, we have S:lleeis, 
 Hellespont, Helloi, Hellenes, and (from Hesiod) Hel- 
 lopia. Probably we have here an indication that the 
 route of the Hellic tribes into Greece was by the Hel- 
 lespont and the northern extremity of the country. 
 They were not, like the Pelasgians, an essentially low- 
 land people, as we perceive from the brief description 
 in the Invocation of Achilles. The name Trechin, as 
 one of the settlements in the kingdom of Peleus, allied 
 as it is with Threx, or Thracian, affords a similar 
 indication. Again, Thamuris, the Bard who attended 
 the solemn public competitions of song, and challenged 
 the Muses, and whom I suppose, like those compe- 
 titions themselves, to be Hellenic, was a Thracian. 
 There is therefore less difficulty in assigning this route 
 unequivocally to the Hellic than to the Pelasgian race. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Phcenicians and the Egyptians. 
 
 Direct Notices. 
 
 I. Minos, who is stated by Thucydides^ to have 
 been the first known founder of a maritime empire, 
 appears in Homer as the greatest and most important 
 of his archaic personages. The achievements of Hera- 
 cles are personal, indeed corporal; but the name of 
 MinoSj whether mythical or not, is a symbol of political 
 power, of the administration of justice, in a word, of 
 civilisation. He is the only person, indeed, lying so 
 far back in time as three generations before the War, 
 about wJiom Homer has supplied us with any details 
 of real and historic interest. 
 
 Minos had Zeus for his father, and the daughter of a 
 distinguished Phoenician ^ (such appears to be the most 
 probable interpretation, but in substance there is little 
 doubt about the meaning) for his mother. At nine 
 years old he received revelations from Zeus^, and 
 reigned over all Crete, at that early age, in the great 
 
 ^ i. 4, * 11. xiv. 321. 'II. xiii. 450-453 ; Od. xix. 178. 
 
THE PH(ENIC1ANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. II9 
 
 city of Knossos^, named first among the Cretan cities 
 in the Catalogue. He was the father of Deucalion, 
 and the grandfather of Idomeneus^, who, at the period 
 of the War, was passing from middle life into old age 3, 
 and had begun to .feel its eflFects in failure of the 
 organs of sense. After death, the Cretan sovereign 
 exercised the office of a ruler in the realm of Aidoneus, 
 and administered justice among the dead*^ as a king 
 does among his subjects upon earth. His brother Rha- 
 damanthus^, hardly less distinguished, has the custody 
 of the Elysian Plain. Him the Phaiakes conveyed (by 
 water from Scherie^) to Eubcea, on his way to Pano- 
 peus of the Phokes, for the purpose, apparently, of his 
 passing judgment upon Tituos, son of Gaia, who had 
 offered violence to Leto, as she was on her way (pro- 
 bably from Delos) to Putho or Delphi'. The presump- 
 tion arising upon these passages is, that Rhadamanthus 
 was acting for his brother Minos, and that the authority 
 of that sovereign prevailed not only in Scherie but in 
 Phokis ; in other words, that he bore sway over a con- 
 siderable dominion, both maritime and continental, in 
 Greece. 
 
 This connection with Scheri^ confirms his Phoeni- 
 cian character : and the signs of an authority extending 
 to the mainland of Greece, and to the islands on its 
 western coast, appear to be plain. It may be as a relic 
 of this dominion, that we find in Ithaca a harbour of 
 Phorcus^ who is a maritime god of the Phoenicians. 
 General tradition reports that Minos laid a tribute 
 
 ^ Il.'ii. 646. " II. xix. 180. ' II. xxiii. 469, 476. 
 
 * Od. xi. 569. ° Od. iv. 564. 
 
 ^ See the Outer Geography, infra, Ch. XIV. 
 
 ' .Od. vii. 321-324; xi. 576-581. ' Od..xiii. 96. 
 
J20 yUVENTUS MUNDI. " [cHAP. 
 
 upon Attica 1. Of this we have no direct evidence 
 from Homer ; but the fact that Theseus went to Crete 
 to seek Ariadne the daughter of Minos to wife^, indi- 
 cates a political relation between them, and in this 
 way partially sustains the tradition. 
 
 Minos is in the last-named passage called oloo- 
 phron^. This is a word confined by Homer to the 
 circle of Phoenician personages. The epithet seems to 
 imply in some form a formidable if not injurious craft. 
 It may apply to the character of the Phoenicians as 
 astute and tricky merchants, who acted at times as 
 kidnappers and pirates: but as it is applied to great 
 personages*. Atlas, Aietes, and Minos, it may probably 
 refer to what is politically formidable j and, if so, it 
 may well be a trace of a former supremacy in Greece, 
 standing in connection with the Phoenician name. 
 
 It may even be doubted whether Homer does not 
 mean to describe the Phoenician tongue as still spoken 
 in Crete; for he says« that in that island there is a 
 mixture of languages. This with him is a significant 
 and rare expression. It is difficult to suppose that he 
 would have used it merely because the island contained 
 Pelasgian as well as Hellenic races. For he speaks 
 of- the mixed tongue of the Trojan army, not in con- 
 nection with the people of Troas, who probably spoke 
 the same or nearly the same language with the Greeks, 
 but with the allies <^, of whom he distinctively calls the 
 Carians barbarophonoi'^. He applies the phrase 
 
 ' See the Dialogue Minos, ascribed to Plato, i6, 17. 
 ^ Od. xi. 322. 
 
 ' 01 00s is applied to an adverse divinity. See II. iii. 365 • 
 xxii. 15. * Od. i. 52; X. 137. 
 
 ^ Od. xix. 175. « II. ii. 203, 204. ' lb. 867. 
 
T.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGVPTIANS. 121 
 
 allothrooi i to the people of Temese in Cyprus, who ■ 
 were probably Phoenician. If the Phoenicians gave 
 Crete its name, then the Eteocretes of this passage 
 of the Odyssey may be a Phoenician race, amidst the 
 other four, which are apparently Hellenic and Pelas- 
 gian. This conjecture is in some degree supported by 
 the fact that the Poet calls them megaletores, or 
 haughty j an epithet suited to a race in possession of 
 political ascendancy, much in accordance with the 
 oloophron already cited, and yet more closely with 
 another of his Phoenician epithets, agauos^- 
 
 It is possible that the Deucalion whom the later 
 tradition connects with Thessaly, may have been the 
 son of Minos j and that his appearance there ought 
 to be taken as another indication that the power of 
 Minos reached to that region. Thucydides ^ states that 
 this personage appointed his children to be hegemones 
 or rulers; which implies a dominion distributed in pro- 
 vinces, and also Asiatic in some of its features. 
 
 If this be so, then, on finding Minos installed as 
 a ruler in the Underworld, we reasonably conclude 
 that he is not so placed by the arbitrary choice of the 
 Poet, but that he governs below the same persons, of 
 the same countries, which he had governed upon earth. 
 In short, that his office there is a testimony to the 
 existence of a bygone Phoenician dominion, exercised 
 in Greece from Crete as a centre. The great wealth 
 of Crete is eminently in harmony with this hypothesis. 
 
 Bishop Thirlwall* has explained the position of 
 Minos, as it is defined by general tradition. Again, 
 the existence of an empire connected with his name 
 
 ^ Od. i. 183, ^ Od. xiii. 272. 
 
 ' i. 4. * Hist, of Greece, i. 5. 
 
I3!2 ■ JUVENTUS MUNDI. ■ [cHAP. 
 
 best explains the partial introduction of Cretan insti- 
 tutions into Laconia. I have elsewhere ^ ventured on 
 the conjecture that the mnoia, or public slavery, of 
 Crete was an institution of Minos, and is named 
 after him. 
 
 Herodotus repeats, that Minos expelled his brother 
 Sarpedon from Crete ; and that Sarpedon colonised 
 Lycia, which, even in the time of the historian, was 
 governed by laws partly Cretan. If the royal house 
 of Lycia was thus connected with that of Crete, and 
 with the man who made the first recorded eflFort to 
 bind Greece together in civil order, it gives a satis- 
 factory explanation to the remarkable partiality which 
 the poet always shows in the Iliad for the Lukioi or 
 Lycians, far above all the other portions, of the Trojan 
 force. 
 
 Again, Homer places Daidalos in Crete; and says 
 that he wrought there for Ariadne, in metal, a dance, 
 which formed the model of that wrought by Hephaistos 
 on the shield of Achilles 2. He could not more dis- 
 tinctly have connected the Crete of Minos with thp 
 Phoenicians than by placing there the great traditional 
 producer of works in metallic art, from whose name 
 was taken the verb baibdWeiv, to embellish. 
 
 Next to Minos we may consider the case of Kadmos 
 in connection with the Phoenician name and race. 
 Homer gives us conclusive evidence of the migration 
 of such a person into Greece, by calling the inhabitants 
 of Thebes, one generation before the Tro'ica, by the 
 nameis of Kadmeioi and Kadmeiones. His proper 
 name is only mentioned in the Odyssey as the father 
 
 ■^ Studies on Homer, vol. i. p. 179. 
 ^ II. xviii. 592. 
 
v.] THE PHCSmCIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I23 
 
 of Leukothee 1, once a mortal, now deified in the Sea- 
 region, who appears to Odysseus after the wreck of his 
 raft on the way from Ogugie, and provides him with 
 a girdle for his preservation from the angry flood. 
 There could hardly be a more distinct intimation of 
 the Phoenician extraction of Ino than her deification, 
 not in Greece, but in the Sea-sphere, and her appear- 
 ing to Odysseus before he had regained the threshold of 
 the Greek world. 
 
 We learn from general tradition that the Thebes of 
 Kadmos had seven gates, which were in correspondence 
 with the sevenfold planetary worship of the East. And 
 Homer 2 calls the Thebes of the Kadmeioi seven- 
 gated. But Kadmos was not the first founder of the 
 city : its first founders were Amphion and Zethos ^ : 
 and Homer, when he mentions the foundation by them^ 
 does not call it seven-gated, but champaign, from the 
 character of the country, conformably to the description 
 given by Thucydides. 
 
 In the Underworld of the Odyssey we find a great 
 proportion of persons having Phoenician associations. 
 Again, the name Phoinix had, at the epoch of the 
 War, been variously naturalised in Greece. Besides 
 being a Greek proper name, it also meant a Phoeni- 
 cian, a palm-tree, and a purple dye*. 
 V The most important works of art named in the 
 poems are obtained from the Phoenicians. Not only 
 \ was this the case with works in metal, but it was from 
 Sidonia that Paris brought the beautifully wrought 
 tissues which were so prized by the royal family of 
 Troy 5. And all navigation, except that of the coasts 
 
 ' Od. V. 333. ^ II. iv. 406. ' Od. xi. 263. 
 
 * Od. xiv. 288 ; V. 163 ; II. iv. 141. ° II. vi. 289. 
 
134 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and the ^gean, appears to be, at the Homeric period, 
 practically in the hands of the same people. The 
 Taphians, who carry iron to Temese^ in Cyprus, and 
 mean to bring back copper, appear clearly to be a 
 Phoenician colony. Odysseus, feigning -that he had 
 escaped from Crete to Ithaca 2, speaks, as if it had been a 
 matter of course, about the ship's company who brought 
 him, as Phoenicians. In his second fiction^, and here 
 again as if it were a matter of course, it is a Phoe- 
 nician rogue who inveigled him in Eg)'pt, carried him 
 to Phoenicia, and then intended to take him to Libya 
 and sell him for a slave. When Odysseus represents him- 
 self in another of his fictions as a practised navigator, he 
 is a Cretan, but he is one of the highest station, and 
 . represents himself as having been the colleague of Ido- 
 meneus in the Trojan command ; therefore, probably, as 
 like him of a Phoenician family*. Eumaios, telling of 
 his own home in the distant Surie^, describes how the 
 Phoenicians came thither for trade or kidnapping, and 
 how a Phoenician woman was a domestic in his father's 
 house ^. Alone among the races of the epoch, the Phoi- 
 nikes, with their imagined counterparts, the Phaiakes, 
 are called nausiclutoi?, 'ship-famous.' 
 
 The immense fame acquired, and the mythical 
 character assumed, by the single great Achaian 
 voyage of the traditionary fore-time, that of the ship 
 Argo to the Euxine, combine with all the other 
 negative evidence of the Poems to prove to us how 
 completely the Greeks of the Homeric age were de- 
 
 ' Od. i. 184. ^ Od. xiii. 272. ' Qd. xviii. 290-300. 
 
 * Od. xiv. 230, 237. ^ Od. XV. 415. 6 jf,_ ^j^_ 
 
 ' Od. XV. 414 ; vii. 39 ; xvi. 227. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. 125 
 
 pendent on the Phoenicians for their ordinary inter-,' 
 course with the outer world; and the outer world 
 here means everything beyond the Greek Peninsula, ' 
 with the islands coasting it to the south of the Corin- 
 thian Gulf, and with the islands and coasts of the ' 
 >Egean. 
 
 Besides the name Phoinix, we have in the poems 
 the names of Marathon, Turo (Tyre), and Danae^, 
 which are all apparently represented in Phoenician 
 names still traceable on that coast. 
 
 The direct notices of Egypt in the Poems are much 
 narrower than those of Phoenicia j and the name 
 Aiguptios^, borne by an Ithacan noble, is perhaps 
 the sole positive trace which we find of an Egyptian 
 influence within the limits of Greece. 
 
 Egyptian Thebes was known as a city of vast 
 
 wealth, with twenty thousand persons possessed of 
 
 chariots, and with an hundred gates ^. 
 
 : In the Odyssey we learn that Menelaos, driven 
 
 /by the winds, visited the Aiguptioi*. In the palace 
 
 ' of Menelaos °, one of the attendants of Helen carried 
 
 ■ her silver basket «, given her by Alkandre, wife of 
 
 Polubos, who dwelt in Egyptian Thebes. Helen had 
 
 likewise the drug of marvellous effects, which may 
 
 have been opium. This drug had been presented to her 
 
 " by the Egyptian Poludamna, wife of Thon''. It grew 
 
 I in Egypt, which abounds in drugs, and where all the 
 
 inhabitants are unrivalled physicians, being of the 
 
 5 race of Paieon *. 
 
 1 See Renan's Phenicie. ^ Od. ii. 15. 
 
 ' II. ix. 382-384 ; Od. iv. 127. * Od. iii. 300. 
 
 = Od. iv. 87. ^ Od. iv. 125. 
 
 ' Od. iv. 227-232. * See Paieon, infra, Ch. VIII. 
 
126 yUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 In this region Menelaos was detained by the gads 
 for neglecting to offer the proper sacrifices, at Pharos ^j 
 a day's sail from the mainland. There he had his 
 interview with Eidothee, and his conflict with Proteus, 
 the servant of Poseidon 2, By Proteus, after his 
 victory, he was directed to return to the mouth of 
 the river Nile, which, as well as the country, was 
 called Aiguptos. At that point he was to make his 
 offerings, which he did. And there he erected a 
 funeral mound in honour of Agamemnon, 'for his 
 eternal fame 3.' This passage seems to show either 
 that Agamemnon was already known in Egypt, or 
 that the m.emorial would make him famous because 
 it was in so famous a country. In either sense, parti- 
 cularly in the latter, the recital savours of some tradi- 
 tion which exhibited Egypt as a great centre of pQ5?er, 
 
 In the fiction where Odysseus pretends to be a 
 Cretan, and the bastard son of Kastor, he relates 
 that he sailed to Egypt with a crew, who in spite of 
 him began to lay waste the exceeding fine fields (peri- 
 calleas agrous) of the Egyptians*, and to assail the 
 inhabitants. Next morning the Egyptians gather in 
 great numbers and drive off" the marauders, killing 
 many, and reducing the rest to slavery. As being 
 their chief, he besought the king's ■ mercy. He was 
 treated with exceeding kindness both by the king, 
 and, after the first excitement, by the people. In 
 this passage ^ Homer calls Egypt ' the well-watered.' 
 
 In another fiction Odysseus relates that he went 
 with free-wandering pirates, probably meaning Phoe- 
 nicians, to Egypt, and the very same circumstances 
 
 ^ Od. iv. 351 seqq. ^ Od. v. 386. ^ lb. 584. 
 
 * Od. xiv. 249-287^ ' lb. 257. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE SGVPTIANS. 12,y 
 
 are repeated; but this time, instead of his applying 
 to the king and obtaining mercy, he reports that they 
 made him over to Demetor, the lord of Cyprus \ 
 
 We have no such thing as a voluntary voyage to-^, 
 Egypt by a pure Greek, or as any voyage to Greece by ' 
 an Egyptian. The sea which separates them is so wide, 
 that the very birds can traverse it but once a year 2. 
 
 And yet, though Homer knew little of Egypt, he had 
 informants who told him of what lay beyond it. 
 Most strange it is to find that his account of the 
 Pugmaioi or Pigmies ^, so long regarded as pure fable, 
 has been found, according to recent travellers^ to be 
 founded in fact. 
 
 Such are the direct Homeric notices of these two 
 countries. But eight Books of the Odyssey (v-xii) 
 describe the adventures of the hero on his way home. 
 From the time when he leaves the Kikones, whose 
 country is his very first halting-place, and passes Cape 
 Malea, the scene of these adventures is in an outer 
 world, evidently foreign to Greek experience. They 
 are made up from materials just such as the tales of 
 daring seamen would supply, with the double resource of 
 strange fact and of embellishment at will : and, in all 
 probability, also with a tendency to give to places and 
 persons an aspect 'not too inviting to the Greeks, who 
 might have seemed capable of becoming, as indeed they 
 did become, their competitors in a lucrative pursuit. 
 
 Among the reasons for supposing the materials of 
 
 ^ Od. xvii. 424-444. ^ Od. iii. 318-322. 
 
 ' II. iii. 6. See in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Oct. 1855, 
 Review of the work of the German missionary Dr. Krapf, 
 pp. 886, '904. These Pigmies are 'hauts d'un metre a un metre 
 trente centimetres.' 
 
ia8 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 this part of the Odyssey to be Phoenician, come first 
 these two, that Greek experience could not have sup- 
 plied them, and that the Phoenicians could. 
 
 Thirdly, we are brought into contact, while the scene 
 is laid in this region, with an altered mythology. 
 Most of the Olympian deities retire, for the time, 
 from the stage. On the other hand, the prerogatives 
 : of Poseidon are enhanced; and we even find him 
 ; apparently presiding at an Olympian meeting ^. A 
 new deity, faintly glanced at in the Iliad as having 
 Trojan sympathies, comes forward in full personality 
 and with distinct attributes. Poseidon's sway seems 
 to lie towards the west and north: it is as we move 
 eastward that we encounter Helios, the Sun. He 
 appears as a recognised member of the Court of 
 Immortals: he has descendants, and satellites, and 
 an island on earth especially consecrated to him. Here 
 too we trace the strongest marks of the sacredness 
 of the ox, an idea wholly alien to the Hellenic mytho- 
 logy. And, in these Books of the Poem, both sea and 
 land are peopled with new and strange half-human 
 races, and with a fresh series or cycle of personages 
 properly mythological, who stand in no relations to the 
 most familiar of the Greek deities, but only to Poseidon 
 and Helios. Nay a change even of diet confronts us ; 
 and, as we get clear away from the Hellenic world, 
 the ox ceases to be used as foodj his place being taken 
 by sheep and swine. In short the evidence is full and 
 thick, to the effect that we have passed into a new 
 and foreign world. 
 
 When such evidence has reached the point of suffi- 
 ciency for a legitimate induction, it gives us authority 
 
 ^ Od. viii. 321, 344. 
 
T.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I39» 
 
 to pronounce Phoenician, from the company in which 
 we find it, even what may not of itself and directly 
 bear the stamp: and further, when reflected on the 
 Hellenic world, it enables us to discern and identify 
 many notes of Phoenician influence, which, but for 
 this clue, we should have beenmiable to detect. 
 
 And the. consequence is, that we find the debt of 
 Greece to Phoenicia to be very large : so large as to 
 be inexplicable, until we bear in mind that, if the 
 Phoenicians were the only foreigners at that time in 
 ordinary contact with Greece, it is highly probable 
 that all, which the Greeks knew or received through 
 the arrival of Phoenician vessels, would with them 
 commonly bear the Phoenician name. It may indeed 
 well have happened that the name Phoenician should, 
 for the Greek people of that day, become the synonym 
 or representative of ' foreign ; " so that whatever came 
 from Syria, Assyria, or Egypt, would sound as Phoe- 
 nician to the Homeric ear, much as in later times 
 every foreigner in the Levant was a Frank, and as 
 in Abyssinia (we are told) a foreigner is, at this our 
 own epoch, %&m^d,2in Egyptian. 
 
 Phoenicia, so understood, comes to mean for Homer, 
 when taken in its widest sense, the East: and the 
 conclusion to which I am led, as the probable result 
 of an inquiry much too large to be here set out in de- 
 tail, is no less than this : that, under cover of the Phoe- 
 nician name, we can trace the channels, through which 
 the old parental East poured into the fertile soil of the 
 Greek mind the seeds of civilisation in very many (to 
 speak moderately) of its most conspicuous provinces i. 
 
 ^ The argument, is partly stated in the Quailerly Review for 
 January 1868, art. 'Phoenicia and Greece.' 
 
 K 
 
J^O JVVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP.' 
 
 To begin with Greek commerce and -navigation. 
 Both these pursuits were in Phoenician hands at the 
 epoch of the Poems. Ever since the time of Minos, 
 without doubt, the Greeks had been their apt pupils: 
 but, even at the epoch of the Troi'ca, they were far 
 behind their masters. From what Homer says of the 
 Arcades^, I conchide that the Pelasgian tribes were 
 not apt to acquire nautical habits. 
 
 It is on general tradition that we must in a great 
 degree rely for showing that Greece owed to Phoe- 
 nicia, by the immigration of Kadmos, the gift of 
 letters: and these were probably at first rudimentary 
 symbolical signs, rather than a regular alphabet. For, 
 had an alphabet been conveyed to Greece several 
 generations before the War, we must surely have 
 perceived more of its results. But the general tradi- 
 tion, thus understood, receives both direct and in- 
 direct support from the text of Homer. Proitos, ruling 
 over, or, as it might well be rendered, mightier than, 
 the Argeioi% sends by Bellerophon a fatal mes- 
 sage, couched in signs which were intelligible, not to 
 the bearer, but to the receiver. Now one of the 
 seven gates of Thebes bore the name of Proitos*. 
 He is spoken of as one who had come in and acquired 
 a sovereignty in Greece by strength or talent *., On 
 the one side, he is in relations with the family of 
 Sisuphos, which we shall find reason to suppose Phoe- 
 nician; on the other side, with the royal house of 
 Lycia, as to which we have already found similar 
 presumptions^. And these facts date from a period 
 of two generations before the War. Yet, in the. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 614. ' II. vi. 157. ' Paus. ix. 8. 4; iEsch. Sept. 360; 
 Eurip. Phoen. 1109. * Il.^vi. 159, ° II. vi. 157, 168. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I3I 
 
 ordinary dealings of the Greeks, we find nothing like 
 written memorial or record. It appears, then, as if 
 an art of writing, but one of rude and ill-developed 
 contrivance, remained in Greece as an occult art, the 
 privileged possession of a few Phoenician families. 
 
 The Pelasgians have been sometimes supposed to 
 have brought the art of building with hewn stone into 
 Greece. And yet the rival name, commonly given to 
 the ancient remains of this class, is Cyclopian. But 
 what is Cyclopian is, as we see from the Odyssey, im- 
 mediately related to Poseidon and to the cycle of Phoe- 
 nician tradition. Now I think we may lay down this 
 rule : that wherever Homer mentions solid building, 
 or the use of hewn or polished stone, we find it always 
 in some relation to the Phcenicians. Tiruns is 'the 
 well- walled i.' But Apollodorus, Strabo, and Pausanias ^ 
 report (in no conflict with Homer) that it belonged 
 to Proitos, and was built for him by the Cyclops. The 
 wall of Troy 3, which so long defied the Greeks, was 
 ^ built by Poseidon * the Pha^nician god: that is to say, 
 \ by Phoenician artisans.. The same supposition will 
 i apply to another Trojan edifice, the palace of Priam =. 
 Again, there were polished stones in the mansion of 
 Kirke « ; a Phoenician goddess. There was a court 
 before the cave of the Cyclops ^ built with hewn stone ; 
 (and the Agore or market-place of Scherie* was con- 
 istructed in like manner; both scenes belonging to the 
 ? Outer or Phoenician world. 
 
 ' II. ii. 559- 
 
 "^ Apollodorus, B. ii. c. 2 ; Strabo, viii. p. 372 ; Paus. ii. 16. 4; 
 Pind. Fragra. 642. 
 '' II. xxi. 516. * II. xxi. 446. ' II. vi. 242, 243. 
 
 « Od. X. 211. ' Od. ix. 185. * Od. vi. 267. 
 
 K i 
 
13a JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 That the Phaiakes, the people of Scherie, now 
 Corfu, were Phoenicians, has been argued by Col. Murei 
 from their name and their pursuits. There are 
 abundance of confirmatory arguments; such as the 
 worship of Poseidon as their chief god ; the descent of 
 their royal house from him ^ : the return of Athene 
 from Scherie to Athens by Marathon 2, a place which 
 was out of her way, but which appears, from a com- 
 parison of the word with the Marathus of Phoenicia *, 
 to have been a Phoenician settlement. Now we 
 observe, that these Phaiakes prided themselves es- 
 pecially on their skill in games : in boxing, wrestling, 
 leaping, running * : and Odysseus gained immense 
 honour by his successful cast of the quoit *. The games 
 in Scherie are the only games regularly described in 
 Homer, besides those of the Twenty-third Iliad. They 
 do not include the horse or the chariot race, nor is the 
 horse mentioned anywhere in Scherie. But they ap- 
 pear to give us a clear indication that the use of these 
 competitive matches in feats of bodily strength was 
 derived from the Phoenicians. And if so, then, taken 
 in connection with the absence of the horse from 
 Scherie, they suggest a natural explanation of what 
 I for one have found a most difficult subject, namely, 
 the close connection between the horse and the god 
 Poseidon, by the following hypothesis. That the 
 institution of games, being Phoenician, was under 
 the god Poseidon. That the legend of the Centaurs, 
 and the immense preponderance of interest attaching 
 to the chariot-race in II. xxiii., warrant us in the 
 
 ' History of Greek Literature, i. 510. ^ Od. vi. 266. 
 
 ' Od. vii. 56. * Renan, Phenicie, pp. 20, 97. 
 
 ° Od. viii. 100-103, 158-164. 6 Od. viii. 235, seqq^ 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I33 
 
 belief that the Hellenic tribes, much given to horse-r 
 manship, introduced the horse into the institution of the ^ 
 Games. And lastly, that the horse, by his introduction . 
 into the Games, which (from II. xi.) we know to have . 
 taken place at least two generations before the Troi'ca, ; 
 came under the special care and patronage of Poseidon. 
 
 With respect to fine art, it seems impossible to 
 resist the clear and ample evidence of the Homeric text, 
 to the effect, first, that works well deserving that name 
 in all essentials existed in the time of Homer ^j and' 
 secondly, that they are exhibited to us as proceeding 
 from a Phoenician source. 
 
 Lastly, there is reason from Homer to suppose, that 
 not perhaps the vital spark of poetry, but yet the use 
 and art of music came to Greece from those whom he 
 calls Phoenicians. In the first place, it is only in the 
 palace of Alkinoos that Homer has presented us with 
 the Bard actually at work; not only as one regularly 
 installed in the household, but with his successive lays 
 given at length. In the palace of Odysseus, the Poet only 
 mentions, and that but once 2, the subject of the lay : in 
 the palaces of Menelaos and Nestor, which afforded ad- 
 miraBIe opportujii'ties, we do iiof hear of the Bard at all. 
 Again, when we enter the mythologic circle of the Phoe- 
 nicians, we have all the beings of the highest order, whom 
 it contains, engaged in music : the Sirens, who may be 
 called goddesses of the chant ; Calypso and Kirke, who 
 have no special connection with the art, but both of 
 whom are found singing in their respective abodes ^. 
 
 If these reasonings be well founded, it may be asked 
 
 1 See 'Hephaistos' and 'Art,' infra, Chap. VIII. sect, ix.; 
 and Chap. XIV. sect. ii. 
 ' Od. i. 327. ^ Od. V. 61 ; x. 221. 
 
134 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 what contributions were made by Pelasgians and 
 Hellenes to that marvellous aggregate which we know 
 as the Greek nation. The answer, I presume, would 
 be this. That the Pelasgian races brought into Greece 
 the pursuits of agriculture, and the habits of a settled 
 life. That the practice, or discipline (it v/as more than 
 a sport), of hunting, which had so powerful a hold on 
 the mind of Homer, and that a high political genius, 
 together with an extraordinary excellence in war, were 
 rather due to the masculine habits, both mental and 
 bodily, of the Hellenic tribes. But that the main 
 question is not the actual possession of this or that 
 accomplishment, of this or that institution; it is the 
 possession of the quality, in soul or body, which is 
 adapted first to receive the gift as into a genial bed, 
 and then so to develope its latent capabilities as to carry 
 them onwards, and upwards, to its perfection. Among 
 all the gifts of the great nations of modern Europe, how 
 many are there which we can affirm to be, in each case, 
 absolutely original i ? 
 
 But then follows the just demand of a sound criticism, 
 that for such gifts as it may seem that the East may 
 have conveyed to Greece at the time when its energies 
 were beginning to expand, we ought to be able to 
 point out an adequate personal medium, through which 
 the communication was effected. It would be much 
 to lay all this honour upon Minos, whose empire, what- 
 ever it was, had passed away, and the more enduring 
 fruits of whose political achievements do not seem, for 
 the time, to have reached beyond the bounds of Cretej 
 or upon Kadmos, whose influence, whatever it had been, 
 
 ^ It seems to be admitted that the very bagpipe of the High- 
 lander is a comparatively modern introduction. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. 135 
 
 certainly had not made the Thebes of the Troic period 
 an ' eye of Greece ' or a recognised centre of its 
 civilisation, as it ought to have done had he supplied 
 the channel through which, were so largely transmitted 
 by his mother-country the gifts of civilisation : not 
 to mention, that with respect to each of these person- 
 ages it is questioned whether they were real, or only 
 mythical. Minos, indeed, stands near the period of 
 the War. But Kadmos is more remote ; and I learn 
 from distinguished authority that his name signifies 
 simply one coming from the East. Either way, it may 
 justly be urged that a channel should be indicated for 
 those most fruitful communications, which I suppose to 
 have taken place. To this reasonable demand I pro- 
 pose to suggest a reply. 
 
 But here our path must be a little circuitous. In my 
 Studies on Homer I have endeavoured to point out, 
 that we have no warrant from the Poems for speaking 
 of an JEolic dialect of the Greek tongue, or of supposed 
 iEolians as the prevailing race of Greeks at the Troic 
 or the Homeric period. Nor is Homer merely silent 
 on the subject; for while he tells us nothing of the 
 existence of the .<Eolians as a tribe, he tells us of 
 Aiolid houses, and gives us to understand that from 
 this stock proceeded a considerable proportion of the 
 reigning families of Greece during and before his time. 
 From him we hear of Sisuphos reigning in Corinth, 
 descended from Aiolos: of the Neleids in Pulos, of 
 Pelias, of Aison, Pheres, Amuthaon, all similarly de- 
 scended : of Augeias reigning in fertile Elis, to whom 
 tradition gives a similar extraction. The question 
 arises, were these Aiolids Phoenician? 
 
 If they were, we have to add to them, first, KadmoS 
 
136 JUVENTUS MVNDI. ' [CHAP; 
 
 and Minos, already reckoned; then the great house of 
 the Actoridai, which is described as being descended 
 from Poseidon ; then Proitos, who made himself King 
 of the Argeioi; and, lastly, there is every reason to 
 suppose that Danaos was a Phoenician. That in the 
 later tradition he stands for an Egyptian is not to be 
 wondered at, when we consider how the two countries 
 melted into one another, in the view of the early 
 Greeks, like a concave line of bays upon a coast trend- 
 ing towards a distant horizon; and while Phoenician 
 vessels were the channel of communication, Phoenicia 
 itself was, before the time of the Troica, deeply charged 
 with Egyptian elements. M. Renan has found a dis- 
 trict in the neighbourhood of Tripoli called Dannie ^, or 
 Dyanniyeh. So in the old Irish histories we find that 
 the third recorded invasion of the island was effected 
 by the Tuath-de-Danaans, who are stated to have 
 been a Greek people 2. No doubt they are set down 
 as Greek, because of the connection established in 
 Homer between Greece and the Danaan name. But 
 we see at once, so far as the Irish tradition is con- 
 cerned, how much more appropriate it becomes, if the 
 name Danaan be of Phoenician extraction. Again : 
 Pausanias tells us^ that there stood at the reputed land- 
 ing-place of Danaos, on the Argive coast, a temple 
 of Poseidon Genesios, an association which at once 
 assigns to that personage a Phoenician origin. 
 
 I return, then, to the question of the Aiolids. And, 
 first, as to Troas. We have found signs that in Ilios, 
 Troy of the plain, the Phoenicians themselves, or the 
 
 ' Ph^nicie, p. 12 v 
 
 '^ The Irish before the Conquest, by M. C. Ferguson, p. 7. 
 
 ° ii. 16. 4. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. 137 
 
 Phoenician worship of Poseidon, had been cast out ; and 
 this ejection is probably represented in the poetic or 
 traditionary fiction, that the god Poseidon had become 
 bitterly hostile to the city of Priam. Not so in Dar- 
 dania ; for Poseidon specially protects ^Eneas, the heir 
 to that sovereignty, and rescues him, at the critical 
 moment, from the attack of Achilles'. This at once 
 betokens a relation between Poseidon and the Darda- 
 nian branch of the royal house of Troas. 
 
 Here history comes in to our aid. Pausanias^ and 
 others assure us that, in the historic period, there were 
 ^olians at a place called Assos in Troas, and that an 
 ^olian race held what was reputed to have been Troy. 
 And the general connection of ^olians with the wor- 
 ship of, Poseidon may, I believe, be taken as an uncon- 
 tested fact. 
 
 Everything combines to raise the presumption thus 
 obtained, about the Phoenicianism of the Aiolids, to 
 the rank of a rational conclusion. Take, for example, 
 the fact that Homer never mentions Aiolos himself in 
 conjunction with his Aiolids. Considering their illus- 
 trious position, this reticence demands observation; 
 especially as in almost every case Homer names the 
 person who stands at the head of one of his genealogies. 
 If Aiolos were a Greek, either born or naturalised, it 
 seems wholly inexplicable. But if Aiolos were an im- 
 migrant who never lost his foreign character, or if he 
 were the famous foreign sire or ancestor of men who 
 acquired sovereignties in Greece ; or, thirdly, if he were 
 only a mythical formation, representing the foreign 
 paternity of a group of distinguished men who had cast 
 their lot in that country, then nothing can be more in 
 
 ' II. XX. 318-340. ^ vi. 4. 5. 
 
138 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 keeping with the general method of the Poet than that, 
 just as he cuts the thread which connects the Pelopids 
 with Tantalos (and, in the preternatural order, the thread 
 which connects Demeter with Persephone), so he should 
 cut the thread which connects the Aiolids with Aiolos. 
 
 Again, observe the link supplied by horse-breeding, 
 and by the introduction of the horse into the Games. 
 Two generations before the Tro'ica, Angelas, a reputed 
 Aiolid, holds Games in Elis^, probably at what was 
 afterwards Olympia: and at these Games there were 
 chariot-races : and it is in direct connection with 
 Games that all which relates to horses is placed under 
 the sanction of Poseidon^, whom tradition so long con- 
 nected with the Olympian contests^. Eumelos, an 
 Aiolid, has the finest mortal horses of the army*- The 
 Trojans, who had -^olian relations, are famous for 
 their horses. Sisuphos, an Aiolid, reigns in Corinth* : 
 and this is one of the districts where Poseidon strives 
 against another deity for the sovereign worship*, and 
 obtains it as far as the low ground is concerned'. 
 
 If then Aiolos was foreign, and was connected with 
 Poseidon, he could hardly be other than Phoenician. 
 We turn then to those books of the Odyssey which 
 we have found to have been constructed out of Phoe- 
 nician materials. And here we meet him, exactly such 
 as we might have anticipated, in consonance with the 
 foregoing data. If Aiolids, settled in Greece, had 
 
 ^ II. xi. 699-702. 2 II. xxiii. 581-585. 
 
 ' Pindar, in the Olympic Odes. * II. ii. 763. 
 
 ° II. vi. 152. ' Find. Ol. xiii. 4. 
 
 ' For a large collection of particulars about Poseidon, see Ger- 
 hard, Ursprung, &c. des Poseidon, in the Berlin Transactions ; and 
 Preller, Gr. Mythologie, vol. i. p. 452. 
 
v.] _ THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. X39 
 
 brought the use of the horse into the Games, nothing 
 could be more natural than that Homer should mythi- 
 cally connect Aiolos with the horse : accordingly, even 
 in this foreign region, and upon this sea-girt isle, 
 Aiolos is the son of Hippotas^, a name of Greek ety- 
 mology. If the Aiolids were sea-borne to Greece, so 
 Aiolos dwells in a sea-island, and is the guardian of 
 the winds. If they were a large variety of houses from 
 one ancestor, either real or supposed, so we find him 
 supplied with six prolific pairs of children : brothers 
 and sisters, coupled together in a way which was alien 
 to Greek manners, but which we may, reasoning from 
 analogy, suppose to have been much more agreeable to 
 Phoenician customs and ideas. If the actual or ideal 
 person represented in Greece by the name of Aiolos 
 was popularly taken to be connected with the ruling 
 houses of Greece, and with Troy, then it is quite 
 natural that he should feel an interest in the Trojan 
 War. Accordingly, the Aiolos of the Odyssey inquires 
 minutely of Odysseus about both Troy and the Greeks ^ : 
 which, be it observed, neither Kirke nor Calypso does, 
 nor does any other of the foreign personages encoun- 
 tered by Odysseus in his tour. 
 
 I suppose, then, that the Aiolos of the Tenth Odyssey 
 is the ancestor, real or reputed, of the Aiolid houses 
 of Greece named in Homer ; and I remark with some 
 confidence, that if he is not this, he is a personage 
 wholly unaccountable and unintelligible. 
 
 This somewhat lengthened though inadequate state- 
 ment will, I hope, appear to be justified, when it is 
 remembered that the historical question, which under 
 the legendary veil invites investigation, is one of 
 
 ^ Od. X. 1-4. ^ Od. X-. 14-16. 
 
I40 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 extreme interest: it is the question of the amount, 
 the nature, and the channels of the earliest powerful 
 Semitic influence upon an Aryan or Japhetic people. 
 
 And this leads me to my concluding point in the 
 present argument. It may naturally be asked, is there 
 anything in the name Aiolos, which is a Greek name 
 and perhaps a mythical one, to account for its being 
 applied by Homer to Phoenician or Semitic families ? 
 This question has been considered by Dr. Hahn^, who. 
 offers his solution of it. He observes that, among 
 many nations, warriors have been tattooed, to make 
 them look terrible : and that a tattooed man might very 
 well be called Aiolos, or ' variegated.' He thinks, 
 therefore, that the name Aiolos, which ran, as we see, 
 wholly in the ruling class, meant a warrior. 
 
 Without denying the ingenuity of this hypothesis, 
 I ofiFer another: for I feel that Dr. Hahn's interpreta- 
 tion is scarcely applicable to the Greeks of Homer. 
 Among them we hear nothing whatever of tattooing; 
 nor is the name Aiolos, with its derivatives, particularly 
 attached to warriors ; nor have we reason to suppose 
 that the Phoenicians were in any manner superior to 
 Hellenes in war, however they may have acted as 
 teachers, or as forerunners, in arts and knowledge. 
 
 I lean to another explanation of the name, which 
 appears to me very simple and sufficient. I find it 
 in a fact stated incidentally by Professor Rawlinson^. 
 He tells us that, among the Persians, dresses were not 
 often patterned, but depended generally for their effect 
 on make and uniform colour only. And he adds, ' In 
 all these respects we observe a remarkable contrast 
 
 ' Hahn, Alb. Stud. p. 247. 
 
 " Ancient Monarchies, vol. iv. p. 326. 
 
v.] THE PH(EN1CIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I4I 
 
 'between the Aryan and the Semitic races, extreme 
 sim£lJ_citj^qharacterising the one, while the most ela- 
 borate ornamentation was affected by the other.' 
 
 If tliis were so, then nothing could be more natural 
 than that when a few prominent and conspicuous per- 
 sons from a Semitic country came to settle in Greece, 
 and especially when they held there a position and 
 attitude of superiority, they should bring with them the 
 customs and dress of their country, and that to them, 
 in respect of the style of their habiliments, the name of 
 Aiolos, meaning patterned or variegated, should attach. 
 
 Let our line of thought now enter upon a somewhat 
 wider field. 
 
 If an empire, connected with the Phoenician name, 
 had already weighed upon Greece within the memory 
 of man ; if Phoenicians, very probably officers of that 
 empire, had penetrated the country at a number of 
 points, and had usually been able, wherever they ap- 
 peared, to obtain the ruling power; we can have no 
 cause to wonder that Homer should have regarded 
 them as a great power in the past, even if to the 
 Greeks of his day they were chieHy known as mer- 
 chants or as freebooters. Hence we can be at no loss 
 to comprehend how it is that his epithets for them, 
 oloophrones, olophoia eidotes, agauoi, go much 
 beyond what was necessary to describe the astute man 
 of businesSj or even the daring kidnapper. 
 
 The detection, if it be a real one, of these powerful 
 Semitic influences, both in the Greece of Homer, and 
 as they had operated before his time, opens a new 
 perspective into the ancient history of the world. The 
 knowledge of this history has recently much advanced, 
 through research of many kinds in various quarters. 
 
143 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and especially through the interpretation of the Egyp- 
 tian hieroglyphics. Before this region of knowledge 
 was unbarred to us, the poems of Homer were justly 
 regarded, even by those who appreciated the evidences 
 for their unity of authorship, as might have been some 
 isle of Delos floating on the sea of time, without pos- 
 sessing root or anchor visible to human eye, and with- 
 out affording us any data whereby we might measure 
 the distance of the extraordinary phenomenon from the 
 continuous and solid ground, the true ifTreipos, or con- 
 tinent, of history. But now the case is altered. Men 
 of learning think themselves to have obtained means 
 of computation, whereby they can follow the annals of 
 Egypt, and, in a degree, of the countries related to it, 
 upwards, for thousands of years before the Advent, along 
 the stream of time. So far as I understand the matter, 
 modern Egyptology adopts in general the chronological 
 computations of the priest Manetho, as sufHciently 
 corroborated by the deciphered records of the country. 
 For myself, I do not understand by what certain crite- 
 rion Manetho could distinguish, at the period when 
 he wrote, between the contemporaneous and the suc- 
 cessive dynasties of the far olden time. It seems that 
 he attempted it, and in some cases refrained accord- 
 ingly from heaping together in series all the years of 
 all the recorded reigns. He may not have been very 
 far wrong : but how can we know that he was right ? 
 To me the constant changes ^ of the chief seat of 
 government, which are allowed to have taken place, 
 suggest the suspicion that there may be more of con- 
 temporary and less of successive power than is sup- 
 
 ^ Le Normant, Histoire Ancienne de I'Orient, Paris, 1868, vol. i. 
 p. 187. 
 
T.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I43 
 
 posed, and that the gross figures of the chronology may 
 be exaggerated. But I take them as very rough approxi- 
 mations to the truth, which doubtless lies, not beyond, 
 but within them. And, so viewing them, it appears to 
 me that the period perhaps has arrived when the Poems 
 of Homer may, for the first time, be regarded as be- 
 coming gradually susceptible of chronological handling, 
 and when attempts may not be hopeless to give them 
 their approximate if not exact place in relation to the 
 main chain of events, which marks for those ancient 
 times the central moyernent of the history^f majj. 
 
 And this with reference firstly to Phoenicia; se- 
 condly and principally to Egypt; which, as I have 
 shown, the Greeks of that early day could hardly have 
 the means of distinguishing from Phoenicia with regu- 
 larity or precision. 
 
 It is plain, from both the Poems, that, at the epoch 
 of the Troica, Sidon was in its vigour. The Sidonians 
 are mentioned apart from Phoinike, in the list of 
 the countries which Menelaos visited 1. Here, as we 
 find, were produced the noblest works of metallic art ^ ; 
 here the richly embroidered robes ^. From the king 
 of Sidon (who has the poetical name of Phaidimos) 
 Menelaos receives a noble gift*. And some of 
 Homer's Phoenician personages are also called Si- ■ 
 donian. 
 
 Now the period of the Sidonian supremacy closed, 
 as we are told, with the rasing of that city by the 
 Philistines in the year 1209 b.c.^ Then began the 
 supremacy of, Tyre; a city of which we have no indi- 
 cation throughout the poems, unless we may be thought 
 
 ^ Od. iv. 84. ^ Od. iv. 618. ^ II. vi. 290. 
 
 * Od. iv. 617 ; XV. 117. ° Le Normant, vol. ii. p. 286. 
 
144 yuvENtvs MUNDi. [chap. 
 
 to find one in the name of Turo ^, the grandmother of 
 Nestor. From many signs it appears that Turo must 
 liave been Phoenician. But Homer tells nothing, 
 knows nothing, of a Tyrian. It seems pretty clear, 
 then, that the epoch of the War, and probably of the 
 Poems, must have been antecedent to the fall of Sidon, 
 reputed to have taken place in 1309 B.C. I do not here 
 attempt to enter into the complicated questions with 
 reference to the succession, juxtaposition, and inter- 
 mixture of races in Phoenicia, where all the three great 
 families of Noachian man seem to come in turn upon 
 the stage ; but I simply treat their influence as a Se- 
 mitic influence, on the evidence of their Semitic tongue, 
 and in conformity I believe with the general judgment 
 of persons entitled to authority. 
 
 Now with respect to Egypt. Ample proof is aflbrded 
 by the verse of Homer that the Greeks of the Troic 
 period had for their proper national name the name of 
 Achaians. We also see very clearly that it had come 
 into vogue but one or two generations before the 
 Troica. We know that it lost its hold as a national 
 name at, if not before, the conquest of the Heracleidai, 
 two or three generations later. 
 
 At the end of the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty 2, 
 and with the reputed date of the fourteenth century 
 before Christ, under Merephtah, successor of Rham- 
 ses II or Sesostris, it appears from the inscriptions that 
 the people of Libya and of the North, who had formerly 
 succumbed to the Egyptian power, effected an invasion 
 of that country in return. In this invasion participated, 
 among others, Achaians of the Peloponnesos, and La- 
 konians. They made great havock in the country j 
 
 • ' OdjxK 23s. '^ Le Normant, ii. 286.' 
 
V.j THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I45 
 
 but a great battle was fought, in which they were 
 entirely defeated, and their enterprise was broken up. 
 
 It seems in a high degree probable, that this invasion 
 occurred during the period which I have described as 
 defining the prevalence of the Achaian name, and 
 the duration of the supremacy of that noble race of 
 Greeks. 
 
 It is much more likely that the effort was made 
 before the War of Troy, than after it ; for the condition 
 of Greece was then less impaired by exhaustion and by 
 internal revolutions. We have no means of saying 
 whether, so far as Greece was concerned, it was a 
 national, or only a local effort. It is probable that 
 Crete may have been its base : that island was nearest 
 to Egypt ; it had a strong Phoenician element, and pro- 
 bably a considerable marine ; and in one of the fictions 
 of the pseud-OdysseuSj when representing himself as a 
 Cretan of high rank, he declares that he undertook a 
 voyage to Egypt i, an effort in navigation of which we 
 hear in no other quarter. 
 
 We need feel no surprise at the silence of Homer 
 with respect to this daring enterprise. The Poet, 
 frequent and even copious in his allusions to the minor 
 legends of his country, seems almost jealous of the 
 greater ones. The ship Argo is mentioned but once 
 in the Poems ^ ; the allusions to the war of Thebes are 
 slight. But if little careful to mix with his own great 
 theme the records of what he might deem rival histories, 
 in a case like this invasion, another and more powerful 
 order of motives would come into play. He sang for 
 the glory of Greece ; and as on this occasion, sharing 
 the disastrous fate of their Libyan allies, his country- 
 
 ^ Od. xiv. 246. ^ Od. xii. 70. 
 
146 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 men were utterly worsted by the foreigner, it was no 
 fit subject for his minstrelsy. Yet it is very remarkable 
 that in the fictitious narrative just made, the expedition 
 takes the form of an invasion. Great havock at first 
 takes place ^. But the Egyptians are roused ; a battle is 
 fought ; the invaders are slain or taken j a pretty exact 
 counterpart, although in miniature, of the history of 
 the actual invasion, as it appears in the Egyptian 
 records-. 
 
 Under Thouthmes IIP, of what is termed the 
 eighteenth dynasty, and at a date taken to be about 
 J 600 B.C., the military power of Egypt reached its 
 zenith. The Empire extended east and northwards 
 over Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and even into 
 Armenia. This military dominion was so constructed 
 as to recognise the local governments, under the su- 
 zerainty of the Pharaohs. Among the supports of its 
 power was a fleet", which established its supremacy 
 in the Mediterranean waters. There can be little 
 doubt that this fleet was, both in its men and material, 
 Phoenician. An inscription at Karnak^ shows that it 
 conquered Crete, the islands of the Archipelago, and 
 portions of the coast, at least of Greece and Asia 
 Minor. It penetrated into the Black Sea ; and it acted 
 on the populations of the Libyan coast. Centuries 
 appear to have passed away before this empire, pro- 
 bably not too stringent in its action, crumbled into 
 fragments. But it subsisted amid much vicissitude. 
 In 1463 B.C. the nineteenth dynasty is reckon^ to 
 commence. It seems doubtful whether the maritime 
 supremacy, wliich there was no native marine abie to 
 
 ' Oa. xiv. »63. 2 Le Normant, ii. 239. 
 
 ' Le Normant, ii. 246. * lb. p. 247. 
 
v.] THE PHCENICIANS AND THE EGYPTIANS. I47 
 
 maintain, had not already dwindled to- nothing. The 
 second monarcli of this dynasty, S:ti I, was a. great 
 warrior J but he made no effort to retrieve the do- 
 minion of the sea. 
 
 Here I may venture conjecturally on the following ) 
 observations. The Egyptian history of the maritime.' 
 conquests of Thouthmes III, if we are allowed the 
 almost inevitable assumption that the nautical instru- 
 ment for creating the supremacy was Phcenician i, , 
 reads like an account in other words of what Tliucy- 
 dides has slightly but firmly sketched from general 
 tradition, and what we are enabled to gather with a 
 considerable amount of proof from Horner^ respecting /' 
 the empire of Minos in Crete, over the- Archi-pelago, 
 and on the continent o-f Greece. 
 
 But the empire by sea soon vanished; while the 
 empire by land, extending it appears into Asia Minor, 
 continued^ though in varying phases,, to subsist. There 
 is at least one indication gathered from flomer and 
 the general tradition jointly, which would lead to the 
 conclusion that the War of Troy took place after the 
 fall of the first, but before the disappearance of the 
 second, portion of the Egyptian power. The Poems 
 are altogether opposed to any idea that a maritime 
 Egyptian Empire still existed. Crete, apparently its 
 old head-quarter, was not at the Troic period the 
 centre of prevailing power that it had been before. 
 But Memnon was among, the allies of Troy ^ j and all 
 tradition reports that Memnon was Egyptian. It may 
 perhaps be worth aoting, that the Memnon of Homer 
 
 ^ In much. Pater times we find Phcenfcia performing much the 
 same office for the Persian ting. Herod, ii. 19 ; vii. 44. 
 ^ Od. xi. 522. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 is gifted with the highest personal beauty, and that 
 this honour would not have been awarded by the 
 Poet, who above all things admired the lighter hair 
 and complexion, to the swarthy, nay tawny, natives 
 of the Egypt of our geography. Is it not also highly 
 improbable that Priam, whose list of allies in the 
 Catalogue stops at Lycia and Caria, should have been 
 able to draw an auxiliary force from so great a dis- 
 tance ? But if the political Egypt, the Egyptian supre- 
 macy or empire of that day, reached as far as Armenia 
 or Asia Minor, the difficulty disappears at once ; from 
 such a region Memnon might have come, and the 
 account of Homer, together with the later tradition, 
 becomes natural and intelligible. 
 
 In the year 13 11 b.c.^ which is considered as a date 
 astronomically ascertained 1, Rhamses III, the last 
 great military monarch of Egypt, came to the throne. 
 Mesopotamia, however, was under Egyptian rule as 
 late as 1150 b.c. 
 
 The time may be at hand, when, from further inves- 
 tigations, it will be possible to define with greater 
 precision those periods of the Egyptian chronology 
 to which the Homeric Poems, and their subject, thus 
 appear to be related. 
 
 In the meantime it may reasonably be pointed out ^ 
 that the discoveries already made tend to show that 
 those inquirers have not been wrong, who have assigned 
 the greatest measure of antiquity, and of historical 
 character, to the works of Homer. 
 
 ^ Le Normant, p. 200. 2 ib. p. 302. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ON THE TITLE 'ANAX ANDRON. 
 
 There is a substantial distinction between titles, and 
 epithets descriptive of station or office. Titles are in 
 effect that class of descriptions which have been gra- 
 dually accepted by society and established in common 
 usage for the purpose of indicating a certain rank or 
 function, just as a given weight and form of the pre- 
 cious metals is appointed by law or custom to indicate 
 a certain value. In both cases the symbol, becoming 
 familiar to the minds of all, is accepted in common use 
 without examination. 
 
 By titles, and also by epithets, I understand, for the 
 present purpose, either adjectives or substantives, as the 
 case may be. 
 
 Epithets, or descriptive phrases, may by degrees grow 
 into titles : and it is probable that all titles, properly so 
 called (I do not now speak of those denoting relation- 
 ship), may begin in descriptive phrases. 
 
 One sign of a title is, that it can either be combined 
 with the name of the person to whom it belongs, or 
 substituted for it. 
 
 In Homer, the substantives hegemones, aristees, 
 
150 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and the adjectives sJceptouchoi (of kings), theioi (of 
 bards), are epithets or descriptive phrases. Again, 
 with respect to individ,uals, echephron (for Penelope), 
 pepnumenos (for Telemachos), polumetis (for Odys- 
 seus), are descriptive phrases. But Basileus, Basileia, 
 for king and queeri, are titles. Anax sometimes means 
 ruler or lord, somewhat vaguely, as a title ; sometimes 
 noble, as a class ; sometimes lord, as a master or pro- 
 prietor, for example, of slaves or animals. It differs from 
 Basileus in these particulars: first, that it is more 
 rarely used as a title; secondly, that, while both in- 
 dicate a superiority, the idea conveyed by anax leans 
 to ownership and absolute command, while the Basi- 
 leus is a ruler not an owner, a ruler of freemen or- 
 ganised under the social bond, and limited by civil right 
 which he is himself bound to observe. 
 
 As a designation of dignity, Basileus is the higher, 
 as well as the more definite. The word nearest to it 
 is koiranos j but this has hardly, in Homer, settled 
 down into a title. The ruling ofEce is also more 
 vaguely indicated by the expressions KpeCiov, and TTOLfiriu 
 \a&v, shepherd of the people. Basileus is well ren- 
 dered by 'king:' anax by 'lord,' a word at once 
 wider, more absolute, and less elevated in the sense 
 it conveys. 
 
 But we find in Homer the remarkable phrase anax 
 andron, lord of men; and this is used, not descriptively, 
 but, beyond all question, as a title. Now, as the word 
 anax has no reference to reciprocal rights and duties^ 
 it is very remarkable that we should find it thus used 
 with regard to relations towards men, and evidently 
 freemen, in a title enjoyed by certain individuals. The 
 physiognomy of the phrase, so to speak, is not that of 
 
TI.] ON THE TITLE 'ANAX ANDRON.' I51 
 
 Hellenic society; for Hellenic society was already 
 founded in rights. It suggests therefore a history of 
 its own, and a character either foreign, or archaic, or 
 both. 
 
 The facts relating to the use of this phrase are as 
 follows : — 
 
 It is applied to Agamemnon forty-four times in the 
 Iliad, and twice in the Qdyssey. 
 It is also applied to 
 iEneas, U. v. 311, Augeias, 11. xi. 700, 739. 
 
 Euphetes, II. xv. 532. Eumelos, II. xxiii. 288. 
 Anchises, II. v. a68. 
 
 Thus then anax andron is a stock or staple phrase 
 for Agamemnon. Yet it is applied to five other per- 
 sons, all of them sovereigns ; but none of them at all 
 approaching Agamemnon in point either of personal 
 eminence, or of power. It is not therefore on account 
 of his personal eminence or of his power that the title 
 is bestowed on Agamemnon. 
 
 But again. While it is given thus frequently to Aga- 
 memnon, it is given but once to four of the other five, 
 and but twice to Augeias. One of these personages, 
 Euphetes, is named but once in the Poems ^, and then 
 he is named with the title. Augeias (except once in a 
 patronymic) is only mentioned twice ^^ in the legend 
 of the Eleventh Iliad ; and twice with the title. Eu- 
 melos has the title once, out of five passages in which 
 he is named. Anchises once only, out of thirteen. But 
 ^neas is very frequently named in the Poem, and yet 
 never with the title except once. He appears to hold 
 it as heir-apparent to his father's throne ; and his 
 
 ' II. XV. 532. ^ II. xi. 700, 738. 
 
152 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 possession of it. marks its hereditary character under 
 such circumstances. 
 
 It is to be noticed, that all the six names to which 
 Homer annexes the title are virtually of the same 
 metrical value in the place of the verse where it is 
 almost invariably so annexed. The same observation 
 applies to the word Atreides joined with it in II. i. 8. 
 At first sight, then, it might appear that metrical con- 
 venience had prompted the use of the phrase. But 
 then, 
 
 1. Two of the six names, in their simpler forms, 
 Aineas and Augeas, are modified into Aineias and 
 Augeias in order to fall in with the title. 
 
 2. It cannot be metrical convenience which gives it 
 so very frequently to Agamemnon, and so rarely to the 
 others. 
 
 3. There are at least from thirty to forty names of 
 equivalent metrical value in the Poems, including 
 many princes, heroes, and notable persons, which never 
 receive the title. Among these are, of the living, 
 Patroclos, Sarpedon, Antenor, Diomedes, Agapenor, 
 Menelaos, Aigisthos ^ and of the dead, Amphion, Hera- 
 cles, Eurustheus, Adrestos, Rhadamanthos, Meleagros. 
 
 Homer never inflects the title, giving it always in 
 the nominative. He never severs the phrase by tmesis, 
 except once only, through inserting tlie copulative par- 
 ticle re. Once, in II. i. 7, it lies between the second 
 and fourth foot of the verse ; in every other case it is 
 found between the third and fifth. Some of these par- 
 ticulars may be held, according to the laws of Homeric 
 use, to add dignity to the title. In illustration of this 
 proposition, I will observe that, conversely, in the few 
 instances where the Poet introduces himself into the 
 
VI.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 153 
 
 verse, he never once uses the nominative. Again, 
 Enosicthon is used for Poseidon forty times ; thirty- 
 nine of them in the nominative. Diogenes is found 
 in the nominative and vocative only. The mascuHne 
 kudistos is used sixteen times, all in the vocative. 
 Eurucreion twelve times, only in the nominative. 
 
 The phrase anax andron entirely disappears from 
 use after Homer. 
 
 Let us now look to particulars connected with the 
 application of the phrase to each of the six names 
 severally, in order to discover the thread, if there be 
 one, on which in common all are hung. 
 
 I. Agamemnon. 
 
 The sovereign of all the Greeks is nowhere described 
 by personal epithets of pointed characteristic force. 
 Eight times he is called by the epithet dios, which 
 indicates some specialty of excellence, and which was 
 fairly due to his prominence whether among rulers or 
 among warriors. Generally he is marked either by the 
 patronymic, which is simply historical, or by what may 
 be called official epithets, creion, eurucreion, poi- 
 men laon. But the staple or stock phrase is anax 
 andron. 
 
 I have already given a reason why this cannot be on 
 account of his great power and sway. Again, the pas- 
 sages which most forcibly describe these are the lines 
 about the Sceptre in II. ii. 100-108, and that which gives 
 him his place in the Catalogue, II. ii. 576-580. In 
 these he is not called anax andron, but creion. In 
 two other passages of the Poem he is personally glori- 
 fied : as to his appearance in II. ii. 477-483, and as to 
 his arming in II. xi. 15-46. In neither of these is he 
 
154 yUVENTUS MUNDI. . [cHAP. 
 
 anax andron. Neither corporal distinctions, then, nor 
 official position thus far appear to supply a basis for 
 the phrase. Yet the very emphatic use of it after the 
 proper name in the prefatory passage of the Poem, 
 which contains so much, as well as its frequent reitera- 
 tion, prove its general dignity and importance. Again, 
 therefore, it seems likely that we are to look somewhere 
 in the past for the secret of its meaning. 
 
 Unfortunately, in the case of this great family of the 
 Pelopidai, the past at a certain point, and that too one 
 soon reached, becomes obscure. 
 
 All that Homer desires or intends us to know of the 
 extraction of Agamemnon is contained in the famous 
 and very significant passage of the Sceptre, II. ii. roi- 
 io8. Here we are informed that 
 
 I. Hephaistos fashioned it. 
 
 3. He gave it to Zeus. 
 
 3. Zeus gave it over to Hermes Diactoros, the Agent, 
 or Go-between ; or Ambassador. 
 
 4. Hermes gave it to Pelops ' the driver of horses.' 
 
 5. Pelops gave it to Atreus, shepherd of the people 
 
 5. Atreus dying left it (lAiwe) ; it remained or passed 
 over to Thuestes, rich in flocks. 
 
 7. From Thuestes in like manner it was left to 
 Agamemnon (Kelire). 
 
 8. It conveyed suzerainty (at the least) over all Greece 
 and its numerous islands. 
 
 The first question is, what are we to say to the theo- 
 techny or preternatural machinery here introduced? 
 If we are to give it an ethnological meaning, the names 
 of Hephaistos and of Hermes give it a colour foreign, 
 and such as I have called Phoenician. Little stress 
 
VI.} ON THE TITLE 'ANAX ANDRON.' 155 
 
 could be placed upon this, if it were an isolated phe- 
 nomenon. But the sphere of the art of Hephaistos, and 
 of the general activity of Hermes, lies so completely 
 beyond the limits of Greece, that I cannot but attach 
 weight to their names as indicating that^ before Pelops, 
 the family had been foreign, and probably Asiatic. The 
 passage also demonstrates that the starting-point of the 
 house is one at which it had attained to princely rank. 
 
 Next, the epithet given to Pelops tends to support 
 the tradition, which places him in relations with the 
 Olympian Games, and with the god Poseidon. 
 
 Further ^ Atreus first appears in the Pelopid time as 
 ' shepherd of the (or a) people.' There is something in 
 this phrase which seems to point him dUt as the first head, 
 in the Pelopid line, of a settled and consolidated Greek 
 sovereignty. The same inference may be drawn from 
 the fact that his name supplies the standing patronymic ; 
 as Neleus supplies it to Nestor. There is a'so some 
 more direct evidence. Heracles may be reckoned as 
 living one generation and a half before the War, since 
 he has in it both a son and grandsons ; and Eun.istheus, 
 who was his contemporary, reigned in Achaic Argos, 
 which afterwards became the seat of the Pelopid power. 
 There seems to be only room, therefore, in the natural 
 course, for one generation of sovereigns in Achaic Argos 
 after Eurustheus and before Agamemnon. 
 
 To this generation probably belong both Atreus and 
 Thuestes, the father of Aigisthos. In the change of 
 phrase from bS>Ke, 'gave/ to eKnre and KeTia, Homer may 
 seem to glance at a departure from the common line of 
 direct succession, and a return to it. Thuestes, then, 
 not being in that line (or, if we were to suppose him in 
 it, being in it only as the brother of Agamemnon), we 
 
I5'5 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAr. 
 
 have but two generations of ancestry, and but one of 
 established sovereignty, given for the house of Agamem- 
 non ; Pelops having probably founded the power of the 
 house, but not placed it in its fixed seat, or obtained 
 for it the full measure of acknowledgment and positive 
 authority. 
 
 We see plainly, from this circumstantial account of 
 the derivation of the Sceptre, that the Pelopids did not 
 simply subvert, or succeed to, a prior dynasty ; but that 
 they held a new dominion, legitimated, in poetic phrase, 
 by the gifb of Zeus. And we know, from the com- 
 parison of dates and particulars already made, that this 
 was the great Achaian dynasty, having the old Argeian 
 dominion for its centre, but reaching much beyond its 
 bounds, with an undefined though acknowledged supre- 
 macy over Greece and its whole coronet of islands. 
 
 The joint and simultaneous rise of the Achaian race, 
 and of the house of Pelops, is well and clearly founded 
 in the facts of the text : which, however, carries us but 
 little farther. Tradition asserts that Pelops was the 
 son of Tantalos, and Tantalos the king of a race of 
 Phruges. Homer introduces him to us in the Under- 
 world, together with a variety of personages, all of 
 whom have relations, in one form or other, with Greece. 
 Placing him among such persons, he still conforms to 
 his rule by not naming him in the passage of the 
 Sceptre; since he never, on any occasion, deduces a 
 Greek dynasty from a confessedly foreign ancestor. 
 
 The nature of his punishment, pointing to some form 
 of greed as his offence, is also well assorted with the 
 tradition which represents him as the last holder of 
 his inherited power, and his son as an immigrant in a 
 foreign land. 
 
VI.] ON THE TITLE ^ANAX ANDRON.' 157 
 
 We have no means "of determining, from the Poems, 
 whether Tantalos was reputed to be of divine descent ; 
 but it is far from improbable, since most of those 
 among whom he appears in the Odyssey were so de- 
 scended. 
 
 Post-Homeric tradition malces Niobe the daughter of 
 Tantalos. The tradition of Niobe herself is recited 
 by Achilles ^, and from this we may infer, first, her dig- 
 nity and fame ; next, her having relations with Greece. 
 The theotechny, too, of the tradition exhibits her as 
 one of the great of the earth; and the term laous^, 
 applied to those who were vicariously punished for her 
 offence, evidently means her subjects. Very possibly, 
 the epithet tjuko/hoSj commending the beauty of her hair, 
 may indicate that the Poet regarded her as a Greek, 
 either born or naturalised. 
 
 Homer places the mourning Niobe on Mount Sipu- 
 los, near the Acheloos; and Pausanias found the re- 
 puted tomb of Pelops on the summit of the hill. The 
 Phruges of Tantalos are reputed to have been a Thra- 
 cian people 2. Their name* appears even in Attica; 
 and a harbour in Elis was called after Tantalos '. 
 
 Pelops is commonly said to have gained the hand of 
 Hippodameia, and the throne of Elis, by success in 
 the chariot-race. Local traces of him remained. He 
 was worshipped in a sanctuary hard by the temple of 
 Zeus Olympios^ ; and revered there among heroes, says 
 Pausanias, as Zeus was among gods. He is the reputed 
 founder or restorer of the Games who raised them to 
 their historic celebrity. Another tradition brings him 
 
 ^ II. xxiv. 603. '^ II. xxiv. 611. 
 
 ^ Strabo, xii. p. 579 ; xiv. p. 680. * Thuc. ii. 22. 
 
 " Paus. V. xiii. 1-4. ^ Paus. V. xiii. 5. 
 
158 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 from Olenos into Elis ; no improbable indication of his 
 route from the north. Nine islands oflF the coast of 
 Methana were called the islands of Pelops in the time 
 of Pausanias'j and we have already noticed in that 
 quarter traces of the Achaian name. 
 
 That the Achaians were Hellenes, and that they 
 rise to pre-eminence with the Pelopids, are circum- 
 stances which lead us to look for further traces of the 
 connection. Now Strabo^ seems to attach a great 
 value to a tradition which he repeats, that the Achaians 
 of Phthiotis came with Pelops into the Peloponnesos, oc- 
 cupied Laconia, and gave it the name of Achaic Argos ; 
 and subsequently, when the Achaians were driven out 
 of Laconia, they drove out an Ionian race from Aigialos, 
 and gave their name to that region. This account 
 of the journey of the race, and of Pelops, is in accord- 
 ance with the traces we have found in Homer and else- 
 where of the passage of the family of Pelops towards 
 the south, and with the emergence of the dynasty of 
 Atreus. It is also in marked accordance with the em- 
 phatic application of the Achaian name to the inhabi- 
 tants of Phthie, and with the prominence that the Poet 
 gives to that district in the War, through its Myrmidon 
 soldiery and its illustrious chief, who are thus placed in 
 near relations with Agamemnon and his adherents. 
 Although we have found in many places vestiges of the 
 local use of the Achaian name, this is one of only two 
 where it is expressly and directly assigned to the in- 
 habitants of a district as such. The other is in Crete ; 
 and there no such great importance attaches to the 
 statement, which exhibits them in conjunction with 
 Dorians and other races. 
 
 ' ii. 34- * Bk. via. 5, p. 363. 
 
YI.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON'. 1 ^g 
 
 History at this point comes in to our aid. Down to 
 the late era of Polybius, the connection of the Achaian 
 name with Phthie still subsisted. There were always 
 Achaians of Plithiotis ; and in the year 205 B.C. Quin- 
 tius, the Roman general, recognised the Achaians, upon 
 inquiry, as a Thessalian race^. 
 
 And the close relation of this race to the Pelopids 
 is in no respect more clear than in this, that as they 
 rose, so they fell, with that particular dynasty. In the 
 post-Homeric literature, all of which follows the Dorian 
 conquest, the Achaian name has ceased to be a current 
 designation for the Greeks. 
 
 We are not entitled, however, to carry the connec- 
 tion backwards in time beyond Pelops. We may reckon 
 with confidence that, if Tantalos had been recognised 
 as a Greek, he would have been named by Homer in 
 the line of the ancestry of Agamemnon. 
 
 Yet not even the Heracleid victors in the struggle 
 could afford to let slip the repute and credit of the 
 Achaian sovereignty. So although Tisamenos, their 
 representative in blood, had been expelled, and had 
 betaken himself with his followers to Aigialos, his tomb 
 in aftertimes was shown at Sparta 5 and hard by it the 
 feast of Pheiditia was kept: with an explanatory tra- 
 dition that their fathers, admonished by an oracle, had 
 fetched tlie remains of the last Pelopid sovereign from 
 their home at Helike, in Achaia. On the other band, 
 the Achaians had now set up a legendary ancestor, 
 Achaios by name, whose image they professed to ex- 
 hibit; and along with it they cherished a tradition, 
 that the family of Tisamenos had continued to reigii 
 among them down to the time of Ogugos, in the third 
 ^ Polyb. xviii. 30.-37* 
 
l6o JTJVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 century before Christ, when their league was formed 
 upon the basis of democratic institutions. In neither 
 quarter do we see any such honour paid to the yet older 
 dynasty of Danaos or of Perseus. All this seems to en- 
 hance the dignity of this Achaian sovereignty, to which 
 the title of anax andron was attached, as if it were 
 possessed of some peculiar attribute which it had not 
 received, and which it did not transmit. 
 
 We have now examined the proper import of the 
 phrase, and its use in the case of Agamemnon. We 
 have found that its groundwork does not lie either in 
 his personal qualities or in his position as general-in- 
 chief or as king. It appears to point backwards to a 
 state of things anterior to the constitution of Achaian 
 society J which, as we find it in Homer, though imma- 
 ture in its forms of administration, was profoundly 
 penetrated with a political spirit, and had completely 
 possessed itself of the substance of civil right, though 
 not in the form of law. It suggests, then, a chieftaincy 
 or hereditary superiority, older than the settlement of 
 the family in its present form of power, and, whether 
 founded in blood or otherwise, having reference to an 
 origin in time and place beyond the limit of Greek 
 history, even in that wide sense of the phrase in which 
 we apply it to the chronicles of Homer. 
 
 Let us now see what further lights can be supplied 
 from the cases of the five personages who share this 
 title with Agamepinon. 
 
 II. Anchises, and III. ^neas. 
 
 If the strong sense of nationality in Homer has led 
 
 him everywhere to keep back from his hearers what he 
 
 may have known or heard of a foreign origin for any 
 
 Greek race or family, it seems plain that least of all 
 
YI.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' l6l 
 
 would he be disposed to lift the veil in the case of a 
 people whom the Greeks had conquered, and whose 
 great chieftains especially he exhibits throughout in 
 marked though skilfully softened and disguised in- 
 feriority. 
 
 As the Hello i are first introduced to us in the 
 mountains above Thessaly, so the Dardanians appear 
 in the recesses of Ida, above the Ilian plain. Dardanos 
 is expressly declared to be the son of Zeus; as Aga- 
 memnon may probably have been his reputed descend- 
 ant. On the one side we have Zeus, with the Helloi 
 for his prophets: on the other, Zeus of Ida, Zeus 
 Idaios. The term anax andron applied to a father 
 and his son, both living, shows the derivative and more 
 than hereditary character of the title, and supports the 
 hypothesis that it springs from some remote fountain- 
 head. But why is it that, given both to Anchises and 
 ^neas, it is not given to Priam or to any of his family ? 
 Here there is opened to us a curious field of inquiry. 
 
 Certain facts are on the face of the Poems. 
 
 Priam ^ had, before the war, been a potentate, ex- 
 celling all in that vicinity. Besides the Allies, and 
 besides his own troops under the command of Hector, 
 who are described in terms somewhat like those applied 
 to the troops of Agamemnon in the Greek army, the 
 Dardanians appear as a separate contingent ; and there 
 are three other military contingents 2, one certainly, but 
 perhaps all, included under the name of Troes, forming 
 the third, fourth, and fifth divisions of the army. The 
 King of Troy, then, probably held a position less 
 powerfiil indeed, yet resembling that of Agamemnon 
 
 ' II. XXV. 543-546. ^ II. ii. 224-239. 
 
 M 
 
i6a yuvENTVs mundi. [chap. 
 
 in having, besides his immediate subjects, various 
 princes under his suzerainty. 
 
 There v/as at Troy an Union or Chamber of brjixoye- 
 poi/resS which occupied the same relative place as the 
 ^ovXrj or Council among the Greeks. It was composed 
 of royal and "princely persons ; yet Anchises appears 
 neither in this body, nor anywhere upon the scene of 
 the poem. It is not directly stated that he was alive j 
 yet it seems to be assumed 2. If he lived, his absence 
 from the Council is remarkable, as his dominions were 
 engaged in the war, and ^neas, before he came to 
 Troy, had only been rescued by Poseidon from the 
 hands of Achilles^. This prince is never spoken of as 
 in possession of his inheritance. 
 
 The sovereignty held by Anchises was the older of 
 the twoj for Dardania was built by Dardanos*, Troy 
 apparently by his grandson Tros, or his great-grandson 
 Ilos. Priam was the great-grandson of Tros through 
 Ilos and Laomedon, Anchises through Assaracos. and 
 Capus. We cannot judge with certainty from this 
 genealogy, the longest and most detailed in the Poems, 
 whether the branch of Ilos or that of Assaracos was the 
 younger. But the presumption arising out of his re- 
 moval from the original seat into the plain seems to be 
 against Ilos. It is true he is named before Assaracos : 
 but in II. vi. 76 we have ^neas named before Hector 
 by Helenos ^ and here likewise he gives precedence to 
 his own birth. Again, ^neas takes no part in the 
 councils of Hector ; and his personal qualities are very 
 faintly marked. Yet, like Hector, he is honoured as a 
 
 " II. iii. 146-148. 2 II. XX. 240. 
 
 ' II. XX, 90-93; 128-131. * II. XX. 215-240. 
 
TI.J ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 163 
 
 god^; and the special protection given him by Posei- 
 don marks him as a most important personage. His 
 name is combined with that of Hector^ in a way which 
 almost implies a parity of military command. More- 
 over, there is jealousy between him and the house of 
 King Priam. He hangs on the outskirt of the battle 2, 
 and cherishes resentment, because he does not receive 
 due honour from the monarch. Yet the character of 
 Priam was genial and kindly. Again, ^Eneas is taunted 
 by Achilles* with entertaining the hope of succeeding to 
 the throne of Troy. In answer to this taunt, he utters 
 no contradiction of it, but simply gives his genealogy. 
 This seems very like an assertion of his title, which, 
 if it existed, could only rest on seniority. 
 
 iEneas does not thwart Hector in counsel like Polu- 
 damas: so that there could be no umbrage taken on 
 that ground. 
 
 Zeus had presented Tros with certain horses, in com- 
 pensation for the loss of Ganymede. These horses re- 
 mained with Laomedon in the plain. But Anchises'^ 
 brought his mares to them surreptitiously, and got pos- 
 session of the breed. And it is here that this prince is 
 called anax andron, as though to say, in virtue of his 
 being the lineal representative of the elder branch, he 
 thus asserted his claim to the use of a gift which had 
 been presented to Tros the common ancestor. 
 
 I have said, that the • import of this title seems to 
 carry it back to a period anterior to the political or- 
 ganisation of society which we find in Greece. Are we 
 then to suppose, that it also came into the family of 
 
 ' II. xi. 53 ; cf. V. 467. 2 II. vi. 75-77- ' H- x. 439. 
 
 * II. XX. 179-183. ° II. V. 268. 
 
 M 3 
 
164 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Dardanos before his settlement on Mount Ida ? I reply 
 that first there is not the same cogency of reason for 
 supposing it : for the relation of the Asiatic king to his 
 people was far more accordant than that of the Greek 
 to the idea implied in anax andron. But neither 
 need it be rejected on the ground that Dardanos is the 
 son of Zeus. For, in these remote ascriptions of Divine 
 origin^ to royal houses, possibly little more in substance 
 is intended than is less pointedly conveyed in the pecu- 
 liar and exclusive ascription to Kings of the epithets 
 Diogenes, Zeus-born, and Diotrephes, Zeus-nurtured. 
 Certainly thpy are to be distinguished from cases of 
 nearer mythological parentage j and they can hardly 
 mean more than something of special dignity as among 
 kingly houses, or else a simple attribute of the class. 
 But in truth the case of Dardanos and his family will, 
 if I mistake not, be found to fall in with the general 
 course of the argument. 
 
 The use of this title is a remarkable sign of affinity 
 between the Trojans and the Greeks : but here is not 
 the place most convenient for examining into the 
 general signs of that affinity. 
 
 We have seen that, in the case of Anchises, the title 
 anax andron is employed as if to justify him in an 
 act of aggression in virtue of this dignity. Again, in 
 the case of iEneas, we are told at a great crisis, ' and 
 now would have perished utterly the anax andron 
 ^neas, had not Aphrodite perceived his plight 2.' As if 
 to say, ' great though he was, it would have been all 
 over with him.' There will be occasion to notice in 
 other cases, how pointedly this phrase is used in con- 
 Mi. xx. 215. Ml. V. 311. 
 
VI.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 165 
 
 nection with some striking act or crisis, and by no 
 means as an otiose or merely ornamental epithet. 
 
 IV. AUGEIAS. 
 
 The Elian contingent is sent to the War under four 
 separate leaders; of whom one is Poluxeinos, son of 
 Agasthenes. He is termed a prince or lord, and (by 
 patronymic) descendant of Angelas '^. 
 
 In the Nestorian legend of the Eleventh Iliad, we 
 are told that Neleus^ sent to Elis a four-horsed chariot 
 to contend in the Games; but Angelas, who is here 
 termed anax andron, laid hands on the horses, and 
 detained them. Hence the invasion from Pulos, ef- 
 fected by Achaians, under the guidance of Athene. 
 Agamede, the daughter of Augeias, was profoundly 
 versed in drugs ^ And she was married to Molios, 
 a descendant of Poseidon through Actor; who re- 
 sided at court, and was slain by Nestor in the Pulian 
 raid*. 
 
 We may justly suppose that Augeias ruled over Elis, 
 because the noble Actorid family were attached to his 
 court as the court of a superior. Whereas at the time 
 of the Troica, when the unity of the Elian State 
 appears to have been broken up, the Actorids of the 
 time command distinct military divisions, upon a 
 footing of equality with the descendant of Augeias. 
 It is probable that Elis, like Bceotia, had already un- 
 dergone revolutions; and for the same cause, namely, 
 its fertility. 
 
 Other circumstances enhance the presumption of the 
 
 ^ II. ii. 615-624. ^ II. xi. 670 seqq. 
 
 ^ II. V. 741. * II. V. 738, 740, 741. 
 
1 66 JVVENTVS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 great position and high descent of Augeias ; especially, 
 his presiding over the Games. To these Games, as we 
 see, the neighbouring States, some half-century before 
 the war, already sent their chariots to compete. To 
 these it seems probable that Thamuris^ was on his way, 
 when he met with the calamity which deprived him of 
 the gift of song; for we find he had reached the 
 Alpheos, at a distance from his own country, and 
 from the court of Eurutos, to which he apparently 
 belonged. 
 
 With respect to the descent of Augeias, Homer is 
 silent, and we must look for the aid of general tradi- 
 tion. He was reputed to be the son of Salmoneus, 
 and thus a descendant of Aiolos. In this manner he 
 comes within the circle of the Phoenician traditions. 
 And though Aiolos is of divine descent, like Belle- 
 rophon^, the text of the Odyssey supports this tradition ^ 
 (i) by giving him the epithet of amumon, which 
 appears to be used by Homer not as an epithet of cha- 
 racter, but most commonly as one indicating a divine 
 descent, of the same class as that of the Dardanids; 
 (a) Because the name of his daughter Turo points to 
 Tyre; (3) Because she is called evTiarepeia*, an epithet 
 only used in two other places^, and both times with 
 respect to Helen, who is treated as the daughter of 
 Zeus, Atos iKyeyavla^. 
 
 Tradition also places in Elis one of the ancient 
 towns called Ephure. The text of Homer, without 
 directly confirming the tradition, is more than pro- 
 
 ' II. ii. 594-600. ^ II. vi. 191. ' Od. xi. 235 seqq. 
 
 * 'daughter of a noble sire.' ° II. vi. 292 ; Od. xxii. 227. 
 
 * II. iii. 199, 418, et alibi. Cf. Od. iv. 569. 
 
¥1.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 167 
 
 bably in accordance with it. For Odysseus visited 
 Ephure to obtain poison for arrows^. And it was 
 feared that Telemachos might pay a like visit^. Now 
 it is certain (i) that this must have been an Ephure on 
 the west coast of Greece ; therefore probably in Pelo- 
 p6nnesos, for intercourse does not appear to pass north- 
 wards beyond the gulf of Corinth 5 (a) that it could not 
 be the Ephure of Sisuphos, since this to all appearance 
 had now become Corinth, and is so named in the Cata- 
 logue^. Furthermore, in both cases Ephure was a place 
 where the use of drugs was studied; and in this use 
 the daughter of Angelas, as we have seen, was skilled. 
 We may, then, reasonably assume that Augeias dwelt 
 at Ephure, though at the period of the Troica the 
 place was not significant enough to be named in con- 
 nection with the force from Elis; but few towns 
 or settlements of which, however, are recited in the 
 Catalogue. 
 
 In the case of Augeias, as of Anchises and ^neas, 
 we may observe the very emphatic use of the phrase. 
 The anax andron detained the mares: i.e. he kept 
 the mares, as if presuming upon his dignity of anax 
 andron. 
 
 V. Etjphetes. 
 
 Euphetes is named but once by Homer. Meges, a 
 Greek chieftain, is saved from the spear-stroke of 
 Dolops by the stoutness of his many-layered breast- 
 plate*, brought by his father Phuleus from Ephure, hard 
 
 ' Od. i. 257. ^ Od. ii. 326. 
 
 ' II. ii, 570, * II. XV. 530. 
 
1 68 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 by the River Selleeis, where it was given him by his 
 host the anax andron Euphetes. 
 
 Euphetes, then, is manifestly the king of Ephure : 
 and is at once brought within the circle of those tra- 
 ditions to, which the name belongs. 
 
 The question, over which Ephure Euphetes reigned, 
 is at first sight less important than the relation estab- 
 lished by the name itself. Strabo^ reckons, besides 
 Corinth, an Ephure in Elis, one in Thesprotia, one in 
 Thessaly, and five others, which had fallen to the con- 
 dition of mere villages. In Homer, we hear (i) of the 
 Ephure of Corinth, (3) indirectly of that of Elis, (3) of 
 the Ephure from which Heracles carried off Astuocheia, 
 the mother of Tlepolemos, after a destructive raid. 
 This would appear to have been in Thessaly; since 
 Tlepolemos comes from Rhodes, and we have other 
 examples of connection between Thessaly and the 
 southern islands in the persons of the descendants of 
 Heracles 2; but none between those islands and the 
 west of Peloponnesos. 
 
 According to Strabo^, Euphetes was the son of 
 Augeias. If so, nothing can better accord with the 
 Homeric text, which makes Meges* the commander of 
 a contingent from the coast over against Elis; which 
 places him in battle at the head of the Epeian troops®; 
 and which states that Phuleus, his parent, had emi- 
 grated on account of a feud with his own father^. 
 Phuleus is not condemned on account of this feud, but 
 on the contrary is commended as dear to Zeus. It 
 was in every way fit, then, that he should con- 
 
 ' p. 332- " II- "• 676-680. 3 p. 459. 
 
 * II. ii. 625. ^ II. xiii. 692. 6 ii_ ii_ g2j_ 
 
Tf.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 169 
 
 tinue to be united by the ties of guestship with the 
 lord of Elis. And as to the use of the title anax 
 and r on, the case of Euphetes may thus in all pro- 
 bability fall under that of Augeias. It appears indeed 
 possible, though I will not now venture to dwell upon 
 it, that the name Ephure may of itself be a sign of 
 Phoenician relations. 
 
 VI. Etjmblos. 
 
 Eumelos commands before Troy the forces of his 
 father Admetos. The seat of his throne seems to have 
 been at Pherai, a name not improbably akin to Ephure 1. 
 And here we find it holding the same relation to the 
 anax andron Eumelos, as Ephure holds to two other 
 bearers of the same title, namely Augeias and Euphetes. 
 Further, we have seen that the name Ephure is also con- 
 nected with the Aiolid line in the person of Sisuphos. 
 Now we find from Homer that Alcestis the mother of 
 Eumelos was the daughter of Pelias, and that Pelias 
 was the spurious child of Poseidon, by Turo afterwards 
 the wife of Cretheus the Aiolid: while in the male 
 line, which would govern the descent, the family was 
 descended from Pheres^, and Pheres was one of the 
 legitimate sons of Cretheus. Eumelos therefore is an 
 Aiolid, and as such is sprung from Zeus. 
 
 He is mentioned six times in oblique cases, either 
 of his own name or of his patronymic Pheretiades, 
 and five times in the nominative; but only once as 
 anax andron ^ This again is on the only occa- 
 sion that called for the use of an emphatic phrase, 
 
 ^ II. ii. 711-715; Od. iv. 798. ^ II. ii. 763. * II. xxiii. 288. 
 
170 JWENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 since his only conspicuous action in the Poems is 
 that, being possessed of the finest horses^, and ex- 
 celling in their management, he springs up much 
 more rapidly than any other chieftain, to accept 
 the challenge of the chariot-race in the Twenty-third 
 Iliad 2. 
 
 The Homeric evidence then, gathered from various 
 parts of the Poems, and slightly aided by the filling 
 in of blanks from tradition, may be summed up as 
 follows : — 
 
 I. The employment of this phrase seems not to be 
 accidental or to be meant for mere ornament; but to 
 rest upon a common character attaching to those who 
 bear it. 
 
 a. It is borne only by ruling princes, or their 
 heirs. 
 
 3. But though a title of peculiar dignity, it does not 
 indicate a present superiority of power or prerogative 
 to other contemporary rulers. 
 
 4. In the cases of the Dardan princes, and of Eu- 
 melos, the text shows expressly that it accompanies 
 descent from Zeus, at a remote date, and without the 
 name of a mother. 
 
 5. In the cases of Euphetes and Augeias, tradition 
 states, and the text indirectly but strongly supports, a 
 similar descent. 
 
 6. In the case of the Pelopids, all direct indications 
 fail us; but even here, Pelops, or his reputed father 
 Tantalos, would appear to be a personage standing 
 relatively to Greek history in much the same position 
 as Aiolos, that is, as the foreign head and founder of 
 
 ' II. ii. 763. ^ II. xxiii. 288. 
 
VI.J ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' 171 
 
 a ruling race; a character, which also apparently at- 
 taches to Dardanos in Troas. 
 
 7. In each and all of these cases, the ancestor ap- 
 pears upon the scene of Greek tradition as already a 
 prince ; and always at a period antecedent to the for- 
 mation of anything like polity in Greece. 
 
 8. It is in this attitude that we are justified in 
 believing Homer presents to us those archaic charac- 
 ters in Greece, whose prior history and descent were 
 foreign, so that if distinctly unfolded they would have 
 broken his uniform rule by representing leading ele- 
 ments of Greek society and nationality as derived from 
 foreign sources. 
 
 9. The nature of the phrase anax andron, meaning 
 nearly, as it does, ' master of men,' seems to bear a 
 foreign rather than a Hellenic colour, and is probably 
 drawn from a state of civil society, which may be 
 called either more patriarchal, or more Asiatic, than 
 that of the Hellenes: a state where power was more 
 absolute, and right less distinctly recognised, than they 
 were respectively in the Greece of Homer. It is a 
 title which, whatever be its lingering glories, has not 
 in it any. savour of liberty. 
 
 10. The name is nowhere found in connection with 
 Pelasgian associations ; but it attaches strongly to what 
 had been all along the ruling element in Greek society 
 from its first recorded formation, whether in connection 
 with the Achaian or with the Phoenician name j namely, 
 a primitive chiefship or superiority, linked to something 
 which, as to time and place, lay beyond the Greek hori- 
 zon proper. 
 
 11. Under these conditions, it is not difficult to see 
 that the title of anax andron could not apply (for 
 
17a yUVENTUS MUNDI.. [CHAP. 
 
 example) to Achilles or Odysseus, whose families were 
 not the representatives of these ancient sovereignties : 
 or to Nestor, whose descent from Poseidon was veiled 
 by spurious birth, and who was connected with Aiolos 
 only in the female line : or to Sarpedon, who is directly 
 affiliated to Zeus : neither do any of them, nor does 
 Diomed or Ajax, stand in any relation to the character- 
 istic name of Ephure, or of the Selleeis. 
 
 12. Nor is it difficult to understand why this title 
 of sovereignty and honour, alone among those em- 
 ployed by Homer, passes away with him. 
 
 We cannot say whether it was accompanied with 
 any prerogatives of a substantive character, as it evi- 
 dently was with a peculiar form of dignity. Those 
 characters and families, who had not risen by effort 
 and degree, of whom no human memory bore record 
 that they had at any period been less than the leaders 
 and the lords of men, and whose names were associated 
 with the earliest guidance lent to Greece in her first 
 struggles for civilisation, might well remain as bright 
 luminaries adorning the past of the race, until either 
 a great lapse of time, or, more probably, a breaking up 
 of the social and political system they had taken a lead 
 in creating, should bring about their extinction. And 
 it is change of this kind, on the brink of which Homer 
 leaves us, as he disappears from us in the distance. In 
 soft music, he sings out the heroic age of heroes : and 
 after him, as Hesiod tells us, a ruder and a darker 
 age is sung in with a wilder music. The traditions, 
 and the families, of the older time are submerged 
 by the flood of Dorian conquest. The noble and 
 refined Achaian succumbs to the half-savage Hera- 
 clid. The Hellenic world is resolved into a chaos, 
 
VI.] ON THE TITLE ' ANAX ANDRON.' > 173 
 
 which devours its ancient ideas and institutions : 
 though the spirit of life still breathes over the form- 
 less mass, and gradually moulds it into a new and 
 more organised and splendid, if not a more pure and 
 healthful civilisation. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Olympian System. 
 
 Homer was the maker not only of Poems ; but also, 
 in a degree never equalled by any other poet, 
 
 I. Of a language; 
 %. Of a nation j 
 3. Of a religion. 
 
 The common tradition of Greece recognised the poets, 
 as having had a large share in the formation of the 
 religion of the country. These poets were in particular 
 Homer and Hesiod, as represented by the works as- 
 cribed to them. But the difference is immense between 
 the work performed by the author of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey, and the author of the Theogony respectively. 
 The latter, at a date very early without doubt, though 
 sensibly later than that of Homer, placed upon record, 
 and arranged, the mythological legends of the por- - 
 tion of country, supposed to have been Boeotia, within 
 which he lived ; and the late position, givpn in the 
 poem to the gods of the Olympian dynasty, is in ac- 
 cordance with all the indications of the Homeric pro- 
 ductions. But the mythology of Homer, instead of 
 
THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 75 
 
 being a chronicle or a catalogue, is a supreme work of 
 art, that lives, breathes^ and moves, like the metallic 
 statues of his own Hephaistos. And it is precisely the 
 contrast between this wonderful performance and the 
 Theogony of Hesiod, which enables us to conceive in 
 some degree the immense power with which the ima- 
 gination of Homer operated in shaping the characters 
 of the Olympian gods, in adjusting their relations to 
 one another, and in fixing the conditions of their go- 
 vernment of the world, and of their intercourse with 
 the children of men. On these great matters, a poem 
 like that of Hesiod could have no other influence, than 
 a register of births and deaths could have upon the 
 social and political fortunes of a community. 
 
 In the supernatural world of Homer, we find deities 
 not only of different ranks and attributes^ but marked 
 with very great varieties of moral character and tone j 
 bearing marks of connection with different places, 
 countries, races of men, and celestial dynasties, or 
 theogonies, with very different degrees of respect paid 
 to them^ and these again varying with races of men 
 and local situations. 
 
 At the same time, these beings have a head, a central 
 place of habitation, a system and polity among them- 
 selves ; to whichj however, the various members of the 
 supernatural order are very variously related. 
 
 In a word, we appear to see a great mass of hete- 
 rogeneous materials having reference to the unseen 
 world, which, as they were probably settling down in 
 the world of fact, from their recent contact, into more 
 stable and normal relations, so, in the world of poetry, 
 they receive from the hand of the master an unity 
 fitting them to constitute that intellectual and ideal 
 
176 JUVENTUS MUNDI, [cHAP. 
 
 whole, which we know as the Hellenic religion. In 
 this process of construction, the actual belief, tradi- 
 tions, and tendencies of. the people could not but be 
 the chief determining force. But the potent mind and 
 imagination of the Poet, in all likelihood, exercised 
 an influence in modifying the stages and fixing the 
 consummation of the process, which, if secondary and 
 subsidiary only with reference to the powers before 
 mentioned, may still be justly supposed to have been 
 far greater than any ever wielded by any other Greek, 
 whether legislator, poet, or philosopher. 
 
 There is nothing contrary to reason in the suppo- 
 sition that the condition of religion in Greece, at the 
 epoch of Homer's existence, may have oflFered remark- 
 able opportunities for the formative influence even of 
 an individual mind. 
 
 In a nation of one blood, which claims to be au- 
 tochthonous or indigenous, because, since first the mi- 
 gration of the primitive tribe was arrested, it has never 
 changed its seat, we may look for a religion based upon 
 the predominance of some single idea, and invested 
 with great uniformity of colour. 
 
 But where, as in Greece, the nation itself is com- 
 pounded out of a variety of factors, the religion will 
 naturally assume a variegated aspect. 
 
 Each race or family of immigrants arrives cum Pe- 
 natihus et magxis Dis ; brings with it its own con- 
 ceptions and names of deity. These they set down; 
 for themselves upon ground already occupied by the 
 religion of the former inhabitants, and by their tra- 
 ditional conceptions. These conceptions will be in 
 many cases representatives of the same original ideas j 
 and though diversely modified, after the separation of 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 77 
 
 the races, according to the genius and associations of 
 each branch, they will often claim the same attributes, 
 and the respective worships will tend to compete and 
 even clash together. 
 
 Of this clashing we find the mark in Homer, when 
 two deities have the same fiinction. Thus Athene is 
 even more supreme over war than Ares. A Paieon 
 has to do with healing as well as Apollo. Poseidon is 
 god of the sea ; but beneath him, yet in independence 
 of him, is Nereus, inhabiting the depths j and the sea 
 is affected by the agency of Zeus, or Here, or Athene ', 
 or Apollo, with respect to breeze, and storm, and ship- 
 wreck, as well as by his own agency. 
 
 The same kind of competition is represented in 
 Homer by the deposition, and relegation to a distance, 
 of the older gods of the Nature-system, and by the 
 legends of the youth, or infancy, of Hephaistos and 
 Dionusos. 
 
 Also this conflict of religions, growing out of the 
 relations and conflicts of races, is powerfully exhibited 
 in Homer by the division of Olympos into two factions 
 during the Trojan War, and by the bold and effective, 
 if to us incongruous, conception of the Theomachy, or 
 Battle of the gods. 
 
 In the later tradition, this clashing comes to be 
 represented by the legends of contests between two 
 deities for a given territory. Poseidon contends with 
 Helios (the Sun) for Corinth j and with Athene for 
 Athens. A variety of other cases may be cited. 
 
 Had the Poet worked up his mythological scheme 
 out of Greek materials alone, we may be sure that the 
 relations of subordination among the gods would. have 
 
 ^ Od. V. io8, 109. 
 N 
 
1 78 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 been at least as well defined, as those subsisting among 
 the leaders of the army, or perhaps even the members 
 of a well-ordered family. Whereas now we find first 
 that Okeanos, as the head of an older though superseded 
 dynasty, stands aloof, and is exempt from attendance 
 at the Olympian court ^ ; and that the position of Zeus 
 among its members reminds us of the position of the 
 kings of France before Louis XI among their great 
 feudatories. Poseidon, even singly, is not without pre- 
 tensions to an equality of force : Athene, without pro- 
 ceeding to physical resistance, does not hesitate to 
 oppose in debate, as well as in veiled action, the 
 councils of her father : and a combination of these two 
 with Here had once proved too much for his solitary 
 strength. 
 
 When the various worships thus met in competition 
 on the same soil, the result could not but be, either 
 that the objects of them were amalgamated j or that 
 some of them were expelled j or that by division of 
 functions, that is a compromise, their diiFerences were 
 adjusted. 
 
 Of amalgamation we observe an example in the first 
 deity of the Homeric poems. The Zeus of Dodona, 
 and of the Pelasgians, becomes also the Zeus of the 
 Hellic tribes. 
 
 Of permanent expulsion we have examples in the 
 Okeanos, and also in the KJronos, of Homer, with their 
 followings respectively. 
 
 Of the resistance to a new worship, and of its tem- 
 porary exile, we have an instance in the driving of 
 Dionusos into the sea by Lukourgos. 
 
 But the great principle of the Homeric mythology 
 
 ^ II. XX. 7. 
 
Til.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 79 
 
 is, adjustment by distribution of offices. And the an- 
 thropomorphic idea greatly favoured the application of 
 this principle ; since it gave to the Poet all the varied 
 functions and orders of humane society, both domestic 
 and political, as a framework after which to arrange 
 his Olympian personages. 
 
 And thus it is that Homer, from living in the midst 
 of an intermixture and fusion of bloods continually 
 proceeding in Greece, acquired a vast command of 
 materials, and by his skilful use of them exercised an 
 immense influence in the construction of the Greek 
 religion. 
 
 It became with him, what it probably had never been 
 before, and what it was not in the works of any later 
 writer^ a most gorgeous and imposing, and even in a 
 certain sense a highly self-consistent, whole : contain- 
 ing in itself, without doubt, many weak and many 
 tarnished elements, but yet serving in an important 
 degree the purpose of a religion to control the passions 
 and acts of men. 
 
 The Olympian system of Homer is eminently what 
 Horace describes as 
 
 ' Speciosa locis, morataque recte 
 Fabula.' 
 It is wrought out with pains and care, full of character 
 and individuality, marvellous alike in the grandeur 
 and the weaknesses of its personages — a work, in the 
 very highest sense that is applicable to any human pro- 
 duction, of true and vast creative power. 
 
 Even without the attestation of Plato, we might 
 have been able to judge that it was in all likelihood a 
 main instrument in establishing the dominant features 
 of the Hellenic religion, such as we know them from 
 
 N a 
 
l8o JVVENTVS MVNBI. [CHAP. 
 
 the historic ages. Partly it reduced to unity the com- 
 peting elements of the true Hellenic tradition, of the 
 old Pelasgian Nature-worship, and of the Phoenician, 
 Syrian, and Egyptian mythologies : partly it cast them 
 into the shade of local, as opposed to national, devotion. 
 In the poems of Hesiod, it appears to us as the latest 
 form of Greek religion j but, more artfldly compacted 
 than the rest, it acquired and retained a real supremacy 
 among them, although the diversity of aspect never was 
 effaced. 
 
 Yet its character continually altered; and altered 
 for the worse. It has features which are sublime, and 
 features which are debased. But the sublime features 
 of the Olympian characters became, with the lapse of 
 generations, less and less observable. The debased ones 
 grew more and more prominent. And the profoundly 
 interesting specialties of the . several deities, indi- 
 cating their respective origins, at length became ap- 
 parently imperceptible even to the Greeks themselves. 
 No one can closely and carefully examine the system 
 of Homer without a deep interest : no one can find 
 much ground for such an interest in the theological 
 part of the religion of the historic period. Only its 
 ethical ideas, and the highly poetic ideas connected 
 with destiny, retain any attractive power; and from 
 the mythology these ideas are, in the later stages of the 
 Olympian system, almost wholly dissociated. 
 
 The wonder indeed is, not that the Olympian 
 religion should have failed to resist the corrosion 
 of change, but that it should have been able in any 
 manner to retain its identity. Devoid as it was of 
 all authority, and even of the allegation of authority, 
 for its origin, and not only unsustained, but belied,; 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. l8l 
 
 by the witness of surrounding nations, it probably had 
 little else of unity than such as it derived from the 
 great Bard of the nation, and from its imaginative 
 splendour; while it had none of the guarantees, real 
 even if partial, which are afforded either by Books 
 known and recognised as sacred, or by a compact and 
 permanent hierarchy, dating, or professing to date, 
 from the beginning of the system. If the Homeric 
 poems stood in the place of the former, yet we can 
 perceive for them no avenue to the mind and heart 
 of man, except that of the poet, and the delight he 
 gives ; 
 
 fj KoL Biaitiv aoihov o Kev TepnT/trw aei&tov^. 
 
 And as respects the latter, neither was the priest, as 
 such, a significant personage in Greece at any period, 
 nor had the priest of any one place or deity, so far as 
 we know, any organic connection with the priest of 
 any other ; so that if there were priests, yet there was 
 not a priesthood. Its strength lay, then, in its beauty; 
 a beauty which, surviving the death of the subject in 
 which it resided, had power to ravish the mind of 
 Goethe, one among the greatest of modern poets ; and 
 probably we could not name in all human experience 
 a more signal instance of the vast power of the imagi- 
 nation, than is to be found in the long life, and the 
 extended influences, of the Greek religion. 
 
 It found a way to the mind of man through his 
 sympathies and propensities. Homer reflected upon 
 his Olynipos the ideas, passions and appetites known 
 to us all, with such a force, that they became with 
 him the paramount power in the construction of the 
 Greek religion. This humanitarian element gradually 
 
 ^ Od. xvii. 385. 
 
1 82 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 subdued to itself all that it found in Greece of tra- 
 ditions already recognised, whether primitive or modem, 
 whether Hellenic, Pelasgian, or foreign. The govern- 
 ing idea of the character of deity in Homer is a nature 
 essentially human, with the addition of unmeasured 
 power. It is at once obvious, then, that the elements 
 of a profound corruption abound in his Olympian 
 Court, although they affect very variously the personages 
 who fill it. And the principle upon which it is con- 
 structed makes but too copious a provision for further 
 deterioration. 
 
 Such accordingly was the actual working of that 
 Hellenic Theo-mythology, of which we must regard 
 Homer as the great founder. With the progress of 
 time it became more and more debased, and the dis- 
 tinctions originally perceptible among its elements 
 being worn away, it likewise fell into such a state of 
 complexity as approached to chaos. 
 
 But, while the popular creed thus degenerated, the 
 intelligence and the speculative mind of the Greeks 
 became more and more estranged from it. With the 
 lapse of time we must learn to regard it, not as in 
 Homer, under a single aspect, but under three : as a 
 religion of philosophers, a religion of legislators, and a 
 religion of the people. ' By the philosophers, the ab- 
 stract idea' of deity was greatly purified and reformed ; 
 but the sense of personality connected with it became 
 feebler and more remote. In Aristotle, the most pro- 
 found and powerful mind of Greece in the classical 
 ages, as well as perhaps among the purest which the 
 country produced, it is reduced, as a practical principle, 
 to zero. Still, the lofty sentiments, thus elaborated 
 in the abstract, again acquired much of the warmth of 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 83 
 
 life in the writings of some at least of the dramatic 
 poets ; and may thus have exercised influence in a wider 
 sphere than that supplied to the few by the thoughtful 
 studies of the Schools. 
 
 Meantime the mythology, with its constant develop- 
 ment and deterioration, continued to be accepted by 
 the people ; while with a view, as must be supposed, 
 to public order, all its institutions had the steady coun- 
 tenance of the ruling authorities. 
 
 It may then be believed that there resided among 
 men, six, eight, or ten centuries after Homer, a much 
 purer intellectual conception of deity than can be 
 collected from his poems j while, as a first necessity of 
 wealth and civilisation, a defined but narrow morality 
 of property, so to call it, arose ; both in a form more 
 determinate than any known to the Poet, and also sus- 
 tained by the machinery of law and public policy. 
 
 But, notwithstanding all this, a great real declension 
 in other, and perhaps yet graver, respects had taken 
 place. For the mass of the population, the abuses and 
 corruptions of the older creed ' did not pass, but grew.' 
 Not perhaps against society, which had learned to take 
 care of itself, but against the unseen Ruler of the 
 world, and against the sanctity of human nature, sins 
 and loathsome abominations had come in, and were 
 flourishing in a rank and foul luxuriance, which seem to 
 have been unknown to the Greece of Homer. For the 
 religion of his day had not ceased to be a power. 
 Variously and imperfectly, but truly, men were com- 
 manded and restrained by it. It presented a system of 
 rewards and punishments, intelligible to its votaries, 
 and operative, as it appears, to no small extent upon 
 human conduct. And whatever may have been, as it is 
 
184 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 represented, the personal practice of the Homeric 
 deities, their system of government was addressed in 
 the main to good ends. It exhibited, generally speak- 
 ing, though in an imperfect, yet in a real manner, 
 superior power, armed and active on behalf of truth, 
 justice, and humanity. This could not but be an 
 engine of great good. That it was so, we may learn 
 from a tone of general character, which certainly did 
 not afterwards improve, and from the absence of the 
 horrors already named, which afterwards abounded 
 even in the more refined regions and in the educated 
 classes of society. 
 
 It may seem strange that the two processes of a 
 speculative ascent and a practical decline, a mental 
 discipline of the few and a general dissoluteness of 
 life, should be simultaneous. But so it was, even to 
 the day of the last dying throes of paganism. Never 
 was the heathen creed, on its intellectual side, in 
 a condition so sublimated, as when it perished under 
 the blows of the Christian apologists and the influence 
 of the Church. But also, never had its practical power, 
 as a religious system elevating or constraining action, 
 fallen so low, as in the days when its votaries were 
 habitually content to deify even monsters in human 
 shape, if they wore the imperial purple. 
 
 To say, then, simflkiter, either that the Greek re- 
 ligion as it grew old improved, or that it degenerated, 
 would be to use equivocal and misleading language. 
 By its side, and never in any degree taking its place in 
 the minds of the many, there grew up a speculation, 
 which was hardly a belief, but which put aside a mass 
 of fables, and in many points approximated to the 
 truth, concerning the nature of God. But as a living 
 
Til.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 85 
 
 creed it worsened; and as an instrument for the 
 government of conduct, it more and more lost its 
 power. 
 
 The reproaches of Plato against Homer, for the un- 
 worthy treatment of the gods, can have little influence 
 on our minds in the light of such knowledge as we now 
 possess. It would appear, from the Cratylus for ex- 
 ample, that Plato had little knowledge of the origin of 
 the Hellenic mythology ; and the personages, who filled 
 the chief places in it, had in his day assumed a same- 
 ness of colour and position, which they had not in the 
 time of Homer. In order to comprehend the method 
 of the Poet, we must bear in mind (i) that many deities, 
 afterwards completely naturalised, were in his day only 
 making the first steps of their way into Greece ; (a) that 
 deity is with him a most elastic idea, susceptible of in- 
 finite diversities, in point both of virtue and of power ; 
 (3) that he has a vivid conception of intercommunion 
 between the two natures, divine and human, which was 
 probably lost in the time of Plato. 
 
 If Ares and Aphrodite are exhibited by Homer in 
 lights which are even ridiculous, we have to observe 
 that nothing can be more profound, more entire, than 
 the reverence of his mortals for Apollo and Athene, nay 
 often for Poseidon and Here. This difference is not 
 casual ; it is in the whole manner of treatment : and 
 what we seem to learn from it is, that, among the Hel- 
 lenes of his time. Ares and Aphrodite had as yet no 
 regular recognition, no established worship. There is 
 not a single indication of either in the Poems j though 
 it appears from them that these deities were worshipped 
 in Thrace and in Cyprus respectively. 
 
 Apart from this, Homer's system of thought included 
 
1 86 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP, 
 
 a number of beings, whom he calls divine, but in whom 
 the divine attributes are minimised. The Gigantes, 
 who rushed to their own ruin ; the Kuklopes, who ex- 
 hibit a perfectly brutalised humanity; the Phaiakes, 
 who in all manly qualities are represented as much 
 below the Greek level; all these were kinsfolk of the 
 gods. 
 
 A slight circumstance shows us how, in Homer, the 
 divine idea could be reduced to the smallest dimensions 
 of power. When the comrades of Odysseus ate the 
 oxen of the Sun, Lampetie, his daughter by Neaira, ex- 
 pressly called a goddess^, carried the news of the deed 
 to her father. Obviously, then, she had not herself 
 sufficient power to prevent or punish this offence, 
 committed by a mere handful of exhausted mariners. 
 Neither could the Sun, who is called all -beholding, see 
 the act from his pathway in the heavens, without her 
 intervention as a messenger. 
 
 The principal materials of religion which Homer 
 found ready to his hand were, so far as appears, sup- 
 plied by 
 
 I. The Pelasgian or other archaic races, which had 
 had possession of the Peninsula prior to the Hel- 
 lenes. 
 
 a. The Hellic families and tribes. 
 
 3. The Phoenician immigration. 
 
 4. An Egyptian and oriental influence which we 
 trace («) in obscure traditions, and [h) in the actual 
 remains of a worship clearly proceeding from this 
 origin, which endured down to the time of Pausanias. 
 This was probably brought to Greece through the Phoe- 
 nician vehicle. 
 
 ^ Od. xii. 131-133. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. T87 
 
 The Zeus of Homer is equally Pelasgian and Hel- 
 lenic. 
 
 The Apollo, the Athene, and the Here appear to 
 belong especially to Hellenic traditions. But the two 
 first carry marks, which can hardly be mistaken, of an 
 affinity, probably dating from a very early period, to the 
 Hebrew traditions, recorded in the sacred Scriptures. 
 
 The Poseidon of Homer is manifestly Phoenician. 
 This deity waives as it were his supremacy on coming 
 into Greece, in deference to the paramount force of 
 the religion of the major number, and to the ruling in- 
 fluences. Yet the character and worship of Poseidon 
 may occasionally in Greece, as well as elsewhere, have 
 been preserved under the name of Zeus. 
 
 These five are the five great deities of the Poems. 
 But it may be convenient to consider first the mode 
 which Homer has devised for dealing with the elder 
 gods. 
 
 It is in a far-distant perspective that he places the 
 Elemental or Nature powers ; which are thus removed 
 from inconvenient contact with the actual governors of 
 the world, and yet are subjected to no indignity. 
 
 At the head of these is Okeanosj whom Homer 
 regards as the source (not the father, that title being 
 reserved for Zeus) of all the gods. He is not invested 
 with anthropomorphic attributes, a circumstance which 
 indicates the distinctness of the race which had wor- 
 shipped him. But Homer, paying a marked respect to 
 his dignity, does not summon him to the great Olym- 
 pian Assembly of the Twentieth Book^, where, if he 
 had appeared, he must have been second to Zeus. It is 
 
 1 II. XX. 7. 
 
1 88 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 possible even that the relations of this deity to man- 
 kind were pre-Pelasgic ; as Zeus appears to have been 
 in the Pelasgian system, and Okeanos could hardly have 
 been there except as its head. 
 
 In no case is the Homeric treatment more artful, 
 than in that of the sea- or water-god Nereus. He is 
 completely invested with the anthropomorphic cha- 
 racter; for he is blessed with an abundant progeny of 
 daughters. But his place was wanted for Poseidon: 
 he is therefore confined to the sea-deep; and he is in 
 no manner or degree an object of worship in the 
 Poems. 
 
 While the Olympian system generally is to be re- 
 garded as alien to elemental worship, and as founded 
 on a diiFerent basis, it is important to trace never- 
 theless such vestiges of the elder religion as are to be 
 found among the Greeks of Homer. 
 
 I. In the Pact of the Third Iliad, the original terms 
 werei that the Greeks should oiFer a lamb to Zeus ; the 
 Trojans two, the one black, the other white, to Gaia 
 and Helios, the Earth and the Sun, This appears to 
 draw the line pretty clearly between some leading ideas 
 of the worship of the two countries ; which nevertheless 
 had, as is plain, many points of contact. 
 
 When we come to the actual Invocation, Agamem- 
 non officiates on behalf of both parties^. Accordingly 
 he first invokes Zeus (but as ruling from Ida); then 
 the all-seeing, all-hearing Helios ; and then he inserts, 
 before Gaia, the Rivers ; and he adds the deities (with- 
 out naming them) who dwell beneath, and who punish 
 perjurers in the Future State, or Underworld. 
 
 * II. iii. 103, '^ 11. iii. 276-280. 
 
Til.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 189 
 
 a. In. the Nineteenth Iliad we have an oath and 
 Invocation purely Greeki; and on comparing it with 
 the former we find 
 
 a. That Zeus is invoked without any mention of 
 Ida. 
 
 h. The Earth is next named. 
 
 c. The Sun is invoked without any special words of 
 personification. 
 
 d. The Erinues, strictly ethical personages, are named 
 as the deities below, unnamed in the previous Invo- 
 cation. 
 
 e. The Rivers do not appear. 
 
 3. We also have, in the Ninth Iliad, another impre- 
 catory Invocation; that of Althaia, mother of Mele- 
 agros. She addresses herself to {a) the Earth, {h) Aido- 
 neus, and {c) Persephone : and her prayer is heard, and ' 
 evidently granted as well as heard, by the air-stalking 
 Erinus. The oflFence here was not perjury, but the 
 slaying of her brother by her son. 
 
 We thus perceive, from the first Invocation, either 
 that the Earth and Sun stood to the Trojans as Zeus 
 did to the Greeks, or that, when all were to be ad- 
 dressed, .the Earth and Sun fell to the Trojans from 
 some greater affinity to their creed. But when we 
 come to an Invocation affecting the Greeks alone, in 
 the Nineteenth Book, the Sun is less prominently 
 named, and the purely ethical element is introduced 
 in the Erinues, avengers of perjury in the nether 
 world. 
 
 In the mixed Invocation the Erinues are not named, 
 but are evidently the personages glanced at as avengers 
 beneath the earth and after death. 
 ' II. xix. 258-260. 
 
190 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 We also find it clearly established by these passages, 
 that the Nature-gods in general were treated by Homer 
 as subterranean: though this did not absolutely and 
 invariably exclude them from the Olympian family. 
 And the office generally assigned to them is not a 
 share in the ordinary government of the world, but is 
 the infliction of punishment, both for perjury and also 
 for other offences, in a future state. 
 
 Hence it is that Achilles, a lock of whose hair had 
 been promised by his father Peleus to be dedicated to 
 the River Spercheios on his return home, deposits such 
 a lock, at the time when he knows he shall not return 
 home at all, in the hands of the dead Patroclos ; that 
 his spirit may carry it to the River-god, in the Under- 
 world^. Here we have the clearest evidence that the 
 'Underworld, into which Patroclos was about to find 
 entrance, was the ordinary residence of the River- 
 gods. 
 
 Nor is this the only case of River-worship in the 
 Poems. The Pulians in the Epeian even sacrificed a 
 bull to Alpheios^, when they reached his banks; and 
 Odysseus likewise invokes the unnamed River of 
 Scherie, at whose mouth he touches the shore 3. These 
 two, it will be observed, were plainly acts of worship 
 with reference to some immediate result, and implied 
 the exercise by the Rivers respectively of some present 
 prerogatives. On the other hand we may notice their 
 strictly local character, as well as that of the act done 
 by Achilles. 
 
 To the great Olympian Assembly of the Twentieth 
 Book, which is to prepare the way for a decisive issue 
 
 ' II. xxiii. 144-151. '^ II. xi. 728. 3 od. v. 445. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 191 
 
 to the war, Themis summons the Rivers (except old 
 Okeanos) and the Nymphs who frequent or inhabit the 
 groves and fountains. These latter, both here and 
 elsewhere, are evidently conceived under the condi- 
 tions of the human form. A like process had been 
 begun with the Rivers 5 because Poseidon ^ accom- 
 plishes his purpose with Turo in the form of the River 
 Enipeus. Others, too, of the Rivers have human sons. 
 Nay, they even sate on the burnished chairs of the 
 Olympian Hall 2. 
 
 Nor let it be thought strange, that while the worship 
 (except for imprecation) of the greater deities of the 
 old Pelasgian system had been superseded, that of 
 smaller ones had thus survived. For the Dii majores 
 of that system, by reason of their very greatness, had 
 no one exclusive residence. But the River-worship 
 was strictly local; and it is the nature of this local 
 worship, in whatever age, and in connection with 
 whatever creed, to take a deep hold, and live a tena- 
 cious life. Of this there can be no stronger proof 
 than the great number of temples recorded in Pausanias 
 as having been erected in honour of deities, whose 
 existence is hardly traceable in the public and national 
 religion of historic Greece. Just so it was that the 
 heathen system, when it was slowly and reluctantly 
 yielding its ground to Christianity, lingered long in 
 the villages and remoter districts, and thus gave us, as 
 if by caprice, the singular name of Paganism for the 
 religion, which had blazed with such extraordinary 
 splendour in the Forum of Rome, and on the Acropolis 
 of Athens. 
 
 ^ Od. xi. 241. * II. XX. II. 
 
iga JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 There is another form of relation between the older 
 and the younger scheme. While the anthropomorphic 
 spirit, of the Olympian religion repels the counter- 
 system of elemental worship, it nevertheless appro- 
 priates its materials, and even exhibits occasionally 
 traces of its form. Thus, while the air- or sky-god 
 becomes Zeus, the rainbow becomes Iris : and, as the 
 rainbow in nature belongs strictly and exclusively to 
 the sky-region, so Iris remains in the closest adhe- 
 rence to Zeus. She is his messenger, not the mes- ' 
 senger of the gods in general ; and even when he sits 
 on Ida, she is in attendance on him, and available 
 for a mission i. And as we may suppose that Ida was 
 the habitual resort of Zeus when the armies were on 
 the field, we can thus understand, not only why it is Iris 
 who informs the Trojans about the Greek array % but 
 how she is at hand to prompt Helen's going to the 
 Wall % and to take Aphrodite out of the turmoil, and 
 drive her, in the chariot of Ares, to Olympos *. 
 
 In like manner. Here appears to be constructed out 
 of the old traditions which treated the Earth as a 
 divine pov^er : Demeter from a like source : and He- 
 phaistos from an elemental god of fire. 
 
 If the local cultus thus survived in fact long after 
 the central system had been eclipsed and superseded 
 by one founded on ideas of greater vigour and eleva- 
 tion, then Homer, who of course had to exercise his 
 plastic powers as a poet upon traditions which he 
 found ready to hand, could not wholly extinguish the 
 representation of these minor nature-powers in his 
 Olympian system. And the ultimate form of recon- 
 
 * II. viii. 399. 2 II. ii. 786. 
 
 ' II. iii. 121. * II. V. 353-369. 
 
Til.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. I93 
 
 ciliation for the two systems was not in the ejection 
 of the minor powers, but in the establishment of their 
 assumption of human form, and with it the presidency 
 over the object in which they at first inhered, as the 
 condition of enlistment, so to speak, in the popular 
 religion. Such was the basis of compromise, so to call it, 
 which secured to Rivers, Fountains, Hills, andWoods, in 
 each case their proper place in the Olympian system. 
 
 To obtain a right view of its nature, the Homeric 
 mythology must be carefully severed, not only from the 
 bygone schemes of Nature-worship, but likewise from 
 (i) the Roman mythology, and (2) the mythology of 
 classical Greece ; from this classical system even as we 
 have it in the poets, and much more as we draw it 
 from the later writers. 
 
 I We then find that the Homeric formation consists 
 of a Polity, framed on the human model, with a king, 
 an aristocracy, and even a people or multitude 5 and 
 that its seat is on Olympos. The king is Zeus. The 
 aristocracy consists of a number not precisely defined. 
 Somewhere about eight or ten deities take actual part 
 in the debates of Olympos. The ordinary meetings 
 are strictly analagous to those of the fiovKri or council 
 of the Greek army. But, like that council, the Olym- 
 pian court has its silent members: and as Hephaistos 
 prepared for it twenty chairs ^ or thrones, we must 
 suppose this to have been the approximate number of 
 those who were entitled to attend. This is the body, 
 of which the feastings are so gorgeously described ; 
 and in it are, probably, included all the deities, who 
 had obtained more than a narrowly local recognition 
 in the Greece of Homer. 
 
 ^ II. xviii. J73. 
 o 
 
194 JVVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 But sometimes the gods meet in (ayop^) their As- 
 sembly ^ Homer appears to use this phrase on occa- 
 sions when a great resolution is about to be taken. 
 The Assembly of the Fourth Book defeats the Pact of 
 the Third, and brings the Greeks into the field against 
 the Trojans during the isolation of Achilles. That of the 
 Eighth is designed to insure the absence of their potent 
 patrons from the field of battle. Greatest of all, the 
 Assembly of the Twentieth Book is brought together 
 by a wider summons, including Nymphs and Rivers. 
 This Assembly removes the embargo, and by permitting 
 the battle of the gods, forecasts the corresponding vic- 
 tory of the stronger party upon earth. 
 
 ,> In the members of the Olympian Court itself we dis- 
 cern every kind of heterogeneity. There seems to be 
 scarcely a single definite feature that they possess in 
 common : only we may assert that every one of them 
 has a preternatural superiority to man in some one or 
 more particulars, while a few approximate to divine 
 perfections. 
 
 v.^ They seem, indeed, in no case to be liable to total and 
 final extinction^. Yet Ares, having fled from Diomed, 
 declares, not only that he might have remained sense- 
 less under the blows of the warrior, but might have 
 suflFered (brjphv) indefinitely long, left among the slain. 
 And the gods may be deposed from Olympos, as Zeus 
 says he would have deposed Ares, if born from any 
 other divine sire than himself. 
 
 In the Fifteenth Iliad, Poseidon appears to be threat- 
 ened with Tartaros, as the consequence of the for- 
 midable conflict between Zeus and himself, which had 
 seemed so imminent. The gods beneath, says Zeus, 
 ' II. iv. I ; viii. 2 ; xx. 4. 2 II. v. 901. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. I95 
 
 who form the Court of Kronos, would have become 
 right well acquainted with the battle. As those\ad^ 
 are wholly cut off from Olympian action, this could 
 only have been, as it seems, if Zeus had placed Posei- 
 don where he had already placed Kronos 1. Even Here 
 and Athene may suiFer wounds, from which ten whole 
 years will not suffice for their recovery ^. And if they 
 had persisted in the second descent, then, smitten by 
 the thunderbolt, they would not have been again ad- 
 mitted to Olympos ^. 
 
 X The same notion of right which binds men together, 
 prevails among the gods, but may be set at nought by 
 them*. The happiness of Olympian Immortals is liable 
 to be impaired and disturbed by quarrels on account of 
 their partialities to men this way or that, as the hap- 
 piness of men would be disturbed^. The community 
 of gods is no less emphatically humanised, than are 
 the individuals. The relations of its members to one 
 another are, however, but partially defined, and are 
 subject to contingency. 
 
 tiardly any two deities are of the same dignity ; and 
 even when they discharge the same function, they do 
 it under diflFerent conditions. Thus Athene and Ares 
 are the deities of war ^. Ares fights with his own hand 
 against a mortal : his opponent Athene does not deign 
 to enter into conflict herself; she incites'^ the mind, 
 drives * the chariot, but only against a god, and impels 
 or diverts the weapon '. 
 
 While however Athene thus behaves in relation to 
 Arfes, we have no similar example in the action of the 
 
 ' II. XV. 221-228. ^ II. viii. 404. ^ II. viii. 455. 
 
 * II. V. 761. ° II. i. 573-576 ; V. 383, 384, and 873, 874. 
 
 « II. V. 430. ' II. V. 200. 8 II. V. 840. » II. V. 290, 856. 
 
 O 2, 
 
196 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Poems, of matters carried to extremity in the upper rank 
 of the Olympian Court. On the contrary, the highest 
 deities of Homer are bound together by a law of mutual 
 respect, even when they take opposite sides of a question 
 or a quarrel, and they show the utmost anxiety to avoid 
 carrying their differences to issue. After all, is it not 
 a folly^ they commonly say, to diminish our own happi- 
 ness on account of beings so inferior to ourselves ? 
 
 See the language of Zeus to Athene, II. viii. 39 ; 
 
 Of Zeus about Poseidon, II. xv. 326-228 j 
 
 Of Apollo to Poseidon, II. xxi. 462-467 ; 
 
 Of Here about Zeus, II. viii. 427-431 ; 
 
 Of Athene about Poseidon, Od. xiii. 341-343 ; 
 
 And, although Hermes is a god of lower stamp, 
 of Hermes to Leto, II. xxi. 498. 
 Again, with a great delicacy. Homer never allows 
 any of the higher deities to be named to mortals as 
 being in conflict one with another. Thus when Diomed 
 ascribes to Apollo the escape of Hector, and makes 
 an appeal for himself to divine aid 1, he does not, as 
 on other occasions (e. g. II. x. 284), name Athene as 
 his protectress, but says, 
 
 ' If perchance I too may have a god for my ally.' 
 
 So Poseidon, in the form of Calchas, urging on the two 
 Aiantes, and referring to Hector as claiming to be 
 the son of Zeus, and as perhaps having his aid 2, sug- 
 gests that ' some one of the gods' might help one of 
 them to make an effectual resistance. In reply, the 
 Oilean Ajax observes that the pretended Calchas is 
 some one of the gods of Olympos *. Thus no deity is 
 placed by name in opposition to Zeus. 
 
 1 II. xi. 362-366, 2 II, xiii. 54-58, ' II. xiii, 68, 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM, I97 
 
 And thus it is contrived, that Poseidon shall retire 
 from the field (II. xv. ai8) before Apollo arrives there 
 to renovate Hector (339). 
 
 In the Seventeenth Book, when Athene ^ appears, that 
 she may give effect to the altered policy of Zeus, 
 Apollo does not absolutely retire, but the agency of 
 the two is so directed as to avoid collision. For when 
 Athene has incited Menelaos, and Apollo then kindles 
 Hector, the two warriors do not meet in fight. Once 
 more, when "Achilles (II. xx. 450) recognises the fact 
 that Apollo has carried off Hector, he expresses a hope 
 that tIs di&v may aid him too. In a word, the greater 
 gods of Homer never are brought into conflict, nor 
 do they exhibit their differences within the human 
 sphere. 
 
 In Book XX, Here consults Poseidon and Athene 
 (v. 115) as to the mode of counteracting the agency 
 of Apollo, who is accompanying ^neas against 
 Achilles. ' Let us,' she says, ' force him back : and 
 then some one of us can go to attend Achilles' (119— 
 lai). Poseidon, in his reply, is unwilling to bring 
 gods into conflict, ' unless Ares or Apollo should begin, 
 or should hinder Achilles' (132-143) in his work of 
 havoc. 
 
 And when, finally, Zeus exhibits the golden scales 
 in the air, that which holds the fate of Hector sinks 
 to Hades, and thereupon Apollo quits him. It is then 
 only that Athene, who was at hand and ready (see 
 V. 187), joins and accompanies Achilles 2. 
 
 But this mutual respect is only one among many 
 notes of diflFerence, which separate the orders of deity 
 in the Olympian Court. 
 
 1 II. xvii. 544. ^ II. xxii. 208-214. 
 
198 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 The Olympian personages of Homer may be divided 
 into several classes, in several respects. 
 y -. Firstly. We may consider them as background and 
 foreground personages. The background personages 
 are little heard ofJ and scarcely affect the machinery 
 of government for' the Homeric world. Such are De- 
 meter, Themis, Leto, Dione, Hebe; such are the 
 Muses, and the Charites or Graces; independently of 
 the Nature-powers, who are summoned to Olympos on 
 great and special occasions, but who take no active part 
 in superintending human aflFairs at large. 
 
 Secondly. The foreground personages may be divided 
 into those of higher and of lower power. 
 
 Of higher power we have only Zeus, Here, Poseidon, 
 Athene, and Apollo. 
 
 Thirdly. The Olympian deities may again be divided 
 into two classes, of the higher and the lower ij^os, or 
 moral tone, respectively. The three first divinities are 
 of the lower, and the two last of the higher, in regard 
 to all those matters which pertain to the morality and 
 to the infirmity, or hxpaaia, of man. 
 
 Zeus, in his Olympian personality, stands with the 
 class to which Here and Poseidon belong; while, as 
 the traditional representative of providence and the 
 Theistic idea, he ranks more justly with Athene and 
 Apollo. 
 
 Of the class lower both in power, and in moral tone, 
 we have Hephaistos, Ares, Hermes, Aphrodite. 
 
 All, except the highest gods, in Homer may be said 
 generally to be subject to the following limitations and 
 liabilities : — 
 
 I. They do not know what events take place among 
 men, except by the common senses of sound or sight. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 1 99 
 
 and when fevourably placed; for example, when near 
 at hand, or when sound is loud. 
 
 2. They do not know what is in the mind, and must 
 ask to be informed. 
 
 3. They shriek or cry aloud from emotion. 
 
 4. When they move, it is {a) by gradual progression ; 
 {h) with means of conveyance. 
 
 5. They are liable to be hurt and wounded. 
 
 6. Human warriors can contend against them. 
 
 7. Their worship is peculiar to some races or places. 
 
 8. They are even liable to disparagement in com- 
 munications held by the higher gods with men. 
 
 9. They have little or no command over outward 
 nature and the elements. 
 
 10. They do not habitually repair to Olymposi. 
 
 11. Their partialities and propensities are without 
 system, policy, or governing mind. 
 
 I a. They neither have divine foreknowledge, nor, 
 in many cases, have they prudence or forethought equal 
 to the human. 
 
 13. They are not able immediately to influence the 
 human mind. 
 
 The only deities who may be called absolutely free 
 from all these limitations are Zeus, Athene, and 
 Apollo. 
 
 Even Here is subject to some of them : Poseidon to 
 more. 
 
 Not even those deities, who are omnipresent upon 
 earth, and take cognisance of all human affairs, are 
 precisely informed as to what takes place in the super- 
 nal region; for when Here sent Iris to Achilles, in 
 
 > Where, however, Hephaistos lived (II. xviii. 143-147); but 
 perhaps for special reasons. 
 
2O0 yUVENTUS MUNDI. - [cHAP. 
 
 the Eighteenth Iliad', to urge him to appear before the 
 contending armies, it was done without the knowledge 
 either of Zeus or of any other deity. 
 
 Certain special features, as we have seen, and shall 
 further see, are traceable, most of all in the Athene 
 and Apollo of the Homeric Poems, but also in Zeus, 
 and (more forcibly) in Leto and in Iris, as well as in 
 one or two other Olympian personages : and these fea- 
 tures, in the case of the two first-named deities parti- 
 cularly, impart to the pictures of them an extraordinary 
 elevation and force, such as to distinguish them broadly 
 from the delineations of other gods, in whom these par- 
 ticular features are wanting. The features themselves 
 are in the most marked correspondence with the Hebraic 
 traditions, as conveyed in the books of Holy Scripture, 
 and also as handed down in the auxiliary sacred learning 
 of the Jews. But while it seems impossible to deny the 
 correspondence without doing violence to facts, on the 
 other hand we are not able to point out historically the 
 channel of communication through which these tradi- 
 tions were conveyed into Greece, and became operative 
 in the formation of the Olympian scheme. 
 
 At first sight we should be tempted to suppose that 
 the Phoenician navigators offered the natural' and pro- 
 bable explanation of any such phenomena. Because^ 
 on the one hand, we know, from the historic books of 
 Scripture, that the Phoenicians were at an early date 
 in habits of intercourse with the Jewsj while, on the 
 other hand, they not only were in like habits with the 
 Achaian Greeks of Homer, but also, as far as we can 
 discern, no other nation had a sensible amount of 
 
 ' w. 183-186. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 20I 
 
 intercourse with Greece, or if there were such, it passed 
 under the Phoenician name. 
 
 And again, there is one of the legends of Homer 
 with reference to which the presumption arises with 
 a peculiar force. 
 
 Apart from any disposition to premature deduction 
 or imaginative interpretation, it seems obvious to ob- 
 serve upon the striking similarity between the legend 
 of Bellerophon, solicited by the wife of Proitos, and 
 that of Joseph, by the wife of Potiphar. 
 
 And the great abundance of tales forming the outer 
 circle of the Odyssey, which (it is hardly too much to 
 say) can only have had a Phoenician origin, and which 
 touch almost every point of the compass except that 
 to the eastward of Phoenicia itself, suggests the likeli- 
 hood that this enterprising people would not be destitute 
 of reports from that quarter also. 
 
 The name of Proitos i, appearing on one of the seven 
 gates of Thebes, which mark its Phoenician re-founda- 
 tion, supplies a positive link between the legend of 
 Bellerophon and the source to which I am ascribing it. 
 , A second such link is supplied by the written charac- 
 ters, in which Proitos communicated with the King of 
 Lycia respecting Bellerophon. The art of writing, ac- 
 cording to the later tradition, was brought by Phoeni- 
 cians into Greece ; and the name of Proitos distinctly 
 connects the text of Homer with that belief. 
 
 Our finding the family of Bellerophon in close re- 
 lations with Proitos tends, of itself, to induce a belief 
 in their ethnical connection. This presumption comes 
 into clearer light when we observe that Bellerophon 
 was an Aiolid. 
 
 ' Paus. p. 727. 
 
202 yUVENTVS MUNDT. [cHAP. 
 
 It must also be admitted that, in supposing any other 
 channels than the Phoenician for the conveyance of 
 these traditions, we should force them up to a very 
 early point of time, namely, that of the separation of 
 the Semitic, and the Japhetic or Aryan, branches of 
 the human family. 
 
 It is however admitted that the Olympian scheme 
 has for its distinctive character, or differentia, the in- 
 tense action of the anthropomorphic principle ; which 
 pervades and moulds the whole, repelling, and as it were 
 repudiating, on the one hand all abstract speculations 
 about the Deity, on the other the worship of Nature- 
 Powers and of the animal creation. It is also clear, 
 that some of the Hebraic traditions were eminently 
 calculated to develop the anthropomorphic principle. 
 The promise or expectation of a Redeemer, or Deli- 
 verer, of man, who should be at once human and divine, 
 laid a basis for the entire system, by annexing the 
 glory of divine attributes to the corporeal form of man. 
 And the seed thus supplied was vivified, so to speak, 
 by the familiar belief in the intercourse of God with 
 the patriarchs, which so readily adapts itself to, if 
 indeed it does not require, the use of a form approach- 
 ing at least to the human type. 
 
 Every race had its own religious traditions. Each 
 modified, or kept, or lost them, in obedience to its 
 ruling tendencies. It does not seem strange that 
 the tribe or tribes, whatever they were, which brought 
 into Greek life and religion what proved to be their 
 central principle, should have clung with a great 
 tenacity to, and preserved far more faithfully than other 
 races of a less fine composition, those traditions which 
 were so well adapted to the effective development 
 of their peculiar genius. 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN STSTEM. 203 
 
 Among the Hebrews, besides what has been en- 
 shrined in the Sacred Scriptures, there was a stream 
 of tradition! otherwise delivered and relating to the 
 Messiah, which, though it nowhere impugns or even 
 varies, yet vividly illustrates the written record. I 
 subjoin some particulars. 
 
 1. The Messiah was to be divine. 
 
 2. He was conceived of as ' the Glory of God ' in the 
 feminine gender. 
 
 3. The relation of His two natures was set forth 
 in the figure of mother and daughter. 
 
 4. He was to be the Logos, the Word or Wisdom 
 of God. 
 
 5. He was the Lord of Hosts — an idea which would 
 naturally take form in some martial development. 
 
 6. He was especially The Light. 
 
 7. He was to be the Mediator, through whom the 
 counsels of God take effect upon man. 
 
 8. He was to perform miracles, 
 
 9. He was to conquer the Evil One, and to libe- 
 rate the dead from the grave and from the power of 
 hell. 
 
 10. And, generally, the divine qualities were all 
 to be reflected in the Messiah (conceived as masculine) 
 or Shechinah (as feminine) 2. 
 
 We may probably regard the use of the feminine 
 gender in these traditions as having been either (i) the 
 most convenient mode of impersonating an abstract 
 idea of the Wisdom of God, or (a) as suggested by 
 
 ^ Studies, vol. ii. pp. 48-51. 
 
 ^ lb. vol. ii. pp. 51-53. Taken principally from Schottgen's 
 Horae Hebraicae. 
 
a04 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the arrangements of the Egyptian, or other Eastern 
 religions. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss at large the origin of 
 the numerous religions which have existed outside the 
 pale of the Divine revelation. It was a favourite 
 opinion with the Christian apologists, Eusebius and 
 others, that the pagan deities represented deified rhen ^. 
 Others consider them to signify the powers of external 
 nature personified. For others they are, in many cases, 
 impersonations of human passions and propensities, 
 reflected back from the mind of man. A fourth mode 
 of interpretation would treat them as copies, distorted 
 and depraved, of a primitive system of religion given 
 by God to man. The Apostle St. Paul speaks of them 
 as devils ^ j by which he may perhaps intend to convey 
 that, under the names and in connection with the 
 worship of those deities, the worst influences of the 
 Evil One were at work. This would rather be a 
 subjective than an objective description; and would 
 rather convey an account of the practical working of 
 a corrupted religion, than an explanation of its origin 
 or its early course. As between the other four, it seems 
 probable that they all, in various degrees and manners, 
 entered into the composition of the later paganism, 
 and also of the Homeric or Olympian system. That 
 system, however, was profoundly adverse to mere 
 Nature-worship J while the care of departments or 
 provinces of external nature were assigned to its 
 leading personages. Such worship of natural objects 
 or elemental powers, as prevailed in connection with 
 it, was in general local or secondary. And the deifi- 
 
 ' See the Propaideia or Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, 
 passim. 2 j Q^f j^ ^o. 
 
VII..] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 205 
 
 cation of heroes in the age of Homer was rare and 
 merely titular. We do not find that any cult or 
 system of devotion was attached to it. 
 
 The preternatural machinery of the Homeric Poems, 
 besides its other qualities, is singularly complex and 
 comprehensive. Its complexity is doubtless due to the 
 fact, that Homer had to represent and to harmonise 
 the several varieties of religion, which had found its 
 way into the country in company with immigrating 
 races, families, or persons. Its comprehensiveness is 
 owing to that anthropomorphic principle on which it is 
 framed, and which borrowed from earth, and carried up 
 to Olympos, the state, the family, and the individual, 
 as they exist among men. 
 
 The bold invention by which the gods take sides 
 in the War of Troy, and decide the controversy by 
 main force in heaven, before it can finally be brought to 
 issue on the plain between the Achaian and Trojan 
 armies, is not a flight of the imagination only. The 
 partisanship of the respective deities, this way and 
 that, is evidently dictated by sympathies of race. 
 Neither the blood, nor yet the religion, of the two 
 countries were wholly separate ; but differences of 
 leaning and of colour between them may readily be 
 discerned upon a close examination. And again, 
 the mode in which general rules are occasionally 
 varied in the Poems, irresistibly suggests that there 
 is a reason both for the rule and for the exceptions; 
 •as, for example, in the care of Poseidon for ^neas 
 the Trojan, and in his persecution of Odysseus the 
 Greek. We may also discern the marks of subdivided 
 attachments. The care of Athene is exercised chiefly 
 on behalf first of Odysseus, next to him of Achilles, 
 
206 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and next to him of Diomed. The care of Here is 
 for the Pelopid family, and apparently for the Greeks 
 as the people whom they lead. Irrespectively, then, 
 of the manifold interest attaching to the Homeric 
 mythology, both as a religion and as poetry, it is 
 in truth a main key to the ethnography of the Poems, 
 and even might on this account be taken as a point of 
 departure in an investigation^ which it influences from 
 first to last. 
 
 The personages of the Homeric Theotechny, under 
 which name I include the whole of the supernatural 
 beings, of whatever rank, introduced into the Poems, 
 are so diversified in character, intellect, and power, 
 that while they cannot be described under any one 
 common form, it is difficult to divide them into classes 
 with anything like precision. Into the following cate- 
 gories, however, we may distribute them with a 
 tolerable approach to accuracy. 
 
 1. The Olympian deities; recognised and actual 
 governors, but with immensely different titles and 
 prerogatives, either of the inner and Greek world, or 
 of the outer world known more faintly and indirectly 
 to the Greeks. 
 
 2. The greater Nature-Powers, with Okeanos at their 
 head, who had apparently been supreme in the prior or 
 Pelasgian Theogony. 
 
 3. The lesser Nature-Powers, who continued to hold 
 their ground, at least in local influence. 
 
 4. Minor deities of foreign tradition, neither na- 
 turalised nor acknowledged in Greece, as not being of 
 sufficient significance to claim admission to Olympos. 
 
 5. Rebellious powers. 
 
 6. Ministers of Doom and Justice, real or reputed j 
 
VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 207 
 
 less than divinities in rankj but more closely associated 
 with the moral order. 
 
 7. Impersonated ideas connected with the objects of 
 human desire and aversion, hope and fear. 
 
 8. Translated, or deified, heroes. 
 
 9. Races intermediate between gods and men. 
 
 Again. Many elements of the Hebrew traditions re- 
 corded in the Holy Scriptures, or otherwise preserved 
 among the Jews down to later times, appear in the 
 Olympian Court of Homer. But they are not found in 
 all the personages that compose the assemblage; nor 
 even in all those deities whom, from various kinds of 
 evidence in the Poems, we perceive to have been fully 
 recognised as objects of the national worship. Further, 
 in the characters where the features corresponding with 
 Hebrew traditions mainly appear, there is a peculiar 
 elevation of tone, and a remarkable degree of reverence 
 is maintained towards them, so as to separate them, 
 not indeed by an uniform, but commonly by a per- 
 ceptible and even a broad line, from the remainder 
 of the gods. 
 
 Besides the idea of a Deity which in some sense 
 is three in one, the traditions traceable in Homer, 
 which appear to be drawn from the same source as 
 those of Holy Scripture, are chiefly these : — (1) A 
 Deliverer, conceived under the double form, first of the 
 'seed of the woman' — a being at once Divine and 
 human, secondly of the Logos, the Word or Wisdom 
 of God. (2) Next, the woman whose seed this 
 Redeemer was to be. (3) Next, the rainbow con- 
 sidered as a means, or a sign, of communication 
 between God and man. And finally the tradition of 
 an Evil Being, together with his ministers, working 
 
208 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [OHAP. 
 
 under the double form described by Moloch in his 
 speech, of 'open war/ and of ? wiles j' as a rebel, 
 and as a tempter. This last tradition is indeed 
 shivered into fragments, such as the giants precipitated 
 into Tartaros, and as Ate roaming on the earth ; with 
 perhaps a portion of the idea lodged in Kronos, whose 
 common and only description in Homer is 'Kronos 
 of the crooked thought ' {ayKvXoixrJTris). The other four 
 traditions appear to be represented in the persons 
 of ApollOj Athene, Leto, and Iris. Of course it by 
 no means follows that they have no other origin than 
 in these traditions, or that, as they stand in Homer, 
 they represent such traditions and nothing else. Iris, 
 for example, must evidently be considered as an im- 
 personation of a Nature-Power, What seems to me 
 undeniable is that, in the Poems of Homer, the tra- 
 ditions I have named are at the least copiously and 
 richly embroidered upon the tissue, supplied by other 
 accounts of the mythological persons I have named; 
 and that they give to those persons a distinctiveness 
 of character and form, which upon a close and detailed 
 view of the Olympian system, as it is unfolded in the 
 Poems of Homer, cannot well be mistaken by a pains- 
 taking and unprejudiced observer. If, in the progress 
 of time, and with the mutations which that system 
 gradually underwent, the marks of correspondence with 
 the Hebrew records became more faint, the fact even 
 raises some presumption that, were we enabled to 
 go yet further back, we should obtain yet fuller and 
 clearer evidence of their identity of origin in certain 
 respects. 
 
 Even the highest conception of deity in Homer does 
 not exclude the element of fraud. I will give an 
 
"VII.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 209 
 
 example. There can be no question that the prize of 
 the loftiest, most free, and most constant and unvary- 
 ing intelligence in the whole catalogue of Olympian 
 deities must be given to Athene; who, alone among 
 them, is never ignorant of what it concerns her to 
 know, never exposed to disrespect, never outwitted by 
 an opponent, never disappointed of an end. But, in 
 the great crisis of Hector and Achilles, when the in- 
 trinsic superiority of the Greek hero makes him inde- 
 pendent of any even more honourable aid, she descends 
 to the mean and shameful artifice of assuming the form 
 of his brother Deiphobos, whom he especially loved and 
 trusted, to induce him to turn and meet his adversary^. 
 This arrangement is the more remarkable, because it 
 is somewhat difficult to discern the motive for such an 
 intervention, or to see why Achilles could not, with 
 his extraordinary swiftness of foot, have overtaken 
 Hector apart from any assistance whatever. Perhaps 
 it was an artifice of the Poet to uplift the character of 
 Hector, of course in order to glorify yet further the 
 Greek hero, who was to overcome him. 
 
 Those pure and lofty traditions, then, which we are 
 justly wont to refer to a primitive revelation as their 
 fountain-head, had already begun to be impaired. And 
 it is only what we ought to expect, if we find that with 
 the lapse of time they suffered further deterioration, 
 and if the persons representing them gradually sunk 
 nearer and nearer to the level of those other Olympian 
 deities who had already in the time of Homer lost, or 
 who perhaps never had possessed, any notes of the sub- 
 lime conceptions which the Holy Scriptures, and in some 
 degree the auxiliary traditions of the Hebrews, have 
 
 ^ II. xxii. 214-247. 
 p 
 
2IO JUVENTVS MUNDI. [OHAP. 
 
 handed down to us in the greatest purity, and which 
 the peculiar genius that became dominant in the Greek 
 religion had, for a time at least, been able to preserve, 
 if not from all injurious contact, yet from anything like 
 absolute immersion in the mire. The Athene and 
 Apollo of the Olympian system may be compared with 
 the Child in the noble Ode of Wordsworth j about 
 whom, in his infancy. Heaven is lying, who as boy and 
 youth 
 
 Yet by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended; 
 
 but who in process of time parts from it altogether : 
 
 At length the man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day'. 
 
 It is no part of the object of this work to institute 
 a detailed comparison between the earliest and the 
 later stages of the morality and religion of the heathen 
 world ; but I shall , now state summarily the results 
 which such a comparison would, I think, reasonably 
 suggest, so far as religion is concerned. 
 
 Religion and race have ever run much together. We 
 find in Homer the clear tokens of a composite people, 
 and of a composite belief. With the lapse of time the 
 edges and angles of ethnical differences are worn down. 
 The nation and the creed settle down upon an acknow- 
 ledged platform; and the distinctive features, though 
 they do not wholly vanish, take a form which it is dif- 
 ficult to trace back to their first origin. All formations, 
 especially if complex, must be examined in their be- 
 ginnings. The religion of classical and historic Greece 
 is already an old religion. The Poems of Homer enable 
 
 ' Wordsworth's Ode on the Recollections of Childhood. 
 
VII.J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 211 
 
 US to investigate its first inception. We can .trace the 
 very finger of the artist on the clay he moulded for his 
 countrymen's behoof. But as the nation was compacted 
 and consolidated, the component parts of the religion 
 also settled down, and their specific differences, like 
 colours running, lost all definite outline. 
 
 This loss of distinctive notes in the Greek mythology 
 was a deteriorating and not an improving process. The 
 gods of later times were not relieved from the stains 
 which attach to them in Homer. Some legends, which 
 with him appear in a beautiful and noble shape, became 
 utterly abominable and base. While the level of the 
 higher characters of his Theogony was reduced till it 
 nearly reached that of the lower, the level of the lower 
 was in no way raised. In the processes of change, 
 nothing was given, all was taken away. 
 
 But the grand distinction between the Homeric and 
 the later systems was this : that the earlier scheme was 
 a real, though it was a corrupt, religion. It acted upon 
 life. It menaced the excesses of power. It prescribed 
 the duties of reverence to age and authority, of hospi- 
 tality to the stranger, and of mercy to the poor. It 
 had one and the same standing with reference to all 
 classes. It did not assign to deity that most ungodlike 
 quality, respect of persons. But in after times, apart 
 from its deeper moral stains, it became wholly severed 
 from the cultured mindj and subsisted mainly as the 
 jest of philosophers and men of the world, the tool of 
 priests and rulers, the bugbear of the vulgar. 
 
 Again, it may be noticed that the religion of Homer, 
 subject to varying closeness of relation between dif- 
 ferent places and particular deities, is, though not an 
 uniform, yet an universal religion. 
 
 P 3 
 
313 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 ^ 
 
 The Poet evidently supposed that in some manner 
 the Olympian gods governed not the Greeks only, but 
 all mankind. This perhaps is the reason why he has 
 admitted into the Olympian family personages like 
 Ares^ Aphrodite, and the Sun, whom we cannot afSrm 
 to have been worshipped at the time in Greece; the 
 evidence being, indeed, adverse to any such supposition. 
 This element of truth in his conceptions of Deity is 
 clearly exhibited by the banquets provided for his gods 
 among the Aithiopes; by the scene of the Iliad, in 
 which Zeus turns his eyes over the country of the Hip- 
 pemolgoi and the Abioi^; and especially by this, that, 
 in the wide range of the Voyage of Odysseus, though 
 he comes within the special jurisdiction first of Posei- 
 don, and next of Helios, still there is always a power 
 of supreme control lodged in the Olympian Assembly ; 
 a power, by means of which his release from the island 
 of Calypso is finally obtained. 
 
 It seems as if his primitive spirit had been unable 
 to embrace the conception, which in later times came 
 into vogue, of diflFerent and unconnected deities ruling 
 different portions of mankind ; and as if both his own 
 and the prevailing religious sense required that, although 
 the name and worship of many among them had origi- 
 nally come from, or even still belonged to, a foreign 
 shore, yet they should, as far as their importance re- 
 quired him to take notice of them, be bound together 
 into a supreme and organised unity. But, notwithstand- 
 ing, within the bosom of this unity the character and 
 associations of his own race, which, without doubt, he 
 placed at the head of all mankind, were to be predomi- 
 
 ^ II. xiii. 3-6. 
 
I 
 
 Til.] THE OLTMPIAN SYSTEM. 213 
 
 nant. In this combination of ideas we find the basis, 
 and the warrant, of his Olympian system. 
 
 The collective action of the Olympian deities in the 
 government of men is less infirm, more venerable, 
 more divine, than their individual action. When they 
 move together, the mere idiosyncracies, in which they 
 abound, appear to be in a great degree lost and absorbed. 
 The co-operation of the three great Hellenising deities 
 in the War against Troy is, indeed, the efficient cause 
 of the divine decision in favour of the Greeks. And 
 this again is mythically referred to a vindictive senti- 
 ment on the part of each of the men ; yet the decision 
 is a righteous decision. And, speaking generally, while 
 the individual members of the Olympian Court are 
 swayed by hate, lust, and greed, they have not any 
 objects which they can pursue in common for the grati- 
 fication of these appetites or passions j and thus is 
 neutralised the personal bias which so frequently draws 
 them off the line of moral obligationj and more free 
 scope is given, in all their common action, to the 
 exercise of the true governing office. 
 
 It is somewhat singular that we have not, in the 
 true Olympian religion, any clear instance of a married 
 deity, except Zeus. Hephaistos is married to Aphro- 
 dite only in the Phoenician, or rather perhaps Syrian, 
 mythology of the Eighth Odyssey. In the Iliad he is 
 but wooing Charis^. That Amphitrite is the wife of 
 Poseidon is a purely gratuitous assumption, and is in 
 every way improbable, since Amphitrite has no clear or 
 definite impersonation. Helios and Perse had children ; 
 but they are wholly within the Eastern mythology. 
 The names of Aides and Persephone are commonly 
 
 ' II. xviii. 382. 
 
214 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP, 
 
 combined in such a way as would be consistent 
 with, and as may even suggest, their being married. 
 But this would scarcely harmonise with his general 
 arrangements, if Demeter was the mother of Persephone, 
 and if Aidoneus^ was an earthy Zeus. And Homer' has 
 carefully avoided using any words which would directly 
 place them in this relation. Okeanos and Tethus, 
 Kronos and Rhea, lie outside the Olympian scheme. 
 
 If this observation be correct, the fact is probably to 
 be accounted for in this way : Homer had no idea of 
 a normal marriage without issue. Where there were 
 none, it was a heaven-sent calamity. He could not, 
 then, have divinities distributed in barren pairs. But 
 to have provided them with families would have placed 
 him in difficulties, such as may sometimes be felt by 
 royalty on earth, with respect to the means of providing 
 for a numerous offspring. It would have been difficult 
 to weave them into the stock of traditions which sup- 
 plied his raw material. Moreover, as between brothers 
 and sisters, the Greek horror of incest perhaps would 
 ill have allowed the general use of the idea of a matri- 
 monial connection ; though Here was the sister as well 
 as the wife of Zeus, and though this double relation 
 was not at all foreign to such Eastern traditions ^ as 
 he had received through the Phoenicians. Thus he 
 was shut up on all sides to arranging his Olympos, as 
 to its younger generation, in the form of the single 
 though manifold family of Zeus. 
 
 Again. Within the theological system of Homer, and 
 
 as a kind of kernel to it, there lies a system which may 
 
 be called one of deontology, or that which ought to 
 
 be, and to be done. 'Will' is the supreme element 
 
 ^ See infra, Aidoneus. '2 Od. x. 5-9. 
 
VII. J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 215 
 
 in the mythological action; or, at the least, it is in 
 practice co-ordinate with 'ought,' and it seems to be 
 in conduct the livelier principle of the two. But 
 the idea conveyed in 'ought' has a separate sphere, 
 and ministers of its own, to which even Olympian 
 personages pay regard. Its laws are expressed some- 
 times in terms relating to destiny : most purely of all 
 in oTTis and in veixeaisi which may truly be said to 
 reflect the moral sense of the gods, and which are 
 never used by Homer to express a mere mental emo- 
 tion of mankind. They may convey more or less the 
 sense of an emotion, but it is an emotion always 
 springing from and regulated by a regard to the essen- 
 tial laws of right, to the themistes of heaven. A third 
 form, in which the dictates of the moral law are ex- 
 pressed and enforced, is in the action of its mute but 
 ever active ministers, the Erinues. 
 
 These topics will be opened in their due order. 1 
 pass to another head. 
 
 Homer informs us in the Eighteenth Iliad that 
 Hephaistos was found by Thetis busy in finishing a 
 set of twenty seats ^, for the members of the Olym- 
 pian Court to use in their assemblies. I have observed 
 that, with some allowance for the vagueness common 
 with the Poet in the use of figures, we may take this 
 incident as indicating pretty closely what he meant to 
 be understood as the number of the Di majores, or 
 personages qualified to attend at the Council (boule) of 
 the gods. 
 
 As to nearly the whole of them, there is no difScuIty 
 in drawing out the roll : — 
 
 ' II. xviii. 372-377. 
 
2\6 JUVENTUS MUNDi. [cHAP. 
 
 I. The children of Kronos : — 
 
 I. Zeus 
 3. Poseidon 
 
 3. Ai'doneus 
 
 4. Here 
 
 II. The secondary wives of Zeus : 
 
 1. Leto 
 
 2. Demeter 
 
 3. Dione 
 
 } 
 
 III. The children of Zeus : — 
 
 1. Athene 
 
 2. Apollo 
 
 3. Hephaistos 
 
 4. Hermes 
 
 5. Artemis 
 
 6. Ares 
 
 7. Persephone 
 
 8. Aphrodite 
 
 IV. Personages not classified, but performing 
 
 Olympian offices : — 
 
 1. Themis, the Summoner 
 
 2. Iris, the Envoy 
 
 3. Hebe, the Cupbearer 
 
 } 
 
■VII.] THE OLrMPIAN SYSTEM. 2,1 "J 
 
 Besides these eighteen we have 
 
 I. Helios, the Sun, taking part in Olympian pro- 
 ceedings i. 
 
 3. Paieon, who appears to be ordinarily present there 
 as Healer ^, 
 
 Both these personages came to be absorbed in Apollo : 
 but in Homer they are distinct from him : and, so far 
 as the poet may have had a distinct intention as to 
 number, these two have perhaps the best claim to the 
 Nineteenth and Twentieth places. 
 
 3. Another claim, making the Twenty-first, is that 
 of Dionusosj whose position, however, in Homer is 
 faintly marked and somewhat equivocal ^. 
 
 On the whole we ought perhaps to reject two other 
 names. 
 
 1. Eris, or Enuo, the sister and the paramour of 
 Ares *. She grows up, and this as it seems habitually, 
 from small to huge dimensions. She remains to wit- 
 ness the battle of the Eleventh Iliad, while the other 
 deities withdraw to their Olympian palaces respect- 
 ively ^ She is sent down to the camp at the beginning 
 of the same Book, and shouts from the ship of Odys- 
 seus. She is named, too, together with Pallas s, in 
 contrast with the effeminate Aphrodite. Yet, on the 
 whole, she is probably no more than a vivid poetical 
 impersonation. In conformity with this supposition, 
 while Ares carries a spear as he leads the Trojans to 
 the fight, she conducts, instead, another form yet more 
 shadowy than her own, that of Kudoimos, or Tumult. 
 
 2. Histie, who is Vesta, and one of the Di majores, 
 
 ' Od. viii. 270, 302, and xii. 374-376. ^ H. v. 401, 899. 
 
 ' Infra, ch. viii. sect. DionuEOS. * II. iv. 441. 
 
 » II. xi. 3, 4, 73. « II. V. 333, 592. 
 
21 8 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 in the Roman mythology, and who is also fully per- 
 sonified in the post-Homeric poetry of the Greeks, can 
 scarcely be considered as a person in the view of 
 Homer, There are indeed invocations to her name', 
 which signifies 'the hearth,' in the Odyssey j but in 
 three cases out of the five it is combined with that of 
 the table for guests. 
 
 ^ Od. xiv. 159 ; xvii. 160 ; xix. 304 ; xx. 230. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Divinities of Olymfos. 
 
 Section I. Zeus. 
 
 L Zeus presents to us a character more heterogeneous 
 and less consistent than that of any other Homeric 
 
 He claims a strength superior to the united strength 
 of all the gods^; yet he admits that he would have some 
 difficulty^ in putting down Poseidon singlehanded ; and 
 he was actually delivered by a giant ^ from fetters into 
 which he had been, or was about to be^ thrown by a 
 combination of that god with Athene and Here. 
 
 In many points he inherits the traditions, and is 
 formed upon the conception, of the One and Supreme 
 God. Yet he was one of three brothers, who had 
 parents preceding them : the three were born to equal 
 honour*: lot alone decided their several domains. 
 Seniority gives Zeus the first place : yet the filial tie 
 had not prevented him from imprisoning his own father 
 in perpetuity. He is alike the depository of high moral 
 ideas, and of intense^ as well as of debased, human 
 
 ' II. iv. 17-27. '^ II. XV. 228. 
 
 ^ II. i. 399-406. * II. XV. 209. 
 
320 yUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 attributes. He bears many diflFerent characters; and 
 no one of them is altogether consistent with the 
 rest. 
 
 There are five different capacities in which, in order 
 to embrace the entire picture drawn by the Poet, he 
 must be regarded. Four of them are Olympian: one 
 appertains to an earlier theogonic scheme. 
 
 T. Zeus is the meeting-point of the Pelasgic with 
 the Olympian or Hellenic system of religion. 
 
 2. He is the depository of the principal remnants of 
 monotheistic and providential ideas. 
 
 3. He is the sovereign lord of meteorological phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 , Y. --4. He is the head of the Olympian Court. 
 
 5. He is the most marked receptacle of all such 
 earthly, sensual, and appetitive elements as, at the 
 time of Homer, anthropophuism had obtruded into th^ 
 sphere of deity. 
 
 On the epithets and verbal ascriptions of Zeus, we 
 may observe, 
 
 1. That they much exceed in number and variety 
 those of any other deity. 
 
 a. That with few and special exceptions they are 
 applied to him exclusively. 
 
 3. That they divide themselves into classes accord- 
 ing as they belong to him, 
 
 a. In respect of national or special worship, as 
 Dodonaios, Idaios, Pelasgicos, Olumpios. 
 
 h. In respect of his chief place in the Hellenic theo- 
 gony, as air-god : such as dorepoTTTjr^s, vecjyeKrjyepiTris, 
 Ke\aive(f>fis, TepiriKepavvos, ipCybovTtos, €vpv<iTir]s. 
 
 c. In respect of his character as the Providence and 
 Governor of mankind, and the defender of social and 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 221 
 
 moral laws : such as dtS>v i-naros koI apurros, ■narrip av- 
 bp&v re OeGtv re, jxriTieTris, ^eivws, iKfrrjinos: highest and 
 best of gods, father of gods and men, the Zeus of 
 counsel, the Zeus of the guest, the Zeus of the sup- 
 pliant. 
 
 Let us now proceed to this fivefold observation of 
 the Homeric Zeus. 
 
 I. The Pelasgian Zeus. 
 
 At times, the Zeus of Homer appears to border upon 
 the mere Nature-Power : as in the epithet Aaircr^s, 
 ' falling from Zeus,' applied to rivers : in 'EkSios, 
 meaning ' at noontide,' and recalling the ' sub dio, sub 
 Jove,' of the Latins. Also the expressions, Aios 6\>.^pos, 
 avydi, i>i<l)a.bes. Spat, the rain, rays, snow-flakes, hours 
 or seasons of Zeus, may all be compared with analo- 
 gous expressions applied to Demeter and to Hephaistos. 
 We may consider all these as being, in their various 
 shades, relics of the Pelasgian worship of Nature- 
 Powers. 
 
 We may in fact either consider the Pelasgian Zeus, 
 and the Zeus of the anthropomorphic system, as one 
 or as two. It is probable that two separate clusters 
 of tradition may have belonged to the same name, and 
 that in time they coalesced together, in obedience to 
 the law of public feeling, combined with their respec- 
 tive internal aptitudes. And this condition may have 
 been the solution no less of a great ethnical than a 
 great mythological question. 
 
 According to the legend of Thetis, in the First 
 Iliad, there was a time when Here, Poseidon, and 
 Athene combined to put him in bonds. He was saved 
 from this peril by Thetis, who fetched Briareus, or 
 
323 JUVENTVS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Aigaion of the Hundred Hands, to his aid. This giant 
 was stronger than his father Poseidon, and on his 
 arrival the plan was abandoned. Of the three deities 
 named, Here and Athene are eminently Hellenic, and 
 Poseidon appears to be Phoenician. The meaning of 
 the legend therefore probably is, that the supremacy of 
 the old, and perhaps purely elemental, Zeus of the 
 Pelasgians was endangered by the arrival of the Phoe- 
 nician and Hellenic immigrants with their respective 
 religious associations : but that an accommodation was 
 afterwards effected, and a Zeus acknowledged, who 
 sufficiently took into himself the Pelasgian element. 
 
 The Zeus of Homer is the Pelasgic Zeus, and the Zeus 
 of Dodona; and he is also worshipped by the Helloi^. 
 These Helloi appear to represent the Hellenic race in 
 its pre-Hellenic form- and the Pelasgian name, with 
 that of Dodona, places the throne of Zeus within the 
 shadows of the pre-Hellenic period. It is true that, in 
 the Theogony of Homer, this deity has ancestors and 
 antecessors : and he alone, of the family of gods proper 
 to the Pelasgians, is carried over at once into the Hel- 
 lenic and Olympian system. This may have been both 
 because, as the god of air and light, he answered best 
 among them to that more abstracted and less mate- 
 rialised conception of Deity which the Hellenic mind 
 required J and because there clustered around him 
 whatever traditions of a supreme and single Being the 
 world of human thought had either fashioned or re- 
 tained. In any case it is plain that the Poet, having 
 got rid of all claims of priority by relegating the 
 Nature-Powers to the Underworld, or to the sea-floor 
 or to the extremities of the earth, is thus enabled to 
 ' II. xvi. 233-235. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 233 
 
 leave his Zeus firmly grounded in authority as the 
 senior god of the Olympian system. And this claim 
 of seniority is the true basis of his supremacy. To 
 this it is, and by no means to mere excess of force, 
 that Poseidon defers in the Fifteenth Iliad, as to a 
 claim profoundly rooted in that moral order, which 
 even gods acknowledge and respect. 
 
 It is at the stage where the Past, having been before 
 only cloud and mist, becomes for Homer that shaped 
 tradition which occupied, relatively to his time, the 
 place of History, that Zeus offers to the mind of the 
 Greek hearer the earliest definite point upon which 
 understanding and memory can fix, so that he can be 
 chosen as, for practical purposes, the origin to which 
 all things are to be traced up and referred. 
 
 It seems likely that this priority of Zeus may lie at 
 the root of his preference for Troy : a state and people 
 in which we discern the predominance of a mere Pelas- 
 gian character, and where the royal family mounts to a 
 greater antiquity than that of any properly Hellenic or 
 Achaian race. 
 
 2. The Divine Zetis. 
 
 To Zeus as Providence belong both a number of 
 separate ascriptions, and a general position, which 
 underlies the whole action of the Iliad. The grandeur 
 of his figure and attributes transcends every other com- 
 position. He is identified, in perhaps an hundred 
 places of the Poems, with the word theos, in its more 
 abstracted signification as Providence, or the moral 
 governor of the world. He is the raixlrjs iroXeiioio, the 
 arbiter of war: and he exhibits in the sky, on great 
 
224 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 occasions, the scales in which are weighed contending 
 fates. He is the source of governing authority, and he 
 shows his displeasure when it is abused i. He is the 
 distributor in general of good and evil among mortals; 
 for it is on his floor that the two caskets^ stand, from 
 which are dispensed the mixed and the unmixed lots of 
 men. He has the care of the guest, the suppliant, and 
 the poor; and thus his name becomes the guarantee for 
 three relations, which were and are fundamental to the 
 condition of mankind, considered with reference to 
 social existence. Indeed in this character he is him- 
 self a source of Destiny, as we find from the remark- 
 able phrase Atos aio-a, the fate of, or proceeding from, 
 Zeus. 
 
 Zeus approximates to, and perhaps possesses, an ubi- 
 quitous or universal supremacy. Hellic and Pelasgian, 
 Idaian and Olympian, he leads the' band of the Immor- 
 tals to feast during an eleven days' absence on the sa- 
 crifices oflFered by the Aithiopes or Ethiopians, who 
 occupied the whole southern line of the world of 
 Homer 3 : and he likewise, in an interval of his cares 
 respecting Troy, casts his eyes in the far north not 
 only over Thracians and Mycians, but over Hippe- 
 molgoi and Abioi*. His name is likewise acknow- 
 ledged in the border land of Scherie, and in the outer 
 sphere where Poseidon rules : for, say the brother Cy- 
 clops to the brutal Poluphemos, ' Disease comes from 
 the mighty Zeus, and cannot be escaped: pray how- 
 ever to thy father the lord Poseidon 5.' From this 
 passage we perceive that Zeus was not for Homer a 
 mere name for Poseidon in his own kingdom, as 
 
 ^ II. xvi. 387. ^ II. xxiv. 527. ^ Od. i. 23. 
 
 * II. xiii. 1-6. = Od. ix. 411. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLVMPOS. 225 
 
 Aidoneus is called ' the Zeus beneath i.' The meaning 
 more nearly approaches to a recognition of the Provi- 
 dential character of Zeus, as contradistinguished from 
 his Olympian capacity. In this larger conception his 
 individual existence at times appears almost wholly to 
 merge. 
 
 Zeus, however, although no positive limits are affixed 
 to his capacities of perception and knowledge, does not 
 as a matter of course perceive all that is going on among 
 mortals. By an expedient of some naivete, he turns 
 his eyes away from Troy towards Thrace and the 
 righteous nations of the North, when Poseidon is about 
 to come into the field. This god, assuming a disguise, 
 remains there long without being observed, although 
 the sleep of Zeus has not yet come^. 
 
 And again, to save the body of Patroclos, Here sends 
 Iris on a mission to Achilles, which is concealed from 
 Zeus as well as from the other gods^ {Kpij^ba Aibs aWuv 
 re Oe&v). 
 
 After the Theomachy also, he inquires of Artemis 
 who it was that had maltreated her. Yet he had seen, 
 and had exulted in seeing, the gods as they engaged in 
 conflict*. 
 
 Besides these physical limitations, Zeus is subject to 
 deceit. He is entrapped by Here through the medium 
 of his passion', and is lulled into a sleep, in order that 
 during his inaction his decree may be disobeyed. In 
 like manner 6 that goddess had completely outwitted 
 him at the time of the birth of Heracles, by obtaining 
 a promise on behalf of a descendant of his who was to 
 
 ' II. ix. 457. " II. xiii. 1-16, 352-356. ' U- ''^"i- 165-169- 
 * II. xxi. 389, 509. = II. xiv. 352. ^ II. xix. 97 seqq. 
 
 Q 
 
226 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 be born on that day, and by then accelerating the birth 
 of Eurustheus in Argos, and stopping that of Heracles 
 in Thebes. 
 
 On certain occasions, we find Zeus acting as supreme 
 and single-handed, neither against nor with the Olym- 
 pian assembly. The grandest of these is at the close 
 of the Odyssey 1- Athene, stimulated by her sympa- 
 thising keenness, appears to have winked at the na- 
 tural, but vengeful, disposition of Odysseus towards his 
 ungrateful and rebellious subjects. Zeus, who had pre- 
 viously counselled moderation, launches his thunder- 
 bolt ; and it falls at the foot of Athene, who thereupon 
 gives the required caution to the exasperated sovereign. 
 Peace immediately follows 2. 
 
 He has also this marked and paramount distinction, 
 that he never descends to earth to execute his own pur- 
 poses, but in general sends other deities as his organs, 
 to give effect to his will, or else operates himself from 
 afar, by signs, or by positive exertions of the power 
 which he possesses as god of air. 
 
 Zeus, however, is not absolutely omnipresent 5 for his 
 journey, and his consequent absence from Olympos, are 
 described". But, unlike the case of Poseidon, we have 
 no detail, no succession in his movement. Again, 
 unlike Poseidon, he hears prayer irrespective of the 
 particular place or point from which it is offered. 
 
 ^ Od. xxiv. 481, 525-541, 546. 2 Od. xxiv. 546. 
 
 ^ II. i. 420-425. 
 
VIII.J THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 227 
 
 3, 4, The Olympian Zeus, and the Lord 0/ Air. 
 
 The chief agency of Zeus in the Poems is as head of 
 the Olympian family and Court. 
 
 In this character he is the governor of the air and all 
 its phenomena; the eldest of the trine brotherhood, 
 and the owner of the Aigis, which is the symbol of 
 sovereign power, like the crown, or sword of state, in an 
 European kingdom. To him the gods rise up at their 
 meetings. Though he swears, as other deities do, in 
 confirmation of his word, we have no details as to the 
 form: but we know that the highest mode of con- 
 veying his will and word is by the nod peculiar to 
 himself 1. 
 
 Besides those offices in relation to the air, which are 
 more capable of an elemental interpretation, he com- 
 mands the clouds, the tempests, the winds, the thunder 
 and lightning, the years ; he impels the falling star, or 
 launches the thunderbolt 2. All signs in air belong to 
 him, as does especially the rainbow, which he planted 
 in the clouds 3. Iris, accordingly, is his personal mes- 
 senger in the Olympian Court. And when any of the 
 attributes belonging to the region of air are employed 
 by other deities, it is in virtue of a special relation to 
 him. These partners of his power appear to be, exclu- 
 sively of the rest. Here as his wife ; with Athene and 
 Apollo, in virtue of moral and traditional relations with 
 the Supreme Deity, belonging to them respectively. 
 The arrangement of the trine brotherhood seems to 
 
 ^ II. i. 524-530. Compare Hebrews vi. 13. 
 
 * Od. xii. 415-417 ; xxiv. 559. ^ II. xi. 27. 
 
 Q3 
 
328 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 bear peculiar marks of a traditional origin. For, be- 
 sides the division of power between three, the mode is 
 remarkable. The Greek ideas and practice were 
 founded, more or less, on primogeniture. Yet it is by 
 lot that Zeus receives the air, Poseidon the sea, A'ldo- 
 neus the Underworld. This method of division is 
 evidently meant to save the principle of equality, 
 which the Poet thus curiously interweaves with the 
 superiority of Zeus. 
 
 For, as the head of the Olympian Court, it is clear 
 that Zeus is stronger than any single god. It is in 
 doubt whether he is, as he boasts, stronger than the 
 whole. We see that at a former period three were 
 able to coerce him. Perhaps we are to understand this 
 legend as referring to a period of crisis : the conditions 
 of human life may enter into the problem, and his 
 sovereignty may be meant to be understood as one 
 which when once vindicated^ became resistless, and was 
 thoroughly consolidated by time. His superiority, how- 
 ever, must in the last resort, like that of other gover- 
 nors, be maintained by main force i, when persuasion or 
 verbal command has failed. Nor could it be exer- 
 cised over the great Poseidon without a struggle^. 
 Here and Athene, however, single or combined, he 
 threatens freely; and the first of these he had once 
 punished with severity 3. 
 
 Of omnipotence, properly so called. Homer does not 
 seem to have embraced the idea. To this height, indeed, 
 even the philosophy of the ancients never ascended. 
 But none of the epithets of Zeus go so far as to 
 express it, even in forms which might be supposed 
 figurative. 
 
 ' II. XV. 164-167. ^ II. XV. 228. ' II. XV. 18. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 329 
 
 The headship of Zeus, however, is established not 
 only in superior force but^ as has been shown, by 
 special marks of respect, and by symbols of sovereignty : 
 it may be added, by the general deference of the gods. 
 Other tokens are observable. There is no patronymic 
 among the gods, except that of Zeus himself. And 
 further, in the Olympian system proper, there is no god 
 born of any divine sire other than Zeus ; nor any god 
 born of a goddess, except he be the father; nor any 
 god born of a human mother. 
 
 Again, he is undisguisedly the arbiter among the 
 gods. Here appeals to him on the conduct of Ares, 
 and he permits his Queen to let loose Athene on the 
 Trojans'. Ares, when wounded, carries his complaint 
 to Zeus ^ J and Artemis also sits on his knee and makes 
 known to him her woes 3. This office, as a kind of 
 judgeship in appeal, is a great stay to the power of 
 ■Zeus. 
 
 This headship of Zeus in the Olympian polity is not 
 merely ornamental; it entails the weight of govern- 
 ment. The careful reader of the Iliad will be struck 
 by the resemblance between his position among the 
 gods, and that of Agamemnon in the circle of his 
 chieftains. As heralds upon earth are his messengers, 
 so it is at his command that a messenger goes to sum- 
 mon the Olympian assemblies : he commonly*, though 
 not universally^ introduces the subject of discussion, 
 and, so to speak, manages the debate. He also feels 
 the burden of government over man, when the divine 
 Assemblies are not in session. After the gorgeous 
 scene of the banquet in the First Iliad, the other gods 
 
 1 II. V. 765. '^ II. V. 782. ' II. xxi. 705. 
 
 * II. iv. 7 ; viii. 41 ; Od. i. 32. ° II. xx. 13. 
 
230 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 slept, but Zeus slept not; he had in his hands the 
 charge of the Executive^ and he summoned Dream to 
 do his bidding 1. 
 
 The idea, to which we give the name of respon- 
 sibility, is represented in Zeus, and in him only. Other 
 gods appear in the movement of the Iliad with an 
 intermittent agency. But it is Zeus who is charged 
 with the general conduct of affairs, with seeing that 
 the government of the world is carried on. There is 
 4 no better example of this, than in the Olympian As- 
 sembly at the opening of the Odyssey. Odysseus is at 
 the time detained by Calypso in the Island of Ogugie. 
 The care of Athene does not reach to him, because he 
 is in the Outer world, under the government, appa- 
 rently, of Poseidon, his great enemy. Meanwhile, his 
 substance is wasted, and his wife tormented, by the 
 dissolute Suitors. All this exhibits a sad rent in the 
 established terrestrial order. Consequently the gods 
 in general are affected with compassion 2. But it is 
 the business of Zeus to introduce the subject to them, 
 for their opinion and decree. 
 
 At the same time we must observe the skill with 
 which he manages the Assembly. He avoids placing 
 himself in conflict with Poseidon by any hasty assump- 
 tion of the initiative ; and only gives his sanction to 
 the plan of the Return, when Athene has complained 
 of the detention, and thrown the responsibility of this 
 evil upon Zeus *. We may observe a like refinement 
 in the Assembly of the Fourth Iliad. The real object 
 of Zeus in that Assembly is to draw the Greeks into 
 the field, which can only be done by bringing about 
 a breach of the Pact of the Third Book. And this 
 ^ II. ii. 1-7. ^ Od. i. 28. 3 Od. i. 62, 76. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 33 1 
 
 must be done by the Trojans, since the Achaians were 
 keepers of their oaths. But his mode of action is to 
 propose that the accommodation just effected shall be 
 made permanent, and that Troy shall continue to sub- 
 sist. For he knows very well, that this will put the 
 Hellenising deities upon proposing a scheme for the 
 renewal of the war, and thus that they will save him 
 from giving offence to those of the Trojan party. 
 
 It is not only in the individual characters and the 
 family order, but also in the general form of the polity 
 of Olympos, that we may trace the anthropomorphic 
 spirit of the Homeric religion. That polity is more 
 aristocratic than monarchical. It does not exclude the 
 idea of coercion, even as applied to Zeus himself j for 
 he was put in chains by the united action of Here, 
 Athene, and Poseidon 1. Upon the whole, notwith- 
 standing the mutterings of Poseidon in the Fifteenth 
 Iliad, the superiority of Zeus to any single deity is 
 sufficiently established. But although he boasts, that he 
 is able to overcome in mere force the whole Assembly ^^ 
 it is incontestable that the will which ultimately pre- 
 vails is that of the body, and not of the individual who 
 is its head. His effort* to obtain a more favourable 
 solution entirely fails. Homer indeed has balanced 
 the question with his usual adroitness ; for, as far as 
 the comparatively narrow plot of the Iliad is concerned, 
 Zeus effects his purpose of glorifying Achilles, by the 
 temporary success of the Trojans whom he loved. 
 But it is the Battle of the gods, and the decisive supe- 
 riority of the Hellenising deities, which foreshadows, 
 and makes way for, the victory of Achilles over Hector. 
 And, as- regards the general issue of the War, it is 
 
 ' II. i. 399-401. ^ II. viii. 18-27. ^ II. iv. 14-19. 
 
232 JVVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 evident that the preference of Zeus lies with the Tro- 
 jans and not with the Greeks. It is then the prevailing 
 sense of the Olympian Court, already represented to us 
 in the Theomachy under the form of physical force, 
 which determines the doom of Troy, and determines it 
 in conformity with justice, but clearly against the bias, 
 if not the outspoken will, of Zeus. 
 
 5. Zeus the type of anthropomorphism. 
 
 The framework of the Olympian system is in itself 
 the most imposing form of development ever given to 
 the principle of anthropomorphism; that principle which, 
 to define it briefly, casts the divine life into human 
 forms. This is effected by Homer with reference to 
 all the main relations of life; the State, the family, 
 and the individual. The State is represented by the 
 Olympian polity as a whole. The relations of the 
 deities among themselves are all thrown into the form 
 of the family. Perhaps it was the sheer necessity of 
 the case, perhaps the fact that the stream of tradition 
 came from the East, which carried with it the con- 
 sequence that, while the Greek family was thoroughly 
 normal, the family of the Greek gods was based upon 
 polygamy 1, and upon polygamy attended with what 
 would among men be deemed a licence yet more re- 
 laxed. In truth, it is the domestic organization of 
 Troy, rather than of Greece, which supplies the earthly 
 original from which the family in Olympos is a copy ; 
 although this is a feature accidental in reference to the 
 main design. 
 
 ^ II. xxi. 499. 
 
yill.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 233 
 
 For, in Olympos, we have Zeus with Here as his 
 principal wife ; with Leto, Dione, and perhaps De- 
 meter, as the secondary or subordinate wives. In the 
 rear of these, came all the persons who were the sub- 
 jects of his adulterous intrigues on earth. Here alone ' 
 is the Queen, who by reflection attracts, and who 
 exercises, though with a contracted power, the air- 
 governing prerogatives of her husband. The other 
 goddesses I have named are personages, differing in 
 dignity, but agreeing in this, that they are mute and 
 blind in reference to the governing ofSce. 
 
 While the Olympian Court, and Zeus as its head, 
 present to our view the weight of political care, and 
 are commonly seen working for good the individual 
 character of Zeus is of a far lower order than his public 
 capacity would lead us to expect. Into this there 
 enters almost as much of FalstaflF, as of Lear into the 
 character of Priam. The basis of it is radically Epi- 
 curean. A profound attachment to ease and self-en- 
 joyment is its first governing principle. Except for 
 his pleasures, and indeed with a view to indulging in 
 them, he never disturbs the established order ; and he 
 resents in a high degree the fiery restlessness, as well as 
 the jealousyi, of Here. The sacrificing man is the pious 
 man : but the love of Zeus for such men appears to be 
 closely associated with the animal enjoyment of the 
 libation aifd the reek 2. To avoid trouble, he acquiesces 
 in the death of Sarpedon, whom he singularly loves : he 
 dreads to give offence to the goddess of Night ^j and he 
 hesitates to grant the request of Thetis, notwithstand- 
 ing the debt of gratitude he owes her. And generally 
 
 ' II. i. 562. ^ II. iv. 48, 49 ; xxiv. 69, 70. * II. xiv. 261. 
 
234 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 he hates those gods who trouble him, and in proportion 
 as they trouble him ; especially his son Ares^. 
 
 He is not, indeed, devoid of affections; for he is 
 moved by pity, now for Agamemnon or a Greek chief- 
 tain, now for Priam 2; and he is wrung with genuine 
 grief, as a father, for Sarpedon, over whom he even 
 weeps tears of bloc5d3. But he delights to sit on Garga- 
 ros, and there to behold the bloody spectacle of the war ; 
 he keenly longs to see the ships on fire ; he anticipates a 
 lively pleasure from witnessing the very gods in conflict 
 with one another*. Not only does he rejoice in the 
 feast, but he glows with sexual passion, and he is sub- 
 ject to the power of Sleep, although that deity can only 
 subdue him by working hard, and moreover somewhat 
 at his peril, so that Here is obliged to bribe him with a 
 high reward, promised under the sanction of an oath^. 
 
 In a word, Zeus is the masterpiece of the Homeric 
 mythology, if we consider it with reference to that 
 humanising or anthropomorphic element, which gave to 
 the religion of Greece its specific national character. 
 
 Section II. Heri. 
 
 The Here of Homer is a deity of all others the most 
 exclusively and intensely national. 
 
 Being such, she is modelled strictly according to that 
 anthropomorphic instinct which governed throughout 
 the formation of the Olympian system. She is proudj 
 passionate, sensual, jealous, vindictive ; but all these in 
 
 ^ II. V. 890. "^ II. xxiv. 174. 
 
 ' II. xvi. 459. * II. viii. 47-52 ; xv. 600 ; xx. 23. 
 
 ° II. xiv. 233, 236,-2S2, 268, 359. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLFMPOS. 335 
 
 Strict subordination to the great end, which she pursues 
 with unremitting perseverance, the glorification of the 
 Greeks. She has no personal or moral preferences, like 
 the regard of Athene for Odysseus, founded upon qua- 
 lities of character. Zeus is obliged to conceal from her 
 the concession which he has made to Thetis on behalf of 
 her son, the greatest of Greek warriors, but to the 
 detriment of the host at large i. She loves Achilles and 
 Agamemnon with an equal love^j that is, she loves 
 them, not personally, but for their cause. 
 
 Here is a deity much superior to Poseidon, as ex- 
 hibiting higher intelligence, with more capacity of far- 
 reaching design, and of the adaptation of means to an 
 end ; matters these, in which we have no manifesta^ 
 tion of Poseidon's faculties, except in his purely ob- 
 stinate persecution of Odysseus, for having used with 
 energy the resources of self-defence against a monster 3. 
 Still there is a total absence of moral elements from 
 the character as it is presented to us. Angered at the 
 lameness of her child Hephaistos, she desires to conceal 
 his birth*. Zeus charges her with being ready to eat 
 Priam and his children raw^. She borrows the kestos 
 of Aphrodite, and entices Zeus in a scene where 
 sensuality is freely used, though as the instrument of 
 a deeply laid and artful scheme s. The motive assigned 
 for her hostility to Troy, is the insult she had suffered 
 by the adverse judgment of Paris ''. 
 
 In the Odyssey, she may be said for practical purposes 
 entirely to disappear. She is mentioned but seven 
 times in the whole poem : thrice, quite incidentally, in 
 
 ^ II. i. 545-550. ^ II. i. 196. ' Od. i. 20. 
 
 * II. xviii. 495. ° II. iv. 34-36. " I], xiv. 190. 
 
 ^ II. xxiv. 27. 
 
336 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 a formula where Zeus is called the loud-thundering 
 husband of Here, and is himself the true subject of the 
 passage ; once as the mother of Hebe ; and thrice in 
 legend or narrative extraneous to the subject of the 
 poem. Nor is this unnatural. For, in the domestic 
 part of it, there is no question of the Greek nationality : 
 while amidst the Phoenician and Eastern associations 
 of the Outer Geography, a conception so strictly Hel- 
 lenic could have no part to play. 
 
 Though the power of Here is immense, yet she is 
 not surrounded with that reverence which the Poet 
 always maintains towards Athene and Apollo. She is 
 not exempted from the touch of defeat and dishonour. 
 She was subjected to ignominious punishment by Zeus, 
 who suspended her with her hands in chains, and with 
 anvils hanging from her feet^. And, in the course of 
 her long feud with Heracles, that hero wounded her 
 with a three-pronged arrow in the right breast, and 
 caused her to suffer intolerable pain ^, 
 
 She alone among the deities is called Argeian Here, 
 as Helen is called Argeian Helen. In both instances, 
 the epithet appears to be founded on the special 
 relation between the person to whom it is a;pplied, 
 and the head-quarter of Greek power, especially as 
 that power was associated with the Argeian name, 
 and therefore probably with the period of the Perseids. 
 This connection subsisted in Argolis throughout the 
 historic period. In the Iliad, Here is said to regard 
 the Greeks as her children ^. She collected the arma- 
 ment against Troy*. She carried Agamemnon safely 
 
 ^ II. XV. 18-21. 2 II y_ 2^2 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 358. * II. iv. 24-29. 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 237 
 
 back to Greece i. She conducted Jason and the Argo 
 through the terrible rocks 2, the Planctai, afterwards 
 Sumplegades. She hates Heracles, apparently because 
 he is in antagonism to the Perseid dynasty ^. It can 
 hardly be from conjugal jealousy, since Jupiter recounts 
 his conquests in addressing her on mount Ida. In a 
 word, the vigour and activity of her partisanship 
 are such, as to make the more dignified conduct of 
 Athene seem almost tame by comparison. 
 
 Her rank in Olympos is among the highest: she 
 must be supposed to sit by Zeus on one side, as we 
 are told Athene did on the other 4. The gods rise 
 from their seats to her as well as to Zeus, when 
 she comes among them^. At times, she acts imme- 
 diately on the thoughts of man ; as when she prompts 
 Achilles to call the Assembly of the First Book, in 
 order to stay the plague »; or impels Agamemnon 
 to stay the victorious course of Hector''. At other 
 times, Athene is content to be her agent; as when, 
 in the debate with Agamemnon, she stays the wrath 
 of Achilles «. But by way of counterpoise, when the 
 two goddesses are about to descend together from 
 heaven, it is Here who harnesses the chariot, and 
 plays in it the inferior part of driver, while Athene 
 bears the Aigis^. The promise of her aid against 
 Poseidon greatly relieves the mind of Zeus i". 
 
 She assumes, like the other higher deities, the 
 human form"; and exhibits an extraordinary power 
 
 1 Od. iv. 513. ^ Od. xii. 72- ' ^l- ^ix. 130-133- 
 
 * II. xxiv. 100. = II. XV. 85. * II. i- 55- 
 
 ' Il.viii. 218. * Il.i.194-196: cf.ii.156; V.711; viii.331. 
 
 » II. V. 745-748. '» II. XV. 49-52- " II. V. 784-792. 
 
338 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 over nature, as if entitled, in virtue of lier wifehood, 
 to exercise in a manner the attributes of Zeus. Iris is 
 her messenger as well as his^. Not only does she 
 order the Winds 2, but she sends the sun ^, in spite of 
 his reluctance, to his setting. When, indignant at 
 the boast of Hector, she rocks upon her throne *, 
 Olympos shakes beneath her, as it did under the nod 
 of Zeus. She endows the horses of Achilles with a 
 voice 5. And, conjointly with Athene, she thunders in 
 honour of the crowning of Agamemnon 6, 
 
 We learn from a speech of Phoenix, that, together 
 with Athene, she can confer valour. The daughters of 
 Pandareus she endows both with beauty and with sense, 
 while Athene and Aphrodite provide them with indus- 
 trial skill and bodily food respectively, and Artemis 
 bestows upon theim stature '. 
 
 Herfe takes part, with Athene and Poseidon, in the 
 great rebellion against Zeus, which all but effected his 
 deposition. She had also been personally favoured 
 with a special protection, at the time when Zeus 
 himself deposed his father Kronos, and thrust him 
 into the Underworld. 
 
 Of these two myths, the latter seems to 'suggest its 
 own interpretation. Its scene is fixed in the midst 
 of the great Theogonic crisis, at the point of the 
 transition from the Pelasgian to the Hellenic or Olym- 
 pian system. That was a moment of danger to her ; 
 but we read of no such danger to Poseidon. From this 
 we may naturally infer that Poseidon had no concern 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 168. 
 
 '^ This seems the natural construction of Od. iv. 513, and 
 
 xii. 69-72. ' II. xviii. 239. * H. yjii. j^j, 
 
 « II. xix. 407. °- U. xi. 45. 7 Od. XX. 68-72. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 239 
 
 at all with the Pelasgian system, and was an importa- 
 tion from a source altogether distinct. Here, however, 
 had a counterpart below, with which she might readily 
 have been confounded. In that superseded system we 
 find a Tata, or Earth, who, with other Nature-Powers, 
 inhabits, and is invoked in, the Underworld. Rescued 
 from that danger, and set high in Olympos, she stands 
 in marked opposition, as an Hellenic goddess, to the 
 older and coarser conception of the same idea, with 
 which she is in direct competition. This will account 
 for the attitude she holds in the Poems. For here she 
 is not only Hellenic, but she is nothing else ; and the 
 principle and groundwork of her Hellenism seem to be 
 an intense untiring hatred of what is Pelasgian by race 
 and association, just as if she were the preferred rival 
 of an old Pelasgian deity j as if she had the very root 
 of her being in a strong recoil from the superseded 
 Nature-Power, into which she might relapse, if Hel- 
 lenism were ever swallowed up by a victorious return 
 of the Pelasgian worship. Born of the Hellenic re- 
 action, its life and hers were bound up together. 
 
 Hence too, in all likelihood, we are to account for 
 her place in the legend of the War in heaven. Zeus, 
 like Janus, has two faces. When he deposes Kronos, 
 he shows us his Hellenic, or Hellic, face. But this 
 rebellion is a rebellion of deities, all of them having 
 the most marked Hellenic sympathies, which evidently 
 run against him in this legend, as the head of the old 
 Pelasgian order. 
 
 The functional attribute, specially entrusted to Here 
 in her Olympian character, appears to be only that 
 of regulating birth, through the medium of the Eili- 
 thuiai. This appears to be an ascription derived from 
 
24° yVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the original character of the all-producing Earth. And 
 the anthropomorphic spirit of the Olympian religion 
 is well illustrated by the fact that Homer cuts her off 
 from all other production, both animal and vegetable, 
 but leaves to her only the bringing of man to birth. 
 Human birth bears to Here the same relation, as birth 
 generally to Gaia. 
 
 Though the Eilithuiai are mentioned as under the 
 control of Here, they were objects of worship ; for the 
 pseud-Odysseus mentions the case of Eilithuie at 
 Amnisos in Crete i. 
 
 On the whole, then, it seems likely that Here, with 
 a name representing "Epa, or the earth, is treated 
 by Homer with a transformation suited to the anthro- 
 pomorphic and personifying spirit of the Olympian 
 religion j divorced, as to her personality, from Gaia, 
 much as Poseidon is held apart from Nereus, and 
 standing towards Gaia as soul to body : the body taking 
 its place with the old elemental deities of the Pelas- 
 gians in the Underworld, the soul rising to higher 
 offices. Here, thus detached from gross matter, carries 
 off with her, as to man alone, the great prerogative 
 of earth, that she is the all-feeding and all-bearing; 
 the Tpa(i>ipri, the Trokvtpopfiog, the <^epeo-/34os. Accord- 
 ingly, Here becomes, or remains rather ^an becomes, 
 the great mother. She is the wife, of Zeus, father of 
 gods and men, and she holds among his wives and 
 concubines the queenly prerogative, like Hecuba in 
 Troy; the mother in heaven of some of his children, 
 as Hebe, Ares, and Hephaistos; and, with the Eili- 
 thuai for her ministers, the goddess of all motherhood 
 on earth ^. 
 
 ^ Od. xix. i88. 2 II. Kix. 119. 
 
Till.] fHE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 2^1 
 
 This last, indeed, is her only specialty. Those 
 other and high prerogatives, which invest her with 
 command over Nature, and with the power of direct 
 action on the mind, probably accrue to her as the 
 consort of Zeus, and are therefore not her original 
 gifts, but the reflection of his glory. 
 
 We have, perhaps, in the Theomachy, at least one 
 vestige of the prerogative of Here as a Nature-Power. 
 It is she who excites Hephaistos against the river 
 Xanthos ^ ; and again, the River, parched by fire, makes 
 his appeal to her to relieve him from suffering, with 
 an engagement which he takes to aid Troy no more, 
 not even in its last necessity. Here accedes to his 
 prayer, and checks the action of Hephaistos, who 
 thereupon desists ^. It seems as if the ground for 
 choosing Here to interpose on this occasion lay in the 
 relation between rivers and the Earth along which 
 they trace their course. This is the only act of a 
 definite nature, with a sensible result performed by 
 Here within the limits of Troas, a fact which is again 
 in accordance with the construction I have given it, 
 and the apparent bias of the Troic religion towards 
 Nature-worship. 
 
 Section III. Poseidon. 
 
 The most striking feature of the Homeric Poseidon, 
 or rather Poseidaon, is vast force combined with a total 
 absence of the higher elements of deity, whether intel- 
 lectual or moral. A persistent vindictiveness, indeed, 
 we trace as the groundwork of his entire action in 
 
 ^ II. xxi. 328-330. ^ lb. 367-381. 
 
 R 
 
^42 yUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAPl 
 
 both the Poems : he hates the Trojans, for the offence 
 of Laomedon; he hates Odysseus, because, in the 
 strictest self-defence, he had: blinded Poluphemos. By 
 no worthy word or act is he marked in any part 
 either of Iliad or Odyssey, unless it be by some natural 
 affection for his descendants, whether they be the 
 youthful warriors of the house of Actor \ or the savage, 
 cruel, atheistic Cyclop. 
 
 One of the three sons of Kronos and Rhea, he comes 
 next to Zeus in order of birth ^. He claims an 
 equality ^ of rank j and avbrs, that the distribution of 
 sovereignties among the three brothers was made only 
 by lot. More than indirectly, he asserts equality, as 
 well as independence. When admonished by Iris 
 that he is junior to Zeus, he acknowledges that there 
 is force in the plea, and he withdraws from the plain 
 of battle as he. had been bid ^ but he reserves a right of 
 resentment, in case Zeus shall not fulfil the decree 
 against Troy. Zeus on his part is delighted at the 
 news J and observes, that it would have cost much 
 labour to coerce him *. ' Again, it is plain that, in 
 the conspiracies against ,Zeus, he was the acting 
 partner. For it is the superiority of. his son to him, 
 that frustrates the design of the whole party ^; and 
 when Here attempts to revive the scheme, he pleads in 
 reply, not their collective inferiority, but his own 
 singly *, as if he thought that it was, in point of mere 
 force, well-nigh all they would have to rely on. 
 
 Apollo is restrained, in the Theomachy, by a senti- 
 ment of respect, from comitig to blows with Poseidon, 
 
 ' II. xi. 749-751' ' II- iv. 174-217. ' lb. 186-209. 
 
 * II. iv. 220-235. ° II- '• 404- ° II. viii. 211. 
 
YIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 243 
 
 as his paternal uncle ^. And a sentiment precisely 
 similar prevents Athene in the Odyssey from comfort- 
 ing Odysseus by her visible presence, even at her own 
 sanctuary in Scherie ^. 
 
 Though god of the sea, he is not, so to speak, the 
 Sea-god, or the Water-god. He has in him nothing of an 
 elemental deity. He is not placed in as near a relation 
 to water as Zeus is to air, by the epithet AairiTrjs, and 
 the phrase Aios o^^pos *. These very phrases show us 
 that he was not, in Homer's view, the god of moisture, 
 or even of water, generally. The attempts to derive 
 his name from a common root with iroo-is, 'drink,' or 
 irora/nos, 'a river,' would therefore be insufficient or 
 inappropriate, even if they were not, as they are, some- 
 what equivocal. It is remarkable that, while Poseidon 
 supplied a sea-deluge as his contribution towards effacing 
 the Greek trench, it was Apollo who turned upon it 
 the mouths of all the rivers that descend from Ida*; 
 which, when Poseidon had accomplished his labour, 
 he in turn sent back again to their proper channels. 
 
 Nereus, the true Sea-god of Homer, gave to the 
 element of water that name of nero, in the popular 
 speech of the Greeks, which it still retains 5. He ever 
 dwells in the depths of the sea, as if he belonged to 
 them, and as if they supplied his atmosphere. But 
 Poseidon has a palace there near Aigai, where his 
 chariot was kept, where the Poet seems to imply that 
 he resided^. Yet not exclusively; for he appears at 
 
 ' Il.xxi.468. ^ Od. vi. 329; xiii. 341. 
 
 3 Au7rfT7;r = fallen from Zeus. Aioi ojii|8pos = Zeus-rain. 
 * II. xii. 13-35. 
 
 = Comp. the adj. neros, wet, in the late Greek of Phrynichus 
 the grammarian, ad. 180. " 11. xiii. 15 ; xv. 219. 
 
 R a 
 
244 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the Olympian Court, on the plain of Troy, on the 
 hill-tops of Samothrace 1, or on the Solyman^ moun- 
 tains j and he singly visits the Ethiopians, to partake 
 of the sacrifices they oflFered him 3. This reference to 
 his being worshipped in a distant quarter is the second 
 sign we have seen of his foreign origin; the first was 
 the want of definiteness in his position of inferiority 
 relatively to Zeus, as though he had been, elsewhere, 
 without a superior. 
 
 So again there appears to be in the Outer or Phoe- 
 nician system an elemental sea-god, Phorcus, who is 
 called ruler of the sea, and after whom a harbour in 
 Ithaca is named*. 
 
 Prayer appears only to be addressed to him, within 
 the Greek world, in the neighbourhood of the sea, as 
 by the Envoys in the Ninth Iliad ; and by his own de- 
 scendants, as Nestor in the Third Odyssey, who like- 
 wise worships by the shore ^. He can assume the form 
 of any man ; can blunt the point of a spear ; can carry 
 off his friends, or envelope his opponents in vapour 8. 
 He can inspire vigour into heroes; not immediately, 
 however, but by a stroke of his staff. Direct action 
 on the mind appears to be beyond his range. The 
 storms of the Poems, in the Greek or inner world, are not 
 raised by Poseidon. Probably he had not the power to 
 raise a storm, though he can break, as the sea does, 
 fragments from the rocks of the coast «. Storms seem 
 to have been regarded as belonging to the province of 
 
 * II. xiii. II. ^ Od. V. 283. 
 
 ^ Od. i. 22, 25. * Od. i. 72 ; xiii. 91 ; II. ix. 183. 
 
 ' Od. iii. s. Cf. II. xi. 728. 
 
 ' II. xiii. 43, 215; xiv. 133; xiii. 562; xi. 752; xx. 321-329. 
 
 '' II. xiii. 59. ' Od. iv. 506. 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 345 
 
 the air-god. They are imputed to him in a passage of 
 the Twenty-fourth Odyssey i j but it would not be alto- 
 gether safe, perhaps, to rely on that Book, in a case where 
 it seems to vary from the usual order of the Poems. 
 
 If, however, Poseidon was less than the absolute lord 
 of water, he was also more. 
 
 1. His possession of the Trident (triaina) could 
 hardly be due to a purely maritime sovereignty. 
 
 2. His relation to the horse, which is very per- 
 ceptible, though not of primary rank, in Homer 2, 
 and which became almost paramount in the later age, 
 cannot be adequately explained by any comparison 
 between that animal and the ship, or the wave. 
 
 3. Poseidon is the building-god. 
 
 4. Poseidon stands in close relation to the giants 
 and other rebellious personages, who troubled both 
 gods and men. 
 
 The existence of these associations for Poseidon, 
 inasmuch as they cannot be explained by virtue of his 
 place in the Olympian system, again urges us to look 
 for the signs of his origin abroad. The key to the 
 inquiry is to be found in the Outer world of the Odys- 
 sey. For 
 
 1. It is plain that the materials of the narrative, so 
 far as the scene of the poem is laid in that Outer world, 
 must have been derived by the Poet from the Phoeni- 
 cians, who alone frequented the waterg beyond the 
 vEgean and the Greek coasts. 
 
 2. In the western portion of the Outer sphere, Zeus 
 practically disappears from the governing office, and 
 Poseidon becomes the supreme ruler. 
 
 We have seen that the subordination of Poseidon to 
 ■ * Od. xxiv. 1 10. ^ II. xxiih 277, 306, 534. 
 
34.6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Zeus rested on juniority. If Zeus were the chief god 
 of the Pelasgian worship, and Poseidon came in with 
 the Phoenicians, this poetical arrangement is suitably 
 explained; and it exhibits a skilful adaptation to the 
 conditions under which the Olympian system was con- 
 structed. His rebellion against Zeus, in concert with 
 Here and Athene, appears to show that, as new immi- 
 grants arrived in Greece, bearing with them their own 
 religion, the older system was for a time brought into 
 question and endangered as a whole. The delivery of 
 Zeus from this rebellion will be considered in connec- 
 tion with the goddess Thetis i. 
 
 The Greek legends relating to Poseidon are just such 
 as we might expect with reference to the god of a nau- 
 tical people, touching at many points about the coast 
 of Greece. He contends with Helios for Corinth, with 
 Athene for Troizen and Athens, with Here for Aigolis, 
 with Zeus for ^gina, with Dionusos for Naxos. Even 
 in the Greece of Homer we find spots specially conse- 
 crated to him in Boeotia, in Eubcea, and in Aigialos. 
 
 Let us now turn to the Voyage of Odysseus in the 
 Outer world ; which begins with the Lotos-eaters, and 
 ends with the Phaiakes of Corfu. Mure^ suggests that 
 their name is a parody of the name Phoinikes : Homer 
 paints them as a wealthy, unwarlike people, singularly 
 expert in navigation. This apparent incongruity falls 
 in with the case of Corfu, if it was then inhabited, as 
 it has been in later times, by a stationary, gentle, 
 indolent peasantry, and at the same time held by a 
 dominant settlement or colony of foreigners, ruling 
 it through maritime power. Mure cites Phai'k as a 
 
 ^ Infra, sect. xxi. ^ Lit. Hist, of Greece, vol. i. p. sio. 
 
■nil-l THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 247 
 
 Semitic word for ' magnificent,' and Scher, as meaning 
 * an emporium.' 
 
 In this Phoenician or Outer world, Athene, who had 
 constantly tended Odysseus while in Troas, and who J 
 Tesumes the regular charge of him in Ithaca, systemati- i 
 cally abstains from helping him j and wholly disappears 
 untrl Poseidon has, in the Fifth Odyssey, voluntarily 
 receded from the scene^. She declares-that respect to_ 
 her uncle was the motive for her own disappearance 2. 
 The presumption then is that this Outer world was a 
 sphere in some way so specially his own, that Athene, 
 whose power and prerogatives in Homer are so ex- 
 tremely lofty, was unwilling to offer him any opposi- 
 tion there. 
 
 Accordingly, we have direct evidence that, in relation 
 to the Outer world, Poseidon exercised prerogatives 
 which seem not to have belonged to him within the 
 Greek sphere. He raised the storm which wrecked 
 the raft of Odysseus ; gathering the clouds, which was 
 the special function of Zeus, and causing the winds 
 to blow^. 
 
 Moreover, in the lay of Ares and Aphrodite, it is evi- 
 dently Poseidon who presides in the Assembly of the 
 gods, and who consequently negotiates with Hephais- 
 tos for the relief of Ares from the net of steel. And 
 just as, at the beginning of the Second Iliad, the other 
 gods were sleeping, but Zeus* (who was responsible) 
 slept not, so here, while the other deities were laugh- 
 ing, Poseidon did not laugh ^j as we may suppose, for 
 the same reason. And while, on ordinary occasions, 
 we are always told that the gods assembled in the 
 
 • Od. V. 380. '' Od. xiii. 341. ^ Od. v. 291. 
 
 * II, ii. I, ^ Od. viii, 344. 
 
348 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 XaA(co/3aT€s b& of Zeus, here the words ' of Zeus ' are 
 omitted^. 
 
 Undoubtedly the name of Zeus appears from time to 
 time in those Books of the Odyssey which describe 
 the wanderings of Odysseus; but his governing office 
 disappears until, in the end of the Twelfth Book, he 
 acts at the instance of Helios (the Sun), and on behalf 
 of the Olympian Court. It is not the abstract, but the 
 working supremacy of Poseidon, which the Poem seems 
 to show. At the same time, the question might be 
 raised whether, as in the later and extraneous tradi- 
 tion the name Zeus was often united with that of 
 Poseidon (as much as to say ' Zeus the supreme deity, 
 in the form and under the name of Poseidon'), so 
 here the word may not improbably have the general 
 force of 'god,' rather than the personal meaning of a 
 particular god. Even in Homer, Ai'doneus is called 
 the Zeus of the Underworld ; and so Poseidon may be 
 the Zeus of the sea and the sea-regions. And it is very 
 notable that in Od. v. 302-304, Odysseus ascribes to 
 Zeus that very storm, which we are expressly told that 
 Poseidon had raised. 
 
 We have therefore very strong indications from the 
 text of Homer that Poseidon was the god, or the chief- 
 god, of the Phoinikes ; and if he was, then, upon their 
 arrival in Greece, he could only be incorporated into 
 the Greek system by some such method as Homer has 
 adopted, in giving him at once a parity and a disparity 
 with Zeus. 
 
 Thus the Outer geography affords us the strongest 
 evidence of the Phoenician origin of Poseidon. It 
 
 ^ Od. viii. 321. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 349 
 
 shows US more than this, as will be seen when we 
 treat of the position of Helios in Homer. 
 
 The view now talcen is in harmony with the evi- 
 dence supplied from other sources respecting Poseidon. 
 Herodotus, deriving the names of the other Greek gods 
 from Egypt, excepts Poseidon. History shows abun- 
 dantly the prevalence of Poseidonian worship among the 
 Phoenicians and their colonial progeny. Diodorus ^ 
 says an altar to Poseidon was built at the northern 
 extremity of the Red Sea, where was a promontory 
 called Poseideion, and a grove of palms (Phoinikes). 
 In the war with Gelon, Hamilcar^ general of the Car- 
 thaginians, offered to Poseidon a magnificent sacrifice, 
 with a view to success in what were mainly land opera- 
 tions. Again, while sacrificing a boy to Kronos, he 
 threw into the sea a crowd of victims in honour of 
 Poseidon^. Later in the historic period, when Scipio 
 attacks Carthago Nova, he assures his army that he 
 has the favour of Poseidon made known to him in a 
 dream 3 J that is to say, that the foe was deserted by 
 his own national and proper god. Pausanias, again, 
 shows us the worship of Poseidon practised in parts of 
 Greece, whither it never could have come had he been 
 regarded as a mere sea-god j and nowhere more than 
 in Arcadia. Manifestly, if he were the chief and dis- 
 tinctive god of the Phoenician nationality, it is pro- 
 bable that, as that acute race penetrated for traflBc into 
 Greece, they would carry with them their worship as 
 they went. And again, in many of the local legends 
 related by that author, which afford evidence of a 
 very trustworthy kind, we find Poseidon possessed of 
 
 ^ Diod. Stc. iii. 41. ^ lb. xi. 21 ; xiii. 86. 
 
 ' Polyb. Bk. X. 11. 7 ; 14. 12. 
 
35° JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 attributes which, in the established religion of Hellas, 
 belonged properly to Zeus^. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to examine the special and 
 separate attributes of Poseidon, already enumerated, 
 in the light of his Phoenician associations. 
 
 With respect to the Trident, an instrument so un- 
 suited to water, it appears evidently to point to some 
 tradition of a Trinity, such as may still be found in 
 various forms of Eastern religion, other than the He- 
 brew. It may have proceeded, among the Phoenicians, 
 from the common source of an older tradition ; and this 
 seems more probable than its direct derivation from 
 the Hebrews, with whom, however, we know that the 
 Phoenicians had intercourse. 
 
 Though the relation of Poseidon to the horse is not 
 explained by his connection with Phoenicia, yet, as this 
 connection points to his supremacy, and thus gives him 
 wider associations than those of a merely maritime 
 deity, it opens a field from which the true explanation 
 may yet be gathered. I have suggested elsewhere a 
 solution of the problem 2. 
 
 Reference to what has been already said of the Phoi- 
 nikes will show that the relation of Poseidon to them 
 at once explains his character as the building-god. 
 
 Lastly, with regard to the giants and monsters. The 
 facts are as follows. 
 
 The Cyclops, a godless race, are his children 3, The 
 impious giants are declared to be of the kindred of the 
 gods*: this is probably through Poseidon. By the 
 
 ^ See ' Phoenicia and Greece,' in the Quarterly Review of 
 Jan. 1868. 
 
 ^ Supra, Phoenicians, chap. v. * Od. ix. 275, 412. 
 
 * Od. vii. 205, 206, 
 
vm.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLVMPOS. 25 1 
 
 daughter of their king and arch-tempter Eurumedon^ 
 he was the father of the royal house of Scherie^. These 
 giants the wicked and cruel Laistrugones are said to 
 resemble^. By Iphimedeia, he was the father of Otos 
 and Ephialtes, those monster-youths ^ who heaped up 
 the mountains^ and perished "by the hands of Apollo. 
 He was also the father of Briareus (called likewise 
 Aigaion), who, however, took part against him*. 
 
 The effort of the two youths recalls the traditions of 
 the Tower of Babel, and of the War in Heaven. 
 
 Two considerations may be noticed, which tend to 
 account for the place of Poseidon as the Phoenician 
 god, in relation to many rebellious and unruly spirits. 
 
 First, the rough manners of a sea-faring and bucca- 
 neering people. Down to the time of Cicero and of 
 the Roman Empire, a rude and ruiSan-like character 
 was called Neptuni filius. 
 
 Secondly, and in possible connection with what has 
 just been said, Syria was inhabited by Canaanites ; and 
 it has been observed that the names given in Scripture 
 to that race indicate great stature and physical force, 
 which became the basis of a tradition that they were a 
 race of giants^. To the Greek mind this would very 
 naturally convey that they were children of Poseidon as 
 the Phoenician god. In a word, the Phoenician origin 
 of Poseidon, and that only, appears to supply a key to 
 his position and attributes, such as they are shown in 
 the Olympian system. 
 
 ^ Od. vii. 56-60. ' Od. X. 120. ' Od. xi. 305-320. 
 
 * II. i. 401-406. ° Le Normant, vol. ii. p. 244. 
 
2^2 JUVENTUS MUNDI. ' [cHAP. 
 
 Section IV. Aidoneus. 
 
 The figure of Aidoneus, or Aides, is one of the most 
 obscure in the whole Homeric mythology. Yet here 
 too there is, as I think, a reward for patient observa- 
 tion J and a clue is to be found which may enable us 
 to trace him home to his origin, as a Nature-Power 
 of an older theogony, rather than what he might at 
 first sight appear to be, little more than a shadowy 
 creature of the Poet's imagination. 
 
 The particulars respecting him in the Poems are 
 but few. 
 
 He was one of the deities who suffered at the hand 
 of man: namely, of Heracles^. Now the associations 
 of Heracles in Homer are Hellenic, as we may per- 
 ceive from the co-operation of Athene with him j and 
 therefore this legend, so far as it goes, tends to place 
 Aidoneus beyond the line of pure Hellenic tradition. 
 It is true, that Heracles also assaulted Here : but the 
 enmity between them was special, and founded on the 
 jealousy of the goddess in favour of the ruling house 
 of the Perseids. 
 
 Heracles shot this god in the shoulder with an arrow 
 at Pulos, not of Messenia but of Elis, according to Pau- 
 sanias^ j and laid him prostrate among the dead, huge 
 as he was. He rose, went to Olympos, and was cured 
 by Paieon^. 
 
 Though a deity of the Underworld*, he is the bro- 
 ther of Zeus, having shared in the partition of the 
 universe by lot. He is therefore adopted, like Posei- 
 
 ' II. V. 395. ^ vi. 25. 3. 
 
 ' II. V. 398-402. * II. XV. 187, 191. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 353 
 
 don, into the Olympian Court, and becomes entitled 
 to appear in the Hellenic heaven, though supposed 
 usually to abide in the Shades. 
 
 His action in the Poems is singularly faint ; an 
 arrangement of which we shall see the probable reason. 
 During the battle of the gods, he trembles ^ lest the 
 earth-shaker Poseidon should split the ground, and ex- 
 hibit the nether region, where he is lord {anax), through 
 the chasm. This shuddering may be said to be th^ 
 single action ascribed to him in the Poems. 
 
 We have, however, passages illustrative of his cha- 
 racter and functions. Stern and inexorable, he is to 
 men the most hateful of all the gods^. This declara- 
 tion is curiously illustrated by the after history of the 
 Olympian system. In all Greece, says Pausanias^, 
 there is no single temple of Aides, except at a single 
 spot of Elis, where, according to tradition, he fought on 
 the side of the Pulians against Heracles. And this 
 temple was opened once a year^: 'I suppose,' adds 
 Pausanias, ' because men die but once.' This perhaps 
 would have been a more apt reason if men had died 
 once a year. 
 
 He is also called the strong*, the hateful or loath- 
 some (oTiryepo's*), the gate-closer «, and in a recurring 
 formula, the horse-famous {KXvroTsmXosl). 
 
 Though he is the king of the world below, he seems 
 to exercise no active power there : throughout the Ele- 
 venth Odyssey, the duties of government are in the 
 hands of Persephone, who also has, by the shores of 
 Okeanos, the grove of worship. Odysseus, indeed, 
 
 1 II. XX. 61. ^ II. i. 158. ^ Paus. as already cited. 
 
 * Od. X. 534; xl. 47, 276. ° II. viii. 368. 
 
 * II. -viii. 367. ' II. V. 654 ;.xi. 445 ; xvi. 623. 
 
254 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 offered to him prayer and sacrifice, together with her, 
 in the Underworld ^ : but there is no sign of his having 
 any established worship upon earth. 
 
 The helmet of Aides was used by Athene^ to make 
 herself invisible to Ares. We hear of this helmet in 
 Hesiod, as worn by Perseus^. It appears to be a symbol 
 of darkness. 
 
 Twice, however, this deity comes before us in the 
 legend of Phoenix. In the war of Caludon, Althaiaj 
 invoking woes on Meleagros, beats the earth with her 
 hands, as she calls on Aides and Persephone ; and she 
 is heard and answered from beneath by the Erinus*. 
 In the other passage the process is reversed. The 
 father of Phoenix calls upon the Erinus, and ' the gods' 
 fiilfil his imprecation, 'and Zeus of the Underworld^ 
 and Persephone the awful j' perhaps meaning this, that 
 these are the gods to whom he refers. 
 
 Of this dualism in the exercise of the penal office I 
 shall speak elsewhere. But the name here given to 
 Aides is very remarkable : he is the Zeus of the Under- 
 world. How comes he by this title ? At first sight it 
 indicates some very close relation between him and 
 the traditions of Zeus in some one of their forms j for 
 Poseidon is never called the Zeus of the sea, al- 
 though, as we have seen, he carries strong marks of 
 supremacy in the Outer world. 
 
 The part he takes at Pulos seems to mean that he 
 was the old god of the country, and the patron of the 
 inhabitants in their struggles against the invading 
 Heracles. The epithet 'huge' further tends to asso- 
 ciate him with the old Nature-Powers. The con- 
 
 ' Od. xi. 43-46. 2 II. V. 845. 
 
 '^ Scut. Here. 227. * II. ix. 563-572. 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLFMPOS. 255 
 
 tinuance of his worship at Pulos in the historic period, 
 when it had disappeared in all other places, is; probably 
 to be taken as an indication, that Elis was even in the 
 earliest times a religious centre for Greece, and that 
 Pulos was the head-quarters of the system, so far as 
 Aidoneus was concerned. 
 
 We shall see that, in the worship of Dodona, there 
 was a Dione, associated as queen with the Pelasgian 
 Zeus. This ; Dione, to make room for Here, disap- 
 pears from active relations to mankind, and becomes a 
 sort of lay-figure in Olympos. 
 
 Was there, then, a residuum of the tradition of the 
 Pelasgian Zeus, after the Olympian Zeus had been fully 
 conceived and, established ? And, as Gaia, or Demeter, 
 or both, represent such a residuum in the case of Here, 
 does Aidoneus represent it in the case of Zeus^ ? 
 
 This would be an adjustment in full analogy with 
 Homer's general method. And it would at once ac- 
 count for the extremely faint outline which he has 
 given to the figure of his Aidoneus, and for his giving 
 the executive office in the Underworld to Persephone. 
 As he keeps back Demeter, that she may not compete 
 with Here, so he would keep back Aidoneus, that he 
 might not compete with Zeus, 
 
 Plutarch^ has preserved a tradition, which seems to 
 supply a missing link, respecting an Aidoneus, who was 
 king of the Molossians; and he thus connects the name 
 with the neighbourhood of Dodona. This Aidoneus 
 releases Theseus, his prisoner, at the request of Heracles : 
 a transaction afterwards transferred to the nether world. 
 Thus one great Hellic personage obtains from him the 
 
 ^ Kreuzer, Symbolik, iv. 477. ^ Thes. c. 35. 
 
<X$6 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 release of another, which accords with the idea of his 
 priority in time. 
 
 Althaias's beating the earth would lead to the conclu- 
 sion, that Ai'doneus must have sprung from some tra- 
 dition of an earth-god, and not an air-god. Hesiod, 
 the Pelasgian poet, directs the husbandman to pray to 
 him, as well as to Demeter, to prosper the fruits of the 
 earthi. 
 
 It is, I suppose, possible that at some period the 
 rude religion of the Pelasgians, not yet having ar- 
 rived at the Egyptian idea of Air and Earth, as repre- 
 senting respectively the active and the passive prin- 
 ciple, may have conceived of Earth as its own supreme 
 •deity. At any rate the relation of Ai'doneus to the 
 Zeus of Dodona appears to rest on probable evidence. 
 
 And if so, then the argument for considering Ai'do- 
 neus as an earth-Zeus, rather than as an air-Zeus, is 
 certainly recommended by various probable suggestions. 
 The general appearance of the aggregate phenomena of 
 Nature- or Element-worship in Homer, and also in 
 ■Hesiodj is by no means such as to fall into a single 
 consistent whole, and appears to imply that more than 
 one theogony, or scheme of deity and religion, had pre- 
 ceded the Olympian system. It is almost certain, that 
 a plurality of such schemes must have presented discre- 
 pancies one with another. 
 
 Moreover, when we regard Zeus as an air-god, he 
 stands in the relation of the active Nature-Power to 
 Earth as the female and passive one. Now this was 
 the notion embodied in the Egyptian system, which 
 may have been carried, in accprdance with the report 
 
 ^ Opp. 436 ; Dbllinger, Held, und Jud. p. 80. 
 
VIH.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLVMPOS. 257 
 
 of Herodotus, and either directly or mediately, from 
 Egypt to Dodona. But it is an idea implying a certain 
 refinement, an action of the speculative mind in the 
 discernment of cause and effect. An entirely rude 
 .people might perhaps be more likely to associate its 
 idea of a God with the earth, of which the sur- 
 face constantly tells them a tale of life, while from 
 its bosom spring the stores that sustain their bodily 
 existence. 
 
 Section V. Zeio. 
 
 I think that every one who carefully examines the 
 text of Homer with reference to the picture there given 
 of Leto, must be struck alike by the slightness and by 
 the dignity of its outline ; and, I may add, by the 
 absence (as far as I know) of any satisfactory attempt 
 to find for her an origin in any pre-existing tradition, 
 either of the Pelasgian Nature-worship, or of the Assy- 
 rian or Egyptian systems. Without origin, without 
 function, she seems to be a mother, and nothing more 
 than a mother j yet she is elevated into a commanding 
 position in the Homeric system by the transcendant 
 dignity of her son Apollo. 
 
 The only epithets given to Leto in the poems are of 
 a character entirely general : glorious 1, right-glorious 2, 
 lovely-cheeked % lovely-haired*. 
 
 Her action in the poems is extremely circumscribed 
 She appears in the temple of Apollo, as his minister, 
 with her daughter Artemis, to nurse and tend .^neas*. 
 
 ' Od. xi. 580. ^ II. xiv. 327. ' II. xxiv. 607. 
 
 * II. i. 36, = II. V. 447. 
 
 s 
 
258 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 She never performs any governing office of any kind, 
 either upon nature or upon man ; though she looks with 
 delight upon Artemis sporting in the wild wood^. 
 When she appears in the Theomachy on the Trojan 
 side, and we are in hopes of finding a link to con- 
 nect her with some definite prerogatives, we find the 
 Poem so contrived, that the door is at once closed 
 upon our curiosity by her release from the necessity 
 of combat. 
 
 With this blankness and faintness, let us now com- 
 pare the high ascriptions of her dignity. It is a great 
 note of honour, that this inactive and hindward deity 
 should find a place in the Theomachy, from which 
 Demeter and Aphrodite are excluded. Hermes is her 
 opponent. But when the time for action comes, he 
 declines the fight : he will not lay hands on the spouse 
 of Zeus : he gives her free leave to proclaim that she 
 has worsted him. She makes no reply^. Again, it is 
 the insult to Leto as the mother of only a pair, that 
 is so fearfully avenged on Niobe and her children 3. 
 And Tituos, the son of Gaia, is tortured in Tartaros, 
 because he sought to oflFer her violence as she was 
 proceeding to the Pythian temple of her son*. In 
 the ascending scale of the mothers of his offspring, 
 she is placed by Zeus after Demeter and next to 
 Here". 
 
 Hesiod marries her to Zeus before Here ; which, con- 
 sidering the supreme rank of Here in Olympos, appears 
 to be the mark of some very old tradition. She is 
 junior, among the consorts he assigns to Zeus, only to 
 Metis, or the Spirit of Counsel. She is there made the 
 
 * Od. vi. 106. 2 II. xxi. 497-501. 3 II. xxiv. 607. 
 
 * Od. xi. 580. ^ II. xiv. 327. 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 259 
 
 daughter of a Titan ; and, in the Hymn to Apollo, she 
 appears as a sister of Zeus, and a daughter of Kronos 
 himself. But, colourless as she is in her own being, all 
 this seems to be a marked reflection from the dignity 
 of Apollo. 
 
 Some have explained this mute yet lofty personage 
 in conformity, as they think, with the etymology of the 
 name; and they regard Leto as the impersonation of 
 Night, and Night as the mother from whose womb 
 Day, or the Sun, is produced. The etymology appears 
 to be uncertain : yet there may be no great difficulty in 
 supposing an affinity between Leto and lateo, and a 
 derivation from the root lath^. Nor is it any con- 
 clusive objection to this theory, that we have already 
 a goddess of Night in Homer 2. For this might be the 
 obsolete Nature-Power, standing in the same relation 
 to an impersonated Leto, as Gaia, or as Demeter, to 
 Here. The idea that the Night is the mother of the 
 Sun, and also is the Moon, does not seem to be an 
 idea much more likely to commend itself to the Greek 
 mind than to represent Chaos as the parent of Cos- 
 mos, anarchy of order. At the same time it is con- 
 ceivable that such an idea might find place in a 
 scheme of Nature-worship. Nor was Apollo united 
 with the Sun in the Olympian scheme of Homer. But, 
 when we perceive the immense reverence accorded to 
 a personage who is without any attribute or office in 
 the poems except motherhood, we cannot but refer to 
 the motherhood the dignity itself. 
 
 It is quite possible, though it is not proved, that 
 there may have been in the Pelasgian or in some other 
 mythology, a personage who may be the base of the 
 
 ' Liddell and Scott, in voc. \avdava, ^ II. xiv. 261. 
 
 S a 
 
36o JVVENTVS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Homeric Leto, just as there are deities who form the 
 base, or a base, of his Apollo. But as the properties 
 attaching to his Apollo appear to be of an order too 
 high to be justly accounted for by anything we find 
 in mere mythology, so, and even more, we are driven 
 to seek outside the limits of the system a mode of 
 accounting for the majesty and reverence, with which 
 the Leto of Homer is surrounded. 
 
 But if in Apollo there are exhibited, together with 
 other matter^ the features of that tradition of a Deli- 
 verer, divine, and yet in human form, which was 
 handed down through the line of Patriarchs, and en- 
 shrined in the Sacred Scriptures, we have to bear in 
 mind that this Deliverer was emphatically described as 
 the Seed of the Woman. Whether by the woman was 
 meant His mother, or Eve, the general mother of our 
 race, is immaterial to our present purpose. What 
 appears obvious is that, if such a tradition imparted 
 its glory to the character of Apollo, it could hardly fail 
 to shed a portion of collateral lustre upon the person, 
 in whom the human descent was signified and fore- 
 shadowed. And it would be no matter of wonder, if 
 the human figure of such a person were elevated to the 
 Olympian Court, whose manifold orders made such ad- 
 mission easy, and whose anthropomorphic principle 
 tended to eiface or weaken the lines of separation 
 between its divinities and mortal man. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that in Leto we have a record, 
 and a sufficiently clear indication, whether wrought 
 into the texture of any current mythological legend, 
 or otherwise, of the Hebrew tradition respecting the 
 Woman, of whose seed the Deliverer of mankind was 
 to be. 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 361 
 
 Section VI. Demeler. 
 
 The text of Pausanias exhibits by its enumeration 
 of temples and remains, though it does not explain, 
 the widespread prevalence and the great local import- 
 ance of the worship of Demeter in Greece. And this 
 picture stands in marked contrast with her insignifi- 
 cance in the action of the Homeric Poems, and in the 
 Olympian system. 
 
 We may safely assign to her one of the twenty 
 chairs or thrones ^, wrought for the Assemblies of Im- 
 mortals in the palace of Zeus. But she nowhere 
 appears as taking part in those Assemblies. She has 
 no place in the Theomachy or in the War. She is never 
 mentioned in the Poems except incidentally. 
 
 The actual Homeric evidence concerning Demeter 
 is as follows : — 
 
 I. Ground corn, or meal, is called Arifj-riTepos A/cttj, as 
 fire (or flame) is called (^A.of 'H<^o^<rroio ^. This is one 
 of the proper associations of a Nature-Power. 
 
 2,. She is the companion of Zeus in one of the con- 
 nections, which he relates in II. xiv. 336. Her child 
 is not named by the Poet either there or elsewhere. 
 But, in the later tradition, we find associated with her 
 in local worship, under the name of Cor^, the Damsel, 
 a great and even awful personage, who thus fills the 
 gap indicated by Homer, and who probably is repre- 
 sented by his Persephone, queen of the Underworld. 
 Certainly the two have a marked correspondence in 
 character. 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 373. ^ II. xiii. 322; xxi. 76. 
 
362 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 3. She has a rifxevos at Purasos in Thessalyi, and 
 these land-endowments, as far as we can discern from 
 Homer, were Pelasgian. 
 
 4. She is termed etiTrXoKajuos and ^avOr), fair-haired, 
 and golden-haired, doubtless with reference to the idea 
 beautifully expressed by Tibullus^: ^Deponit flavas an- 
 nua terra comas' 
 
 5. She felt and gave way to a passion for a son or 
 descendant of lasos; and this took place among the 
 fields 3. The name of lasos is obscure, but seems to 
 be certainly older than the Hellenes. Hesiod enlarges 
 the tradition^ and says this event came about in Crete, 
 a country at least partially marked with strong Pelasgic 
 features *. This powerful element of lust in her charac- 
 ter tends further to detach her, as a goddess, from 
 Hellenic associations. 
 
 6. She presides over the operation of winnowing; 
 and threshing-floors are consecrated to her ^. 
 
 The later tradition, testifying to an extensively estab- 
 lished worship of Demeter, places the most noted seat 
 of it in Attica, which is an eminently Pelasgian dis- 
 trict, with Eleusis for its head-quarter. 
 
 In the Hymn to Demeter, she herself founds that 
 worship; and reports herself as having come thither, 
 but unwillingly*, from Crete. This tradition may point 
 to the epoch when the Phoenicians acquired the domi- 
 nion of Crete. It certainly points to some decisive 
 change tending to displace her worship. 
 
 Pausanias' states, that there was in his time a temple 
 of Demeter Pelasgis at Corinth. 
 
 Diodorus^ reports that she merely represents the cha- 
 ^ II. ii. 696. 2 ii. I. 48. ' Od. V. 125. * Theog. 971. 
 
 ° II. V. 499-502. ^V. 123. '11.22.2. M. 13. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 263 
 
 racter of Isis in the Egyptian mythology ; that is to 
 say, as earth-goddess and inventress of cultivation. 
 
 We have indeed three Homeric personages, all of 
 whom appear to be related to the old tradition of 
 Nature-worship, which made Earth a deity, and a fe- 
 male deity'. The share of Demeter in that tradition 
 is established by her attributes in connection with 
 food, and by her name of Tij jutjttj/), Mother-earth, 
 
 Detached as this is from Hellenic associationsj we 
 cannot be surprised at our not finding her among the 
 Hellenising divinities of the War. Nor is it very diffi- 
 cult to conjecture a reason, why she could not conve- 
 niently appear among those who were allies of Troy : 
 namely this, that in Greece her personality had been 
 sufficiently severed from that of Gaia, the Earth-god- 
 dess proper, by the relegation of Gaia to the Under- 
 world, and probably by the prevalence of her local wor- 
 ship, to allow her a place in Olympos ; but in Troas 
 it would seem that this severance may not have been 
 eflFected, and that the Earth-goddess was worshipped 
 under her own name, like, and together with, the Sun ^- 
 Perhaps the same line of thought may carry us to the 
 reason, why Demeter appears to us without a daughter, 
 and Persephone, the Awful, without a mother. For Per- 
 sephone is the queen of that dark region in which Gaia 
 dwells: but, as being an Hellenic deity, she cannot 
 have a Pelasgian Nature-Power for her mother. Neither 
 can she be made by Homer the daughter of Demeter, 
 because Demeter herself bears many signs of charac- 
 ter which associate her with Gaia, but which are wholly 
 absent from the picture of Persephone. 
 
 We find in the Albanian language the same form 
 • See JK/ira, p. 239. " II. iii. 104. 
 
264 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 for the Earth as in Demeter, deou ' : though it is com- 
 bined with a form not found in that tongue, which 
 gives us memme, and other like forms, for mother. 
 
 The Demeter of Homer, then, seems to be a figure 
 partially Hellenised, principally of Pelasgian concep- 
 tion, and having parts of its material in Eastern 
 tradition. 
 
 In Athens, and in Olympia, her statue stood by that 
 of Zeus 2 : and, according to Herodotus, the Scythians 
 treated her as his consort. This is probably no more 
 than the mythological impersonation given to the earth 
 as the female or passive principle, subjected to the 
 action of air, light, and sky. 
 
 Section VII. Dime. 
 
 We find Dione present in Olympos, when Aphrodite 
 arrives there after her wound, and is received as her 
 daughter 3. She was therefore one of the wives of 
 Zeus, who expressly owns Aphrodite as his child*: and 
 she, again, expressly names herself as one of the 
 Olympian gods^. To console Aphrodite, she relates 
 how Ares had suffered at the hands of Otos and Ephi- 
 altes, Here and Aides at the hands of Heracles. But 
 there is nothing in the passage to throw light upon the 
 origin of Dione herself; and it is the only passage of 
 Homer, in which she appears. 
 
 We learn however from Hesiod^, that Dione was 
 one of the daughters of Okeanos and Tethus. These 
 daughters were sisters to the Rivers. Pherecydes, an 
 
 ^ Hahn, Alb. Stud. Lexicon. * lb. p. 251. 
 
 ' II. V. 371, 373. * II. V. 4a8. 5 II. V. 383. 
 
 * Theog. 353. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMFOS. 2,6 ^ 
 
 Athenian logographer of the fifth century before Christ, 
 represented her as one of the Nymphs of Dodona^. The 
 coins of Epiros show the head of a Zeus of Dodona, 
 the Pelasgian Zeus, crowned with oak-leaf 2, an asso- 
 ciation sustained by that passage of the Odyssey which 
 refers to the oak, from which the oracles were deli- 
 vered 3. Together with the head of Zeus on these 
 coins is a crowned female head, which cannot be the 
 head of Here, as she belongs only to the Hellenic 
 traditions. Strabo * says that Dione shared the temple 
 of Zeus at Dodona. 
 
 By combining together the fragments of this infor- 
 mation, we may come with reasonable evidence to the 
 conclusion, that Dione was of the family of Nature- 
 Powers j and that in this character she was associated 
 with the elder Zeus of the Pelasgians, the air-god, as 
 his wife. Some will have it^ that she was the mother 
 of Persephone. In Homer, the line between the dei- 
 ties of the Underworld and of Olympos is broad, and 
 not easily crossed : but Dione is the mother of Aphro- 
 dite, and the traditions of Aphrodite^ of Persephone, 
 and of Artemis, undoubtedly intermix. Upon the case 
 of Dione, we may make the general observation, that 
 Homer does not pursue an uniform method of dealing 
 with the divinities of all the old Theogonies. The darker 
 and grosser of them, related to the earth, pass into the 
 Underworld. But Okeanos remains, I suppose, in the 
 Ocean-River ; and Nereus, we know, inhabits the sea- 
 depth, with his family. The water of rivers is bound 
 by the epithet Diipetes to the realm and to the idea of 
 the air-god : and of the rivers Dione was the reputed 
 
 ' Creuzer, Symbolik, iv. 157. ^ lb. iv. 156. 
 
 ' Od. xix. 297. * Strabo, b. vii. p. 329 C. 
 
266 yVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 sister. Therefore, like the air-god himself, she perhaps 
 was sufficiently ethereal in her composition to pass, 
 though but as a dimly-drawn and unimportant person- 
 age, into the Olympian court. 
 
 Section VIII. Aiheni and Apollo. 
 
 These two are by far the most remarkable personages 
 who adorn the Olympos of Homer; and the features, 
 which they possess in common, are so much more 
 numerous and significant than any by which they may 
 be separated, that it will be convenient to treat them 
 together for the purpose of bringing those common 
 features into view. Such differences as subsist between 
 them are much more in function, than in character. 
 
 But I speak only of their features as shown in the 
 Homeric text. It is perfectly possible that they may 
 severally represent in singleness groups of traditions 
 which either had been, or which afterwards became, the 
 property of more than one mythological personage. The 
 names of these may be wholly distinct, and their places, 
 outside the Homeric mythology, far apart. But the 
 self-consistency of each of them, upon the page of Homer, 
 is scarcely less remarkable than their mutual relation ; 
 a relation which at one and the same time both 
 associates them with one another, and severs them from 
 most of the other members of the Olympian Court. 
 
 Their action, however, in the Poems is so extensive 
 and multiform, that it will not be possible to exhibit all 
 its particulars : nor is there the same need for such an 
 operation as in cases where the evidence is scanty. 
 
 Still, it is the more needful to make a comprehensive 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 267 
 
 and accurate survey of their attributes and offices, be- 
 cause upon the cases of these two deities will mainly 
 turn the answer to be given to the interesting and im- 
 portant question, whether there is or is not any sensible 
 infusion into the Homeric system of the ideas related to 
 the redemption of mankind, which have been preserved 
 in the Holy Bible and among the Hebrews, and which 
 may be termed for convenience Messianic. To their 
 case, however, that of Leto is an important auxiliary. 
 
 I. Unless we explain their position in the Olympian 
 system by the aid of the Hebrew traditions, it offers to 
 our view a hopeless solecism. The Olympian gods are 
 arranged generally in two generations. The really 
 great governing powers are given to the elder of the 
 two, to ZeuSj Poseidop, and to Here ; with a parity of 
 dignity, though not of influence, to Aidoneus. All the 
 three first, in one way or other^ are representations of 
 soine_concegtion of the Suprenie^eing which had pre- 
 vailed elsewhere, or at an earlier epoch. But Athene 
 andT^Apollo present no such character; and, standing 
 as they doin the junior line, we are obliged to ask, why 
 do these two junior deities alone, and in a manner 
 which cannot be mistaken, share and exercise the pre- 
 rogatives of supreme deity and government ? Inferior 
 only in some respects to Zeus^ they show no inferiority 
 in any, and in some a marked superiority, to Here or 
 Poseidon. 
 
 It is true indeed that both Athene and Apollo recog- 
 nise the rights of the Uncle, as the Senior, in Poseidon. 
 And, if I am right in considering him as having been the 
 supreme god of a foreign mythology, who was afterwards 
 naturalised in tEe_ Hellenic _system, we may readily 
 understand why, notwithstanding the coarse material 
 
268 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 of his being, he, too, is always shielded from palpable 
 dishonour. Yet neither is he suffered to inflict any 
 disgrace or shame on Athene or Apollo. In the case of 
 Apollo, the two part without fighting i. In the case of 
 rSthene, Poseidon withdraws when Odysseus is about 
 to pass beyond the special sphere of that god^j and the 
 goddess then resumes the conduct of the affairs of the 
 hero, and guides them to a happy issue. And when, in 
 the disguise of Mentor, she attends the sacrifice of 
 Nestor, and offers prayer to Poseidon, the Poet adds, 
 ' so she prayed j and of herself accomplished all the 
 prayer ^.' 
 
 Yet more notable is the relation of rank as between 
 Here and Athene. Once Athene appears, namely in 
 the Debate of the First Book, as the messenger of 
 Here, to prevent the wrath of Achilles from bursting 
 into flagrant violence*: as though Here had a title 
 to employ her services. Yet, even in this case. Here, 
 it should be remarked, supplies no instructions; and 
 Athene frames her discourse after her own will, and 
 with no regard to the special inclination of Here for 
 Agamemnon. But elsewhere Homqr has not scrupled 
 to give to Athene the first place. Twice the goddesses 
 descend together from Olympos to the field of battle, 
 in the chariot of Here. It is Here who yokes the 
 horses, and acts as charioteer. Athene not only mounts 
 as the warrior beside her, but bears the Aigis of su- 
 preme power 5. 
 
 When Thetis arrives at Olympos, in the Twenty- 
 fourth Iliad, she receives the honours of a guest, and is 
 placed by the side of Zeus, Athene giving way to her. 
 
 '^ Ikxxi._468. ' Od. v. 380. ^ Od. iii. 55-62. 
 
 * II. i. 195. ' ° II. V. 711-752; viii. 381-396. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 269 
 
 She probably held the second seat of rank on the left 
 side, the first being, as we need not doubt, given to 
 Here. It is Here, again, who sends the Sun to his 
 repose^. On the whole, an ingenious division of ascrip- 
 tions seems to be carried through, by means of which 
 Here has the higher place in the internal relations of 
 Olympos, but Athene far excels in all that immedi- 
 ately touches the government of men. 
 
 And now as to the dignity of Apollo. 
 
 In the ancient Hymn to this god, cited by Thucy- 
 dides, it is told that the gods rise from their seats as 
 he comes near 2. 
 
 The superiority thus awarded to Apollo cannot be 
 accounted for by anything in the mere order of Olym- 
 pos, which it seems, indeed, to contravene. The child 
 of Leto the obscure is preferred to the child of great 
 Here. In a time of wild men and deeds, a god pre- 
 siding over peaceful functions infinitely outshines the 
 god of war. We must seek for the reason, then, in 
 traditions flowing from another source. 
 
 a. In the Fifth Iliad, Homer appears to inform us, 
 that Athene was born of Zeus without a mother^: a 
 statement afterwards developed in the legend, which 
 represents her as having sprung full-grown from his 
 headi Now if the Hellenes had preserved the tradition 
 of the Logos, it was impossible to clothe it, for the 
 purposes of their system, in a more appropriate form. 
 If they had not, how comes it that we have this one 
 only exception made to the accustomed method of 
 parentage ? — a method so deeply ingrained in the Greek 
 ideas, that even for Zeus a father must be found. 
 
 But Apollo is the child of Leto ; and Leto, if we can 
 
 ' II. xviii. 239. ^ Hymn, 2-4. ^ II. v. 880. 
 
270 yUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 give the word a meaning, means darkness or oblivion. 
 If Apollo be considered as the Sun, the name of his 
 mother may signify his birth from Night. But the 
 Apollo of Homer's Olympos is not the Sun j and of his 
 functions a very large portion have no relation to the 
 Night whatever. But if Homer saw in his Apollo a 
 son of his Zeus, whose filial relation rested upon tra- 
 ditions anterior to any which the current mythologies 
 supplied, and if the word Leto expressed such an ob- 
 scurity, this surely appears to supply a rational and 
 consistent explanation. 
 
 Thus the differences between the birth of Athene 
 and that of Apollo, according to Homer, correspond 
 with the differences between the two forms of the, 
 Messianic tradition represented respectively in the 
 Logos, and the Son of the Woman. 
 
 3. But while the rank and the power of these deities 
 were traceable to those of Zeus in the Olympian sys- 
 tem, it is plain that their dignity, their sanctitas, 
 was greater than his. They were regarded with a 
 more unmixed reverence, as if the traditions relating 
 to them had been kept more free from earthy elements. 
 These propositions do not rest merely on the general 
 mode of handling them in Homer, but upon distinct 
 and well-defined notes. They are never exhibited in 
 the mood of sensual passion, like Zeus and Here, to 
 say nothing of lesser deities. This is true, without 
 the least qualification, of Athene. Apollo is stated to 
 have carried up Marpessa the bride of Ideus^; and he 
 enters into the ribald jesting of Olympos in the Lay of 
 the Net 2. But the latter story, as has already been 
 observed, is conceived in the spirit of a foreign myth- 
 ' II. iv. 559-564- ^ Od. viii. 334. 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 27 1 
 
 ology; and with respect to Marpessa, it may be re- 
 marked, that the numerous intrigues of the mythical 
 gods in Homer are never accompanied with violence, 
 but are invariably made to appear as connections volun- 
 tarily accepted; while again they are always attended 
 with the birth of children. In both particulars this story 
 differs from them, and it much more resembles that of 
 Ganymede 1, who was carried up to be cup-bearer in 
 heaven. Perhaps we are to understand that she was 
 taken for the service of the deity at the neighbouring 
 shrine of Delphi, where a priestess so long officiated. 
 
 But again, these deities, and these alone, are never 
 subjected to disparagement in any other form. Here, 
 as we have seen, had once been wounded, and Zeus 
 had been, or was about to be, enchained ; but to these 
 two no violence is ever offered. Further, Zeus is on 
 the very verge of open conflict with Poseidon ; but in the 
 Theomachy, the battle between Apollo and his uncle is 
 avoided, while Athene inflicts a terrible reverse on her 
 huge opponent Ares. Again, Zeus himself is, for the 
 time, completely baffled and outwitted by the strat^em 
 ■of Here; and the Hellenising Poseidon is enabled to 
 take the field against his orders. But neither Athene 
 nor Apollo are ever deceived or visibly put to shame. 
 
 Nor will this appear an easy matter to arrange, when 
 it is borne in mind that these two are the great agents 
 of the two great Olympian deities respectively. It is, 
 however, carefully contrived that they shall never come 
 into actual collision one with the other. Apollo inter- 
 feres against Patroclos ; but Athene is absent. Athene 
 interferes against Hector ; but Apollo is abseni. Again 
 he is absent, in the Doloneia, while she conducts to a 
 ' II. XX. 234. 
 
273 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 prosperous issue the night-expedition of Diomed and 
 Odysseus^. In the Chariot-race of the Twenty-third 
 Book, where the contest for the first place is between 
 Eumelos and Diomed, Apollo, the partisan of Eumelos, 
 throws the whip of Diomed out of his hand^. Athene 
 restores it, apparently when Apollo has departed, and 
 by breaking the chariot-yoke of Eumelos secures the 
 victory of her favourite. Apollo here, though saved as 
 far as the Poet's art can do it, comes off second best ; 
 but only as against Athene. A second instance occurs, 
 where he is brought to suggest, at a time when the 
 Greeks 3 were losing ground, in lieu of the general con- 
 flict, a personal challenge, from Hector which was sure 
 to be to their advantage. To appreciate the import- 
 ance of this consideration, we must observe how other 
 deities are liable to be foiled and worsted : Ares by 
 Athene in the Fifth Iliad, and by Hephaistos in the 
 Eighth Odyssey; Here and Aidoneus by Heracles j 
 Artemis by Here in the Theomachy ; Aphrodite by Dio- 
 med ; Demeter*, and Here too^, by Zeus. Zeus him- 
 self was delivered from a conspiracy by extraneous aid. 
 
 There is a manifest difiFerence to be observed as to the 
 relations of will and affection with Zeus, between these 
 two and the other deities. These alone he calls by the 
 epithet ' dear*.' The case of Apollo stands alone as an 
 exhibition of entire unbroken harmony with the will 
 of Zeus, which in all things he regards. When he 
 remonstrates, it is with the body of the gods not 
 with Zeus personally? ; and Here, rebuking him for his 
 
 • II. X. 515. * II. xxiii. 384. ' II. vii. 20. « Od. v. 
 
 « U. XV. 18. « II. vlii. 39, xxii. 183 ; and xv. 221, xvi. 667. 
 ' II, xxiv. 33. 
 
YIII.], THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 273 
 
 interference, is at once checked by Zeusi. Though he 
 seems to be the habitual organ for accomplishing his 
 father's designs, he is never so employed in any purpose 
 which is about to failj such, for instance, as would 
 have been the defence of Sarpedon. Zeus himself is by 
 no means so carefully shielded, in great providential 
 matters, as Apollo. 
 
 The necessities of the Poem place Athene in an- 
 tagonism to Zeus, and she goes all lengths in the prose- 
 cution of her purposes. But, if in opposition to the 
 chief deity, she is on the side not only of justice, but of 
 the Olympian decree, to which Zeus himself, his per- 
 sonal partialities leaning one way, and his governing 
 responsibility another, has felt it right to' yield. She 
 exposes herself, together with Here, to his threats ; but 
 his anger, in her case, is on account of her threatening 
 him on a special and rare occasion ^^ while Here ever 
 leads him an uneasy life ^ j and he seems anxious to 
 take the first opportunity of reassuring her* as his be- 
 loved daughter. 
 
 We have, then, in the case of Apollo, an uniform 
 identity of -will with the chief god, and in the case of 
 Athene only an exceptional departure from it. This is 
 a very remarkable feature. In Here and Poseidon, it is 
 wholly wanting. In Hermes and Iris we find the obedi- 
 ence of messengers, but not the unity of counsel and of 
 mind. In general, such harmony can no more broadly 
 be asserted of Olympos^ than of a kingdom or court on 
 earth. No traditions known to me appear in any way 
 to account for it, except those of the Hebrew race. It 
 
 ' II. xxiv. 69. ^ II. viii. 406-408. ' II. i. 561-563- 
 
 * II. viii. 39. 
 T 
 
374 JVVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 is evidently the very picture for which they are calcu- 
 lated to furnish the materials. 
 
 The Hellenic religion represents Apollo as the de- 
 fender of Heaven, and the Deliverer of the Immortals, 
 in some great peril or struggle of contending spirits. 
 He destroyed Otos and Ephialtes, the hugest, and after 
 Orion the most beautiful, of all beings reared on earth, 
 at the critical time when they are about to scale heaven 
 by piling the mountains. 
 
 " This function has no natural connection with the 
 mythological offices of Apollo, great and varied as they 
 are. Neither as physician, harper, poet, prophet, archer, 
 nor angel of death, can he appear entitled to claim the 
 honour thus awarded to him. There is also in Homer 
 a glance at a general rebellion of the Giants and at 
 their fall in consequence of their impiety i. The later 
 tradition retains, down to the Augustan age, this ac- 
 count of Apollo with a diversity of accompaniments. 
 In Homer, as the account is by no means to be ex- 
 plained through his Olympian offices, it appears to re- 
 present some older tradition, according to which this 
 bright and lofty person, intimately associated with, and 
 specially executing on earth, the divine will, had like- 
 ■yyise put down in actual battle a rising of rebellious 
 spirits in the Upper world. 
 
 To Athene there is assigned by Homer no function 
 resembling this. But the specialties of a certain divine 
 supremacy are in a manner divided between them. 
 Athene takes a peculiar jurisdiction in the Underworld; 
 and it is the more remarkable because, while she uses 
 it in aid of Zeus, it does not come by derivation from 
 him. She declares ^ that but for her, Heracles, when 
 ' Od. vii. 56, 60. ^ IL viii. 362-3-69; cf. Od. ii. 623-626. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OlYMPOS. 375 
 
 he went to fetch Cerberus, never would have escaped 
 the dire streams of Styx. This seems to mean that 
 Zeus could not have delivered him. 
 
 Lastly, we cannot fail to observe how the powers 
 and offices of these two deities encroach upon and 
 cut across the provinces of other recognised divinities, 
 with a total absence of any reciprocity in regard to 
 what may be called their special function. Athene, 
 as the goddess of war, not only rivals Ares, but excels 
 him. She is the goddess of art, like Hephaistos, with 
 some distinction, indeed, as he operates upon metals 
 with the aid of fire, and she ordinarily on tissues. Yet 
 not so as to limit her power; for she, together with 
 Hephaistos, instructs the silversmith in all the depart- 
 ments of his art ' ; and moreover teaches mensuration 
 to the carpenter^. She presides over industry and over 
 cunning, like Hermes ; and she shares with this deity 
 his special function as conductor of the dead^. Again, 
 in parts of her relation to Polity, as 'AyeXfCt}*, Aao<r- 
 o-o'os^, ipvcrivToXis^, she approaches to the office of The- 
 mis ? : who summons and dissolves assemblies, thus 
 discharging subordinate functions apparently on behalf 
 of the primary political deity. 
 
 Apollo, as the healer, discharges the office of Paieon. 
 But while Paieon s, who is somewhat strongly marked 
 as a deity of the Egyptian system, heals with the 
 hand a, Apollo has too high a dignity to be thus re- 
 presented. He simply deposits the stunned ^neas 
 in his temple, where Leto and Artemis proceed to treat 
 
 ' Od.vi. 233,xxiii. 154. '^II. xv. 412. => Od. ii. 626 ; cf. xxiv.i. 
 * 'AyfXeir; = Spoil-driver, or Folk-leader. 
 ° Aaoo-o-dos =Folk-stirrer. ^ ^pi;(nVToXtj = City-warder. 
 
 ' Od. ii. 69, n. XX. 4. ' Od. iv. 231. ^ II. v. 401. 
 
 T a 
 
Z'jS yUVENTUS MUNDI. ['CHAP. 
 
 him': or, in answer to the prayer of Glaucos, heals 
 from afar the wound of that gallant warrior^. 
 
 Apollo, as the musician, is supreme in the province 
 of the Muses; who are purely poetical and Hellenic 
 •impersonations, sometimes one in number, sometimes 
 nine 3. His concern is with the instrument, theirs with 
 the voice ; but they perform together at the Olympian 
 banquet*, and have, probably, a community of relation 
 to the Bard. 
 
 Apollo, as the agent of Zeus, moves in the same 
 province as Hermes and Iris, especially the latter: 
 but the highest offices are always reserved to him, in 
 which the Divine intention is to take eiFect. It is 
 left to Hermes to conduct Priam to the presence of 
 Achilles, when the object is only that of a go-between, 
 and the result depends upon the will of the hero. 
 
 In the ' Studies on Homer' I called by the name of 
 Secondaries 5 the deities who are thus placed, even in 
 their own departments, below Apollo and Athene. 
 ■Perhaps the name is not appropriate, since these 
 personages have in general independent traditions of 
 their own. The main point is that we should observe 
 the approach to a divine universality of office and 
 power in Apollo and Athene, which can in no respect 
 be accounted for by the formation of the Olympian 
 family or its laws. 
 
 Let us now turn to points connected with the human 
 and terrestrial relations of these great deities. 
 
 They are jointly invoked, together with Zeus, in a 
 solemn but often-repeated formula expressing keen 
 desire; as when Achilles prays, 'Father Zeus! and 
 
 ? II. V. 445-447. a II. xvi. 527-529. ' Od. xxiv. 60. 
 
 * II. i. 603,. 604, 6 Vol. ii. p. 59. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLtMPOS. 2']'] 
 
 Athene! and Apollo! would that every Trojan should 
 perish, and every Greek'/ 
 
 And they are placed at the climax of honour in 
 another formula ^ : 
 
 ' Were I honoured as are honoured Athene and Apollo.' 
 This line suggests the question whether, in the time 
 of Homer, some visible form of worship may possibly 
 have been paid to these two deities, as the agents of a 
 Supreme God, presumed to be less accessible than they, 
 and was at the same time not accorded to others. Be 
 this as it may, they are the only deities whose temples 
 are unequivocally named to us in Homer : the temple 
 of Apollo 5 at Chruse, on Pergamos, and at Putho : the 
 temple of Athene* at Athens, on Pergamos, and in 
 Scherie. 
 
 Again, we do not find any local limit to the worship 
 of these deities within the sphere of Greek knowledge 
 and experience. Athene, the most Hellenic deity, is 
 the patroness of Pelasgian Attica, and is also the object 
 of the supplicatory procession of Trojan women in the 
 Sixth Iliad. She is worshipped at Pulos, in Ithaca, 
 in the Greek camp. Apollo, the great Trojan deity, 
 has his priest among the Kicones, his temple at Pytho, 
 his altar in Delos, his grove and festival in Ithaca; 
 and he is the fountain-head of the prophetic gift, which 
 pervades all parts of Greece. He is connected with 
 Kille, with Lycia in the south, and with the Lycian 
 Trojans in the north of Asia Minor. Seers, whom he 
 always endows with vision, are found* even among the 
 Cyclops. He feeds the horses of Admetos in Picrie, 
 
 ' II. xvi. 97. ^ II. viii. 540; xiii. 827. 
 
 3 II. i. 39; v.. 445; ix. 404. 
 
 * II. ii. 549 ; vi. 88, 297. Od. vi. 320-322. * Od. ix. 508'. 
 
278 yuVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 claims the daughter of Marpessa in ^tolia, and slays 
 the children of Niobe near Mount Sipulos. In truth, 
 he seems scarcely less universal than that scourge of 
 Death, to which he stands in so near and solemn a 
 relation. 
 
 No deity of the Poems, except Zeus, can at all 
 compete with Apollo and Athene in this respect. 
 
 Next, Apollo and Athene are independent of all the 
 limitations of place : another point in which no other 
 deity, but Zeus, appears to resemble them. 
 
 Athens, indeed, appears to be indicated in the 
 Odyssey as the abode of Athene'. Apollo has no 
 abode directly assigned to him. But the sign of 
 omnipresence in both is, that prayer is addressed to 
 them from all places indifferently. Only four times^ 
 do we find actual petitions to Apollo, and all these 
 in Troas. But we may observe this essential point; 
 that, as in the two last of these for example, he is 
 presumed to be present, and to hear it as a matter of 
 course, without reference to any special residence or 
 function. To Athene we have no less than twelve 
 prayers given in the Poems, in Ithaca, Scherie, Pulos, 
 Troy, and the Greek camp • and always to her as an 
 universal not a local power. But even Poseidon, great 
 as he is, never has prayer offered to him, except near 
 the sea, or by his own descendants. 
 
 In truth, but a small number of deities in Homer are 
 made the subjects of actual invocation. For example^ 
 there is no invocation anywhere to Aphrodite, Ares 
 
 ^ Od. vii. 80, 81. 
 
 ''11.1.35-43; 450-457; iii. 100-103, 116-131 ; .xvi. 513-529. 
 Add, however, the references in II. xi. 363, 364, and i. 65, 
 473- 
 
^^II.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLrMPOS. 279 
 
 Hermes, Hephaistos, Demeter, or even Here. Ar- 
 temis' and Poseidon are invoked: the first in con- 
 nection with function, the latter with place. We 
 have also addresses from mortals to the deities pre- 
 siding over the Oath, or ruling in the Underworld. 
 But general prayer is addressed only to Zeus, Pallas, 
 and Apollo. 
 
 Again, these favoured deities are exempt from 
 physical or other infirmity or need in general. They 
 are never excited by mere personal passion. Neither 
 of them individually eats or drinks; as Hermes, for 
 example, does, at the dwelling of Calypso-, or as Iris 
 fears lest she should lose her share of the Ethiopian 
 hecatomb-. Neither of them sleeps, or is weary, or 
 is wounded, or suffers pain. They are never intro- 
 duced as delighting in sacrifice apart from obedience. 
 Artemis sends the boar to Caludon because she had 
 been forgotten in the offerings*: but Apollo's wrath, 
 in the First Iliad, is not for the want of prayer or 
 hecatomb, it is on account of the shame and wrong 
 done by Agamemnon to Chruses his priest 5. Diomed 
 and Odysseus are dear to Pallas : but she never asks or 
 commends their bounty at the altar, as Zeus commends 
 that of Hector, and of Odysseus himself^. When 
 sacrifice is offered to Apollo, in the First Iliad 7, after 
 the restitution, his pleasure is not stated to have been 
 in the savour of it, but in the hymn of praise which 
 was addressed to him. Zeus can accept the victims 
 even while he frustrates the petition'*: but when 
 Athene in like manner declines a prayer of the 
 
 ^ Od. XX. 6i. ^ Od. V. 94. ^ II. xxiii. 207. 
 
 * II. ix. 536. ° II. i. 6s, 93. « II. xxiv. 68. Od. i. 66. 
 
 ' II. i. 473. * II. ii- 420- 
 
a8o -JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Trojans, she is not stated to accept the ofFeringi ; 
 and the idea that when offended she can be appeased 
 by mere offerings is thus practically repudiated^. 
 
 Again, attributes of bulk stand at the bottom of the 
 scale of excellence. They are indirectly assigned to 
 Pallas by the weight of the Aigis which she carries-J. 
 This is possibly on account of the direct competition 
 which subsists between the huge Ares, as a god of war, 
 and herself, presiding over the same province*. Bulk 
 is never ascribed to Apollo. 
 
 Again, as to locomotion. Apollo and Athene move 
 without the use of any instruments, such as wings, 
 chariots, or otherwise. Their journeys are usually 
 undistributed and instantaneous. They set out, and 
 they arrive 5. On one occasion only, Athene employs 
 the foot-wings 6 which were used by Hermes. But there 
 are details and steps in the movements of Hermes, 
 Poseidon, and Here''. 
 
 The ordinary Olympian deity, when offended by 
 mortals, most commonly makes his appeal to Zeus 
 for redress. Thus Poseidon acts with respect to the 
 Greek rampart; Aphrodite, tacitly, after her wound 
 by Diomed ; Ares, in the same condition ; and Helios, 
 after his. oxen have been devoured by the crew of 
 Odysseus 8. 
 
 But the retributive action of Apollo, in the Plague. of 
 the First Iliad, is wholly independent, and is the more 
 remarkable since he wastes the army of the Greeks to 
 the great peril of an enterprise promoted by such 
 
 > II. vii. 311. " Od. iii. 143-147. ^ jj^ jj ^^,_ 
 
 * See n. xviii. 519. = Od. i. 102-103. H- xv. 150. 
 
 * Od. i. 96. ' Od. V. 50^58. II, xiii. 17-31 ;.xiv. 225-230. 
 « II. V. 869, 426; vii. 445. Od. xii. 377, 387. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. a8l 
 
 powerful divinities. In the Third Odyssey', on the 
 return of the Greeks, we are told that Zeus designed 
 evil for them by reason of their crimes, wherefore 
 many perished by the wrath of Pallas ; that she could 
 not be appeased, and that Zeus suspended calamity over 
 them. There is no sign here of an appeal to Zeus, 
 but rather of an identification of the two agencies in 
 the providential government of the world. 
 
 Again, Apollo and Athene administer powers which 
 are otherwise the special or exclusive property of Zeus. 
 
 The air-functions of that deity are sometimes, 
 indeed, exercised by Here. This may reasonably be 
 accounted for by her relation to him as wife. No 
 kindred reason is available for the selection of these 
 two among his children for an office so elevated. 
 Athene, with Here, thunders in honour of Agamem- 
 non ^i. and she can cause the winds to cease, or to 
 blows. So he too sends for the Greek ship a toward 
 breeze^. But the most significant of all the partici- 
 pations of the supreme power is confined to Athene 
 with Apollo. Both of them in turn carry the Aigis 
 in the Fifth and Fifteenth Iliads respectively '. And, 
 in truth, these two deities seem throughout the Iliad 
 to share with Zeus the function of Providence ; the one 
 as towards the Trojans, the other as towa,rds the 
 Greeks 6. Indeed, in the Odyssey more especially, 
 they fill the very highest offices of divine government 
 over the minds of men j which appear to be conducted 
 by Pallas, much more than by Zeus himself. 
 
 ^ Od. iii. 132 seqq. ^ II. xi. 45. 
 
 ^ Od. V. 109, 382-385, ,;/ alibi. * II. i. 479 
 
 " II. V. 735-742 ; XV. 229. 
 ' See Studies on Homer, Olympos, pp. 115-122. 
 
a82 yuvENTUs mundi. [chap; 
 
 There is a very peculiar function attaching to the 
 divine supremacy, in the signification of coming 
 events to men by the flight of birds, and by atmo- 
 spheric signs. This power, being connected with the 
 future, is distinguished from the general power over 
 external nature. It is shared with Zeus principally 
 by Apollo, but also by Athene. He sends the Kirkos, 
 or wheeling falcon, to Thrace, as an omen of success 
 to Telemachos' : she, a heron to cheer Odysseus and 
 Diomed in the Night-excursion of the Tenth Iliad^. 
 She stupefies and bewilders the Suitors as their ruin 
 approaches : but his agent, Theoclumenos3, announces, 
 and he therefore may be considered as supplying, the 
 portents which beset the Hall of the Palace before the 
 final catastrophe. 
 
 Nagelsbach observes, that the power of signs is 
 confined to Zeus, Here, Apollo, and PaUas*. But 
 the signs exhibited by Here, the thunder of the 
 Eleventh Iliad, and the gift of speech to the horses of 
 Achilles, involve no knowledge or signification of the 
 future. The prediction delivered by the horse Xanthos 
 appears to be his own, and not the gift of the goddess. 
 
 It may be affirmed generally, that both these deities, 
 but especially Athene, exercise a power over external 
 nature almost without limit. Assuming the human 
 form, they can make themselves visible to one person 
 only among many^. They, and none but they, frame 
 images of human beings which can speak or fight S: 
 Pallas alters at will the figures and features of 
 
 1 Od.xv. 526. 2 II. X. 274. 
 
 ' Od. XX. 345-371- * Horn. Theol. iv. 16 ; p. 147. 
 
 ** II. i..i98, and (apparently) xvii. 321-324. 
 
 " II. V. 449. . Od. iv..796, 826. 
 
Vni.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 383 
 
 Odysseus, Penelope, and Laertes; having command, 
 apparently, of some organic power over matter and 
 vital force. While Athene's jurisdiction as to storms 
 is unlimited, Apollo diverts rivers from their beds, and 
 makes them converge upon a point'. 
 
 In like manner they act upon the mind of man 
 by infusing fear, courage, counsel, as the case may be. 
 These operations are never assigned to any deity 
 except those of the first order in Olympos. 
 
 But when Poseidon breathes valour into the two 
 Ajaxes, he does it by striking them ; just as when he 
 has to convert the ship of the Phaiakes into a rock, 
 he drives it downward with a blow of his hand^. On 
 the other hand, Apollo infuses courage into Hector 
 aiid Glaucos, and heals also the wounds of the latter 
 chieftain 3, without any outward act. Most of the 
 corporal changes effected by Athene in the Odyssey 
 are similarly brought about. Only in the case where 
 she effects a total transformation of Odysseus, she- 
 touches him with her wand*. 
 
 This exception, as a rule, from the use of instruments 
 in giving effect to their will, is a sign of a high con- 
 ception, on the part of the Poet, with respect to their 
 divine power. In the Kestos of Aphrodite, in the 
 wand of Hermes, an intrinsic virtue resides, apart from 
 the will of those personages respectively. These are 
 not mere symbols : they are causative seats of power. 
 That Apollo and Athene do not use any such vehicle, 
 is a sign of force, essential, independent, and su- 
 preme, over matter. 
 
 1 II. xii. 24. ^ II. xiii. 58. Od. xiii. 164. 
 
 2 II. xvi. 528. * Od. xiii. 429; xvi. 172, 453. 
 
a84 yuVENTus mundi. " [chap. 
 
 Yet once more, as to the common features of these 
 extraordinary personages. 
 
 Their moral standard is conspicuously raised above 
 that of the Olympian family in general. 
 
 Athene has the purity of Artemis, whom in all other 
 points she eclipses. This prerogative is expressly 
 acknowledged in the ancient Hymn to Aphrodite ^ 
 No such statement can be made of any other among 
 the active goddesses : not of Here, Thetis, or Demeter j 
 much less of Aphrodite herself. 
 
 So we have in the Poems sons of Zeus, of Poseidon, of 
 Ares, of Hermes; all of them the fruit of their intrigues 
 with women ; but no son of Apollo. Hephaistos, indeed, 
 is exempt from the charge, probably on account of his 
 personal deformity. Down to the time of ^schylus^, 
 Apollo retained the epithet of ' the pure.' Later still, 
 it had been lost'; and the legend of Marpessa, which 
 by no means requires such a construction in Homer, 
 had been read in the light of the later tradition, and 
 had descended to the common level. His share in the 
 scene described by the Lay of Demodocos may perhaps 
 be accounted for by the fact that the subject belonged to 
 a foreign theology, though it may have been one which 
 was already beginning to act upon Greece. 
 
 I do not however attach to the term ' purity,' in an 
 inquiry of this nature, its full Christian sense ; in which 
 it appears as one portion of the panoply of a complete 
 and almost seraphic virtue, and is elevated as well as 
 sustained by the spirit of the marvellous religion to 
 which it belongs. The moral characters of Apollo 
 and Athene are lofty, if measured by the Olympian 
 standard, although they will not bear the tests which 
 ' w. 8, i6. 2 suppi_ 222. 3 s_ Clem. Alex. p. 20, B. 
 
VIII.] THE I)IVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 285 
 
 the Christian system would apply. Apollo descends 
 from his height, in the scene where he strikes Patroclos 
 from behind, and knocks his armour oflF, so as to bring 
 the Greek hero into that unequal position in which 
 even the keen national feeling of the Poet would allow 
 him to be conquered by a Trojan. And Pallas under- 
 takes a mean office when she incites Pandaros to a 
 breach of the Pact. Counsel, with her, certainly de- 
 generates at times into craft and frauds But these 
 drawbacks are in both cases exceptional. Speaking 
 generally, the two are beautiful and majestic delinea- 
 tions ; and Athend in particular has many of the 
 characteristics of the Eternal Wisdom, which came 
 forth from the bosom of God. 
 
 The distinctive functions of Apollo, which sever him 
 from Athene, are many. The highest are these four: 
 that he is familiarly employed by Zeus^ with whom he 
 has a perfect conformity of will, as his agent in the 
 government of human affairs ; that he is the champion 
 of Zeus and of heaven against the rebellious powers; 
 that he is the minister of death; and, finally, that to 
 him alone there seems to be committed an absolute 
 knowledge of the future, and the administration of that 
 prophetic gift which Calchas, though acting in and for 
 the Greek army, held from him^- Athene, on the other 
 hand, is occasionally the agent of Zeus, with whose 
 will, however, she is less uniformly associated ^ Apollo 
 has also, besides the gifts of the bow, of healing, and 
 of song, a special association with the light. 
 
 The ministry of death, exercised by Apollo for men 
 as by Artemis for women, is most of all remarkable 
 
 ' II. iv. 86-92. Od. xiii. 299. '^ II. i. 72. 
 
 ' U. iv. 70. Od. xxiv. 539-545- 
 
a86 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 on account of its twofold aspect. It is sometimes 
 penal, as with Ariadne' ; or even a terrible vengeance, 
 as with the children of Niobe^. It is sometimes a 
 tranquil and painless deliverance from the burden of 
 the flesh, as in the island of Surie'. Another peculiarity 
 of this prerogative is, that it refers to death produced 
 without second causes. All other deaths whatever in 
 the Poems, natural or violent, appear to be referred to 
 second causes. There is a mythological impersonation 
 of Death (Thanatos) provided by the Poet, to which to 
 refer them. The death brought about by Apollo and 
 Artemis is an exceptional death, in the point of being 
 directly due to their supreme will and special ministry. 
 
 And this is at least a wonderful phenomenon in the 
 Olympian system, especially when we consider how 
 gloomy and repulsive, in the view of Homer and his age, 
 was the extinction of our mortal life, and the prospect 
 of the region that lay beyond it. Here is, as matter of 
 fact, a tradition of a Power that was to take away the 
 sting from Death, preserved for the time, but for the 
 time only, among a people who surrounded death in 
 general with associations of a wholly diiferent character. 
 Even if it stood alone, we should be driven surely to 
 treat it as derived, through whatever channel, from 
 some ancient and signal promise of a Deliverer for the 
 human race. It does not however stand alone, but 
 forms part of a multitude of varied testimonies, all 
 converging upon the same point. 
 
 Athene, besides her great special prerogatives of War, 
 
 Policy, and Industrial Art, is invested generally with 
 
 yet greater power than Apollo, and rises to a still 
 
 higher grade of moral majesty. She seems also, by 
 
 ' Od. xi. 324. ^ II. xxiv. 606 ; cf. vi. 205. ^ oj_ ^y ^^^^ 
 
Vin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLFMPOS. zSj 
 
 virtue of a latent partnership in the divine supremacy, 
 to partake of or represent something analogous to 
 several of his peculiar gifts. She enters into his know- 
 ledge of the future ; for in the Ithacan cave she foretells 
 to Odysseus all that he has yet to suffer ^ And if he 
 is the champion of the gods in Olympus (an office 
 which she shared with him in the later tradition), she, 
 as I have above observed^ possesses a jurisdiction in the 
 Underwork, which appears to cross and over-ride that 
 of its appointed rulers. Though she cannot avert death 
 from a mortal, she can afterwards extricate him from 
 its grasp'. 
 
 The limits of this work forbid me to pursue the my- 
 thological history of Athene and Apollo through the later 
 literature of the Greeks and Romans. They continue, 
 it may be said generally, to hold positions of great 
 splendour, but the distinctive character of their features 
 as a whole is gradually enfeebled and effaced. 
 
 Even the hasty reader of Homer cannot fail to be 
 struck with it ; but it is only by a minute and careful 
 observation of particulars that the whole case can be 
 brought out. It then becomes fully manifest that, by 
 not one, but a crowd of attributes and incidents, they 
 are severed from the general body of the Olympian 
 deities of Homer, and closely associated together, 
 though very far from being even substantially identified, 
 far less confused. These attributes are partly intellec- 
 tual, partly moral. The general result is to render their 
 position grossly anomalous and wholly inexplicable, if 
 the explanation of it is only to be sought in the laws 
 of the Olympian system, or in such traditions as the 
 
 ^ Od. xiii. 306. ^ II. viii. 362-369, Od. iv. 790-793. 
 
 ' Od. iv. 752, 753. 
 
388 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [fcHAP. 
 
 .older nature-worship, or the Egyptian, or Syrian, or 
 Phoenician mythologies could supply. 
 
 But when we turn to the Hebrew annals, we find 
 there a group of traditions, belonging to what may be 
 termed the Messianic order, which appear to supply us 
 with a key to the double enigma. The general cha- 
 racteristics of the Messianic anticipations are in marked 
 conformity with the common prerogatives of Pallas and 
 Apollo. And the distinctions of the two deities fall in, 
 not less clearly, with the twofold form in which those 
 anticipations are presented to us ; the one, which 
 pointed to a conception more abstract, and less capable 
 of being confounded with mere humanity; the other, 
 to a form strictly personal, and intimately associated 
 with our nature. 
 
 In these resemblances, there appears to be found 
 a very strong presumption, that the Hellenic portion 
 of the Aryan family had for a time preserved to itself, 
 in broad outline, no small share of those treasures, of 
 which the Semitic family of Abraham were to be the 
 appointed guardians, on behalf of all mankind, until 
 the fulness of time should come. 
 
 It is obvious that such traditions, when cut off from 
 their fountain-head, supplied a material basis for that 
 anthropomorphic character which distinguished the 
 Greek religion from first to last, and associated it so 
 closely with the whole detail of life.. For, according to 
 their tenor, the conception and representation of deity 
 in human form were no idle fancy, but were the great 
 design of the Almighty God for the recovery of an 
 erring, suflFering, and distracted race. 
 
 On the importance of these propositions I need not 
 dwell. The more they are important, the more it is to 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 289 
 
 be desired that they should be strictly noted. The 
 intention of these pages is both to invite, and some- 
 what to assist, all such as shall be disposed to undertake 
 the pains of such an investigation. 
 
 Section IX. Hephaistos. 
 
 Hephaistos bears in Homer the double stamp of a 
 Nature-Power, representing the element of fire, and 
 of an anthropomorphic deity, who is the god of Art, 
 at a period when the only fine art known was in 
 works of metal produced by the aid of fire. 
 
 As Homer gives us faint traces of the elemental god 
 of air in end i OS, and as his Nereus is still represented 
 in the nero of modern Greek for 'water,' so he actually 
 employs the name Hephaistos in one passage undeni- 
 ably for firei, if he does not also mean the flame of fire 
 in other passages where he mentions 'the flame of 
 Hephaistos.' This deity is worshipped in Troas, 
 where he has a wealthy priest^. 
 
 Hahn finds in the fouki-a of the Albanian tongue, 
 signifying force, the root of the word Vulcanus^; and 
 quotes Varro, 'ab ignis vi et violentiii Vulcanus 
 est dictus.' Schmidt connects the name with fulgere 
 and fulmen*. 
 
 Hephaistos is not one of the seven astral deities of 
 the East, who stood in relation to seven metals. 
 
 It is doubtless in a double or plural tradition that 
 we are to seek the explanation of our finding Hephai- 
 stos, on the one hand, bearing the marks of antiquity 
 which belong to a Nature-Power, and, on the other 
 
 * II. ii. 426. ^ II. V. 9. ^ Alban. Studien, p. 252. 
 
 Beckmann,- Inventions, Art. Metals. 
 
 U 
 
390 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 hand, made known to us as an infant, the offspring of 
 Zeus and Here, whose mother sought to hide him, that 
 is to put him out of the way, on account of his lame- 
 ness : a sure sign that, in the view of Homer, he was, so 
 far as regards his higher character of Art-master, a deity 
 of more recent introduction. This part of the tradi- 
 tions can relate to no mere fire-god. He is saved by 
 Thetis, the grand mediatress of the Theogonies, and 
 Eurunome, the daughter of Okeanos ; and hid by them 
 in a submarine cavern, where, with the tidal flood of 
 ocean ever gurgling in his ears, he spends his time for 
 nine years in working clasps, and necklaces, and other 
 trinkets. Such an assemblage of images is highly PhcE- 
 nician, that is to say Eastern, in its colour. 
 
 The combination in this place of Thetis, a sea-god- 
 dess, and the ocean-deity, is remarkable ; and stands, I 
 think, alone in Homer. I understand it to betoken 
 the dual course of tradition relating to Hephaistos. The 
 Okeanos of Homer is the sire of gods, or their source i. 
 This may indeed relate to the Nature-Powers, rather 
 than to the Olympian gods, from whom Okeanos stands 
 somewhat widely apart. If so, Eurunome has her 
 share in the transaction as a representative of the 
 older dynasty of gods, and Thetis as a personage who 
 has the entrie to the newer circle. But it seems more 
 probable that as Okeanos, the father of Perse, and 
 father-in-law of Helios, has strong Eastern associa- 
 tions, Eurunome represents the newer and higher 
 character of Hephaistos imported from the East, and 
 that Thetis, according to her own stock, befriends him 
 as a Nature-Power. 
 
 Both the water of Ocean, and the connection of fire 
 
 ' II. Xiv. 201. 
 
¥111.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 29 1 
 
 with fine art in metals, probably attach Hephaistos to 
 the channels of Phoenician, in its widest sense of 
 Eastern, tradition : while he may have represented the 
 simple element of fire in the Pelasgian systems of 
 religion. 
 
 The latter relation accounts for his being- wor- 
 shipped in Troas, even while he is one of the deities 
 who, following his chief bent^ takes decidedly, though 
 not passionately, the Greek part in the quarrel. And,^ 
 accordingly^ it is under the rude conception of mere 
 fire that he is matched, in the Theomachy, with the 
 river Xanthos, whom he exhausts by drying up the 
 stream, and thus sorely afflicts, until Here intercedes. 
 
 Through all his other marked operations in the 
 Poems, Hephaistos, instead of resolving himself into 
 the element, remains entirely anthropomorphic, although 
 he is so far from satisfying the Greek ideal of a god in 
 respect of form. He is such in the Olympian banquet 
 at the close of the first Book, at the smithy or forge in 
 his own palace, and again in the lay of Demodocos. 
 
 Married to Aphrodite in the Odyssey, he appears in 
 the Iliad as the husband of Charis^. Now Aphrodite 
 is a real member of the mythological system, whereas 
 Charis is loosely and faintly delineated, and seems 
 almost to hover between an idea and a person. Some 
 have treated these two representations as discrepant, 
 and have used them in support of the theory, which 
 separates the authorship of the two Poems. Others 
 (myself included) may have suggested modes of recon- 
 ciliation between them, which are insufficient^. Having 
 now arrived, I think, at adequate proof of the Eastern 
 or Phoenician character of the mythology, as well as 
 
 ^ Od. viii. 269; II. xviii. 382. ^ Studies, vol. ii. p. 257. 
 
 U 3 
 
29a JUVENTUS MUNDt. [CHAPi 
 
 the scenery, of the whole sphere of the Voyages, I find 
 in this fact the simplest explanation of a difference, 
 which, instead of any longer impeaching, rather tends 
 to sustain the unity of authorship. . Hephaistos and 
 Aphrodite, as husband and wife, owe that relation prob- 
 ably to a Syrian or Syro-Phoenician source. Hephaistos 
 and Charis, in the sense of the Hellenic mythology, 
 together represent, with a perfect propriety, the strength 
 and the grace, the beauty or charm, which require to 
 be combined in works of Art. Nagelsbach, accordingly, 
 treats this marriage as allegorical^. 
 
 The Poems, however, establish a relation, be it alle- 
 gorical or not, between the Charites and Aphrodite j 
 for the Charites receive her on her return from the 
 scene of the Net to Cyprus, where they bathe, anoint, 
 and vest her. One junior of their band, promised by 
 Here as a wife to Hupnos, or the god of sleep, in Lem- 
 nos, is named Pasithee. Two handmaids of Nausicaa 
 in Scherie draw their beauty from the Charites. There 
 is therefore some evidence to give them a personality 
 beyond that which the single mind of the Poet can 
 confer. Their relation to Eastern personages suggests 
 that they may have had a place in Eastern tradition ; 
 while it seems that they acquired with time a recog- 
 nised character and worship in Greece^. Professor 
 Max Miiller derives their name, as well as that of 
 the Harits or horses of the Sun, from the Sanscrit root 
 ghar, to glitter, to render brilliant by oil 3. 
 
 The deity of Hephaistos is matchless within the 
 sphere of his own art. It is in concert with Athene, that 
 
 ^ Horn. Theol. p. 114. 
 
 ^ Welcker, vol. i. p. 696. Dr. Schmidt in Smith's Diet, sub -voc. 
 
 ^ Lectures on Language, ii. 373, 375. 
 
VIII.] i THE DIVINITIES OF OLrMPOS. 1293 
 
 he grants to mortals the gift of manual skills ^ but his own 
 works are the most wonderful recorded of any god. In 
 addition to every charm of grace and splendour, they 
 have the actual gift of life. In Olympos, the metal 
 handmaids of the Umping god both think and speak^ ; 
 and in Scherie, the porter-dogs of Alkinoos^ have per- 
 petual existence, and perpetual youth. Even in the 
 inanimate Shield there are varied signs of life*. A cer- 
 tain kindliness of nature marks the intervention of 
 Hephaistos, in the first Book, to stop a quarrel^ be- 
 tween his j)arents ; and that he was endowed with 
 warm affections is evident from the recital he there 
 gives of a former eiFort made by him to save Here 
 from the wrath of Zeus, which entailed on him a fall 
 from heaven to earth 6, as well as from the warm grati- 
 tude? he displays towards Thetis for the benefit she 
 had conferred on him. His conduct respecting Here 
 is the more praiseworthy, in proportion as her attempt 
 upon his deformed infancy had been unnatural s. In 
 the lay of the Net, under the heaviest provocation, 
 his conduct is not vindictive. 
 
 Hephaistos is the architect of the palaces of the godss, 
 as well as the artificer of the most conspicuous works of 
 Art mentioned in the Poems i". He made a lock for 
 Here which not only no man, but no god could open^i. 
 Lemnos appears to be his chosen abode, as a volcanic 
 isle: of other similar islands or spots, in the later 
 mythology, we find the like recorded, 
 
 ^ Od. vi. 233 ; xxiii. 160. ^ II. xviii. 417. 
 
 ^ Od. vii. 91-94. * Infra, p. 488. ' II. i. 571-589- 
 
 « II. i. 590-594. ' II. xviii. 395. * II. xviii. 395-397. 
 
 ' II. i. 607; xiv. 167, 338. '" II. viii. 195; Od. iv. 617. 
 
 " II. xiv. 167, 8. 
 
294 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Out of his own art, he carries no signs of divinity in 
 Homer; he does not act on general nature, or on the 
 human mind, unless in a case where the sons of his 
 own Priest are concerned ; and these he merely conceals 
 in a cloud of vapour, a power which even Aphrodite 
 seems to exercise on behalf of the body of Hector. 
 His powers of perception are so limited, that, in the 
 lay of Demodocos, he is ignorant of what takes place, 
 during his absence, in his own house, until the Sun 
 informs him, whom he again employs as a spy; nor, 
 in the Twenty-first Book of the Iliad, is he aware of 
 the danger in which Achilles stands from the united 
 Rivers, until Here informs him, and bids him act ^. 
 
 Section X. Arh. 
 
 The Ares of Homer, like his Poseidon, exhibits that 
 idea of deity which both rises above man, and sinks 
 much below him : in point of strength divine, in point 
 of mind and heart simply animal. He is a compound 
 of deity and brute. 
 
 But Ares is greatly inferior to Poseidon in that class 
 of conceptions, to which both, in a marked manner, 
 belong. Glory and awe surround the one, from his 
 unfailing might, and his high origin. Ares represents 
 a huge mass of animal force ; but he is so exhibited in 
 the action of the Iliad, as to fall into much of the con- 
 tempt (in a certain sense) which is evidently meant to 
 attach to Aphrodite. 
 
 It seems safe to assume that a god, and more espe- 
 cially a god of war, whom Homer represents as wounded 
 
 ' II. xxi. 328-333. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 295 
 
 and disabled by a Greek warrior, could not, in the time 
 of Homer, have been a deity of acknowledged worship 
 and renown in Greece. Nor is there found in the Poems 
 any trace of such worship. No prayer or sacrifice is 
 offered to him : he has no general command over the 
 mind of man, or over external nature. It is said, in- 
 deed, that he entered into Hector while that chieftain 
 was engaged in putting on the armour of Achilles i; but 
 this appears to treat him simply as a passion, just as in 
 other places his name becomes a synonym for war, or for 
 a spear. None of the five great gods of the Poems are 
 ever said thus to enter into (as if it were to be con- 
 tained in and circumscribed by) the spirit of a man; 
 the highest divine agents effuse, so to speak, and in- 
 spire a temper, but do not impart themselves. He has, 
 however, a special relation to the martial spirit, which 
 he stirs in Menelaos^, and which he confers as a gift 
 in the Odyssey upon the Pseudodysseus ; but only in 
 conjunction with Athene^. This may be taken, how- 
 ever, as a sign that he was known to some extent within 
 Greece ; in Crete, for example. In Greece, too, he is 
 the father of Ascalaphos and lalmenos*; and the wall 
 of Thebes is the teichos Areion^. Liinemann^ ob- 
 serves, that Ares represents the idea of raw courage. 
 He does not represent courage as Homer conceived it. 
 He has no skill, resource, or even perseverance in war, 
 whether against Athene or against Diomed ; but rather 
 a stupid insensibility, which rushes on the spear's point?. 
 And, when he has felt it, he flies ofF, and howls under 
 the pain : two operations never (I think) permitted by 
 
 Ml. xvii. 210. Ml. V. 563. ' Od. xiv. 199, 216. 
 
 * II. ii. in voc. ° II. iv. 407. * Worterbuch in voc. 
 
 "• II. V. 859-863. 
 
296 JUVENTVS MVNDI. [CJHAP,' 
 
 Homer to a wounded Greek; perhaps not even to a 
 wounded Trojan. He groans again after his discom- 
 fiture by Athene in the Theomachy^. 
 
 In battle with the Solumoi, Ares is said to slay Isan- 
 dros, the son of Bellerophon. This may mean no more 
 than that Isandros fell in the war^. 
 
 Represented as dwelling in Olympos, he is unaware 
 of what has taken place on the battle-fields of Troas ; 
 he learns by accident the death of his son Ascalaphos ; 
 and when rushing forth to avenge it, he is arrested by 
 Pallas, who strips off his armour, scolds him sharply, 
 and replaces 2 him in his seat 3. She habitually, indeed, 
 to use our homely phrase, bullies him^. 
 
 Thus inferior in action to Athene, he only divides 
 with her the prerogative of presiding over war. On 
 the Shield of Achilles, the two are represented^ as the 
 patrons respectively of the two opposing hosts j and in 
 a variety of passages ^ besides that already referred to, 
 their common, or rather rival, possession of this field of 
 action is exhibited. For example, in the Twentieth 
 Iliad?, while Athene shouts to urge on the Greeks, Ares 
 does the like for the Trojans. 
 
 In the Fifth Iliad*, he envelopes the fight in darkness : 
 but, as if to account for so powerful an operation by 
 a deity of his secondary rank, the Poet goes on to say 
 that he was fiilfiUing the orders of Apollo, who had bid 
 him incite the Trojans. 
 
 He was overcome and bound by the youths Otos and 
 Ephialtes (whom Apollo conquered) ; and he would have 
 
 ' II. xxi. 417. ^ II. vi. 203. ' II. XV. 1 10-142. 
 
 * II. V. 766. II. xviii. 516. 
 
 ^ II. V. 430, xvii. 398, XX. 350. ' 48-53. 
 " 505-51 1- 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLTMPOS. igf 
 
 perished in his bonds, had not Hermes released him, 
 after an imprisonment of thirteen months ^. Immortal 
 he is ^ i but, it appears, only just immortal. 
 
 He is thirsty, not of sacrifices in the ordinary way, 
 but of human blood s. According to Ammianus*, the 
 Thracians of history propitiated him by sacrificing the 
 lives of prisoners. 
 
 So limited are his perceptions, that Pallas, by putting 
 on a particular helmet, can prevent his recognising 
 her«. 
 
 His flesh is tender, like that of all the gbds : but he 
 is described principally by bulk and mass^. When 
 Athene smites him to the ground, he extends over 
 nine pelethra, or about seven hundred feet'', in 
 length. 
 
 On escaping from the net, in the Eighth Odyssey, 
 he repairs to Thrace. From thence, with his ideal son 
 Terror, he comes forth to make war upon the Ephuroi 
 (a race whom their name appears to associate with the 
 Greeks), or with the Phleguai. In Thrace, clearly was 
 his home. Thrace appears to have been known by the 
 name of Aria^. Berkel connects the two names to- 
 gether. 
 
 If, on the one hand. Ares was not fully established 
 as an Hellenic deity, still he is a son of Here, in the 
 Olympian family, and there is a lack of special links 
 between him and the Trojans. It appears that he 
 wavered between the two parties : nay, even that he 
 had promised to take part with the Greeks, and had 
 then changed his mind. He is accordingly called turn- 
 
 ^ II. V. 385-391. Mb. 901. 3 lb. 289. 
 
 * xxvii. 4. ' II. V. 845. « II. ii. 478 ; vii. 208 ; viil. 349. 
 
 ' II. xxi. 407. ' Steph. Byzant. in voc. Thrake. 
 
298 yVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 coat (alloprosallos), and is a special object of the 
 wrath of Here, who makes known in Olympos the 
 death of his son Ascalaphos, with the hope that he may 
 avenge it on the Trojans, and so change sides again. 
 This he is evidently about to do, in despite of the pro- 
 hibition of Zeus, when Pallas stops him, lest more 
 trouble should arise from the wrath of the Sire. When 
 he suffers defeat in the Theomachy, Pallas tells him 
 it is because the Erinues of his mother Here pursue 
 him '. The whole nation of the Thrakes, however 
 (as we now understand Thrace), with whom he is 
 specially associated, are among the allies of Troy in 
 the War 2. 
 
 It is difficult, from the materials afforded by Homer, 
 to trace the god Ares up to his origin. But his promi- 
 nent place in the Italian mythology renders it probable, 
 that his worship may have prevailed among the Pelas- 
 gian forerunners of the Hellenic race, Welcker thinks 
 that he had had a divine cultus at an early date among 
 some race alien to the Greek, from which the Hellenic 
 gods proper displaced him, and that there are traces 
 of him as a Nature-Power ^. Both ideas would be veri- 
 fied if he could be tracked to a Pelasgian or quasi-Pe- 
 lasgian source ; and this too would give a propriety to 
 his siding with Troy ; which, however, poetical neces- 
 sity went far towards exacting, in order to give even 
 the faintest show of equality to the Trojan party in 
 Olympos. 
 
 ' II. xxi. 412. 2 II. ii. 844-846. 3 Gr. Gotterlehre, i. 414. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OL7MPOS. 299 
 
 Section XL Hermes. 
 
 The part played by Hermes in the Iliad is secondary. 
 His only important manifestation is when, in the 
 Twenty-fourth Book, he appears by order of Zeus to 
 Priam, under the semblance of a young prince j and 
 attends him, with amiable care, on his way to and from 
 the scene of his arduous errand. But this mission is 
 neither political nor military. It is only social and 
 domestic. It is eminently illustrative of the peculiar 
 function of Hermes, which is, to be the god of expe- 
 dients, resource, and help; the accommodating and 
 genial god^. This character is expressed alike in his 
 epithets, such as eriounios'^ and akaketa^, and in his 
 conduct. His agency is, as a rule, beneficial to those 
 with whom he deals : hence he is chosen to be the 
 guide of Priam : hence he assures Calypso that he has 
 come to her unwillingly at the command of Zeus, 
 cautiously alleging, however, the length of way and 
 want of provision on the journey^ as his reasons *. He 
 is the person employed to admonish Aigisthos ^ not to 
 commit the meditated crimes : a warning, which aimed 
 at saving him from vengeance. 
 
 Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maias «. He is the 
 giver of increase, dstor eaon?: and it is perhaps in 
 this capacity that Eumaios, the swineherd, consecrates 
 to him a seventh portion, at the meal-sacrifice in his 
 hut, on the arrival of Odysseus s. Like the majority of 
 the other gods, he has one or more human children 
 
 ' II. xxiv. 334. "^ Rare helper. ' Never harmful. 
 
 * Od. V. 99-102. " Qd. i. 38. " Od. viii. 335 ; xiv. 435. 
 
 ' Od. viii. 335. . «Od. xiy. 435. 
 
300 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 born clandestinely ^ : but, whenever we hear of him, 
 it is as the giver of some gift, or renderer of some 
 service. Yet the idea of concealment inheres in his 
 functions. When the question is raised in Olympos 
 as to delivering the body of Hector, the first expedient 
 is, that Hermes should steal it ^. Again he steals Ares 
 out of his confinement 2. His prerogatives however 
 embrace not only thievery, but also perjury, as it was 
 he who conferred both these gifts on Autolucos *. Yet 
 perhaps, considering his general character of usefulness 
 without hurt, we may possibly presume that these ob- 
 jectionable faculties were only given for some defensive 
 or beneficial end. In Homer, he has no relation to 
 industry, or skill in manufacture : these belong to 
 Athene and Hephaistos. But he seems to be the agent 
 or envoy of the Olympian assembly : and his office as 
 the god of increase, together with his relation to pilfer- 
 ing, place him in connection with the business of 
 exchange, at a period when commerce, so beneficial in 
 itselfj is notwithstanding a near neighbour not only to 
 fraud on the one hand, but to violence on the othen 
 
 He never hates, or punishes, or quarrels, or is in- 
 censed with any one. Nor is he troubled with self- 
 love. Though ranged on the Greek side in the poem, 
 and in the Theomachy, he declines the contest with 
 Leto, his appointed antagonist, as a wife of Zeus, too 
 great for him to cope with : and tells her she may give 
 out that she has worsted him ^. 
 
 In the Fourth Iliad, Zeus chooses Athene for the 
 mission to PandaroSj to persuade him to break the 
 covenanted truce 6. This office would have seemed 
 
 ' II. xvi. i8i. ' II. xxiv. 24. ^ II. V. 390. 
 
 * Od, xix, 369. ° II. xxi. 497-501. " II. iv. 69. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OirMPOS. 30! 
 
 every way more suitable to Hermes. The reason that 
 it is not committed to him may probably be, that he 
 was unknown in Troy. In the Twenty-fourth Book, 
 he describes himself to Priam as a Myrmidon and an 
 esquire of Achilles, nor does he announce himself as 
 a god until it becomes necessary that he should depart, 
 and leave the old King alone within the cantonment 
 of the formidable hero. Priam does not then in any- 
 manner recognise him personally, or address him in his 
 divine capacity. 
 
 The functions discharged by Hermes appear to point 
 to a connection with the Phoenicians, as the great mer- 
 chants of the time. The name of his mother Maias 
 is not connected by Homer with Phoenicia, except by 
 the negative evidence that, like Dione the mother of 
 Aphrodite, she does not appear in the list of the attach- 
 ments of Zeus given in the Fourteenth Iliad, where all the 
 intimacies have their scene laid or supposed in Greece, 
 Greek traditions alone appearing to be admitted. In 
 the Hymn to Hermes the gap is suppHed, and Maias 
 is declared to be the daughter of Atlas, who is with 
 Homer a personage entirely Phoenician. 
 
 Again, Hermes manifestly has a personal relation 
 with Calypso 1, who welcomes him as alhoUs re (|)^Xos re^ ; 
 terms, which are much beyond the limit of ordinary 
 courtesy ; which are employed in the very special case 
 of Zeus and Thetis ^ ; and which Here flatters herself 
 she shall deserve at the hands of Okeanos and Tethus, 
 provided she shall succeed in bringing them together 
 again 3. Calypso was the daughter of Atlas: and it 
 is probable that Maias was her mythological sister, 
 
 1 Od. V. 88. ^ Revered and loved. 
 
 3 II. xxiv. III. Cf. II. xviii.- 394. * II. xiv. 210. 
 
30a JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and Hermes her nephew. We have another sign of 
 the ties between him and Calypso in this, that Odys- 
 seus obtained from her the account of the proceedings 
 in Olympos about the oxen of the Sun, and that she 
 had had it from Hermes. This could hardly be on 
 any other footing than that of a mythological relation- 
 ship, really indicating an ethnical affinity. He was 
 systematically worshipped by the people of Scherie 
 before retiring to rest '• 
 
 We find him yet again employed, within the circle 
 of the Phoenician traditions^, to instruct Odysseus as 
 to the means, by which he may safely encounter Kirke 
 and her enchantments. I again use the word Phoenician 
 as including, for Homer, what was Egyptian or Eastern. 
 
 Other . remarkable incidents are recorded of him. 
 It was he who, together with Athene, conducted He- 
 racles in safety, with the formidable dog, out of Hades ^: 
 and he likewise escorts the souls of the Suitors from 
 Ithaca to the Underworld <. He, moreover, carried to 
 Pelops, from Zeus, the sceptre which Hephaistos had 
 wrought ^ 
 
 Hermes is an agent rather than a mere messenger : 
 and, as a messenger, he is pretty clearly distinguished in 
 this vital respect, that he goes not, like Iris, upon the- 
 personal errand of Zeus or Here, but he carries the 
 collective resolution of the Olympian Courts His 
 general office is best represented by the word diactoros 
 or agent, hers by angelos or messenger. He may be 
 called the god of intercourse. 
 
 His very marked name, Argeiphontes, is nowhere 
 
 ' Od. vii. 137. 2 od. X. 275-307. 3 od. xi. 623-626. 
 
 * Od. xxiv. 1-14. 5 II. ii. 104. 
 
 « Od. i. 38, 84. Cf. II. xxiv. 24. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 303 
 
 explained in Homer ; or in Hesiod ; or in the Homeric 
 Hymn. It is discussed fully by Welcker^: and the 
 constructions put upon it tend to connect him with 
 the East, and with the astronomic worship. In the 
 system of the Persians^ as stated by Origen, the seventh 
 or mixed metal is assigned to him 2. The first verse 
 of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey connects him with Ar- 
 cadia through Cyllene. Hahn finds in the Albanian 
 language words capable (chermes, tourme,) of rela- 
 tion to his name. It is quite possible that two or more 
 streams of mythological traditions may meet in him ; 
 but his dominant relations are evidently Eastern. 
 
 But as this deity, of great importance and highly 
 diversified attributes in the later mythology, is of se- 
 condary consequence in Homer, I pass on. 
 
 Section XII. Artemis, 
 
 We must not be discouraged if, especially in the 
 case of a deity of the second order like Artemis, we 
 find much difficulty in discerning the precise channel 
 through which she reached her actual place in the 
 Hellenic mythology, as daughter of Leto, and sister 
 of Apollo, with the other attributes attaching to her. 
 
 On the whole, however, it seems that there is much 
 truth in the observation of Miiller, who says she was 
 worshipped 'as it were a part of the same deity 3' with 
 Apollo. She is in the main a reflection of her brother, 
 much in the same manner as, saving the substitution 
 
 ' Gr. Gotterlehre, vol. i. pp. 336 seqq. 
 "^ Beckmann, Hist, of Inventions, Art. ' Metals.' 
 ' Miiller's Dorians, vol. ii. ch. 9. The chapter contains much 
 information on the worship of Artemis. 
 
■304 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 (as it may be called) of the sisterly for the conjugal 
 relation, Here is a reflection of Zeus. The relation of 
 atmosphere to earth, which had been recognised outside 
 of the Olympian scheme, became, under the anthro- 
 pomorphic law of that scheme, the relation of King and 
 Father Zeus, to Queen and Mother Here. The affinity 
 of Sun to Moon, acknowledged already as divinities in 
 eastern, and probably also in Pelasgian, systems of reli- 
 gion, undergoing a like transmutation, appears in the 
 Olympian scheme as the relation of the brother Apollo* 
 to the sister Artemis. For we have already seen the 
 reasons for supposing that in Troy itself the Sun was 
 worshipped as the far-darting Apollo. If there was a 
 Sun-worship there, so in all likelihood there was a 
 worship of the Moon. But Olympian laws seem not to 
 allow an acknowledgment in the action of the Iliad of 
 the relation between Apollo and the Sun; nor, by 
 parity of reasoning, can they recognise any relation 
 of Artemis to the Moon. 
 
 That such a relation subsisted out of Greece, we may 
 readily suppose. The traditions, on which Homer had 
 to employ his plastic power, varied and heterogeneous, 
 were on that very ground the more elastic and flexible, 
 partly in things, but especially in names. Identity is 
 as hard to follow in them, as it is easy in human life. 
 They seem to form, disform, and re-form before us, like 
 the squares of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope as it 
 is turned about by the hand. One group of these tradi- 
 tions, which when associated compose a nebula, appears 
 before us in severalty, divided between the three indi- 
 vidualities of Artemis, Persephone, and Aphrodite. 
 Another form of the severance, wholly Greek in spirit, 
 comes before us in the double tradition of the Celestial 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 305 
 
 and the earthy or sensual Aphrodite ; and to the celes- 
 tial Aphrodite the Artemis of Homer bears no small 
 resemblance. Indeed it seems likely that, as Homer 
 found or shaped the old Earth-tradition in several 
 forms, of which the portion least earthy, and most 
 sublimed, became his Here, so probably there may have 
 lain before him a variety of forms of the tradition of 
 the Moon-goddess, in association with highly varied 
 ascriptions, the most ethereal and purest part of which 
 took, we may suppose, its place in the Olympian 
 system as his Artemis. 
 
 But the relations of wife and sister respectively, in 
 which Here and Artemis are placed, are probably due 
 to the anthropomorphic principle, and to that method 
 of copying for heaven the things seen and known on 
 earthj according to which the Theo-mythology of Homer 
 is constructed. And the remarkable participation of 
 Artemis in the high prerogatives of Apollo is notably 
 like the participation of Here in the prerogatives of 
 Zeus. In this participation, this greatness by reflection, 
 consists principally the dignity of each goddess. The 
 rude material, which as Nature-Powers they respec- 
 tively offered to the hand, is thus lighted up with an 
 extraordinary splendour. 
 
 The Homeric signs of relation between Artemis and 
 the Moon are of the same kind with those of Apollo to 
 the Sun ; but fainter in proportion to smaller energies, 
 and a more confined activity. The terrible clang of 
 the arrows of Apollo is reflected in the rattle of those of 
 Artemis 1. His golden sword is represented in her 
 golden distaflF^. She is also golden-throned, and uses 
 golden reins ^< These are epithets suitable to the moon. 
 ^ II. i. 46 ; xvi. 183. ^ II. XX. 71. ^ II. vi. 205 ; ix. 529. 
 
 X 
 
3o6 yuvsNTUs mundi. [chap. 
 
 Hahn finds no root for the name Artemis in the Al- 
 banian tongue ; and we cannot in this way trace it to 
 the Pelasgian religion. But in 'Charnea,' meaning 
 the moon, he detects the Anna Perenna of the Latins, 
 of whom Ovid^ says, 'Sunt quibus haec Luna est;' 
 and likewise the Anath or Tanath of Egypt, who is 
 taken by some to be the analogue of Artemis^. On the 
 whole we seem to have a groundwork in the scheme of 
 Nature-worship, on which the Homeric tradition of Ar- 
 temis is built, and which places her on the Trojan side. 
 
 The great function which in Homer she shares with 
 Apollo, is that of being the minister of Death, in the 
 double sense of a deliverance or translation, and of 
 an infliction penal in its nature. In the first capacity, 
 Penelope asks her aid, that she may be set free from 
 the persecutions of the Suitors 3; and in like manner 
 she dismisses from life the women, and Apollo the 
 men, of the happy island of Surie, where want and 
 sickness are unknown*. But she likewise slays Ariadne, 
 for her lapse from chastity in Die*; and avenges on the 
 daughters of Niobe (as does Apollo on the sons) the 
 offence of their mother e. As the Huntress-queen, she 
 is the destroyer of life in animals, and perhaps this 
 office was committed to her as an inferior portion of 
 the ministry of death, more suitably placed in her hands 
 than in those of her brother Apollo ; as if she had, so to 
 speak, the leavings of his great offices. 
 
 The inferiority, indeed, of Artemis to Apollo is very 
 strongly marked in Homer, although the relation of 
 Moon to Sun was most suitably represented in an an- 
 
 ' Fast. iii. 657. ^ Hahn. Alban. Stud. pp. 250, 277. 
 
 ' Od. XX. 61. * Od. XV. 407. » Od. xi. 324. 
 
 * II. xxiv. 604-609, 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OirMPOS. 307 
 
 thropomorphic religion by placing them as brother and 
 sister. In the Fifth Iliad, when Apollo carries ^neas 
 to Pergamos, and places the disabled chief in his own 
 temple, Leto and Artemis are found there 1, to nurse 
 and restore him ; not in any shrine of their own, nor 
 in one common to the family. And again in the Theo- 
 machy, Artemis, contending with Here, is subjected to 
 sad indignity, and actually whipped with her own bow 
 and arrows 2. She is here treated with none of the 
 special respect that is given, not only to Apollo and 
 Athene, but to Leto. This convinces me on further 
 reflection 3 that her Olympian relation to Apollo is 
 more probably based upon physical facts, than upon 
 participation in the higher traditions. 
 
 Her agency, however, is ubiquitous ; perhaps in 
 virtue of facts belonging to the same order; yet it 
 would be singular, if her worship obtained among Hel- 
 lenes earlier than that of the Sun. So, however, it 
 seems to have been. A generation at least before the 
 War, Artemis is worshipped in Caludon, and she sends 
 the Boar thither to avenge the lack of sacrifice*. We 
 are thus enabled to conjecture that in this instance, 
 even before the hand of Homer was applied to mytho- 
 logic manipulation, the Hellenic mind had done its 
 work, and she was fairly impersonated in the capacity 
 which we find that she fills in the Poems. We meet 
 her in Troas, where she taught Scamandrios^ to hunt ; 
 she is invoked in Ithaca by Penelope®; her part in the 
 legend of the daughters, of Pandareos belongs probably 
 to Crete ; and we have seen her agency in Surie, and 
 
 ' II. V. 445. ^ II. xxi. 489-496. 
 
 ^ Studies on Homer, voL n. pp. no, 144. * II. ix. 533-542. 
 ° II. V. 49-52. * Od. XX. 61, 71. 
 
 X 3 
 
308 JUVENTUS MUNDi. [cHAP. 
 
 in Die^. Again, in Ortugie she took the life of Orion. 
 And the Artemis of Homer has no relation to any one 
 or more places in particular. 
 
 Apart from the ministry of death, and from this appa- 
 rent attribute of omnipresence, her powers, in regard 
 both to Nature and to the mind, are those of the lower 
 or secondary order of the Olympian Court. But, in the 
 matter of personal beauty, she is the rival of Aphrodite; 
 and here she appears to absorb that part of the tradition, 
 which afterwards went by the name of the heavenly 
 Aphrodite. One most frequent illustration of great 
 beauty is a comparison with Aphrodite the golden ; and 
 it is to her that Achilles refers ^ as the model of loveli- 
 ness. But the incomparable Nausicaa, who appears to 
 be the poet's ideal of youthful beauty combined with 
 purity and excellence ', is likened by Odysseus to Artemis 
 in countenance, bearing, and stature. And again, in 
 the case of the daughters of Pandareos, while it is Here 
 who confers upon them beauty of feature, and Aphro- 
 dite simply purveys food for them, it is Artemis who 
 gives them stature, which I suppose to include all 
 that relates to beauty of figure. It is noteworthy that 
 stature is never mentioned (I think) in connection with 
 Aphrodite, and I suppose it therefore to be in the pro- 
 vince of Artemis. 
 
 While this attribute marks the point at which the 
 traditions appropriated to her touch upon those of 
 Aphrodite, on the other hand the epithet ayvTJ, the 
 severely pure*, seems to indicate her point of contact 
 with Persephone, the Queen of Hades. The two forms 
 were, as we know, afterwards fused into one. 
 
 - ^ Od. V. 123. ^ II. ix. 389. » Od. vi. 150. 
 
 * Od. V. 123 ; xviii. 201 ; xx. 71. 
 
vni.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLFMPOS. 309 
 
 Section XIII. Persephml. 
 
 Persephone the Queen of Hades is called by Homer 
 the ' severely pure' {ayvr]), the ' majestic' {ayavri), and the 
 ' terrible' {k-naiini). And she represents what v/e might 
 reasonably expect from her position as Queen in the 
 Underworld: a mixture of Pelasgic and of Eastern 
 traditions. Of the former, because all the Pelasgic 
 Nature-Powers had been disposed of by carrying them 
 into that nether sphere j of the latter, because the site 
 of the Underworld of Homer was in the East, the 
 entrance to it by the point of the rising of the Sun^. 
 
 She is represented as ruling together with Aidoneus, 
 and by no means as merely his wife. Introduced together 
 with him into the Legend of Phoenix by his father, and 
 also by Althaia^, she seems even to be charged in chief 
 with the sovereignty. She gathers the Women-shades 
 for Odysseus,, and she disperses them. It is she who, 
 as he fears, may send forth the head of Gorgo should 
 he tarry over long; who may have deluded him with 
 an Eidolon or shadow in lieu of a substance; who 
 endows Teiresias with the functions of a Seer 3. On the 
 shores of Ocean, just before the point of descent in the 
 far East, are the groves of Persephone. Aidoneus does 
 no personal act in the Poems, except that with her he 
 executes the imprecatory vow of the father of Phoenix'*; 
 and that he trembles lest the crust of earth should be 
 riven by earthquake, during the battle of the gods^. 
 
 ' Od. xii. 1-4. ^ II. ix. 457-569. 
 
 ' Od. xi. 226, 385, 634, 213 ; and x. 494. 
 
 * II. ix. 456, 457. ° II. XX. 61-65. 
 
310 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Notwithstanding his high rank as the brother of Zeus, 
 she is the principal, and he is the secondary figure in 
 the weird scenery of the Eleventh Odyssey. 
 
 It seems very probable that she represents that old 
 Pelasgian tradition of the awful Damsel, which had, as 
 we know especially from the mythological itinerary of 
 Pausanias, such extraordinary longevity and power in 
 the Greek religion. Together with this, we have to 
 consider i. her Eastern site, 2. her gift to Teiresias, 
 alone among the dead; connecting her on the one 
 hand with Apollo, the god of foreknowledge, but on 
 the other with the Phoenicians, and with the Eastern 
 associations of which they were the channels. 
 
 The name Persephone appears to attach itself by 
 etymology to other names in the Homeric Poems ; all 
 of which are Eastern in their associations. Perse, the 
 daughter of Okeanos, is also the wife of Helios, and the 
 mother of Kirke, who dwells in Aiaie. Each of the 
 three points of contact thus established is a link to the 
 East. Perseus, the founder of the dynasty which pre- 
 cedes the Pelopids, is the son of Zeus and Danae, a 
 parentage which, as we have already found, we may 
 properly consider as implying a foreign, and an Eastern, 
 origin. In the person of Perseus, the son of Nestor^, 
 the name is continued in the Neleid House, which 
 appears to have been of Phoenician extraction. The 
 national designation of Achaians appears also not im- 
 probably to connect itself with the Persian race through 
 the name Archaimenidai and otherwise 2, which may 
 not improbably have contributed an element to the 
 formation of the Greek nation. 
 
 Our first historical notice of that race is about the 
 * Od. iii. 414. 2 See studies on Homer, vol. i. p. 557. 
 
VIII. J THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 3II 
 
 middle of the ninth century before Christ^, when Shal- 
 maneser II found them in south-western Armenia. 
 This point approximates to the region, in which the 
 imagination of Homer placed the shadowy dwelling of 
 Persephone. 
 
 In the later tradition, she becomes united with Arte- 
 mis, and so related to Apollo ; a relationship of which 
 perhaps we have a single Homeric trace in her com- 
 mand over the knowledge of the future. 
 
 Section XIV. Aphrodith 
 
 The Aphrodite of Homer was a goddess, for she 
 is the daughter of Zeus, and of Dione, whose residence 
 is in Olympos, and who belongs to the divine order 2, 
 She is also herself expressly stated to belong to it^. 
 But it does not appear that she had as yet come to be 
 a goddess of the Hellenic religion properly so called. 
 
 In order to estimate her position in the scheme of 
 Homer, the following circumstances should be con- 
 sidered : — 
 
 I. There is no trace of her worship, or of any in- 
 fluence exercised by her over mortals, either in Greece, 
 or among the Greeks. 
 
 a. She is never once exhibited by Homer in a favour- 
 able light; sometimes in a neutral one; more com- 
 monly in an odious or contemptible point of view. 
 
 3. Though herself a model of personal beauty*, she 
 was not the goddess of beauty, inasmuch as she had 
 
 ' Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, ii. 374 ; iii. 349- 
 
 ^ II. iv. 370, 381, 383. ' II. iv. 337-342 ; XX. 106. 
 
 * II. ix. 389. 
 
313- yuVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP.' 
 
 not the power to confer the gift. Beauty is not in- 
 cluded in the properties ^ conveyed by the Kestos ; and 
 it is Here who endows the orphan daughters of Pan- 
 dareos with beauty, while Aphrodite has no other office 
 assigned to her in their rearing, than supplying them 
 with food, and preferring to Zeus, when they are 
 grown up, the prayer that they may marry 2. 
 
 4. She is wounded by Diomed, and is apparently 
 destitute alike of the powers of resistance, of vengeance, 
 and of endurance. We can hardly suppose that a 
 deity exhibited in a light so contemptible, as is Aphro- 
 dite in the Battle of the Fifth Iliad, was as yet an 
 object of Hellenic worship^. 
 
 5. Her helplessness after receiving her wound from 
 Diomed is remarkable. While Ares rides spontaneously 
 to heaven*. Aphrodite is led out of the battle by Iris^, 
 and makes a petition to her brother Ares for the loan 
 of his chariot and horses, that she may by their means 
 be carried to Olympos. 
 
 In the Lay of the Net, she is reported as going from 
 Olympos to Paphos without aid^ : possibly because this 
 is a descent, not an ascent ; or more probably because 
 in a Syrian episode her rank would be more fully 
 recognised than in an Hellenic poem* 
 
 6. No place is assigned to her, even on the losing 
 side, in the Theomachy, which determines or ushers 
 in the issue of the Iliad. And this is the more remark- 
 able, because a fifth deity is wanting to make up a 
 number equal to the five deities of the Greeks ; and 
 
 ^ II. xiv. 198, 215. ^ Od. XX. 66-75. Cf. II, V. 429., 
 
 ' II. V. 311-380. * II. V. 864-870. " II. V. 353. 
 
 * Od. viii. 362. 
 
■vmi.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 313 
 
 Leto, who is elsewhere in the Poems a perfectly mute 
 personage, is introduced in order to fill it. 
 
 7. The only place where -she is named among the 
 Olympian family, is in the Lay of the Net, a tale 
 apparently of Phoenician importation, and of Syrian 
 origin. She bears the name of Cypris ; and her place 
 of abode is Cyprus, where were her altars, and her glebe 
 or domain 1- She was therefore worshipped in that 
 island ; and we may trace her worship as far westward 
 as Cythera, from the following circumstances : first, she 
 is twice called livOepeia ^ 5 and secondly, Kvdripai are 
 called CdOeoi, an epithet which always indicates the 
 special relation of the place to some deity. Her relation 
 to Paris 3 proves that she was in some manner acknow- 
 ledged in Troas; and the taunt of Helen respecting 
 her supposed favourites in Meonia and Phrygia is to 
 be taken as showing that she was also recognised as 
 a deity in those regions. In effect she was an Asiatic 
 deity j and her name and worship were crossing the sea 
 by steps towards the Greek Peninsula. But she must have 
 been of small account in Asia Minor, or she could 
 hardly have failed to find a place in the Theomachy. 
 
 8. The power of this goddess over external nature 
 is extremely limited. The greatest manifestation of 
 it is where she 'with ease' draws Paris out of the fight, 
 wrapping him in vapour*. In the Fifth Book, it is 
 when she is slily dragging oflF iEneas, covered with her 
 robe, that Diomed pursues and wounds her, 'Icnowing 
 that she was an eflFeminate or strengthless deity ^' 
 
 She is however invested with a certain superintend- 
 ence of marriage in its physical aspect; and in this 
 
 1 Od..viii. 362. '' Od. viii. 288; xviii. 192. 
 
 3 II. iii. 400-402. * II. iii. 380. ° H. v. 331. 
 
314 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 capacity she sends to Andromache the nuptial gift of 
 her hood or head-band 1. 
 
 Athene, taunting her upon her wound^ makes the 
 supposition 2 that she got it in undressing some Greek 
 woman that she had persuaded to elope with one of 
 her beloved Trojans, Nay, Helen also bitterly re- 
 proaches her, advising her to cease altogether from 
 pretending to divinity; and Aphrodite, in the Third 
 Iliad, only overcomes her by the violence of her threats^. 
 From these it appears, if indeed proof were wanting, 
 that this character, odious on the side of lawless in- 
 dulgence, has its base in simple appetite, and in no 
 degree carries the softening accompaniments of gentle- 
 ness or compassion. 
 
 In the Odyssey it is contrived that the Suitors, before 
 they are put to death, shall ojfFer gifts to Penelope; 
 perhaps by way of partial requital for the waste of the 
 substance of Odysseus. With this view, the Queen* 
 issues from her chamber, like to Artemis or golden 
 Aphrodite. Aphrodite is introduced here, because pas- 
 sion was the motive of the Suitors. But the deity, at 
 whose suggestion Penelope thus adorned herself, was 
 Pallas. Had Aphrodite been worshipped in Greece, 
 this office surely would have fallen to her. It is yet 
 more noteworthy, that the whole design is executed 
 by Pallas. Penelope is lulled to sleep ; and then Pallas 
 applies ambrosion to her face, 'such as Aphrodite 
 uses when she goes among the Graces.' But Aphrodite 
 herself is excluded from the entire process. 
 
 Even in the Lay of the Net, apparently a legend 
 of the Eastern mythology, the Poet seems to intend 
 
 ^ II. V. 429 ; xxii. 470. ^ II. V. 422-425. 
 
 ^ II. iii. 499-317. * Od. xvii. 37. 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF 0L7MP0S. 315 
 
 to make the. guilty pair ridiculous by sending them ofF, 
 when released, so rapidly and in silence 1. 
 
 9. She is never invested with any of the higher 
 attributes, such as foreknowledge, omnipresence, or 
 command over the mind of man. Her only power 
 seems to be that of stimulating passion^. 
 
 10. We now know that the planetary worship of the 
 Assyrians was brought by the Phoenicians into Greece, 
 and that each deity was associated with a particular 
 metal. We find in Cyprus, the land of copper, with 
 a Phoenician colony, the worship of Aphrodite. We 
 may safely then refer the origin of this Olympian per- 
 sonage to the Assyrian mythology. 
 
 The local indications of her worship, as proceeding 
 from the East, are in accordance with the traditions 
 which under the names of Astarte, Ashtoreth, Mylitta, 
 Mitra, exhibit to us a similar character as held in 
 honour there. The marriage with Hephaistos bears a 
 similar witness ; the more remarkable, because it is only 
 recognised in the mythology of the Outer world, drawn 
 from the Phoenicians, while in the Iliad he is the suitor 
 of Charis. Aphrodite, however, is placed by Homer 
 in relation with the Charites, Eastern personages, whose 
 name corresponds with the Sanscrit Harits, meaning 
 originally 'bright,' and afterwards the horses of the 
 dawn 3. In very late mythology. Aphrodite appears as 
 the daughter of Poseidon*, and thus acquires a new 
 note of Eastern origin. 
 
 In historic Greece, we find the double tradition of 
 the heavenly and the promiscuous Aphrodite. It would 
 
 ' Od. viii. 360. ^ II. xiv. 215-217 ; xxiv. 30. 
 
 ' Max Muller, Lect. on Language, Second Series, p. 370. 
 * Pausanias, Corinthiaca. 
 
3l6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 seem as though any elements of the former character, 
 known to Homer, were assigned by him to his chaste 
 Artemis, the rival in beauty of his Aphrodite. The 
 pure tradition was, according to the view of Max 
 Miiller, the original basis of the character of Aphrodite j 
 and he thinks that it was 'afterwards debased by an 
 admixture of Syrian mythology^.' He gives to this 
 word his favourite meaning of the ' dawn/ Some old 
 traditions however connect Aphrodite as Astarte with 
 the Moon 2. There has been therefore an intermixture 
 of the traditions, which ultimately distributed them- 
 selves between Artemis, Aphrodite, and Persephone j 
 and there is a certain correspondence of the two first,, 
 as we find them in Homer, with the vulgar and the 
 heavenly Aphrodite of later times respectively,. 
 
 Of the name there seems to be no sign in the 
 Albanian tongue, which brings down to us so much 
 of the old speech of the PelasgQi. But the root of the 
 name Venus is found in the Gegian branch of the 
 language ^. 
 
 Dione, the mother of Aphrodite, resides in Olympos. 
 Homer affords us no means of tracing her origin or 
 functions ; but from other evidence we have been enabled 
 to interpret her as a Nature-Power of the Pelasgian 
 worship. If this is so, then probably we are to consider 
 her motherhood to be assigned to her, not in virtue 
 of that Syrian character of Aphrodite, which we trace 
 in the South, but of the place which Aphrodite (or 
 
 ' Lectures, Second Series, p. 373. 
 
 ^ Hahn, Albanesische Studien, p. 250. 'Wirglaubendiese Ver- 
 bindung mit dem in so vielen Sprachen dem Hahnrei zukom- 
 menden Hornem zusammen stellen zu diirfen.' p. 251. See Smith, 
 Diet. Bibl., Art. Ashtoreth. 3 Hahn, ibid. 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 3 17 
 
 Venus) appears to have held in the Trojan system, and 
 therefore in the Pelasgian cultus of the Nature-Powers. 
 
 Section XV. Dimusos. 
 
 The traditions of Dionusos in Homer are as dark as 
 they are slight. On the one hand he is the son of 
 Semele ; and we have no case in the Homeric Theogony 
 where a deity is born of a woman : but Semele is men- 
 tioned in the list given by Zeus among the mortal 
 mothers of his children, who stand separate from the 
 goddess mothers. She comes between the unnamed 
 mother of Minos, and Alcmene 1 ; and the birth of 
 Dionusos thus appears to be parallel with that of 
 Heracles. Dionusos is^ however, called in this passage 
 ' a joy to mortals ;' which may of itself faintly seem to 
 sever him from the race. Neither is there in the 
 Poems any clearly divine act assigned to him. The 
 Homeric Hymn to Hermes treats Semele as the daughter 
 or descendant of Kadmos 2. 
 
 But on the other hand there is a great resemblance 
 between the good offices of Metis to him and to 
 Hephaistoss. When the terrible Lucourgos attacks 
 and scourges his nurses^ he trembling takes refuge in 
 the seaj and Thetis receives him in her bosom ^. 
 This is confirmed indirectly by the Odyssey', which 
 represents him as the giver to that goddess of the 
 golden urn which she used for the ashes of Achilles ; 
 doubtless in requital for her services, which are 
 thoroughly in keeping with her character as the great 
 
 ^ II. xiv. 323-325. "^ V. 57. 
 
 ^ See supra, Sect. Hephaistos. * II. vi. 136. " Od. xxiv. 74. 
 
31 8 yuVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 mediatress in matters respecting contrasted or com- 
 peting worships. 
 
 The conclusive test however is found in this, 
 that the recital concerning Lucourgos is offered to 
 illustrate a class of cases where outrage is offered by 
 mortals to deities; and the scourging of his nurses 
 is treated as an offence to himself, for which, accord- 
 ingly, not however by him, but by Zeus, Lucourgos was 
 smitten with blindness, and then cut off prematurely '. 
 Homer must therefore be understood to include him in 
 the phrase ' gods of heaven.' 
 
 In the Odyssey we have a probable sign of his wor- 
 ship. Ariadne is put to death in Die, supposed to be 
 Naxos, by Artemis, when Theseus is carrying her to 
 Athens. Artemis does this 'upon the testimony of 
 Dionusos ^.' The only probable construction, of these 
 words which offers itself is, that Theseus landed with 
 Ariadn^ in Naxos, as Paris had landed with Helen in 
 Cranae, and that Dionusos procured the intervention of 
 Artemis to avenge a meditated profanation; which 
 presumes that the island, or some place in it, was 
 sacred to him. It is also likely, that the epithet ■^yddeov 
 applied to the Nuseian mount, means that it was sacred 
 to him as a god. 
 
 Nagelsbach observes 3, that Homer places neither him 
 nor Demeter in Olympos by any distinct recital or 
 declaration. But in both cases the recognition of 
 deity, coupled with the personal relation to Zeus, appears 
 to make good the title. 
 
 At the same time, I have pointed out an incon- 
 sistency which I do not know how to rectify. The 
 traditions are not closely pieced together. 
 ■ II. vi. 129-140. ^ Od. xi. 321-323. ^ Horn. Theol. p. 115. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 319 
 
 What is most clear about Dionusos in Homer is, 
 first, that his worship was extremely recent j secondly, 
 that it made its appearance in Thrace ', to which 
 belongs the Nuseian mountain; thirdly, that it was 
 violently opposed on its introduction, a fact of which 
 we have other records, as for example, in the Bacchae 
 of Euripides. 
 
 Lucourgos, who resisted and punished it, was the 
 son of Druas ; and Druas was alive and a warrior in 
 the youth of Nestor. Consequently, Dionusos was an 
 infant, that is, his worship was in its infancy, not more 
 than two generations before the War of Troy. The 
 Hymn addressed to Dionusos describes how Tursenians 
 found him on the shore, and brought him over sea. 
 The colouring of this legend is Phoenician ; as is that 
 of the legend, if such there were, that gave him the isle 
 of Naxos as the seat of his worship. It is also on the 
 sea shore that he appears, according to Homer; and it 
 is in Thrace, where there would seem to have been 
 Phoenician manufactures of metal. Again, he obtains 
 a work of art, probably Phoenician, from Hephaistos \ 
 just as does Phaidimos, the king of the Sidonians^. 
 And the name of Semele * itself, according to general 
 traditions, supports the Phoenician association thus 
 established at a variety of points. 
 
 We cannot perhaps, treat the Dionusos of Homer as 
 the discoverer of wine, and father of its use, in Greece ; 
 for it is universal and familiar, while he appears to be 
 but local and as yet strange. The novel feature, which 
 connects itself with his name, seems to be the use of 
 wine by women ; and the effect produced, in an extra- 
 
 ' Nagelsbach, p. 9. ^ Od. xxiv. 74. ^ 0\ iv. 615-619. 
 * Hymn to Dionusos, v. 37. 
 
,^20 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 ordinary and furious excitement, which might well 
 justify not only jealousy, but even forcible resistance to 
 demoralising orgies. It seems, then, as if this usage 
 was introduced by immigrants of a race comparatively 
 wealthy and luxurious, and was resisted by, or on behalf 
 of, the older and simpler population. 
 
 The later account of Hesiod makes Dionusos the 
 husband of Ariadne, who was the daughter of Minos. 
 The poet of Ascra thus places him within the circle of 
 Phoenician traditions. 
 
 Though Homer has represented this personage as a 
 god, and though, as we see, traces of his worship are .not 
 wanting, yet the human maternity might possibly indi- 
 cate that we should do best to regard him as a deified 
 mortal, rather than as a god from the beginning of his 
 existence. In this case, we are to suppose that the 
 fascination of the usage he introduced not only proved 
 so powerful as to overrule all opposition, but likewise 
 generated a halo which was reflected on his birth, and 
 caused his deification by a process more rapid than that 
 which took effect upon Heracles or the Tyndarids. In 
 the later time, greater consistency was given to the 
 legend by a parallel deification of Semele, his mother. 
 
 Homer has attached no ennobling epithet or circum- 
 stance of dignity to the name of Dionusos, unless we 
 so regard the eulogy of Zeus i under an excess of ex- 
 citement. The Poet acts in this case as in the cases 
 of Ares and Aphrodite ; since he has no reverence for 
 either drunkenness, or violence, or lust. 
 
 ■^ II. xiv. 325. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 321 
 
 Section XVI. Helios, or the Sun. 
 
 It is sometimes stated, that Helios, or the Sun, does 
 not appear as a god in the Iliad, but only in the 
 Odyssey. This is not so. As far as the Odyssey is 
 concerned, he appears only in the Outer, not in the 
 Inner, world. In the Iliad his personality is undeni- 
 able, though very faint. The Sun hearing all, as well as 
 seeing all, is certainly a person 1. 
 
 Again, all will remember the long day of the Iliad, 
 with the close of which the successes of the Trojans 
 were to end. When the appointed moment came, at 
 the command of Here the Sun went, unwillingly 2, to 
 his rest beside the Ocean stream. 
 
 Here then he is a person, though in the background. 
 In the Odyssey, he reappears with more marked effect. 
 In the Lay of Demodocos, it is he who first makes 
 known to Hephaistos the intimacy of Ares with Aphro- 
 dite 3, and then undertakes to act as spy upon the 
 guilty couple. The Island of Thrinakie, placed by 
 Homer not far from the entrance to the Euxine, is 
 his island *. Here are his oxen, and his sheep, tended 
 by the care of his daughters, whose mother was 
 Neaira, and who were called Phaethusa and Lampetie *. 
 These animals the crew of Odysseus had been warned 
 on no account to molest. Under the direst pressure 
 of famine ^, however, they at length slew certain of 
 the oxen; having first vowed that on their return to 
 
 ^ II. iii. 277. '^ II. xviii. 239. ^ II. xviii. 204, 270. 
 
 * Od. xii. 261, 274. 5 Od. xi. 132. ° Od. xii. 330, 353. 
 
 y 
 
323 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Ithaca 1 they would build a temple to the Sun and store 
 it richly j a sign^ it may be remembered, that such an 
 edifice would be a novelty in the island. Portents, 
 such as we nowhere else encounter in the Poems, wait 
 upon the deed; the hides of the animals creep about, 
 and the flesh, even when roasted, lows upon the spits 2, 
 Notwithstanding the Sun's all-seeing function, it is 
 Lampetie who carries him the news. It seems possible, 
 however, as Odysseus was asleep, that we are to under- 
 stand the deed to have been done by night. The god 
 makes his complaint in the court of the Immortals, 
 to which he is thus proved to belong ^^ and he de- 
 mands reparation for the loss of his oxen, with whom 
 ' he disported himself night and morning.' Failing it, 
 he declares that he will thenceforward shine in Hades. 
 Zeus at once promises to destroy the crew at sea, which 
 is done accordingly *. 
 
 The extraordinary sanctity ascribed to these oxen is 
 wholly alien to the genius of the Greek mythology. 
 But when we turn to the East, and observe that Phoenicia 
 was impregnated with Egyptian traditions, we find the 
 sacredness of the ox, and its relation to the Sun, indi- . 
 cated in the consecration of Apis to. Osiris; while the 
 function of the ox in agriculture also falls in with the 
 earlier form of the religion, which appears to have 
 regarded Isis as the land, or passive principle, and 
 Osiris as the Nile-god, who taught to the Egyptians the 
 use of the plough. 
 
 And again, we find in the temple of Jerusalem, for 
 the erection of which Solomon called in the aid of 
 Phoenician workmen, the forms of twelve oxen *, sup- 
 
 ' Od. xii, 345. ' Od. xii. 394. ' Od. xii. 377. 
 
 * Od. xii. 403-419. " I Kings vli. 24, 25, 44, 
 
Tin.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 323 
 
 porting a brazen sea^. These were made by King 
 Hiram of Tyre ; and they symbolise at once the Egyp- 
 tian religion^ with other Oriental forms of fable, and 
 the maritime pursuits of the Phoenicians. 
 
 It is also remarkable, that the use of the ox for meat 
 appears to cease in the Outer world of the Odyssey. 
 In the land of the Cyclops, we find only sheep and 
 goats. And it is with mutton only that Kirke stocks 
 the vessel of Odysseus. 
 
 All these indications agree together. In other re- 
 spects, too, Helios is marked as an Eastern god. He 
 is the father of Aietes, and of Kirke, dwelling near the 
 Eastern Okeanos^; and the island of Aiaie is indicated 
 as the place of his rising 3. The fact of his sporting 
 with the oxen night and morning goes far to show that 
 Homer did not think the earth a plane, but round, 
 perhaps as upon a cylinder, and believed that the West 
 and East were in contact. But only in the East does 
 he give the Sun a dwelling. Aietes, the son of Helios, 
 carries the exclusively Phoenician epithet of 6\o6<^pa>v. 
 
 Further, we may notice thatj as long as the Voyage of 
 Odysseus is in the West and North, we hear nothing 
 of the Sun. Poseidon rules in the land of the Cyclops, 
 stirs the northern sea into a tempest, and is supreme 
 in Scherie. It is in Aiaife, and Thrinakie, that we are 
 brought into contact with this deity, and both these 
 islands appear to lie in Homer's East. 
 
 Thus the Sun, by many concurrent signs, is marked 
 out to us as an Eastern deity. There is not in the 
 Odyssey the faintest trace of his identification with 
 Apollo. The traditions respecting him were doubtless 
 conveyed by the Phoenicians; but we cannot say that 
 
 ' I Kings vii. 13. * Od. x. 137. ' Od. xii. 4. 
 
 Y a 
 
334 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 they were Phoenician in themselves. The division of 
 regions to which I have adverted, seems to point to 
 Poseidon as the god of Piioinikes proper, and to Helios 
 as the god of the Canaanitish population of Syria to 
 the Eastward. Among them it is not improbable that, 
 at the period represented by Homer, the Egyptian 
 belief extensively prevailed, but Assyrian elements may 
 also enter into this conception. 
 
 In the Iliad, though not in the Odyssey, we have 
 a sign of the process which finally incorporated the 
 traditions of Apollo with the Sun j while the humani- 
 tarian spirit of the Olympian system of Homer seems 
 to have resisted the operation. The plague of the First 
 Book can hardly represent anything else than the 
 miasma rising from the marshes of the Troad, and 
 the arrows of Apollo are the rays of the sun causing 
 the moisture to evaporate. We find a family of epi- 
 thets applied to Apollo, which evidently glance at the 
 solar properties: Hekaergos, Hekatebolos, Heke- 
 bolos. It is somewhat remarkable that these epithets, 
 which are only used twenty-five times in the other 
 forty-seven books of the Poems, are met twelve times 
 in the First Iliad alone. It is also likely that the 
 epithet Phoibos may glance at the relation between 
 Apollo and the Sun, already recognised beyond the. 
 borders of Greece, and possibly also in the old Pelasgian 
 religion of the Peninsula. Again we have the term 
 Lukabas applied to the year. It is probable that in the 
 religion of Troy, where Nature-worship seems to have 
 prevailed more largely, Apollo and the Sun were iden- 
 tified, and that this union made it convenient for the 
 Poet to place Apollo on the Trojan side in tlie war. 
 Whilst Poseidon built the walls of Troy for King 
 
Till.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. ^'i^ 
 
 Laomedon, Apollo fed his oxen ; and we have seen the 
 close relation between these animals and the worship 
 of the Sun. And this interpretation accounts for what 
 otherwise would be most difficult to explain : I mean 
 the fact that Helios does not appear in the Theomachy, 
 nor does he under that name take part in the war, 
 though his inclination towards the Trojans is plainly 
 declared. Troy was probably a sort of meeting-point 
 for Greek and Asiatic systems. But in the Phoeni- 
 cian or Syrian mythology of the Outer world, Apollo 
 and Helios can appear together, because the Eastern 
 conception of the latter ran no risk of being confounded 
 in the Greek mind with the purely anthropomorphic 
 idea of the true Homeric Apollo. 
 
 Section XVII. Hehl 
 
 Hebe is a deity, whose offices are very clearly set 
 forth, but whom we can scarcely consider as having a 
 perceptible root in any tradition beyond the circle of 
 the Greek mythology. 
 
 She is the Cup-bearer, who pours out nectar for the 
 godsi. She puts together the parts of the chariot of 
 Here, though Here herself yokes the horses to it, before 
 her descent to the field of battle^. She performs the 
 offices of the bath for Ares, after he has been healed by 
 Paieon^. Again, we find her in the Eleventh Odyssey, 
 as the celestial bride of Heracles, and in an obelised 
 verse, as the daughter of Zeus and Here*. 
 
 Her offices are exclusively Olympian; and she is 
 
 1 II. iv. 2. '^ II. V. 722, 731. 
 
 ^ II. V. 905. * Od. xi, 602-604. 
 
336 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 nowhere brought into relations with our mortal state; 
 one sign among many that she is probably to be re- 
 garded as a purely ideal conception. 
 
 Her name in Greek expresses youth adult, or full 
 age just attained. Her marriage with Heracles appears 
 to signify that the divine gift of an unending youth 
 is imparted to him when he reaches Olympos^. Homer 
 assigns to her the epithet callisphuros, prettily 
 ancled, which he only gives to those who are to be 
 understood as youthful persons ; Danae, Ino, and 
 Marpessa^. 
 
 She may well be conceived as the daughter of Zeus 
 in that general sense, according to which he is the 
 father of divinities in general; and thus it must be, 
 in all likelihood, that the Muses, the Hours, and the 
 Nymphs in general are his daughters. But these per- 
 sonages are not daughters of Here, who has but few 
 children, and those due apparently to special traditions. 
 In truth she expresses the idea of youth 3, and is perhaps 
 but a thought seized and personified. There is no note 
 in Homer of her worship on earth, which however is 
 mentioned by Strabo and Pausanias: and Hahn finds 
 no trace of her in the Albanian language. 
 
 It is the distinct and clear, though simple, account 
 given by Homer of her functions, which seems to give 
 her a place in the Olympian court upon one of the 
 twenty thrones of Hephaistos. 
 
 ' Hes. Theog. 944-955. Ov. Met. ix. 400. 
 * II. xiv. 319 ; ix. 553. Od. v. 333. 
 ' ' Nagelsbach, Horn. Theol. p. 41. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 337 
 
 Section XVIII. Themts. 
 
 Slightly as her outline is drawn, we cannot refuse 
 to reckon Themis among the ordinary members of the 
 Olympian Court, for the simple reason that we find 
 her actually installed there. When, in the absence of 
 Zeus, Here enters the company of the Immortals, and 
 they rise in honour of her^^ it is from ThemiSj who 
 came first to meet her, that she accepts the cup of 
 greeting. This is evidently because she had been pre- 
 siding : for Here, who is troubled at the view, invites 
 her to continue to presided 
 
 Again, in the Twentieth Iliad, all the deities, in- 
 cluding the minor Nature-Powers (whom Homer prob- 
 ably recognises as divine because they continued to 
 hold their ground in local worship)^ are invited to the 
 Great Assembly which is to decide finally the fate of 
 Troy : and it is Themis who summons them^. 
 
 In the Second Odyssey, Telemachos describes himself 
 as making his prayer to Zeus, and to Themis, who 
 collects and dissolves public assemblies generally. 
 
 Nevertheless, I apprehend we are not to look for 
 her origin in any foreign traditions, but simply to re- 
 gard her as a creation of the Hellenic mind*, and 
 probably of the mind of our Poet himself. Like Hebe 
 she represents, in the main, the deification of an im- 
 personated idea 5. 
 
 In reference to terrestrial affairs, the name Themis 
 signifies civil right, and is the basis on which are 
 
 • II. XV. 85. ^ II. XV. 95. ' II. XX. 4. 
 
 * Od. ii. 68, 69. " Welcker, Gr. Gotterlehre, i. 700. 
 
3a8 yvvENTus mundi. [chap. 
 
 founded the relations of the whole political and social 
 order. If Olympos was to be fashioned into a quasi- 
 commonwealth, such a personage could hardly be dis- 
 pensed with in its formation, among a race with whom 
 the political spirit was so strong as among the Greeks 
 of the heroic age. 
 
 Even Hestie, who represents the principle of the 
 family order, in the same way as Themis represents 
 the groundwork of the State, though she is not imper- 
 sonated by Homer, yet is at the least on her way to 
 impersonation, and attains fully to it after his time. 
 She was less necessary to the theogonic scheme of the 
 Poet ; for, though the family is involved in the Olympian 
 arrangements, it does not embrace the whole of them, 
 whereas Olympos gives the complete picture of a Court 
 and a Polity. 
 
 Hahn^ derives the name of Themis from fle/n, 'I 
 speak,' and observes that the statue of this deity was 
 placed over against the b em a of the orators in Athens. 
 
 Section XIX. Paieon. 
 
 In the Fifth Iliad, Dione recites that when A'ides, 
 wounded by Heracles, repaired to Olympos, Paieon 
 (or Paian) applied anodyne drugs to his shoulder, and 
 healed him^. It is evident that the presence of this 
 deity there, as the healer, was regarded by the Poet 
 as habitual J for when Ares has been wounded by 
 Diomed, and appears in the palace of Zeus, his father, 
 after rebuking him, commands Paieon ^ to heal him, 
 which accordingly is done forthwith, as by one at hand. 
 
 ^ Alban. Studien, p. 253. ^ II. v. 395-402. ' II. v. 395. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLFMPOS. 329 
 
 In the Fourth Odyssey, Helen, after using the drug, 
 which produces the effect of opium, and may indeed 
 be opium, states that she obtained it from the Egyptian 
 Poludamna, wife of Thon ^ ; and adds that every 
 Egyptian is eminently a physician, since they are of 
 the race of Paieon. 
 
 Apollo is a healer as well as Paieon : but while Paieon 
 heals by instrumental causes after the manner of a 
 man, Apollo heals Glaucos immediately, as by a divine 
 action 2. 
 
 The Phaiakes are called angchitheoi, near to divine, 
 because the royal house of Alkinoos is descended from 
 Poseidon. Something like this may be meant with 
 respect to the Egyptians and Paieon: or just possibly 
 they may be called children of Paieon for no other 
 reason than their medical skill, without actually imply- 
 ing that the traditions relating to the person of Paieon 
 were Egyptian. 
 
 But the word Paieon, which is the name of this deity, 
 is also twice used in the Iliad for a hymn ; first for the 
 hymn of purgation, addressed to Apollo, after the oiFence 
 of the First Book has been expiated ; secondly for the 
 hymn of triumph sung by the Greek soldiers over the 
 lifeless body of Hector 8. 
 
 A singular relation is thus established between Paieon 
 and Apollo, somewhat like that between the Sun and 
 the same deity ; as though Homer had not been willing 
 to treat as amalgamated, or even had actually severed 
 into two personages traditions which had already, and 
 elsewhere, been combined; for the reason that parts 
 of them did not seem to be of sufficient elevation to 
 
 ^ Od. iv. 227 seqq. ^ See sufra, sect. viii. 
 
 ^ II. i. 473 ; xxii. 381. 
 
330 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP, 
 
 suit the rest, and to be proper for the equipment of so 
 gorgeous a figure as his Apollo. 
 
 The name paian became subsequently the estab- 
 lished name pf those Hymns to Apollo, which were 
 sung in connection with victory and deliverance, espe- 
 cially, as it seems, upon a completed act of puri- 
 fication i. 
 
 Welcker observes that, even down to a late epoch, 
 the separate personality of Paieon had not altogether 
 been submerged, as Cicero mentions a statue to him^. 
 
 It is however possible that he may be, like Hebe, 
 a purely ideal personage, not rooted in former or in 
 foreign tradition, and representing in a physical way 
 the office of healing in Olympos itseF, as Hebe repre- 
 sents the faculty of youth among the divine race. 
 
 Section XX. Iris. 
 
 Iris, constantly introduced in the Iliad as the ordi- 
 nary messenger between Olympos and mankind, and 
 likewise among the gods themselves, is nowhere men- 
 tioned in the Odyssey. Yet the name of Iros is given 
 to Arnaios the vagrant, because it naturally fell to him 
 to circulate messages and news; and it is evidently 
 derived from, or from the same source with, the name 
 of this deity 3. 
 
 Her office in the Iliad is not exclusive. Themis is 
 the pursuivant who summons the gods to the great 
 assembly 4 J and Hermes is the envoy or agent who, in 
 
 ' Miiller's Dorians, vol. i. pp. 319, 320. (Transl.) 
 
 '' Welcker, Gr. Gotteslehre, vol. i. p. 695. 
 
 ^ Od. xviii. 7. * II. XX. 4. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 33 1 
 
 consequence of the general resolution of the gods re- 
 specting the body of Hector^ is employed to conduct 
 Priam to and from the presence of Achilles 1. 
 
 In the Odyssey, Zeus does not act in his individual 
 capacity, but only as head of the Olympian Court ; and 
 Iris is his personal messenger rather than the agent or 
 envoy of the Olympian Court. There is therefore no 
 obvious place for her in a poem where the conduct of 
 affairs rests, in the Greek sphere, with Athene, and 
 beyond that sphere either with Poseidon, or with the 
 collective body of the gods. 
 
 The name of Iris is also the Greek name for the 
 rainbow; and the correspondence is very remarkable 
 between her office of messenger from heaven to man, 
 and the traditional function of the rainbow as a sign 
 that the great covenants of Nature remain undisturbed^. 
 As it is only by the tradition recorded in Scripture that 
 the rainbow has this meaning, and not by any obvious 
 natural significance, it appears hard to explain how 
 Homer came to combine the two ideas, except by sup- 
 posing that his race drew the association from the same 
 early source from which Moses and the earlier de- 
 scendants of Abraham obtained it. 
 
 It is true that Homer nowhere recognises the relation 
 of the Messenger-Goddess to the rainbow. He does 
 not, even on any high occasion, assign to her an epithet 
 of colour. But this is precisely of a piece with his 
 manner of separating the deities of his anthropomor- 
 phic system from the mere Nature-Powers of other 
 theogonies : his Zeus from the Air, his Apollo from the 
 Sun, his Artemis from the Moon. Iris as the Rainbow 
 would have been wholly out of place in Olympos. 
 1 II. xxiv. 333 seqq. '' Genesis ix. 12-15. 
 
332 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 This separation from the older deities he has marked, 
 in the case of Iris, after a most curious fashion. In the 
 Twenty-third Iliad i, she carries to the palace of Ze- 
 phuros the prayer of Achilles for a Wind to consume 
 the pyre of Patroclos. She finds the Winds at table, 
 and they eagerly solicit her to sit and feast with them. 
 She answers that she has not time : if she tarries, she 
 will lose her share of a banquet which the Ethiopians 
 are just about to provide in their country for the Immor- 
 tals. This want of time is evidently an excuse devised by 
 good manners : in truth, the higher deity of the Olym- 
 pian order will not stoop to keep company with the 
 mere agents of Nature. And this, although Homer has 
 given them animation, for Boreas is the Sire of the 
 Trojan mares 2. His impersonation, then, was not a 
 human one, like that of the Olympian system. 
 
 In the case just mentioned, the prayer of Achilles 
 is addressed to the Winds. But apparently the Poet 
 does not allow them the faculty of hearing when they 
 are invoked j for it is Iris who, spontaneously it appears, 
 charges herself with the supplication, and in the cha- 
 racter of metanggelos, inter-messenger, carries it 
 to them. 
 
 In one 2 other case, when she appears to Helen, and 
 exhorts her to repair to the Wall of Troy, no one is 
 named as sending her ; but as she has here the title of 
 messenger expressly attached to her name, it is prob- 
 able that we are to understand she is despatched by 
 Zeus. 
 
 When, however. Aphrodite is wounded by Diomed, 
 in the Fifth Iliad, Iris comes to her assistance*, and 
 
 ^ 198-212. ^ II. XX. 223, 3 II. iil. 121. 
 
 * 353, 36s. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 333 
 
 here, without doubt because her action is spontaneous, 
 she is not called messenger. She drives the chariot of 
 Ares, which carries the wounded goddess to Olympos. 
 
 Though Iris hears prayer, she does not appear to be 
 an object of worship, and her spontaneous action is 
 confined to the business of the gods. It serves perhaps 
 additionally to mark her Hellenic character that, when 
 she appears to Achilles, she is without disguise, and is 
 addressed by him in her proper character ij but when 
 she addresses 2 Priam it is with the voice of Polites, 
 and she comes ^ before Helen in the character of her 
 sister-in-law Laodike. When she carries the order of 
 Zeus to Priam, in the Twenty-fourth Book, she an- 
 nounces herself as the messenger of Zeus, but there is 
 no proof or even sign of his being acquainted with her 
 personally*. 
 
 Her mission to Achilles is remarkable, because she is 
 sent by Here. In this instance alone, she obeys the 
 order of a deity other than Zeus^. It is one of the 
 instances in which Here exhibits a command over 
 aerial phenomena, apparently in virtue of her wifehood ; 
 and it bears an independent witness to the connection 
 between Iris and the rainbow. 
 
 In every other case (I think) Iris is sent personally 
 by Zeus, from the message for Priam in the Second 
 Book of the Iliad, to those for Thetis s and Priam in 
 the Twenty-fourth. 
 
 By much the most important errand with which she 
 is intrusted is the mission to Poseidon in the Fifteenth 
 Iliad, where she carries the order for his withdrawal 
 from the field of battle. Supporting it with skill and 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 182. ^ II. ii. 791- ' H- "'■ 121. 
 
 * 11. xxiv. 173. ° II. xviii. 268. " II. xxiv. 77. 
 
334 yUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 persuasiveness, she by these means induces him to 
 obey 1. 
 
 Section XXI. Thetis. 
 
 Thetis is not to be regarded as properly an Olym- 
 pian deity in the restricted sense of the phrase j yet 
 by reason of her great influence in the Iliad, she is 
 entitled to a marked position of her own. 
 
 The origin of Thetis in Homer is elemental only, 
 and her attributes as a goddess are feeble. She does 
 not act upon the course of Nature; she does not in- 
 fluence the mind : her powers of knowledge and vision 
 are limited; she deplores her own lot among the Im- 
 mortals; she is subject to weeping; she was married 
 to Peleus much against her will. In no single instance 
 throughout the Iliad does she exercise any divine power : 
 nor is there in the Poem the faintest sign of worship 
 as paid to her in any place. 
 
 But while her power, strictly so called, is thus bounded, 
 her influence and consequence are immense. She is the 
 pet deity of the Poet ; or rather the engine he has chosen 
 to carry through his theurgic process. It is her request 
 to Hephaistos, that in a moment sets him to work 
 upon the arms for Achilles; and when, in answer to 
 the summons of Zeus, she repairs to Olympos, she is 
 received with an extraordinary respect. But the chief 
 act performed by her is the exercise of influence over 
 Zeus in the First Book, where she overcomes his undis- 
 guised reluctance to act, growing out of his fears of a 
 conjugal quarrel ; and obtains his assent to her petition 
 or demand, that the Trojans may prevail in the war, 
 
 ' II. XV. 157-319. 
 
■VIII.J THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 335 
 
 until the Greeks shall have made full reparation to 
 her son Achilles^. 
 
 This is termed efotVws ap»j^; a prayer lying outside 
 the provisions of destiny and the moral order, or one 
 which caused them to vary from their course. The 
 meaning of the phrase is not hard to discover. The 
 cause of the Trojans in the war was radically unjust. 
 The moral law required their discomfiture. In this 
 channel ran the main stream of justice and of Provi- 
 dence. The request of Thetis was not in itself unjust, 
 for her son, who had so powerfully fought for the just 
 cause, had been deeply wronged by Agamemnon, the 
 head of the Greeks. But it tended to delay the con- 
 summation of a greater justice in a world-wide quarrel ^ 
 and for a time it set aside the moral purpose of divine 
 government. Interposing a secondary obstacle, it de- 
 flected the current from its course; and an immense 
 influence must be supposed to have been possessed by 
 Thetis, who, and who alone, by her personal interven- 
 tion, produced this extraordinary effect. 
 
 While she is thus a deity of far greater importance 
 than her rank in the preternatural order would lead us 
 to suppose ; there is no personage, either sublunary or 
 celestial, that appears to bear more or deeper marks of 
 the moulding hand of the Poet. Some find in her only 
 a transposition of the primitive but obsolete deity 
 Tethus, the wife of old Okeanos. Her name Thetis 
 also appears to be found in the deti of the Albanian 
 tongue, meaning the sea3. On the other hand, as one 
 of some thirty or forty daughters of Nereus, himself an 
 elemental god, though practically superseded by Posei- 
 
 ' II. i. 505-510. ^ II. XV. 598. 
 
 ^ Hahn, Alban. Studien, p. 252. 
 
33(5 yvvENTus mundi. [chap. 
 
 don, there is really no regular place for her in Olympos. 
 She has all the appearance of a character shaped and 
 turned to account for the purposes of the Poem : while, 
 at the same time, there are functions ascribed to her 
 which seem to imply a higher parentage than that 
 assigned to her, and to support the hypothesis which 
 makes her a reflection, as it were, of an older deity. 
 For though, of the regular Olympian divinities. Aphro- 
 dite is among the lowest, she is expressly declared to 
 be of a higher order than Thetis^. 
 
 In her marriage to Peleus, there is nothing that re- 
 sembles the clandestine or lawless and transitory con- 
 nections with mortals, that are ascribed to Demeter, to 
 Aphrodite, and to the Nymphs. It is the result of 
 solemn divine Counsel 2, and it is celebrated by the 
 whole Olympian Court. She had habitually sat^ as 
 Queen in the palace of Phthie, and in the discharge of 
 her motherly cares she had supplied Achilles with a 
 chest of garments for the war*. Though at first sight 
 the birth of Achilles may seem to be the counterpart 
 of that of ^neas, they are really opposed in every 
 feature : the one is lawful, solemn, permanent wedlock, 
 the other occasional and secret lust. Thetis herself, 
 indeed, appears to have been reluctant at the time to 
 marry Peleus ; and she rendered obedience only to an 
 order of the gods in general. 
 
 The purpose of the Poet in giving this high and un- 
 exampled sanction to the union, is not difficult to trace. 
 For her agency is the hinge on which turns, in the first 
 place, the reconciliation of the old and the new The- 
 ogonies; in the second, of the Pelasgic and the Hel- 
 
 ^ II. XX. 106. '^ II. xviii. 85; xxiv. 59. 
 
 ^ II. i. 396; xvi. 574. * II. xvi. 221-224. 
 
VIII.J THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 337 
 
 lenic nationalities ; in the third, of the rival purposes 
 of the gods (so far as the general scheme of Homer 
 admitted them) with regard to Troy. I think we may 
 find, that the marriage of Peleus to Thetis signifies and 
 records the union, both on earth and in Olympos, of 
 the Pelasgian and Hellenic systems. 
 
 The worship of Zeus, as we know, was Pelasgian, 
 and therefore pre-Hellenic. The revolt of the three 
 great deities of the new scheme. Here, Athene, and 
 Poseidon, against him, seems to signify the tendency 
 of the new worship, with its anthropomorphic or human- 
 ising forces, to effect the overthrow of the former creed, 
 cherished by the older but less intelligent and less 
 powerful population. And the pure Nature-Powers 
 indeed disappear ; but Zeus, whose relation with Nature 
 is in its most refined region, that of air, and who repre- 
 sents, too, the central principle of Theism,, survives the 
 change. The agency employed for his relief is that of 
 the hundred-handed giant, called Briareus by the gods, 
 that is, in relation to the old religion, but Aigaion by 
 men, that is, under the new^. It seems to be in virtue 
 of his being a giant that he is the son of Poseidon ; but 
 his having a place both in the old and the new Theogo- 
 nies evidently fits him to be the reconciler, and his 
 being under the influence of Thetis, which is shown 
 by his obeying her call, harmonises with her double 
 relation. 
 
 That relation is again indicated by her good offices 
 to the child Hephaistos, whose adoption into the 
 Hellenic Theogony, notwithstanding his Pelasgian asso- 
 ciations and his leaning to an elemental character, she, 
 seems to have procured ^. 
 ' II. i. 403. * il. xviii. 394-407. See sect. ix. Hephaistos. 
 
338 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 And in yet a third instance do we find her discharg- 
 ing a like ofSce. Such were the troubles excited by the 
 introduction of the worship of Dionusos, that it seems 
 to have been all but cast out of the country; but, as 
 we ha-ve already seen, she gave him a refuge, which he 
 appears to have requited with the gift of a golden (or 
 gilded) amphora, the work of Hephaistos K 
 
 For this office of reconciler between the creeds and 
 ideas of the two nationalities, she has been carefully 
 prepared by the fancy and skill of the Poet. Inde- 
 pendently of the apparent association with Tethus, she 
 is rooted in the Pelasgian system by her owning Nereus 
 for a father. An ample counterpoise, however, has 
 been provided, and in part by a most curious contriv- 
 ance. She is the mother of Achilles, who is himself 
 the highest specimen of the pure Hellenic type, and 
 whose Phthian country is, in a pre-eminent sense, 
 already the land of Hellenes and Achaians. 
 
 Something, however, is added, that the transition may 
 not be too abrupt, and that an Hellenic colour may be 
 made to attach even to the extraction of the great hero. 
 
 In the Eighteenth Iliad 2, when his mother issues 
 from the depths, she is followed by a long train of sisters ; 
 and the names of no less than thirty-three of them are 
 given in a string. No catalogue of names approaching 
 to this length is to be found anywhere in Homer. The 
 nearest to it is in the Eighth Odyssey, where he de- 
 scribes his Phaiakes repairing to their Games 3. Here 
 he gives in rapid succession the proper names of sixteen 
 youths of Scherie. On examination, we find that every 
 one of them has relation to ships and navigation. It is 
 
 ' II. vi. 136. Od. xxiv. 73. 2 II. xviii. 39-49. 
 
 " Od. viii. 111-116. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 339 
 
 therefore evident that the long list has a meaning. He 
 desires to illustrate the especial, if not exclusive, devo- 
 tion of the people to nautical pursuits. Now, on ex- 
 amining in a similar manner the catalogue of Nereids, 
 we find that their names, instead of being, as is often 
 the case with his Immortals, of an etymology that 
 cannot be ascertained, are in nearly every instance 
 pure Hellenic appellations^ and that they even include 
 the name Doris ^. It is extremely difficult to suppose 
 that Homer should have deviated so widely from his 
 usual practice as to these lists, without a reason. And 
 the reason seems to be obvious ; namely, his desire to 
 give a sort of Hellenic character to the family of Ne- 
 reus, (whose name he never introduces except once in 
 the patronymic,) as the maternal ancestry of Achilles. 
 
 From the obligations thus conferred, Thetis is in 
 a condition to use urgency, though not authority, with 
 Zeus ; and honour is done to her son at the expense of 
 the Greek army, notwithstanding the murmurs and 
 devices of the Hellenising deities. In like manner, she 
 has no difficulty in obtaining from Hephaistos, on a 
 similar ground, the gift of the Arms. In each case it 
 is not a mere act of grace and favour, but the requital of 
 a benefit received. In the case of Zeus, it is the more 
 noteworthy, because the prayer of Thetis is declared to 
 be in the nature of a deviation from the appointed 
 course of destiny 2, which had long ago fixed the down- 
 fall of Troy 3. And again he signifies his attachment 
 to her, when, though most of the gods recommended 
 that the body of Hector should be removed by stealth, 
 he arranges that she shall have an opportunity of giving 
 
 ' II. xviii. 45. "^ II. XV. 598. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 305-330. 
 
 z 3 
 
340 yuvENTUs mundi. [chap. 
 
 glory anew to her son, by advising him to accept the 
 ransom ^ which is to be offered by Priam. 
 
 The other principal particulars given us respecting 
 Thetis are as follows. 
 
 During the action of the Poem she habitually resides 
 with ' the old man her father,' in the depths. We may 
 suppose that this was because she was now released from 
 any direct maternal duties in the house of Peleus. 
 
 Here was her nurse ; and was the special designer of 
 the marriage ^. Here again we observe the meeting of 
 Hellenic and Pelasgic elements. The undisguised re- 
 luctance of the bride ^ may have been due to her pre- 
 vision of the time when Peleus her husband would be 
 overtaken by old age; but I rather think it may 
 have been inserted by Homer in order to separate 
 the case of Thetis broadly from those of Demeter and 
 Aphrodite. 
 
 She has an union of strong human aiFections with 
 the fainter attributes of deity. Besides what we have 
 already seen, she hears from beneath the prayer of 
 Achilles, but then he offers it from the shore, and 
 looking seawards*. She also hears his wail over Pa- 
 troclos ; but it was an awfully loud one ^. She herself 
 joined in the audible lament ^. She was aware of his 
 appointed destiny'', but was under the necessity of 
 applying to him to know the cause of his grief. So 
 at least she asserts, though her own sori seems to 
 contradict her ». She suggests to him to seek comfort 
 in sensual indulgence^. In his sorrow, however, she 
 
 ^ II. xxiv. 107-111. ^ II. xxiv. 60. ' II. xviii. 434. 
 
 * II. i. 348-351. ° II. xviii. 35. ' 11. xviii. 37, 71, et alibi. 
 ' II. i. 416-418 ; xviii. 95. * II. i. 363, 365 ; xviii. 63. 
 
 * II. xxiv. 130. y 
 
VIH.J THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 341 
 
 watches over him night and day, besides inspiring him 
 with courage for the field i. And when summoned to 
 Olympos in the matter of Hector's ransom, she appears 
 there in deep mourning ^. 
 
 Upon entering the divine Assembly, she is received 
 with the utmost deference, Athene yielding her place 
 by Zeus, which Thetis takes 3. This may be a pro- 
 ceeding of delicate courtesy, having reference either to 
 her sorrowing state, or more probably to the honourable 
 customs of hospitality. 
 
 On repairing to Hephaistos to obtain the Arms, she 
 dispatches her sisters to inform old Nereus of what had 
 happened*. When the gift is ready, she herself, de- 
 scending like a falcon from Olympos, carries the Arms 
 to the tent of Achilles ^. 
 
 The point of the sea, at which she dwells with her 
 father, is between Samothrace and Imbros «. 
 
 She came once more to the camp on the yet more 
 sorrowful occasion of the death of Achilles ?. She then 
 appointed the great contest between Ajax and Odysseus 
 for the arms of the departed hero ». She supplied the 
 famous urn, to receive his ashes ; which was the work 
 of Hephaistos, and the gift of Dionusos. She also sup- 
 plied the prize^ for the funeral games 9, which she ob- 
 tained from the other gods, more richly endowed, as is 
 probable according to the idea of the Poems, than herself. 
 
 The epithets applied to Thetis are generally con- 
 nected with her marine extraction, and of these Argu- 
 ropeza, the silver-footed, is the most characteristic j or 
 else they relate to her good disposition. 
 
 1 II. xxiv. 72 ; xix. 37. '^ II. xxiv. 93. ' II. xxiv. 100. 
 * II. xviii. 139-147. ' II. xviii. 6i6; xix. 2. " 11. xxiv. 78. 
 ' Od. xxiv. 47, 55. ' Od. xi. 556. ^ Od. xxiv. 85. 
 
343 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 She is plainly not an Olympian deity in the sense of 
 belonging to the ordinary Assembly. Of this her 
 reception as a guest in the Twenty-fourth Book appears 
 to be a positive signj and it is in harmony with all 
 that we can see of her origin. 
 
 Most of the later tradition respecting Thetis appears 
 to be but arbitrary comment and embellishment. The 
 authentic data are few. She had a temple, according 
 to Strabo, between Old and New Pharsalos, in Thessaly ; 
 doubtless owing to traditions of local worship, which 
 had grown out of the distinguished honours assigned to 
 her in the Poems i. Pausanias mentions a case in 
 which, during the Messenian wars, a priestess of Thetis, 
 named Cleo, was taken and found to have in her pos- 
 session an ancient wooden statue of the deity. This 
 appears to have been the only temple to her which 
 existed south of Thessaly ^j but there was a tale of 
 a statue of her, planted by Menelaos over against 
 Cranae ^, on his return from his wanderings. It is not 
 improbable that, after the Troica, there may have been 
 tendencies to establish this worship, and that they were 
 afterwards eflFaced from the want of a sufficient basis 
 for such a divinity. Hesiod adds nothing to the 
 Homeric account *. 
 
 I cannot help leaning to the belief that, whether she 
 is or is not a transformation of Tethus, she is, in most 
 of what we hear of her, a creation of Homer for the 
 purposes of his work ; and that, as the Poet .of Greece, 
 engaged in building up her nationality and religion, he 
 has employed her as a most effective instrument for 
 signifying that union of ethnical and theogojiic elements, 
 
 ^ Strabo, ix. p. 431. ^ Paus. iii. 14, 4. » Paus. xx. 2. 
 
 * Theog. 244, 1006. 
 
VIII.] THE DIVINITIES OF OLYMPOS. 343 
 
 which he in part commemorated, and in part brought 
 about. 
 
 With reference to the etymology of her name, it is 
 perhaps worthy of remark that the only office of media- 
 tion at all resembling hers is ascribed to Tethus, who, 
 with her husband Okeanos, gives shelter and nurture 
 to Herei, at the great crisis when Zeus was thrusting 
 his father Kronos down to the Underworld 2. 
 
 ^ II. xiv. 201-204. 
 
 ^ It would be matter of great interest to know how far, apart 
 from any theory, the names of the Hellenic divinities are really 
 derivable from the Sanscrit : and in the recent work of M. Jacol- 
 liot. La Bible dans I'lnde, a list of many of them is given with 
 Sanscrit roots, in many cases seemingly appropriate. But for 
 one ignorant like myself of that language, this etymology must 
 rest upon authority : and the general propositions of M. Jacol- 
 liot's work are not sufficiently restrained and circumspect at once 
 to inspire coniidence in his judgments. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Further Sketch and Moral Aspects of the 
 Olympian System. 
 
 I. Various Orders of Preternatural Beings. 
 
 I HAVE dwelt largely on the Olympian Deities. The 
 goddess Thetis has received a separate supplemental 
 notice, on account, not of her mythological rank but of 
 her essential share in the machinery, both human and 
 theogonic, of the Iliad. Also it is essential to give 
 some attention to the deities or impersonations con- 
 nected with Duty, Doom, and Justice. With respect to 
 all other preternatural figures appearing in the Poems, 
 it will nearly suffice to present their names according 
 to the classification which has been already stated. 
 
 I. The Nature-Powers : — 
 
 Okeanos: the source of deities (Qi&v yivfms). 
 
 II. xiv. 30I. 
 
 Tethtis: the mother of deities. II. xiv. 201. 
 
 These two were married, but estranged. II. xiv. 206. 
 
 It is probable that Homer intends by these expres- 
 sions to represent Okeanos and Tethus as the general 
 parents of the various dynasties of gods j and it can 
 
THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 345 
 
 only be from a supreme respect to Okeanos that, when 
 all other Rivers are summoned to the Great Olympian 
 Assembly, he alone is not called \ because he could not 
 appear there in his proper place, as head and Sire of all. 
 Gaia. In the Underworld. The word means 
 
 Land, rather than Earth. 
 Nereus. In the sea. Never expressly named ; 
 but only called 'the aged father of Thetis/ 
 and signified in the patronymic of Nereides. 
 Kronos and Rhea. In Tartaros. Welcker thinks 
 that Kronos (Time) is a mythical reflection 
 from the conception of Zeus, who alone has in 
 Homer the title of Kronides. Rhea he takes, 
 as kindred to Era % to be an Earth-goddess of 
 one of the old associated races of the Greek 
 Peninsula. Rhea is clearly placed in associa- 
 tion with Okeanos and Tethus, by her de- 
 livering over Here to their care. 
 Amphitrite, the moaning sea (aydoTovos), is men- 
 tioned in the Odyssey ; in a very faint personi- 
 fication. In later mythology, she becomes a 
 wife of Poseidon. The passages where she is 
 named, as well as the fact that she is only 
 named in this poem, well admit of our re- 
 ferring her to the circle of Phoenician tra- 
 ditions 3. 
 3. The Minor Nature-Powers : — 
 
 The Rivers : of whom are specially named — 
 Xanthos or Scamandros. II. xx. 74. 
 Asopos. Od. xi. 260. 
 Spercheios. II. xxiii. 144. 
 
 . 1 II. XX. 4. '' Welcker, i. 143 ; ii. 216. 
 
 ' Od. iii. 91 ; v. 422 ; xii. 60, 97. 
 
346 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Alpheios. II. xi. 728. 
 Enipeus. Od. xi. 238. 
 Axios. II. xxi. 141, 157. 
 The Nymphs — 
 
 Daughters of Zeus. II. vi. 420. Odi 
 
 vi. 105. 
 The Mountain Nymphs. II. vi. 420. 
 The Grove Nymphs. II. xxi. 8. 
 The Fountain Nymphs. II. xiv. 144; 
 
 XX. 384 j xxi. 9. Od. xiii. 356. 
 The Meadow Nymphs. II. xxi. 9. 
 The Nymph Abarbaree. II. vi. 22. 
 Worship of Nymphs. Od. xiv. 435. 
 Their Altar. Od. xvii. 211. 
 The Nymphs mentioned thus far are named 
 as having been summoned to the Great 
 Olympian Assembly. 
 
 The Nymphs of the Sun, Lampetie and 
 Phaethousa. Od. xii. 132. Their mother 
 is Neaira. Od. xii. 133. 
 The Nereids, sisters of Thetis, dwelling 
 in the sea. II. xviii. 37. 
 The Winds : never admitted to Olympos ; but 
 worshipped; viz. 
 
 Zephuros. II. xxiii. 195, 200, 208. 
 Boreas. II. xx. 223 ; xxiii. 195, 208. 
 (Notos and Euros are not mentioned as 
 separate impersonations.) 
 3. Mythological Personages of the Outer, or Phoeni- 
 cian Sphere. 
 
 Helios, father of Aietes and Kirke. Od. x. 138. 
 
 Kirke. Od. x. 136. 
 
 Calypso, daughter of Atlas. Od. i. 52. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 347 
 
 Ino Leucothee. Od. v. 333. A deified mortal. 
 Proteus. Od. iv. 385. Declared to belong to 
 
 Egypt. 
 Atlas, the Pillar-bearer, and sea explorer. Od. 
 
 i. 5a. 
 Maias, mother of Hermes. Od. xiv. 435. 
 Thoosa. Od. i. 71. 
 Phorcus. Od. i. ']%. 'Ruler of the sea:' in 
 
 relations with Poseidon through his daughter 
 
 Thoosa. 
 Aietes, brother of Kirke. Od. x. 137. 
 Perse, mother of Kirke and Aietes. Od. x. 139. 
 Aiolos. Od. X. 2. A semi-deified mortal. 
 The Sirens : two in number. Od. xii. 53. 
 
 4. The Rebellious Powers are — 
 
 Kronos (probably). II. xiv. 303. 
 
 Titans (perhaps). II. xiv. 379. 
 
 The Giants. Od. vii. 59, 60. 
 
 Tituos. Od. xi. 576. 
 
 Otos and Ephialtes. Od-. xi. 305 seqq. 
 But it is not easy to distinguish in all cases between 
 powers rebellious, and powers simply deposed or super- 
 seded. 
 
 Passages relating to the punishment of rebellious 
 powers, according to the Sacred or Hebrew tradition, 
 are to be found in Job xxvi. 5 j Prov. ii. 18, xxi. 16 j 
 cf. Gen. vi. 4, 5; in 3 Pet. ii. 4, 5; Wisd. xiv. 6; 
 Ecclus. xvi. 7 5 Baruch iii. 36, 38. 
 
 5. Ministers of Doom. 
 
 Ate. 
 Erinues. 
 
 Moira, Moirai, Aisa, Kataclothes. 
 These will be mentioned severally. 
 
348 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 6. Poetical Impersonations. 
 
 The Muses, daughters of Zeus : their number is 
 
 only mentioned by Homer in Od. xxiv. 60. 
 
 The invocation is most commonly in the 
 
 singular. They are, however, nine in all. 
 The Fates (Keres, Cataclothes). 
 The Prayers (with Ate). 
 Ossa, Rumour. II. ii. 93 j Od. xxiv. 412. 
 Deimos, Terror. II. iv. 440, ii. 37, xv. 119. 
 
 Probably son of Ares. 
 PhoboSj Panic. Ibid. A son of Ares. II. xiii. 299. 
 Kudoimos, Tumult. Attends upon Enno. II. 
 
 V. 593- 
 
 Eris, Discord. II. v. 740. See supra. Chap. VIII. 
 
 Oneiros, Dream. II. ii. 6—54. 
 
 Hupnos, Sleep. II. xiv. 23 1 . 
 
 Thanatos, Death. IJ, xiv. 231, xvi. 454, 68a. 
 
 Alke, Might. II. v. 740. 
 
 loke, Rout. II V. 740. 
 
 Arpuiai : the Storm-winds. Od. i. 241 ; re- 
 peated xiv. 371, XX. 77; cf. 63. Of these 
 Podarge is named as the mother; who bears 
 to Zephuros the two immortal horses of 
 Achilles, Zanthos and Balios. 
 
 II. 7%« Erinnes. 
 
 There are three chief descriptions of preternatural 
 force recognised in the Homeric Poems. 
 
 I. The will and power of the Olympian deities. 
 
 3. The binding efficacy of Destiny. 
 
 3. The obligations of the moral order. 
 The first of them may be described, from its mixed 
 
IX. J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 349 
 
 character of truth and fable, as the Theomythology of 
 the Poet. 
 
 The second is his Necessitarianism. 
 
 The third is his Deontology. 
 
 But none of these are scientifically set forth or 
 viewed , and no one of them has an exclusive sway. 
 
 In the first, a personal will is everywhere apparent ; 
 and though this will is largely used in sustaining moral 
 ideas, yet with them are mixed mere propensities and 
 partialities, and even passions and vices. 
 
 In the second and third, personality and will are 
 thrown into the background. As his first rests on 
 ' shall,' so the second is based on the idea we convey 
 by ' must ; ' but the third is founded on ' ought.' 
 
 The second, if absolute, is perhaps among the most 
 immoral and degrading of all philosophical systems; 
 but those, who have given it a logical assent, have 
 seldom adopted it as the rule of life ; and in Homer it 
 has only a very limited range. It is rarely held up to 
 us apart from some reference either to the personal will 
 of the gods, or to the moral order; and it never appears 
 as the single, ultimate, overruling force. 
 
 The third corresponds with the second in its gene- 
 rally, though not invariably, impersonal character; and 
 the ideas belonging to the two respectively are some- 
 times mixed in the words jxotpa, which leans however 
 to the idea of force, and ai<ra and haCfxav, which con- 
 tains more of the moral element. There is also a 
 relation between the idea of Zeus, and that of Fate, 
 exhibited in the remarkable phrase Atos ai<ra, the fate 
 of, that is, proceeding from, Zeus. 
 
 But in the rear of this law of the great Ought, or the 
 moral order of the Universe, there is a personal agency. 
 
350 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 which in Homer is principally charged with enforcing 
 its observance ; that namely of the 'Epivves. With the 
 progress of time, and the growth of moral corruption, 
 the function of these venerable ministers of Right 
 comes more and more to be, not enforcing the observ- 
 ance, or repairing the breach, but simply punishing the 
 offender • and they themselves gradually assume the 
 power of Furies, dressed in every imaginable horror. 
 The later pictures of them are coarse and vulgar, com- 
 pared with the awful yet noble figures of the Erinues 
 of Homer, in whom is really represented, more than in 
 Zeus himself, the idea of an ultimate Divine Judgment, 
 togetlier with compensating and rectifying powers. 
 
 The action of the Erinues is to a certain extent 
 mixed with that of the subterranean or avenging gods. 
 When the father of Phoenix prays the Erinues to make 
 him childless, the imprecation is fulfilled by ' the godSj 
 and (or namely) the nether Zeus and the awful Per- 
 sephone:' and again, when Althaia invokes these two 
 deities for the punishment of Meleagros, it is the 
 Erinus who from Erebos hears, and accomplishes, the 
 prayer 1. The Erinues are invoked by Agamemnon to 
 witness to his asseverated oath concerning Briseis, as 
 punishers of the perjured j together with Zeus, Gaia, 
 and the Sun 2, The Erinues of Epicaste haunt her 
 son CEdipus^. In his father's house, Telemachos ap- 
 prehends that, should he dismiss his mother, her Erinues 
 will come upon him 4; and Odysseus, when the Suitor 
 Antinoos has hurled the stool at him, invokes upon 
 him ' ity or, ' for surely,' ' there are such,' the gods and 
 Erinues of the poor ^. 
 
 ^ II. ix. 449-457 and 565-603. ^ II. xix. 258-260. 
 
 ^ Od. ii. 279. * Od. ii. 135. = Od. xvii. 475, 476. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 35 1 
 
 The functions of the Erinues are not confined to 
 mortals. They affect also the gods. When Ares is 
 laid prostrate in the Theomachy, Athene tells him his 
 fall is due to the Erinues of his mother Here, whose 
 side he had abandoned i. And, when Iris finds it dif- 
 ficult to induce Poseidon to obey the behest of Zeus 
 by withdrawing from the field of battle, she reminds 
 him that the Erinues are with the elder ^. 
 
 The horse Xanthos receives a voice from Here, to 
 warn Achilles of his fate: when he has done it, the 
 Erinues arrest his speech ^. 
 
 When Agamemnon has to confess his &Tri or sin 
 in the matter of Briseis, he says, ' I however am not 
 to blame, but Zeus, and Fate, and the Erinus that 
 stalks in cloud «.' 
 
 When the daughters of Pandareos have received all 
 manner of gifts by the agency of the gods, and Zeus 
 is being asked to find them husbands, instead of this, 
 the Harpuiai or Hurricanes, who are either storm-blasts 
 or subordinate ministers of vengeance, carry them oiF, 
 and deliver them to the Erinues to deal with ^. 
 
 Thus far, in eleven cases out of the twelve in which 
 Homer introduces these remarkable personages, they 
 evidently appear as the champions and avengers of 
 the moral order, in all forms, and against all persons 
 whatever. 
 
 They are never subject to the order of any Deity. 
 The gods indeed are subject to control, or even punish- 
 ment, by them. Zeus is never mentioned in this 
 relation : but their office expressly reaches to Poseidon. 
 Their agency is wholly anterior to, and independent 
 
 ' II. xxi. 410-414. '^ II. XV. 202. ' II. xix. 418. 
 
 * II. xix. 87. = Od. XX. 66-78. 
 
352 yVVENTVS MUNDI, [cHAP. 
 
 of, all volition whatever. They represent Law in 
 action. But, besides punishing offenders, they actually 
 stop and repair infractions of the moral or settled 
 constitution of the world, as in the case of the horse 
 Xanthos. They therefore represent not only right as 
 opposed to wrong, but order as opposed to disorder: 
 and, in this respect, they supply a very characteristic 
 product of the symmetrical mind of the Greeks. 
 
 The Erinues of parents, of elders, of the poor^ and the 
 like, are the sanctions of those great relations, in which 
 moral obligation has its roots for the mass of men. 
 
 In the case of the offence of CEdipus, will was not 
 concerned : yet it is enough for them that law was 
 violated ; and they appear in order to avenge it. 
 
 In the case of the orphan daughters of Pandareos, 
 it is simply excess which they appear to resent. All 
 personal gifts, even their food, were conveyed to these 
 maidens by the direct agency of deities. This abnormal 
 provision, lying far beyond, was therefore in derogation 
 of, the established laws for the government of the world : 
 it left no space for human volition, effort, or discipline. 
 This is the probable ground for the remarkable inter- 
 vention of the Erinues against the damsels. 
 
 The twelfth and remaining case represents the close- 
 sticking, or tenacious, Erinus^ (SatnrXTJTts) as insinuat- 
 ing an Ate or offence into the mind of Melampous. 
 Neleus had made it a condition of obtaining the hand 
 of his daughter Pero, that the Suitor should bring him 
 certain oxen of Iphiclos. This Melampous undertook 
 to do, on behalf not of himself but of a brother ^ though 
 it entailed a year's imprisonment, which as a Seer he 
 must be supposed to have known beforehand. We 
 ' Compare 'Post equitem sedet atra cura.' Hor. Od. 3. i, 40. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 353 
 
 have to ask, in what did the ofFence consist? Was 
 it an imprudence or folly thus to expose himself? or 
 was the theft an ofFence against the laws of good 
 neighbourhood or guestship ? In either case we do not 
 escape this difficulty, that it was suggested by the 
 Erinus. This is a representation not easily brought 
 into accordance with any of the other Homeric re- 
 ferences to the Erinues: which, though severe teyond 
 the limits of justice, nowhere else appear as the in- 
 stigators of evil. It seems to be peculiarly strange, 
 because of the habitual care of the Erinus to maintain 
 the established order, and not merely to punish the 
 breach of it. 
 
 It is true that, in the Odyssey, Athene is said to 
 restrain the Suitors from discontinuing their evil deeds. 
 But these are men who had long persisted in a pro- 
 fligate and cruel disregard of all the laws of duty \ 
 No such consideration will apply to the case of 
 Melampous. Agamemnon, indeed, blames the Erinus 
 for his own fault: but this is a mere excuse. The 
 whole legend of Melampous is given in a form some- 
 what cramped; and, like other passages in the later 
 books of the Odyssey, suggests that it had not been 
 fully wrought out by the Poet. Possibly, but I cannot 
 say more than possibly, this may account for the mode 
 in which the Erinus is introduced. We may also 
 remark that here only she is called by the name of 
 goddess; which appears rather inconsistent with her 
 position. 
 
 Whether we are to regard the Erinus as really 
 
 capable of being a tempter or not, the conception 
 
 deviates from the highest form of rectitude by ad- 
 
 ^ Od. xviii. 151, 346. 
 
 A a 
 
354 yuvENTUs mvndi. [chap. 
 
 ministering punishment^ in the case of (Edipus, to an 
 involuntary offence. But here the elements of good 
 greatly preponderate ; and there is something noble as 
 well as awful in these beings, watching with so much 
 care over constituted laws, and maintaining or restoring 
 the equilibrium of the moral world. It is by an im- 
 mense declension that these sublime Erinues become 
 the savage Furies of the Latin Hades ^. 
 
 The name of Erinus is traced etymologically by 
 Professor Max Miiller to the Sanscrit Saranyu, a name 
 of the Dawn ^ : which, as importing discovery by means 
 of light, would connect it with the office we have been 
 considering. 
 
 III. Aie, the Temptress. 
 
 The Ate of Homer, as a person, represents a Temp- 
 tress, who insinuates into the mind error or crime, 
 begun in folly, and ending in calamity. Among the 
 later Greeks it is Calamity simply, with a shadow of 
 Destiny hanging in the distance. 
 
 The Homeric Ate means and wishes ill to mortals ; 
 but seems to have no power to hurt them, except it 
 be through channels wholly or partially opened to her 
 by their own erring or bewildered volition. Even 
 Deity is not exempt from her illusions : for, before the 
 birth of Heracles ^, she it is who leads Zeus to promise 
 what will, through Here's craft, overturn his own most 
 dearly cherished plans. For this excess of daring, Zeus 
 Seizes her by the hair, and hurls her from Olympos 
 to Earth ", apparently taken to be her native seat. 
 
 ^ ^n. vi. sss, 571. "^ Lectures on Language, ii. 484, 516, 562. 
 ^ II. xix. 95 seqq. ' * II. xix. 126-133. 
 
IX.] ■ THX OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. ^e^^ 
 
 For she ^ is his eldest daughter ; his daughters too 
 are the Litai, or prayers, that lag behind her. She 
 is vigorous and nimble, prowling about for mischief. 
 They are limping and decrepit : they cannot see 
 straight before them ^. In this allegory, we have man 
 ready and quick to err, slow to repent. We have^ 
 also a living power of Evil extraneous to him, and ever 
 soliciting him to his own loss and ruin. Here is a 
 picture in substance much resembling the Serpent of 
 the Book of Genesis, the Satan of Scripture, and the 
 punishment he has undergone. 
 
 The temptations of Ate are to acts, also called atai, 
 variously shaded between folly and sheer crime. The 
 most innocent ate of Homer is perhaps the sleep of 
 Odysseus in Thrinakie, during which his crew consume 
 the oxen of the Sun s. He may, indeed, be regarded 
 as in some sort responsible for his comrades: yet he 
 had bound them by oath * not to commit the acts. 
 
 We cannot be surprised if occasionally we find moral 
 government in Homer out of joint, as in the case lately 
 observed, where the Eriniis is said to send an Ate^. 
 Agamemnon complains that his Ate was sent to him 
 by Zeus, together with Destiny and Erinus ? ; but this 
 is an exhibition of a weak and self-excusing character, 
 rather than a normal example of the thought current 
 in that age. 
 
 Besides the Ate of Zeus, of Agamemnon, and of 
 Odysseus, we have in Homer the following chief 
 examples : 
 
 Of Dolon, II. X. 391. 
 
 ' II. xix. 91. ^ II. ix. 499-514. 
 
 ^ Od. xii. 372. * Od. xii. 303. 
 
 ^ Od. XV. 234. " II. xix. 87. 
 A a 3 
 
356 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Of Melampous, Od. xv. q,'^'^. 
 
 These are offences against prudence. 
 
 Of Paris, II. vi. ^^6; xxiv. a8. 
 
 Of Helen, Od. iv. 261 ; xxiii. 323. 
 
 Of the Manslayer, II. xxiv. 480. 
 
 Of the drunken Centaur Eurution, Od. xxi. 296-302. 
 These are moral transgressions. 
 
 The higher form of human wickedness, deliberate 
 and self-conscious, is, as we shall see, not ate but 
 atasthalie. 
 
 IV. Fate or Doom. 
 
 The words used in Homer to signify Fate, Doom, 
 and Destiny, are Ker, also in the plural Keres ; Kata- 
 clothes ; Moira ; Aisa ; and Moros. 
 
 Of these, Ker approaches most frequently to a distinct 
 impersonation j has the faintest trace of any moral 
 element, distinct from the mere machinery of an iron 
 system of decrees ; and is of the darkest colour, as it 
 always implies doom or death, never a fated blessing. 
 Ker again is the destiny of an individual ; not of law 
 governing the world. It is, however, on no occasion 
 eluded or contravened. 
 
 The Kataclothes or Spinners are only mentioned in 
 Od. vii. 197. They are personal : and the epithet 
 'weighty' or 'oppressive' is attached to them. They 
 partake of the character of the Keres. 
 
 Neither of these touch the great questions, how far 
 destiny overrules the human will, and how far it is 
 separate from, or even superior to, the divine will. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 357 
 
 The word Aisa means the destiny of a particular 
 person ^ : or the moral law for the government of 
 conduct 2 • or that moral law as proceeding from Zeus or 
 Providence personally, as the Dios aisa^, daimonos 
 aisa: or lastly a separate power moving and ruling 
 affairs*. In this last and gravest sense, Aisa is not very 
 prominently used. Again, it is but rarely and faintly 
 personified; it contains more of the moral element, 
 more of ought than of must : though, when used to mean 
 Death it is irresistible, because the law of death cannot 
 be directly cancelled. Otherwise, it may be overcome. 
 In II. xvi. 780, the Achaians gain the upperhand against 
 the Trojans, in spite of Aisa. But this particular Aisa 
 was no more than the decree of Zeus, which gave 
 that one day of success to the fortunes of Troy. The 
 dominant idea of Aisa generally is not blind com- 
 mand, but an ordained law of right : a law without 
 doubt very liable to be broken. 
 
 Moira, like Aisa, means an allotted share: but it 
 is less ethical, more contracted, and more sovereign 
 and resistless. Moira deals with each man: but we 
 scarcely hear of the Moira of a man. It may mean 
 good fortune, and has this sense in opposition to am- 
 morie^: it requires a darkening epithet to give it the 
 adverse sense 6. It is however often used for death. 
 It may be the divine will embodied, as we have the 
 Moira of the god, or the gods?; but never of any 
 named god, which seems to place it somewhat higher 
 than Aisa. Nothing in Homer is actually done con- 
 
 ' II. i. 416. "^ II. iii. 59. ' II. xvii. 321. 
 
 * II. XX. 127 ; xvi. 441. ^ Od. xx. 76. ^ II. xii. 116. 
 
 ' Od. iii. 269; xxii. 413. 
 
358 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 trary to Moira: but such things seem to be regarded 
 as not beyond the bounds of possibility ^. 
 
 It is not however incapable of receiving the moral 
 element. To speak generally, morsimos is destined, 
 aisimos is right. But when Antinoos is killed, he is 
 killed according to Moira 2, that is rightly: and the 
 term cata moiran connects it with the moral order, in 
 the sense of propriety ^. 
 
 In the order of action, then, Moira is above Aisa; 
 in the order of laWj below it. 
 
 Moros in Homer is never personified. Referred 
 to an individual it seems to mean his death: and 
 etymologically it corresponds with the Latin mon. It 
 is never associated with the deity. But it is like Aisa 
 in receiving the sense of the moral law. And here it 
 corresponds with the Latin mos, moth. For mortals 
 bring calamity on themselves in defiance of moros, 
 and in similar defiance Aigisthos commits his crimes *. 
 This can hardly mean that he was too strong for 
 Destiny ; but he was too strong for Right. 
 
 In none of these forms does Destiny ever fight with 
 the gods ; or, unless it be in the shape of Death, defy 
 them. The later Greek mind elaborated the idea of 
 a Fate apart from, and higher than, the gods s. But, in 
 Homer, not even the human will is controlled in such 
 a manner as to suggest or sustain the Necessitarian 
 theory. Indeed we find the gods helping Destiny against 
 man : as when, in the Second Iliad ^, the Greeks would, 
 against Moros, have returned to their country after the 
 
 ^ II. XX. 335. 2 Od. xxii. 54. 3 II 3j j6j_ 
 
 ♦ Od. I 34, 35. 
 
 ° jEsch. Ag. 993 ; Herod, i. 91 ; Philem. Fragra. 86. 
 « Od. i. 155. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM, 359 
 
 rush from the Assembly, had not Here urged Athene 
 to stay the torrent of home-sick emotion : and Apollo 
 entered Troy, lest the Greeks should take it, against 
 Moros, on the day of the fall of Hector \ Nor is the 
 Fate of Homer absolutely blind: on the contrary it 
 shows rather a tendency at times to grow into a sort 
 of rival Providence, as in 'The Fates have ordained 
 for man a hardy mind 2,' 
 
 And when, in order to obtain a comprehensive view 
 of the field of human action, we turn to the general 
 plan of the two Poems, we find that in each case they 
 work, not according to the impulsion of a blind and 
 occult force, but rationally, towards the fulfilment of 
 a divine or Olympian decree, announced at the outset, 
 and steadily pursued to the end ^. 
 
 V. Animal Worship. 
 
 Although Animal worship has played so considerable 
 a part in the religions of the East, the traces of it in 
 Homer are few, and, with one exception, they are 
 also faint. 
 
 That exception is the extraordinary sanctity attach- 
 ing, in the Twelfth Odyssey, to the Oxen of the Sun, 
 which I have treated as belonging to the Phoenician 
 system, and as foreign to the Olympian religion *. 
 
 Other traces seem to be rather dubiously discoverable, 
 as follows : 
 
 ' II. xxi. 517. ^ II. xxiv. 49. 
 
 ^ II. i. 5 ; iv. 62-64. Od. i. 76-79. 
 * See supra, Helios, Chap. VIII. 
 
3f)0 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 (a) The introduction of the immortal horses, Xanthos 
 and Balios ; the gift of speech, conferred for the mo- 
 ment by Here on Xanthos; and, what is of more 
 weight, the gift of prevision, which enabled him to 
 foretell his master's death. That gift he did not derive 
 from the goddess. But, when he had thus spoken, 
 the Erinus interfered to arrest this violation of the 
 natural order ^. 
 
 {h) The assumption by deities, of the forms of birds : 
 viz: — 
 
 By Athene, II. vii. 59; Od. i. 320, iii. 372, xxii. 
 240. 
 Apollo, II. vii. 59. 
 Hupnos, II. xiv. 290. 
 Ino Leucothee (Phoenician), Od. v. 333. 
 {c) The horse in Homer generally has not only a 
 poetical grandeur, but a near relation to deity, which 
 I am unable sufficiently to explain : but which, it seems 
 possible, may be the reflection or analogue of the place 
 assigned to the ox in the East. Several circumstances, 
 and among them the practice of describing a cham- 
 paign country as one suited to feeding the horse 2, 
 combine to show how completely, for the Greek, this 
 noble creature stood at the head of the animal 
 creation. 
 
 Some have pointed to qualities belonging to the 
 brute creation as the possible groundwork of the extra- 
 ordinary system of religion, which regarded animals 
 as fit objects of worship: the unity and tranquillity 
 of animal life, which makes it, as it were, a colourless 
 medium for an inward spirit to inhabit : and the 
 
 ^ II. xix. 404-418. 
 
 '^ II. ii. 287, and in fourteen other places. 
 
IX.J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 361 
 
 singular instincts by wliich it appears in a manner 
 to apprehend the future 1. 
 
 For my own part, I am not able, even after reading 
 the argument of the learned and able Mr. Davison 2, 
 to escape from the belief that the hypothesis of a divine 
 command, given before the races recorded in Scripture 
 were multiplied and dispersed^ affords by far the most 
 rational and satisfactory explanation of the wide ex- 
 tension of the practice of animal sacrifice, and of its 
 remarkable uniformity as between races such as the 
 Hebrews and the Hellenes, who had no communication 
 together, and little indeed of anything in common. 
 At the same time, it is an hypothesis only, and has 
 not been demonstrated. 
 
 But if mankind thus offered certain animals to their 
 gods, under what they esteemed a divine authority, it 
 is not difficult to perceive the chain of association by 
 which those animals might themselves, in process of 
 time, very easily be taken for symbols of the godhead, 
 and might again, from being mere symbols, grow to 
 be esteemed the real shrines of its glory, and thus to 
 attract the worship which is its due. 
 
 VI. On the Modes 0/ Approximation between the Divine and 
 the Human Nature. 
 
 The anthropomorphic principle of the Greek religion 
 found for itself, in a spontaneous manner, several dis- 
 tinct forms or channels of development, for the closer 
 association of the races of gods and men. 
 
 ' Dbllinger, Heid. u. Jud. vi. 130, p. 424. 
 ^ Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice. 
 London, 1825. 
 
3^2 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 The deification of heroes and benefactors after death 
 appears before us in Homer as begun, yet, at least 
 in the Olympian mythology, as incomplete. No per- 
 son, avowedly of human origin, has yet been advanced 
 to the rank of deity with the full consequences both 
 of an abode in heaven, and a worship on earth. 
 
 Yet the consummation of the process is imminent. 
 All the materials are prepared ; and all the steps taken, 
 except the final one which combines them into a con- 
 sistent whole. 
 
 The elements of what was soon to be a system are 
 found in Homer principally as follows : — 
 
 1. The ascription of human forms, manners, affec- 
 tions, passions, and other qualities, to the gods in 
 general, lying at the root of the Homeric mythology 
 as an anthropomorphic system, firmly lays the ground 
 for further assimilation and intercommunion of the 
 two orders of being. 
 
 2. Divine beauty, strength, influence, and intellect, 
 are ascribed freely in a long list of epithets and phrases, 
 to the mortals most eminent for these properties : and 
 even the epithet Oilos, meaning simply 'divine,' is 
 attached, in the two grand cases of the Protagonists 
 Achilles and Odysseus, to the living personages of the 
 Poems, and to a larger number of the most eminent 
 among the dead. This second head of preparation is 
 as it were the counterpart of the first. 
 
 3. Birth from a divine progenitor, and even from 
 a divine father, is ascribed to many personages who 
 are active in the Poems, as well as to many who were 
 dead. 
 
 4. Passion for beautiful or distinguished men is 
 freely ascribed to goddesses, in a number of instances. 
 
IX.] THE OLrMPIAN SYSTEM. 363 
 
 Among these were some, especially Aphrodite and 
 Demeter, who were already in part, and whom at a 
 later date we find fully and unequivocally, adopted into 
 the Hellenic religion. But it is remarkable that such 
 passion is in no case throughout the Poems ascribed 
 to any of those goddesses who were either the most 
 elevated or else the most national : Here, Athene, 
 Leto, Artemis. A higher and purer idea of woman was 
 entertained among the Achaians, and reflected in their 
 religion, than in the elemental or the oriental systems. 
 
 5, More closely to the purpose than anything that 
 has yet been stated, are the instances of Ganymede 
 and Cleitos, translated to heaven and the society of 
 the Immortals for their beauty 1 : of Tithonos, taken 
 up to be the husband of Eos or the morning ; possibly 
 of Marpessa, whom Apollo ' snatched up ' 2 : and of Ino 
 Leucothee^, who locally, that is, in the great sea region, 
 has from being a mortal risen to the honours and 
 character of deity. Aiolos, too, may be considered as 
 nearly approaching to the character of a deified Per- 
 sonage *. 
 
 These, indeed, are all foreign, or extra-Hellenic, 
 traditions. But of Hellenes, we have Castor, and 
 Poludeukes or Pollux, who, even while on alternate days 
 alive though not among men, and still in the lower 
 regions, yet have by gift of Zeus had divine honours 
 allotted to them*: and more still, we have Heraklesf", 
 who, while his Wraith is in the Shades, himself dwells 
 among the gods, and has Hebe, who is apparently a 
 goddess proper, assigned to him for his mate. 
 
 1 II. XX. 233. Od. XV. 250. "^ II. ix. 564. 
 
 s Od. V, 333-335. * Od. X. I. 
 
 " Od. xi. 298-304. ^ Od. xi. 601. 
 
364 JUVENTUS MVNDI. ' [CHAP. 
 
 6. We have also the case of Dionusos, whom, as 
 having been born of a woman, we must apparently take 
 to have been at the outset a mortal, but who had, as 
 is pretty clear, in the time of Homer already become 
 an Olympian god. 
 
 7. Asclepios underwent a subsequent deification ; but 
 in Homer he is a mortal only, for his sons, Podalirios 
 and Machaon, bear the title of Asclepiad^, and no 
 mortal in Homer ever derives a patronymic from a god. 
 
 8. To whatever inferences the case of Dionusos may 
 lead, there is no other in which we find a trace or sug- 
 gestion of worsliip in its proper sense, as paid to any 
 deceased or translated hero. Yet there are two instances 
 of what may be called initial worship, which must not be 
 overlooked. Achilles, besides the fat of oxen and sheep, 
 casts four horses, two dogs, and twelve Trojan youths, 
 upon the funeral pyre of Patroclos ^. This is, however, 
 I think, to be interpreted purely as a gratification to 
 the departed spirit. In the Eleventh Odyssey we 
 advance a step further, though some may think the 
 Oriental character of the scenery of the Poem in this 
 part ought to be taken into account. Odysseus, by 
 express order from Kirke, besides making a libation, 
 sacrifices a ram and a sheep on the spot, with invoca- 
 tion to the gods, of whom Aides and Persephone are 
 named ; and permits the dead successively to drink the 
 blood, that they may tell him what he wants to know ^. 
 Here we see, dominant and unmixed, that idea of actual 
 enjoyment by the objects of the sacrifice, which in the 
 case of ordinary offerings to the gods is combined with 
 other ideas more proper to the notion of worship. But 
 
 1 II. iv. 204. 2 ij_ jjjjjjj^ i7i_jy6, 
 
 ^ Od. xi. 35, 44-47. 
 
IX.J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 365 
 
 besides this, Odysseus is also enjoined to promise, and 
 he promises accordingly, that, on his return to Ithaca, 
 he will offer (and here the sacrificial words pl^uv and 
 Upiveiv are employed) a black sheep to Teiresias, and 
 a cow that has never calved to the dead in general ^. 
 This vow seems to come within a step, at least, of the 
 full idea of worship. We do not hear of its fulfilment 
 on his return home : but this may be because we are 
 not carried by the Poem to a perfect settlement of the 
 difficulties which he finds awaiting him. Prayers {evxal 
 and \iTal) are here expressly mentioned as used in the 
 propitiation of the dead. But these are the entire 
 mass of dead, not selected spirits of the great or 
 brave. 
 
 One marked, and yet rather obscure, form of the con- 
 nection between the gods and the human race in Homer 
 is that of divine filiation. It is with much diffidence that 
 I offer any explanation of this subject. A very large 
 number of cases are recorded by the Poet, in which the 
 parentage of a god is expressly assigned to some human 
 house or hero. In some instances it arises by infer- 
 ence ; as when he calls Bellerophon, the son of Sisuphos, 
 descended from the god {9eov yovos^), which can only 
 mean, as Sisuphos was descended from Aiolos, that Aiolos 
 was the offspring of a god. So, again, in the Legend 
 of Nestor ^, we are told that the young heroes of the 
 line of Actor were saved from death by their ancestor 
 Poseidon. The Iliad enables us to trace this line up to 
 Azeus*, who must either have been a reputed son of 
 the god, or may more probably have been an Aiolid, 
 and thus descended from him, like the heads of so many 
 
 ' Od. xi. 29. ^ II. vi. 191. 
 
 ' II. xi. 751. * II. ii. 513, 621. 
 
^66 yuVENTUS MUNDI, [cHAP, 
 
 Other great houses. Amphimachos, another Actorid, is 
 slain in the Thirteenth Iliad : whereupon Poseidon is 
 exceedingly vexed at heart for his vlatvos or de- 
 scendant 1. 
 
 To examine more thoroughly into this matter, let us 
 take first for consideration the case of the great Ancient 
 Houses, represented by their chiefs in and before the 
 Trojan war. We find expressly assigned to Zeus the 
 stocks of 
 
 1. Perseus, 4. Heracles, 
 
 2. Minos, 5. Minos, 
 
 3. Aiacos, 6. Dardanos. 
 And to Poseidon those of 
 
 1. Actor (probably through Aiolos), 
 3. Pelias, 
 
 3. Neleus, 
 
 4. Bellerophon, through Aiolos, 
 
 5. Cretheus, (and Eumelos,) through Aiolos. 
 Again it appears, upon examination^ that Homer very 
 commonly characterises by the epithet afxvimv persons 
 of recognised divine descent. This epithet he gives to 
 members of the families of 
 
 1. The Pelopids, 
 3. Odysseus, 
 
 3. Telamon. 
 
 4. Portheus (ancestor of Meleager and of Tudeus), 
 
 5. Salmoneus and Angelas (through Aiolos,) with a 
 
 very few others of less distinction. 
 
 But the question arises, why is Homer so reserved, 
 
 in many of these cases, with respect to the immediate 
 
 connection between the first ancestor and the divine 
 
 stock ? The case, where we should have expected it to 
 
 * II. xiii. 206. 
 
IX.J THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 367 
 
 be most clearly declared, is that of the great sovereign 
 house of Agamemnon. But not a word is said by him 
 expressly on the subject of the birth of the Pelopids; 
 and the sceptre comes first into the hands of Pelops % 
 whereas tradition names Tantalos as the first ancestor, 
 and this Homer in no way contradicts. In the case of 
 Dardanos, on the contrary, which is the counterpart to 
 that of the Pelopids, the line is traced straight up to 
 Zeus 2. 
 
 The natural explanation seems to be that, here as in 
 so many other cases. Homer's functions as Chronicler 
 were circumscribed by his feelings of nationality ; and 
 that he acted on his usual rule of never knowingly re- 
 ferring, or providing means to refer, anything Hellenic 
 to a source admittedly foreign. Therefore, where the 
 oldest recognised ancestor is an undoubted Greek, as 
 in the case of Aiacos or Heracles, he gives the divine 
 parentage; but where the line ran up to some one, 
 who had not been completely or adequately Hellenised, 
 there no distinct declaration is given, and we are left to 
 form a judgment for ourselves, from slightsr indica- 
 tions, or from the fact that there is a general repre- 
 sentation of the Kings and Chiefs of the heroic age as 
 heaven-descended. In the case of Dardanos, there 
 could be no corresponding motive for reticence. 
 
 It will be observed, that all the very ancient houses 
 in Homer, say those of from four to seven generations 
 back, as well as the most distinguished modern ones, 
 like those of Aiacos and Heracles, are referred either 
 to Zeus, the supreme god of the Pelasgians and Hel- 
 lenes; or to Poseidon, who appears to have been the 
 supreme god according to the conception of the Phce- 
 ^ II. ii. 104. ^ II. XX. 215. 
 
368 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 nician immigrants. So far, then, as these cases are 
 concerned, it seems needless to travel far in search of an 
 explanatory hypothesis. In fact, if there was a tradi- 
 tion, such as we find from the Scriptures to have pre- 
 vailed among the Hebrews, and by which man in his 
 first inception was viewed as standing in the relation 
 of sonship to the Almighty, it is in accordance with 
 all likelihood that, in process of time, this illustrious 
 extraction should come in popular estimation to be 
 confined to chiefs or ruling men. 
 
 This explanation is however principally available for 
 the class of Kings and Princes, who are called Zeus- 
 born and Zeus-nurtured ; and for those individual 
 cases, which are of the greatest antiquity, and where 
 no name of a mother is preserved. When we find a 
 maternal name, a new element of difficulty is intro- 
 duced. This difficulty may be deemed secondary in 
 cases like those of Minos and Perseus; because there 
 the mother may be nothing more than an indication, 
 supplied by tradition, of the national extraction of the 
 son. The mother of Minos is simply ' the daughter of 
 an illustrious Phoenician,' and Danae has her counter- 
 part in a local Phoenician name. But what are we to 
 say of Alcmene, the mother of Heracles 1? of Lao- 
 damia, the mother of Sarpedon ^ ? of Astuoche, the 
 mother of Ascalaphos and lalmenos^? of Polumele'', 
 the mother of Eudoros? perhaps also, of Turo, the 
 mother of Pelias and Neleus * ? All these are women, 
 having a place and an individuality as well defined as 
 any other pre-Homeric women of the Poems. 
 
 ^ II. xix. 98. 2 ii_ ^i jgg_ 
 
 ' II. ii. 513. * II. xvi. 180. 
 
 " Od. xi. 235, 254. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 369 
 
 The explanation commonly given of these cases has 
 been that they were cases of mere bastardy, covered 
 with the illustrious names of deity. May it not how- 
 ever be said that, if this be true, then nowhere did 
 those connected with the birth of illegitimate children 
 take so amazingly high a flight as among the Greeks ; 
 since, not content with equality, they gave them a 
 higher title, by extraction, than the lawful offspring of 
 the family themselves enjoyed ? Of bastardy, as com- 
 monly understood, we have plenty of examples in the 
 Homeric poems. Sometimes, as in the case of Eudoros, 
 a person born out of wedlock was reared upon the same 
 footing as a legitimate child. But when this is done, 
 it is always mentioned as a thing worthy of note, evi- 
 dently because more or less exceptional. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that these singular cases of 
 persons who had a known mother, and who supplied 
 the want of a known father by claiming the parentage 
 of a god, were not cases of common bastardy, but that 
 they are rather to be explained by reference to the an- 
 cient customs of what may be called marriage by violent 
 abduction, or violation without dishonour, practised in 
 ancient times by the men of one tribe upon the daugh- 
 ters of another 1. Of the traces of this custom, ancient 
 history is full ; and even modern manners, in certain 
 cases, aye at our very doors, visibly retain them. It 
 seems to me that where, in the incidents of a tribal 
 raid, some noble maid or even some matron of high 
 birth fell a victim to the lust of an invader, it was 
 agreeable to likelihood, as well as to social justice, that 
 a clear line should be drawn between such cases and 
 cases of dishonour willingly or corruptly incurred ; and 
 ' See Maclellan on Primitive Marriage, Edinb. 1865. 
 Bb 
 
370 JVVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 that either the involuntary mother at the time of the 
 birth, or her offspring as he grew up, and went among 
 his fellows without having like them a father to point 
 to and to lean on, might exceptionally, and under 
 favouring circutnstances, have contrived to imitate for 
 themselves the old tradition of the descent of kings 
 from gods. The choice of the deity might in such cases 
 be influenced by the particular worship in vogue among 
 the aggressive tribe. 
 
 The correlative cases, of legendary births due to the 
 passion of goddesses for men, may perhaps admit of a 
 similar explanation. The probable difference in the 
 facts being, that these would be instances where the 
 mother disappeared, and the child remained in the pos- 
 session of the father. This remark may possibly apply to 
 jEneas, son of Aphrodite ; to Aisepos and Pedasos, sons 
 of the Naiad Nymph Abarbareej to Satnios, the son of 
 another Naiad ; and to Iphition, the son of a third ^. 
 
 The birth of Achilles from Thetis will not fall into 
 either of these categories; since it is represented as 
 having taken place in regular wedlock. My conjecture 
 respecting this birth is, that it may possibly be a pure 
 invention, due to Homer himself, though perhaps sug- 
 gested by the legends current in his day, respecting the 
 attachments contracted by goddesses to mortal men. 
 Such a fiction would be comparatively easy in the case 
 of one who, like Peleus, was a reputed immigrant into 
 the country which he ruled. 
 
 1 sum up then by observing that we find, over and 
 above the use of language properly figurative, four main 
 channels of approach for the human nature to the 
 divine, 
 
 ^ II. ii. 821 ; vi. 21 ; xiv. 444; xx. 3.84. 
 
IX.] TBE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 371 
 
 I. Translation. 
 
 3. Mixed Composition. 
 
 3. Affiliation. 
 
 4. Deification. 
 
 And affiliation again, if I am riglit, appears in at least 
 four shapes, 
 
 {a) The ascription of a Divine birth or nurture to 
 
 Kings and Princes as a class. 
 (^)'<Che ascription of a particular god as ancestor to 
 a sovereign house. This god is always either 
 Zeus or Poseidon, 
 (f) More recent births from a divine father. 
 {d) Births of men from a goddess ; few, and all recent. 
 
 VII. The Homeric View of the Future State. 
 
 The picture of the future state of man in Homer is emi- 
 nently truthful as a representation of a creed which had 
 probably fallen into dilapidation, and of the feelings 
 which clustered about it ; and it is perhaps unrivalled in 
 the perfectly natural, but penetrating force, with which it 
 conveys the effect of dreariness and gloom. It does not 
 appear to be in all respects coherent and symmetrical ; 
 and, while nothing betokens that this defect is owing to 
 the diversity of the sources from which the traditions 
 are drawn, it is such as might be due to the waste 
 wrought by time and change on a belief which liad at 
 an earlier date been self-consistent. 
 
 The future life, however, is in Homer used with 
 solemnity and force as a sanction of the moral laws, 
 especially in so far as the crime of perjury is concerned 1. 
 
 ^ II. iii. 297; xix. 259. 
 B b 2 
 
^7:2 yuv'ENruS MUNDI. ' [cHAP. 
 
 The Erinues dwell in the Underworld, and punish per- 
 jurors. As the Erinues are invoked with reference to 
 other offences^, we may therefore presume them also 
 to have been punishable in the Underworld. 
 
 The world to come is exhibited to us by Homer in 
 three divisions. 
 
 First, there is the Elysian plain, apparently under the 
 government of Rhadamanthus, to which Menelaos will 
 be conducted, or rather perhaps translated, in order to 
 die there ; not for his virtues, however, but because he 
 is the husband of Helen, and so the son-in-law of Zeus. 
 The main characteristic of this abode seems to be easy 
 and abundant subsistence with an atmosphere free from 
 the violence of winter, and from rain and snow. 
 Okeanos freshens it with Zephyrs ; it is therefore appa- 
 rently on the western border of the world ^. Mr. Max 
 Miiller conjectures that Elysium (rjXvOov) may be a name 
 simply expressing the future ^. The whole conception, 
 however, may be deemed more or less ambiguous, inas- 
 much as the Elysian state is antecedent to death. 
 
 a. Next comes the Underworld proper, the general 
 receptacle of human spirits. It nowhere receives a 
 territorial name in Homer, but is called the abode of 
 Aides, or of Aides and Persephone. Its character is 
 chill, drear, and dark ; the very gods abhor it *. Better 
 to serve for hire even a needy master, says the Shade of 
 Achilles, than to be lord over all the Dead '. It reaches, 
 however, under the crust of the earth ; for, in the Theo- 
 machy, Aidoneus dreads lest the earthquake of Poseidon 
 should lay open his domain to gods and men 6. 
 
 ^ See Erinues, sect. iii. jupra. " Od. iv. 561-569. 
 
 ^ Lectures on Language, ii. 562, n. 
 
 * II. XX. 65. " Od. xi. 489. « II. XX. I. Comp. Od. xi. 302. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 373 
 
 Minos administers justice among the dead, as a king 
 would on earth. But they are in general under no penal 
 infliction. Three cases only are mentioned as cases of 
 suffering: those of Tituos, Tantalos, and Sisuphos^. 
 The offence is only named in the case of Tituos ; it 
 was violence offered to the goddess Leto. Heracles 
 suffers a strange discerption of individuality; for his 
 eidolon or Shade moves and speaks here, while 'he 
 himself is at the banquets of the immortals ^.' Again, 
 Castor and Pollux are here, and are alive on alternate 
 days, while they enjoy on earth the honours of deities *. 
 Here, then, somewhat conflicting conditions appear to 
 be combined. 
 
 Within the dreary region seems to be a palace, which 
 is in a more special sense the residence of its rulers *. 
 
 The access to the Underworld is in the far East, by 
 the Ocean River, at a full day's sail from the Euxine, 
 in the country of the cloud-wrapt Kimmerioi ^. From 
 this point the way lies, for an indefinite distance, up 
 the Stream ; to a point where the beach is narrow, and 
 where Persephone is worshipped in her groves of poplar 
 and of willow «. 
 
 3. There is also the region of Tartaros, as far below 
 that of Aides, as Aides is below the earth. Here 
 dwell lapetos and Kronos, far from the solar ray''. 
 Kronos has a band of gods around him, who have in 
 another place the epithet of sub-Tartarean j and the 
 name of Titans s. It does not appear whether these 
 are at all identified with the deposed dynasty of the 
 
 1 Od. xi. 576, 582, 593. ^ Od. xi. 601-627. 
 
 ' Od. xi. 300-304. * Od. xi. 627, 635; 
 
 ? Od. xi. 9-14. See Chap. XIII. sect. 3. ^ Od. x. 506-512. 
 
 ' II. viii. 1.6, 479. . ; * II. xiv. 274, 279. 
 
374 yuvENTUs mundi. [chap. 
 
 Nature Powers, whose dwelling is in the Underworld ^ j 
 and with whom the human Dead had communication, 
 for Achilles charges the Shade of Patroclos with a com- 
 mission to the River Spercheios ^. 
 
 The line, therefore, between the realm of Aides and 
 the dark Tartaros is obscurely drawn ^ but in general 
 we may say that, while the former was for men, the 
 latter was for deposed or condemned Immortals. We 
 hear of the offences of Eurumedon and the Giants with 
 their ruler ^ ■ and, though their place is not named, we 
 may presume them, as well as Otos and Ephialtes, to 
 be in Tartaros, in addition to the deities already 
 named*. Hither it is that Zeus threatens to hurl 
 down refractory divinities of the Olympian Court ^. 
 
 This threefold division of the unseen world is in 
 some kind of correspondence with the Christian, and 
 with what may have been the patriarchal, tradition ; as 
 is the retributive character of the future state, however 
 imperfectly developed, and the continuance there of the 
 habits and propensities acquired on earth. 
 
 VIII. The Olympian System in its Results. 
 
 The history of the race of Adam before the Advent 
 is the history of a long and varied but incessant pre- 
 paration for the Advent. It is commonly perceived 
 that Greece contributed a language and an intellectual 
 discipline, Rome a political organisation, to the appa- 
 ratus which was put in readiness to assist the propaga- 
 
 ' II. iii. 278. 2 II. xxiii. 144-153. 
 
 2 Od. vli. 60. * Od. xi. 318. II. V. 385, 407. 
 
 ° II. V. 897, 898; viii. 10; xvii. 401-406. 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 375 
 
 tion of the Gospel ; and that each of these, in its kind, 
 was the most perfect that the world had produced. I 
 have endeavoured elsewhere to show with some fulness 
 what was the place of Greece in the Providential order 
 of the world 1 ; and likewise what was the relation of 
 Homer to the Greeks, and to their part of the Divine 
 plan, as compared with the relation of the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures to the chosen people of God 2. I cannot now enter 
 on that field at large ; yet neither can I part without 
 a word from the subject of the Olympian religion. 
 
 In the works of Homer, this design is projected with 
 such extraordinary grandeur, that the representation of 
 it, altogether apart from the general merits of the 
 Poems, deserves to be considered as one of the topmost 
 achievements of the human mind. Yet its character, 
 as it was first and best set forth in its entirety from 
 the brain of the finisher and the maker, is not more 
 wonderful than its subsequent influence and duration 
 in actual life. For, during, twelve or fourteen hundred 
 years, it was the religion of the most thoughtful, the 
 most fruitful^ the most energetic portions of the human 
 family. It yielded to Christianity alone j and to the 
 Church it yielded with reluctance, summoning up 
 strength in its extreme old age, and only giving way 
 after an intellectual as well as a civil battle, obstinately 
 fought, and lasting for generations. For the greater 
 part of a century after the fall of Constantinople, in 
 the chief centres of a Christian civilisation in many 
 respects degenerated, and an ecclesiastical power too 
 little faithful to its trust, Greek letters and Greek 
 thought once again asserted their strength over the 
 
 ' Address to the University of Edinburgh, 1865. 
 ^ Studies on Homer, vol. ii. Olympos, sect, x. 
 
37<5 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 most cultivated minds of Italy^ in a manner which testi- 
 fied to the force, and to the magic charm, with which 
 they were imperishably endowed. Even within what 
 may be called our own time, the Olympian religion has 
 exercised a fascination altogether extraordinary over the 
 mind of Goethe, who must be regarded as standing in 
 the very first rank of the great minds of the latest 
 centuries. 
 
 The Olympian religion^ however, owes perhaps as 
 large a share of its triumphs to its depraved accommoda- 
 tions, as to its excellences. Yet an instrument so 
 durable, potent, and elastic, must certainly have had 
 a purpose to serve. Let us consider for a moment 
 what it may have been. 
 
 We have seen how closely, and in how many ways, • 
 it bound humanity and deity together. As regarded 
 matter of duty and virtue, not to speak of that highest 
 form of virtue which is called holiness, this union was 
 effected mainly by lowering the divine element. But 
 as regarded all other functions of our nature, outside 
 the domain of the life to god-ward, all those functions 
 which are summed up in what Saint Paul calls the 
 flesh and the mind, the psychic and the bodily life, 
 the tendency of the system was to exalt the human 
 element, by proposing a model of beauty, strength, and 
 wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated, that the 
 effort to attain them required a continual upward 
 strain. It made divinity attainable j and thus it effect- 
 ually directed the thought and aim of man 
 
 ' Along the line of limitless desires.' 
 
 Such a scheme of religion, though failing grossly in 
 the government of the passions, and in upholding the 
 
IX.] THE OLYMPIAN SYSTEM. 377 
 
 standard of moral duties, tended powerfully to produce 
 a lofty self-respect, and a large, free, and varied con- 
 ception of humanity. It incorporated itself in schemes 
 of notable discipline for mind and body, indeed of a 
 lifelong education ; and these habits of mind and action 
 had their marked results (to omit many other great- 
 nesses) in a philosophy, literature, and art, which remain 
 to this day unrivalled or unsurpassed. 
 
 The sacred fire, indeed, that was to touch the mind 
 and heart of man from above, was in preparation else- 
 where. Within the shelter of the hills that stand about 
 Jerusalem, the great Archetype of the spiritual excel- 
 lence and purification of man was to be produced and 
 matured. But a body, as it were, was to be made ready 
 for this angelic soul. And as when some splendid edi- 
 fice is to be reared, its diversified materials are brought 
 from this quarter and from that, according as nature 
 and man favour their production, so did the wisdom of 
 God, with slow but ever sure device, cause to ripen 
 amidst the several races best adapted for the work, the 
 several component parts of the noble fabric of a Chris- 
 tian manhood and a Christian civilisation. ' The kings 
 of Tharsis and of the isles shall give presents: the 
 kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts K' Every 
 worker was, with or without his knowledge and his will, 
 to contribute to the work. And among them an appro- 
 priate part was thus assigned both to the Greek people, 
 and to what I have termed the Olympian religion. 
 
 ' Ps, Ixxii. 10. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ethics of the Heroic Age. 
 
 Section I. 
 
 In general outline, we may thus sum up the moral 
 character of the Homeric Greeks, favourably regarded. 
 
 A high-spirited, energetic, adventurous, and daring 
 people, they show themselves prone to acts of hasty 
 violence ; and their splendid courage occasionally even 
 degenerates, under the influence of strong passion, into 
 ferocity, while their acuteness and sagacity sometimes, 
 though more rarely, take a decided tinge of cunning. 
 Yet they are neither selfish, cruel, nor implacable. 
 At the same time, self-command is scarcely less con- 
 spicuous among them than strong, and deep, and quick 
 emotion. They are, in the main, a people of warm 
 affections and high honour, commonly tender, never 
 morbid : they respect the weak and the helpless ; they 
 hold authority in reverence. Domestic purity, too, is 
 cherished and esteemed among them more than else- 
 where; and they have not yet fallen into the lower 
 depths of sensual excess. 
 
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 379 
 
 The Greek thanks the gods in his prosperity ; 
 witness the case of Laertes. It is perhaps less remark- 
 able that in his adversity he appeals to them for aid. 
 If, again, he is discontented, he complains of them; 
 for he harbours no concealed dissatisfaction. Ready 
 enough to take from those who have, he is at least 
 as ready to give to those who need. He represents 
 to the life the sentiment which another great master 
 of manners has given to his Duke of Argyle, in the 
 ' Heart of Mid Lothian' : ' It is our Highland privi- 
 lege to take from all what we want, and to give to 
 all what tbey want^.' Distinctions of class are recog- 
 nised, but they are mild and genial ; there is no 
 arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the 
 other. Reverence is paid to those in authority; and 
 yet the Greek thinks in the spirit, and moves in 
 the sphere, of habitual freedom. Over and above his 
 warmth and tenacity in domestic affections, he prizes 
 highly those other special relations between man and 
 man, which mitigate and restrain the law of force in 
 societies as yet imperfectly organized. He thoroughly 
 admires the intelligence displayed in stratagem, whether 
 among the resources of self-defence, or by way of jest 
 upon a friend, or for the hurt or ruin of an enemy ; but 
 life in disguise he cannot away with, and holds it a 
 prime article in his creed that the tongue should 
 habitually represent the man^. 
 
 From these facts, if taken alone, we might be tempted 
 to suppose, that the Greeks of the Homeric age were an 
 inhuman and savage race, who did not appreciate the 
 value of human life. But this is not so. They are not 
 a cruel people. There is no wanton infliction of pain 
 ' Scott's Novels and Tales, 8vo. ed., x. 238. '' II. ix. 312. 
 
380 yUVENTUS MUNOI. [cHAP. 
 
 throughout the whole operations of the Iliad ; no delight 
 in the sufferings of others, no aggravation of them 
 through vindictive passion. The only needless wounds 
 given, are wounds inflicted on the dead body of Hector 1. 
 It seems to be not a disregard of human life, but an 
 excess of regard for courage, which led them to under- 
 value the miseries incident to violence. 
 
 The character of Heracles, or Hercules, is one of 
 which we hear much more evil than good in the 
 Poems, if indeed we hear any good at all. The 
 climax of his misdeeds is in the case of Iphitos, the 
 possessor of certain fine mares. Heracles became his 
 guest, slew him, and carried off the animals^. Yet, 
 he is nowhere held up to reprobation. Indeed he seems 
 to be a sharer of the banquets of the gods, and has 
 Hebe for his wife ; his Shade, or Eidolon, however, 
 dwelling in the Underworld^. If this passage be 
 genuine, we can only suppose his crimes to be re- 
 deemed, in the public judgmeat, by his courage, toge- 
 ther with his divine extraction. And the passage is 
 supported by the application to him of the epithet 
 th eios, which is given in the Poems only to the two 
 Protagonists, Achilles and Odysseus, among the living, 
 and to the most distinguished among the dead. Cer- 
 tainly, the indignation of the Greeks is against Paris 
 the eiFeminate coward, much more than Paris the 
 ravisher. The shame of the abduction lay in the fact 
 that he was the guest of Menelaos*. And the guilt of 
 Aigisthos finds its climax in this, that he slew Agamem- 
 non by stealth, at a banquet, like a stalled ox^. Piracy, 
 
 ^ II. xxii. 371. ^ Od. xxi. 24-30. 
 
 ' Od. xi. 601-604. * II. iii. 351-354. 
 
 = Od. i., 35-37 ; iv, 5J4-535; xi. 409-420. .. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 381 
 
 again, was regarded, at the very least, with a moral 
 indifference', which continued down to the time of 
 Thucydides in many parts of Greece 2. Even Odysseus, 
 the model-prince, when he has destroyed the Suitors, 
 and is considering how he can repair his wasted sub- 
 stance, calculates upon effecting it in part by occasional 
 free-booting^. To the principle, then, he freely gives 
 his sanction ; although he probably attacked the Kicones 
 as allies of Troy*; and he disapproved, as it appears, of 
 the raid upon the Egyptians, which in one of his fables 
 he imputes to his ship's company". This act is denomi- 
 nated an outrage 8; and some disapproval of pirates is 
 implied in another passage''. But it is faint. Piracy 
 was a practice connected on one side with trade, and 
 on the other with fighting; and it seems to have been 
 acquitted of guilt for the reason that the gains of the 
 pirate's life were the fruit of bravery combined with 
 skill, and were not unequally balanced by its dangers. 
 And piracy seems to have been practised only upon 
 foreigners; of course such foreigners only as did not 
 come within the range of any bond of guestship. 
 
 Religion, however, had a considerable moral force. 
 
 The connection in the age of Homer between duty 
 on the one side, and religious belief and reverence on 
 the other, is well seen 
 
 {a) Negatively, by the faithlessness and ferocity of 
 the Cyclops towards men, while he avows his contempt 
 for Zeus and the gods^. 
 
 {b) By the fact that the persons addicted to sacrifice 
 and religious observances are with Homer the upright 
 
 ' Od. iii. 72. ^ Thuc. i. 5. ^ Od. xxiii. 357. 
 
 * Od. ix. 40. ' Od. xiv. 259 seqq. " Od. xiv. 262. 
 
 ' Od. xxiv. III. * Od. ix. 273-280, 356, 368-270. 
 
382 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 and good men : such as Hector in the Iliad, and Eumaios 
 in the Odyssey'. 
 
 (c) As our word 'righteous,' founded on right, and 
 embracing morality, extends also to piety, so in 
 Homer the corresponding word dicaios clearly 
 embraces duty towards the gods^. The Abioi^, an 
 uncivilised nation, are with him 'the most righteous 
 of men.' 
 
 {d) Conversely, the character of the theoudes, or 
 god-revering man, is identified with that of the 
 stranger-loving, and opposed to that of the insolent, 
 the savage, and the unrighteous'*. 
 
 (e) The wicked man cannot by sacrifices secure the 
 fruits of his crime. Aigisthos oiFers them in abun- 
 dance: but the gods destroy him by the hand of 
 Orestes'. 
 
 (/) Though the outward act of sacrifice did not of 
 necessity imply a corresponding frame of mind, yet it 
 was of rehgious tendency. The ordinary offering, at the 
 common meal, of a portion to the deity as the giver, 
 may be compared with the ' grace ' among Christians. 
 In solemn celebrations, and sometimes indeed at the 
 private meal 6, prayer and thanksgiving were commonly 
 combined with the rite. 
 
 {g) The gods, as we have already seen, were thought, 
 in a real though incomplete measure, to be rewarders 
 of the good, and punishers of the bad. 
 
 [h) There was a strong general belief in the efScacy 
 of prayer, testified by its practice. 
 
 We must not deny the reality of moral distinctions 
 
 ' II. xxiv. 68. Od. xiv. 420. ^ qj_ j;j_ 132-136. 
 
 ' II. xiii. 6. * Od. vi. 120. 
 
 = Od. iii. 272-275 ; i. 35-43. « Od. xiv. 423. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 383 
 
 in Homer upon any such ground as that he sometimes 
 describes greatness and strength by names rather de- 
 noting virtue, and mentions, for example, the services 
 ' which the inferior render to the good'.' The language 
 even of our own day has not yet escaped from this" 
 very improper confusion. We still speak of the ' better 
 classes,' and of ' good society.' By him, as by us, the 
 error is escaped in other cases : for he calls the Suitor- 
 Princes ' very inferior men 2.' And the word a g a t h o s, 
 or good, has unquestionably in some passages a solely 
 moral meanings; while it is never applied to any 
 bad man or action, however energetic or successfiil. 
 
 There was a voice of conscience, and a sentiment 
 ranging between reverence and fear, within the breast. 
 Sometimes this ascended to a point far higher than 
 the mere avoidance of crime. After his conquest of 
 the Hupoplakian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil 
 the body of the slain king Eetion, and burned it with 
 the precious armour on. He was restrained, not by 
 general opinion, but by the inward sentiment called 
 sebas*. To strip the corpse would have been the 
 usual course. Telemachos endeavours, of course in 
 vain, to arouse in the minds of the Suitors a nemesis * 
 of self-judgment, or sense of the moral law. To this 
 nemesis (often inacccurately rendered as revenge) 
 Menelaos appeals, when exciting the Greeks to defend 
 the body of Patrocloss from insult. But the whole 
 matter is best learned from an address of Telemachos 
 to the Suitors, where he says (a) ' rouse within you of 
 yourselves a nemesis (or moral sense); and {l>) an albcas 
 (a sense of honour, or regard to opinion of your fellow- 
 
 ^ Od. XV. 323. 2 Od. xxi. 325. ^ II. vi. 162; ix. 341. 
 
 * II. vi. 417. ' Od. ii. 138. ^ II. xvii. 254. 
 
384 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 citizens) i and {c) fear the wrath of the gods'.' These 
 three principles were the three great pillars of morality. 
 The motive of ai'S&is may be stirred by the brniov <pdns, 
 or public sentiment, which we find to have been an 
 engine of great power with Phoenix^ and even with 
 Penelope and Nausicaa. This aidos is a sentiment 
 which has ultimate reference to the standard of opinion j 
 but it does not require that opinion to be in present 
 and immediate action. It is self-judgment, according 
 to the standard supplied by the ideas of others; as 
 nemesis is self-judgment by the inward law. This aiS'is 
 ranges through a great variety of sub-meanings — defer- 
 ence, tenderness, scrupulosity, compassion, self-respect, 
 piety, bashfulness, honour, and every form of shame, 
 excepting false shame. Hesiod says in his iron, or 
 post-Homeric age, that albas, along with viixecris, had 
 vanished from the earth. 
 
 With respect to blood-shedding, the morality of the 
 Greeks of Homer was extremely loose. To have killed 
 a man was considered a misfortune, or at most an error 
 in point of prudence ^. It was punished by a fine payable 
 to relatives, which it was usual to accept in full satisfac- 
 tion. But fugitives from their vengeance were every- 
 where received without displeasure or surprise. Priam,. 
 appearing unexpectedly before Achilles, is compared 
 to a man who, having had the misfortune to slay 
 somebody, appears on a sudden in a strange place*. 
 
 The cases of such homicides are numerous in the 
 Poems. It may be enough to observe that Patroclos, 
 whose character is one of great gentleness, committed 
 
 ^ Od. ii. 64-67. 2 II. ix. 460. 
 
 ' II. ix. 632. * II. xxiv. 480-482. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 385 
 
 one in his youth without premeditation \ and was 
 therefore given over by his father Menoitios into the 
 honourable charge of Peleus: that Ajax had received 
 Lycophron after homicide, and 'honoured him as if 
 a beloved parent ^ :' and that Telemachos receives 
 Theoclumenos, and gives him the place of honour, 
 ■when he had simply announced himself as a fugitive 
 from the vengeance of the powerful kindred of a man 
 whom he had killed^, without stating anything about 
 the cause. 
 
 It is difHcult however to trace in Homer the existence 
 of an universal law of relative duty, between man and 
 man as such. The chief restraints upon misdeeds were 
 to be found in laws, understood but not written, and 
 which were binding as between certain men, not be- 
 tween all men. These were 
 
 1. Members of a family. 
 
 2. Members of a State or nation. 
 
 3. Persons bound by the law of guestship. 
 
 4. Suppliants and those whom they addressed. 
 
 The weakest point of the Homeric system of ethics 
 is its tenderness (to say the least) for fraud under cer- 
 tain conditions. This has ever been indeed a difficult 
 chapter in the science of Ethics : it is probably one, 
 in which the human faculties will ever, or very long, 
 remain unequal to the task of drawing at once clearly 
 and firmly, in abstract statement, the lines of discrimi- 
 nation between right and wrong. In Homer, how- 
 ever, we seem to find the balance not doubtfully deter- 
 mined, but manifestly inclining the wrong way. Into 
 the mouth of Achilles, indeed, he has put the most 
 
 ^ II. xxiii. 86. 2 ii_ XV. 4.29-440. ' Od. xv. 260 seqq. 
 
 c c 
 
386 yVVENTUS MUNDT. [CHAP, 
 
 powerful denunciation of falsehood ever uttered by 
 man^. Pope's rendering is not quite unworthy — 
 
 ' Who dares think one thing, and another tell, 
 My heart detests him as the gates of hell.' 
 
 This, however, we may consider as in great part belong- 
 ing to the single character of Achilles. It is a principle 
 worked out in his entire conduct, without a single flaw. 
 His soul and actions are sky-clear. Among the Homeric 
 deities, there is nothing that approaches him in this re- 
 spect. Indeed it is especially in the region of the Immor- 
 tals that we find the plague-spot planted. In Athene, by 
 far the loftiest of his Olympian conceptions, we find 
 a distinct condescension not simply to stratagem, but 
 to fraud ; and she, with Odysseus, finds a satisfaction, 
 when they respectively allow to one another the praise 
 of excelling all others within this department, she 
 among the gods, he among mortal men ^, 
 
 At this we may not be greatly surprised; for force 
 and energy already outweigh the moral element in the 
 whole conception of the supernatural : and the character 
 of Odysseus, with its many and great virtues, has a 
 bias in this direction. But we may be much more 
 surprised to find what we may fairly call a glorification 
 of cunning, if not of fraud, exhibited in the character 
 of that Greek chieftain, who, next to Achilles, may 
 be thought most to approximate to the ideal of Homeric 
 chivalry. Diomed meets the noble Glaucos on the 
 field : they explain, and recognise as subsisting between 
 them, the laws of hereditary guestship. The Greek 
 then proposes the exchange of arms, which Glaucos 
 
 ' II. ix. 312 (Pope, V. 412). 2 Od. xiii. 294 seqq. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 387 
 
 accepts: and Diomed obtains the value of a hundred 
 oxen in return for the value of nine. 
 
 We may however observe, that Achilles, in whom 
 comes out the bright blaze of perfect openness and 
 truth, is not only the Coryphjeus of the Greek band 
 of heroes, but he is above all things the type of 
 Hellenism ; the model of that character, which Homer 
 considered to belong to his race. And, as far as we 
 can perceive, though there is a delight in the use of 
 deceit as stratagem for a particular end, the general 
 course of thought is unreserved and open : the Poems 
 show us nothing like life in a mask. 
 
 The idea of sin, considered as an ofFence against 
 the divine order, has by no means been effaced from 
 the circle of moral ideas in Homer. It seems to be 
 strongly implied in the word drao-flaXiij, which is applied 
 to deep, deliberate wickedness ; to sinning against 
 light J to doing what, but for a guilty ignorance, we 
 must know to be wrong. For, when it is intended to 
 let in any allowance for mere weakness, or for solici- 
 tation from without, or for a simply foolish blindnessj 
 then the word arrj is used. And I doubt whether, in 
 any one instance throughout the Poems, these two 
 designations are ever applied to one and the same mis- 
 conduct. It is certainly contrary to the general, and 
 almost universal, rule. The atasthalie is something 
 done with clear sight and knowledge, with the full 
 and conscious action of the will : it is something re- 
 garded as wholly without excuse, as tending to an entire 
 moral deadness, and as entailing final punishment alike 
 without warning and without mercy. Nothing can ac- 
 count for the introduction into a moral code of a form 
 of ofFence conceived with such intensity, and ranked 
 
 c c a 
 
•jS'S JUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 SO highj except the belief that the man committing it 
 had deliberately set aside that inward witness to truth 
 and righteousness which is supplied by the law of our 
 nature, and in the repudiation of which the universal 
 and consentient voice of mankind has always placed 
 the most awful responsibility, the extremest degree of 
 guilt, that the human being can incur. 
 
 The wicked man, thus hardened in his deliberate 
 wickedness (arao-^aAf?/), is then driven on by the deity, 
 that is, as we should say, by a divine order and dis- 
 pensation, in his mad career. Of this penal mechanism 
 Athene is, in the Odyssey, the instrument. When the 
 stool has been hurled at Odysseus disguised in his own 
 house, and the insolence of the Suitors has reached its 
 height, Telemachos tells them 'ye are mad with 
 excess of food and wine j some deity now drives you i.' 
 Before this we are told 'Athene would not let the 
 haughty Suitors stop in their biting insolence V And 
 when Amphinomos has received the friendly but very 
 solemn warning of Odysseus », he is shaken inwardly, 
 and a presentiment of calamity presses on him. Here 
 the Poet goes beyond, that 'hardening of Pharaoh's 
 heart,' with which a comparison is naturally suggested, 
 And indicates that, even while he was suiFering this 
 pain, which may almost be construed into a state of 
 indecision, Athene held him entangled inwardly, in the 
 meshes of his guilt, that he might be conquered by 
 Telemachost. The subsequent attempt of Amphinomos 
 to restrain outrageous excess appears to show, that he 
 was still at this time halting between two opinions. 
 The sentiment of the Poet, usually so just, appears here 
 
 ^ Od. xvili. 406. '^ Od. xviii. 346. ^ Qd. xviii. 125-150. 
 * Od. xviii. 155. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 389 
 
 even to tremble on the verge of a dark fatalism. But 
 this belongs to ulterior and later processes of thought. 
 What we have here to notice is, how very deeply the 
 idea of moral guilt was engraven in the mind of the 
 Poet, and therefore probably of his age. 
 
 The peculiar word atasthalie is chiefly used by 
 Homer to describe the prolonged and hardened wicked- 
 ness of the Suitors. The weakest case of its applica- 
 tion is to the obstinate folly of Hector in refusing the 
 counsel of Poludamas, and thus ruining the Trojan 
 cause ^: but here it is applied by the hero himself, not 
 by any one else to him. 
 
 The view of patience in the Ethics of Homer is a 
 very noble one. It is with him a prime virtue. In- 
 deed, the characteristic merit of one of the Protagonists, 
 Odysseus, is to be patient (woXi^rXas), as his distinguishing 
 intellectual endowment is to be iroXviJ.rjns J resourceful, 
 elastic, versatile. This patience of the Homeric hero 
 is as far as possible from being a mere acquiescence in 
 fatality, or a cowardly retirement from the battle of life 
 in order to put the soul to sleep. It is full of reason 
 and feeling; it involves and largely partakes of self- 
 restraint ; it might almost be defined as moral courage. 
 It is an active, not a passive function of the mind. 
 Its action, indeed, is generally confined to the inward 
 sphere. Yet it is not always so confined^. And it is 
 always on the verge of, and ever capable of being de- 
 veloped into, the most heroic energy. 
 
 The sense of justice is also very strong in the Poems. 
 
 Agamemnon indeed is unjust, as well as rapacious; 
 
 but, notwithstanding his sense of responsibility, and his 
 
 fraternal affection, Agamemnon is not a character 
 
 1 II. xxii, 104, ^ II. xxiv. 505. 
 
390 . " juvENTirs mvNDi. ' [cbAs. 
 
 towards whom Homer intends to attract our sympathies. 
 The Greek chieftains seem never among themselves to 
 deviate from fairness, except in the case of the chariot- 
 race. It is singular that three thousand years ago, as 
 now, horse-racing should have been found to offer the 
 subtlest temptations to the inward integrity of man. 
 The winning positions of Diomed^ and Eumelos in the 
 race are reversed by a divine intervention, which throws 
 Eumelos into the very last place. And it seems to be from 
 a sense of substantial justice that Achilles proposes to 
 commit what would have been a technical breach of it 
 by giving him the second honour. But Antilochos, who 
 has gained the third place against Menelaos by a sheer 
 trick, remonstrates; and Achilles, with his supreme 
 courtesy, introduces for Eumelos an additional prize to 
 ^oid even the semblance of wrong. Then comes the 
 turn of Menelaos, who vehemently protests against the 
 proceeding of Antilochos. The young warrior, who 
 had been greatly excited against Eumelos, at once 
 acknowledges the justice of the complaint, and oflFers to 
 give Menelaos not only the prize in question, but any- 
 thing else that he possesses, rather than oflFend him. 
 Upon this Menelaos, not to be outdone in the contest 
 of high manners, and without doubt recollecting that all 
 his competitors are suffering in the war on his behalf, at 
 once surrendersthe second prize and takes the third. Thus, 
 notwithstanding the device effected in the race itself, 
 a strong sense of right predominates in the whole scene 
 of the distribution, and governs the final adjustment. 
 
 The high estimate of the virtue of justice, thus ob- 
 servable, perhaps connects itself with that strong po- 
 litical genius which had already found development 
 ^ II. xxiii. 373-401. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 39I 
 
 among the Greeks, inasmuch as justice is to political 
 society as its vital spark. But again, justtee^^is moral 
 symmetgy._and._in^ it the exact spirit "of the ^reelc 
 would, on this ground, find at'IeisF a stroiig speculative 
 satisfaction^ which would help to determine the habits 
 -of t he m iad-and life. 
 
 The idea of self-restraint, which seems to admit only 
 of a limited application to the ordeiL-oLdeities, is ex- 
 ceeding strong in the Homeric man, where he at all 
 approaches excellence. Hence we find, in various 
 forms, excess among the Immortals, such as would not 
 have been tolerated in the Achaian circle. The howling 
 of Ares^ in pain when wounded, his loss of all power 
 of reflection on learning the death of his son^, and the 
 licence which prevailed among the gods, with only few 
 exceptions, in matters relating to sexual passion, are 
 striking examples. But the same observation may be 
 made in lesser matters. Inextinguishable laughter is 
 excited in the Olympian Court, when the gods see 
 Hephaistos limp about to minister the wine. But the 
 Achaians never laugh with violence. If there could be 
 a case warranting it at all, it would be one like that of 
 Oilean Ajax, when he slipped and fell amidst the 
 ordure ^ Even here, however, self-control is not lost. 
 They only smiled, or laughed mildly or gently (^8ir yi- 
 Aao-o-ov), at the strange predicament*. 
 
 The self-command of heroes, wliich is thus observable 
 in minor matters, extends also to the greatest. When 
 we find any virtue prominently exhibited in the two 
 Protagonists, we may without more ado be certain that 
 Homer intends to give it a very high place. And by 
 
 ' II. V. 860. 2 II. XV. 115. ^ II. xxiii. 777. 
 
 * II. xxiii. 784. 
 
392 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP." 
 
 far the greatest instances of self-command are given us 
 in these two characters. On this basis is founded the 
 singular courtesy of Achilles, in the midst of his resent- 
 ment, to the heralds who came by order of Agamemnon 
 to remove Briseis^. When he was in danger of losing: 
 himself for the moment, on the occasion of the First 
 Assembly, a divine interposition took place to enable 
 him to hold his equilibrium. And many times, when 
 he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he seems 
 to eye his own passion as the tiger is eyed by its 
 keeper, and puts a spell upon it so that it dare not 
 spring. When, for example, he is sensible that the 
 incautious words of Priam ^ are kindling within him 
 a fire that might blast the aged suppliant, he seizes the 
 moment, and, ere it is yet too late, bids him to desist. 
 Whenever, after the death of Patroclos, his mind goes 
 back upon the thought of Agamemnon and the wrong, 
 he breaks sharply away from the subject'. So it is with 
 this tempestuous character. But not less remarkable 
 is the self-command of Odysseus. This extends to all 
 circumstances : it suffices alike for the cave of Polu- 
 phemos j for enforcing silence in the body of the wooden 
 horse; for bearing in his disguise the insults of the 
 Suitors. But most of all in point is that wonderfiil 
 speech in answer to the insolence of Eumalos, the 
 Phaiakian prince, which teaches us more than any com- 
 position with which I am acquainted, up to what a 
 point emotion, sarcasm, and indignation can be carried 
 without any loss of self-command. 
 
 The fiery Diomed also offers us, in his submission to 
 the reproof of Agamemnon, a fine example of this great 
 
 ' II. i. 329-336. ^ II. xxiv. 560. 
 
 ^ II. xvi. 60; xviii. 112 ; xix. 65. 
 
X.] ETHICS VF THE HEROIC AGE. 393 
 
 quality 1. But in truth it ■ extends to the army, that is, 
 the nation. We see it in their stern silence on the 
 march, and in the battle-field. And their manner of 
 applause in the Assembly is always described by a term 
 diiFerent from that which the Poet uses to describe the 
 corresponding indication of feeling among the Trojans. 
 The Greeks usually shouted (iirlaxov) their applause ; 
 the Trojans rattled or clattered it {fiTLKfKdtrja-av). 
 
 In truth, there lies at the root of the Homeric model 
 of the good or the great man, in a practical form, 
 that which Aristotle has expressed scientifically as a 
 condition of moral virtue ; a spirit of moderation, a 
 love of TO fiia-ov, or the mean. There should be mode- 
 ration in sorrow 2, moderation in wrath, moderation in 
 pleasure. Not a mean between extremes of mere quan- 
 tity; but a true mean, an inward equipoise of the mind, 
 and in the composition of mental qualities, abhorring 
 excess in any one of them, because it mars the com- 
 bination as a whole, and throws the rest into deficiency. 
 This sentiment is conveyed by Homer in a multitude 
 of slight and fine shadings of expression, like that 
 insensible action of the hand in driving which keeps 
 a straight instead of a fluctuating line. We trace it in 
 the frequent expression 0^8^ eoiKev : in fvaicrifios : in the 
 TTVKLvov ems : in the <f)priv efiweSos : in the censure implied 
 by fxeya epyov, and in a multitude of other expressions. 
 
 This being so, it follows that one of the qualities 
 most unequivocally vicious in Homer is an absolute 
 implacability ; that state of mind towards which Achilles 
 for a time appears to lean; first, with regard to the 
 Greeks, secondly, with regard to Hector ; to both the 
 living and the dead. It is a sin against Nature, rather 
 ' II. iv. 411-418. ? II. xxiv. 419. 
 
394 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 than one of mere infirmity; because the very first 
 requisite of such a feeling, to give it even colourable 
 justice, is that the person entertaining it should himself 
 be without fault, or weakness, or shortcoming of what- 
 ever kind. 
 
 This lawj of moderation in quantity, was bodily 
 as well as mental. Homer sings the praises of wine ; 
 but he reprehends even that mild form of excess which 
 does no more than promote garrulity^. When the 
 Greeks are about to suffer calamity in the Return, he 
 lets them go in a state of drunkenness to their As- 
 sembly 2. Elpenor dies by an accidental fall from 
 drunkenness, and his character is accordingly described 
 in terms of disparagement^. A legend is introduced to 
 show the mischief of this vice, which even the Suitor 
 Antinoos condemns*. No character esteemed by the 
 Poet ever acts in any matter under the influence of 
 liquor. It was for him the dew, not the deluge, of the 
 soul J and it was nothing more. The gods indeed sit 
 by the bowl the livelong day*j but for men it is not 
 seemly to tarry for hours at the sacred (that is regular 
 and public) feast. And this, not only in cases like 
 that of wine, where the truth is obvious, and the excess 
 repulsive; but in instances where it would less be 
 expected. ' Do not go to bed too soon i excess of sleep 
 is itself avbi, a trouble V ' Do not admire,' says 
 Odysseus, 'or wonder at your father to excess V 'I 
 disapprove,^ saysMenelaos% 'of excess, either in attach- 
 ments or in aversions: better to have all things in 
 
 ^ Od. xiv. 463-466. '^ Od. iii. 139. 
 
 ' Od. X. 552-560; xi. 61. * Od. xxi. 293-304. 
 
 ^ II. ix. 69. 6 Od. XV. 394. 
 
 ' Od.xvl. 203, 203. * Od, XV. 70. 
 
X,] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 395 
 
 moderation.' The exact word is aivifxa, according to 
 aio-a, which may be said to signify the moral element 
 of measure, order, just proportion, in fate. 
 
 This general disinclination to excess is happily ex- 
 emplified in relation to excess of wickedness. 
 
 The extremest forms of human depravity are un- 
 known to the practice of the Greeks in the Homeric 
 age. We find among them no infanticide ; no canni- 
 balism ; no practice, or mention, of unnatural lusts : 
 incest is profoundly abhorred, and even its uninten- 
 tioned commission in the case of Oidipous and Epicaste 
 was visited with the heaviest calamities. The old age 
 of parents is treated with respect and affection. Slavery 
 itself is mild ; and predial slavery apparently rare. 
 There is no polygamy j no domestic concubinage; no 
 torture. There are no human sacrifices ; and even 
 down to the time of Euripides the tradition subsisted 
 that they were not a Greek but a foreign usage ^. The 
 legend of the seizure of Ganymedes, which was after- 
 wards deeply tainted with shame, is in Homer perfectly 
 beautiful and pure. Adultery is detested. The life- 
 long bond of man and wife does not wholly yield even 
 to violence : absence the 'most prolonged does not shake 
 it off: and there is no escape from it by the at best 
 poor and doubtful invention of divorce. 
 
 There is undoubtedly something savage in the wrath 
 of Odysseus against the Suitors, as there is in the 
 wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon and the Greeks. 
 Neither of these two are represented to us as faultless 
 personages. But when they err, it is in measure and 
 degree^; lalhe^ exaggeration of jwhat, as to its essence, 
 v-irtuejustifies, and even requires. But an exceeding 
 ^ Eurip. Tphig. in Aul. Wos iiij irajprnv. 
 
396 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHIJ-. 
 
 nobleness marks the rebuke of Odysseus to the Nurse 
 Eurucleia, when she is about to shout in exultation 
 over the fallen Suitors. ' It is wrong,' he says 1, ' to exult 
 over the slain, who have been overthrown by divine 
 providence, and by their own perverse deeds.' 
 
 So again, while Hecuba wishes she could find it in 
 her heart to eat Achilles, Achilles ^ utters a similar 
 wish with regard to Hector. But the wish is that he 
 could prevail upon himself to perform the act 5 wliich 
 accordingly he cannot do. From these passages, as well 
 as from the case of the Cyclops, we may learn that 
 cannibalism was within the knowledge, though not 
 the experience, of the nation ; that it might even come 
 before them as an image in the hideous dreams of 
 passion at seasons of extreme excitement, but never 
 could enter the circle of their actual life. 
 
 Indeed, the manifestations of mere personal reyengg 
 in the Poems are almost wholly among the divinities,' 
 no FlEHe"lnorEaS The'vengeance of Achilles has refer- 
 ence not to an arbitrary or imaginary code, but to a 
 gross breach by Agamemnon of the laws of honour and 
 justice. The vengeance of Odysseus vindicates not 
 merely the duty of political obedience, but the violated 
 order of society, gainst depraved and lawless men. 
 
 The point, however, in which the ethical tone of the 
 heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength 
 of the domestic affections. 
 
 They are prevalent in Olympos ; and they constitute 
 an amiable feature in the portraiture even of deities 
 who have nothing else to recommend them. Not only 
 does Poseidon care for the brutal Poluphemos, and Zeus 
 for the noble and gallant Sarpedon, but Ares for As- 
 ' Od. xxii. 412. . * II. xxii. 346. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 397 
 
 calaphos, and Aphrodite for iEneas. In the Trojan 
 royal family, there is little of the higher morality ; but 
 parental affection is vehement in the characters, some- 
 what relaxed as they are in fibre, both of Priam and 
 of Hecuba. Odysseus chooses for the title, by which 
 he would be known, that of the Father of Telemachos ^. 
 The single portraiture of Penelope, ever yearning 
 through twenty years for her absent husband, and then 
 praying to be removed from life, that she may never 
 gladden the spirit of a meaner man, could not have 
 been designed or drawn, except in a country where the 
 standard, in this great branch of morality, was a high 
 one. This is the palmary and all-sufficient instance. 
 Others might be mentioned to follow, though none can 
 equal it. 
 
 Perhaps even beyond other cases of domestic relation, 
 the natural sentiment, as between parents and children, 
 was profoundly ingrained in the morality of the heroic 
 age. The feeling of Achilles for Peleus, of Odysseus 
 for his father Laertes and his mother Anticleia, exhibits 
 an affection alike deep and tender. Those who die 
 young, like Simoeisios ^ by the hand of Ajax, die before 
 they have had time to repay to their parents their 
 threptra, the pains and care of rearing them. Phoenix, 
 in the height of wrath with his father, and in a country 
 where homicide was thought a calamity far more than 
 a crime, is restrained from .offering him any violence, 
 lest he should be branded, among the Achaians, with the 
 stamp of parricide ^. All this was reciprocated on the 
 side of parents : even in Troy, as we may judge from 
 the conduct and words of Hector *, of Andromache % 
 
 1 II. ii. 260. '^ II. iv. 473-479- ' H- 'x. 459-461- 
 
 * II. vi. 476. = II. xxii. 483-507. 
 
398 yVVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 of Priam 1. While the father of Odysseus pined on 
 earth for his return, his mother died of a broken heart 
 for his absence ^. And the Shade of Achilles in the 
 Underworld only craves to know whether Peleus is still 
 held in honour ; and a momentary streak of light and 
 joy gilds his dreary and gloomy existence, when he 
 learns that his son Neoptolemos has proved himself 
 worthy of his sire, and has attained to fame in war. 
 The very selfish nature of Agamemnon does not prevent 
 his feeling a watchful anxiety for his brother Menelaos^. 
 Where human interests spread and ramify by this 
 tenacity of domestic affections, there- the generations 
 of men are firmly knit together; concern for the future 
 becomes a spring of noble action- affection for the 
 past engenders an emulation of its greatness; and as 
 it is in history that these sentiments find their means 
 of subsistence, the primitive poet of such a country 
 scarcely can but be an historian. 
 
 We do not find, indeed, that relationships are traced 
 in Homer by name beyond the degree of first cousins *. 
 But that the tie of blood was much more widely re- 
 cognised, we may judge from the passage in the Second 
 Iliad, which shows that the divisions of the army were 
 subdivided- into tribes {<^v\a) and clans {^pi^Tpai)^. 
 Guestship likewise descended through generations : 
 Diomed and Glaucos exchange arms, and agree to avoid 
 one another in fight, because their grandfathers had 
 been xenoi". 
 
 The intensity of the Poet's admiration for beautiful 
 form is exhibited alike with reference to men, women, . 
 
 ' II. xxii. 424. ^ Od. xi. 196, 202. 
 
 ^ II. X. 234-240. * II. XV. 419-422, 525, 554. ' 
 
 ° II. ii. 362. ^ II. vi. 216, 226-231. 
 
X.] ETHICS' OF THE HEROIC AGE. 399 
 
 and animals. Achilles, his greatest warrior, is also 
 his most -beautiful man: Ajax, the second soldier, has 
 also the second place in beauty according to Odysseus ^. 
 Nireus, his rival for that place, is commemorated for his 
 beauty, though in other respects he is declared to have 
 been an insignificant personage^ Odysseus, elderly, 
 if not old, is carried into rapture by the beauty of 
 Nausicaa*. Not Helen alone, but his principal women 
 in general, short of positive old age (for Penelope is 
 included), are beautiful. He felt intensely, as appears 
 from many passages, the beauty of the horse. But this 
 admiring sentiment towards all beauty of form appears 
 to have been an entirely pure one. His only licentious 
 episode, that of the Net of Hephaistos, he draws from 
 an Eastern mythology. He recounts it as sung before 
 men only, not women j and not in Greece, but in 
 Scherie, to an audience of Phoenician extraction and 
 associations. It is in Troy that the gloating eyes of 
 the old men follow Helen as she walks*. The only 
 Greeks, to whom the like is imputed, are the dissolute 
 and hateful Suitors of the Odyssey. The proceedings 
 of Here in the Fourteenth Iliad are strictly subordinated 
 to policy. They are scarcely decent; and a single 
 sentiment of Thetis may be criticised ^. But the ob- 
 servations I would offer are, first that all the question- 
 able incidents or sentiments are in the sphere of the 
 mythology, which in several important respects tended 
 to corrupt, and not to elevate, mankind. Secondly, how 
 trifling an item do they contribute to the great Ency- 
 clopasdia of human life, which is presented to us in the 
 Poems. Thirdly, even among the great writers of the 
 
 ' Od. xi. 550. ^ II. ii. 676-680. ' Od. vi. 151-169. 
 
 * II. iii. 156-158. ^ II. xxiv. 130. 
 
400 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Christian ages, how few will abide the application of 
 a rigid test in this respect so well as Homer. And 
 lastly, let us observe the thorough rectitude of purpose 
 -which governs the Poems : where Artemis, the severely 
 pure, is commonly represented as an object of venera- 
 tion, but Aphrodite is as commonly represented in 
 such a manner as to attract aversion or contempt : and 
 when, among human characters, no licentious act is 
 ever so exhibited, as to confuse or pervert the sense 
 of right and wrong. The Poefs treatment of Paris 
 on earth, whom he has made his only contemptible 
 prince or warrior, is in strict keeping with his treat- 
 ment of Aphrodite among Immortals. 
 
 With regard to anything which is unbecoming in 
 the human person, the delicacy of Homer is uniform 
 and perhaps unrivalled. In the case of women, there 
 is not a single allusion to it. In the case of men, the 
 only allusions we find are grave, and admirably handled. 
 When Odysseus threatens to strip Thersites, it is only 
 to make him an object of general and unmitigated 
 disgusts When Priam foretells the mangling of his 
 own naked corpse by animals 2, the insult to natural 
 decency thus anticipated serves only to express the in- 
 tense agony of his mind. The scene in which Odysseu^ 
 emerges from the sea on the coast of ScheriS, is perhaps* 
 among the most careful, and yet the most simple and 
 unaflFected, exhibitions of true modesty in all literature. 
 And the mode, in which all this is presented to us, 
 suggests that it forms a true picture of the . general 
 manners of the nation at the time. That this delicacy 
 long subsisted in Greece, we learn from Thucydides^. 
 The morality of the Homeric period is that of the 
 ^ II. ii. 262. 2 II. xxii. 74-76. » i. 6. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. , 40 1 
 
 childhood of a race : the morality of the classic times 
 belongs to its manhood. On the side of the latter, 
 it may be urged that two causes in particular tend to 
 raise its level. With regular forms of political and 
 civil organization, there grows up in written law a 
 public testimonial on behalf, in the main, of truth, 
 honesty, and justice. For, while private conduct re- 
 presents the human mind under the bias of every 
 temptation, the law, as a general rule, speaks that 
 which our perceptions would affirm were there no such 
 bias. But further, with law and order comes the 
 clearer idea and fuller enjoyment of the fruits of 
 labour ; and for the sake of security each man adopts, 
 and in general acts upon, a recognition of the rights of 
 property. These are powerful agencies for good in a 
 great department of morals. Besides these, with a more 
 imposing beauty, but probably with less of practical 
 efficacy, the speculative intellect of man goes to work, 
 and establishes abstract theories of virtue, vice, and 
 their consequences, which by their comprehensiveness 
 and method put out of countenance the indeterminate 
 ethics of remote antiquity. All this is to be laid in one 
 •^le. But the other would, I think, preponderate, if it 
 Jere only from the single consideration, that the creed of 
 the Homeric age brought both the sense and the dread 
 of the divine justice to bear in restraint of vice and 
 passion. And upon the whole, after the survey which 
 has been taken, it would in my opinion be somewhat 
 rash to assert, that either the duties of men to the deity, 
 or the larger claims of man upon man, were better 
 understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of 
 Sylla or Augustus, than in the age of Homer. 
 
 Dd 
 
403 yUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Perhaps the following sketch of Greek life in the 
 heroic age may not be far wide of the truth. 
 
 The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now 
 separated from the low, is educated under tutors in 
 reverence for his parents, and in desire to emulate 
 their fame ; he shares in manly and in graceful sports j 
 acquires the u'se of arms ; hardens himself in the pursuit, 
 then of all others the most indispensable, the hunting 
 down of wild beasts 3 gains the knowledge of medicine, 
 probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided 
 intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build 
 his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough firm 
 and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the 
 standing corn ^. 
 
 And, when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his 
 country or his tribe, takes part in its government, 
 learns by direct instruction, and by practice, how to rule 
 mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive 
 power in political assemblies, attends and assists in 
 sacrifices to the gods. For, all this time, he has been 
 in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, 
 his family, his equals of his own age, but with the 
 attendants, although they are but serfs, who have 
 known him from infancy on his father's domain. 
 
 He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of 
 the strong hand. Human life is cheap • so cheap that 
 even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a 
 casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, 
 into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, 
 should some occasion come that stirs up his passions 
 from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes 
 within him, and he loses his humanity for the 'time, 
 ' Od. xviii. 366-375. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 403 
 
 until reason has re-established her control. Short, 
 however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could 
 not for the world rob his friend or his neighbour, yet 
 he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his 
 cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity ; 
 while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from 
 the individual who has become his enemy, he will 
 acquire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple 
 to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury'. 
 He must, however, give liberally to those who are in 
 need ; to the wayfarer, to the poor, to the suppliant who 
 begs from him shelter and protection. On the other 
 hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and 
 open-handed contributions of his neighbours will not 
 be wanting to replace them. 
 
 His early youth is not , solicited into vice by finding 
 sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it 
 ■glaring in his eye, and sounding in his ear. Gluttony 
 is ha;rdly known 5 drunkenness is marked only by its 
 degrading character, and by the evil consequences that 
 flow so straight from it; and it is abhorred. But he 
 loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hour 
 when the guests, gathered in his father's hall, enjoy a 
 liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup^. 
 For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who 
 celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the 
 heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse their manly 
 resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and 
 their country's heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals 
 of religion ; the maiden's hand upon his wrist, and the 
 gilded knife gleaming from his belt, as they course from 
 
 ' Od. xiii. 252-270. ' Od. viii. 5-11 ; xiv. 193-198. 
 
 D d 2 
 
404 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CB.LV, 
 
 point to point, or wheel in round on round 1. That 
 maiden, some Nausicaa, or some Hermione of a 
 neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst 
 the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to 
 cherish her, 'from the flower to the ripeness of the 
 grape,' with respect, fidelity, and love. 
 
 Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring 
 him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of 
 trouble. Government is a machine, of which the wheels 
 move easily enough; for they are well oiled by 
 simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires- by unity of 
 interest J by respect for authority, and for those in 
 whose hands it is reposed; by love of the common 
 country, the common altar, the common Festivals and 
 Games, to which already there is large resort. In peace 
 he settles the disputes of his people, in war he lends 
 them the precious example of heroic daring. He con- 
 sults them, and advises with them, on all grave aflFairs ; 
 and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by 
 the ample domains which are set apart for the prince 
 by the people 2. Finally, he closes his eyes, delivering 
 over the sceptre to his son, and leaving much peace 
 and happiness around him^. 
 
 Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the 
 concluding phase of which Homer's youth, at least, was 
 passed. But a dark and deep social revolution seems 
 to have followed the Trojan war ; we have its workings 
 already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could 
 even Odysseus cope with it, contracted though it was for 
 him within the narrow bounds of Ithaca. On the main- 
 land, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 594-602. ^ II. ix. 581 ; xii. 313. 
 
 " Od. xxiii. 281-284. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 405 
 
 broken. The Pelopid, Neleidj (Enid houses, are a 
 wreck : disorganization invites the entry of new forces 
 to control it ; the Dorian lances bristle on the iEtolian 
 beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal Greece, 
 the Greece of Homer, is no more. 
 
 Section II. 
 
 We must not dismiss the subject of Ethics or morals 
 without considering what is both a criterion and an 
 essential part of it, namely, the position held by 
 Woman in the heroic age '. 
 
 Within the pale of that civilisation, which has grown 
 up under the combined influence of the Christian 
 religion as paramount, and what may be called the 
 Teutonic manners as secondary, we find the idea of 
 Woman and her social position raised to a point higher 
 than in the Poems of Homer. But it would be hard to 
 discover any period of history, or country of the world, 
 not being Christian, in which women stood so high as 
 with the Greeks of the heroic age. 
 
 I will here very briefly illustrate this proposition 
 under several heads; and first, that of marriage with 
 its accessories. 
 
 The essence of Homeric marriage seems to have 
 lain in cohabitation, together with a solemn public 
 acknowledgment of the relation of the parties as man 
 and wife, and with an attendant ceremonial such as 
 is represented on the Shield of Achilles. This might 
 
 * For a faller exposition, see Studies on Homer, Olympos, 
 Sect. 9. See also Mr. Buckle's Lecture on Woman, in Frazer's 
 Magazine. 
 
4o6 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 apparently be preceded by cohabitation with the 
 intention of marriage. Hence Briseis is called by 
 Achilles his wife^; yet in the very same speech he 
 speaks of himself as open to marriage with another 
 womanj and Briseis, in her lament over Patroclos, says^, 
 ' Thou wouldst not let me weep, but saidst thou wouldst 
 make me the wife of Achilles, and take me by ship to 
 Phthie, and feast (i. e. celebrate) my marriage among the 
 Myrmidons.' So that the full accomplishment of the 
 union was apparently to follow the expected return; 
 and she was in the meantime a wife-designate. 
 
 It is in the interest of the woman that the law of 
 marriage should be strict, and that marriage should be 
 single. Among the Homeric Greeks we have not the 
 slightest trace of polygamy ; or of a woman taken from 
 her husband, and made the wife of another man during 
 his lifetime. The Suitors always urge Penelope to 
 re-marry, on the ground that Odysseus must be dead^ and 
 that there is no hope of his return. A shorter period 
 of absence, than that assigned to him, is recognised by 
 the law of England as making re-marriage legal. A 
 presumption of death .brought near to certainty must, 
 under the conditions of human affairs, be taken to 
 suffice; for, says Butler, with a sweep of compre- 
 hensive wisdom, 'Probability is the very guide of life 3.' 
 But in the case of Agamemnon, there was no pre- 
 sumption of death ; and, accordingly, the act of 
 Aigisthos, is described by Zeus as a double outrage, 
 made up of two crimes; the last part of it being 
 
 ^ II. ix. 340 seqq. 
 
 '^ II. xix. 295 seqq. I omit the word raupiSiV) which would 
 require a discussion. 
 " Introduction to the Analogy. 
 
X.j ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 407 
 
 the murder, but the first the simple fact of the 
 marriage"!. 
 
 Even the violent bodily abstraction of the wife, as in 
 the case of Helen, does no more than destroy the 
 marriage for the time. When she is recovered, she 
 resumes her domestic place. There is no such thing 
 as a formal and final dissolution of a marriage^ except 
 by death. In the narrative, and by the Trojans, as 
 well as by herself, Helen is called the wife of Paris ; 
 yet we never find this acknowledgment in the mouth 
 of a Greek. Nay, Hector even calls Helen the wife of 
 Menelaos^: but this may mean the past wife. Mene- 
 laos never treats what had occurred as setting him free 
 from his obligations to Helen. And the long resistance 
 of Penelope, presented to us in the Odyssey as a central 
 object of our interest and admiration, could not have 
 been chosen for this purpose by the poet, unless it had 
 been in conformity with the actual Greek idea of a 
 genuine and lofty virtue. 
 
 Concubinage is practised by some few, and as far as 
 we are informed only by few, of the Greek chieftains 
 before Troy: yet this also is single. Of actual domestic 
 concubinage we have no example. But Agamemnon 
 threatens to take Briseis home with him^. This, how- 
 ever, is done under angry excitement. In the Assembly, 
 he thinks it necessary to give the reason of a proceeding, 
 which he apparently perceived would require a justi- 
 fication; and it is, that he prefers her in all respects 
 to Clutaimnestra. But we have no trace, in the 
 Return, of any chiefs carrying a concubine home 
 with him. The wife of Amuntor adopted an extreme 
 measure to prevent her husband from falling into a 
 
 ' Od,i. 36, a II. iii. 53. 3 Hi. 29, 113. 
 
4o8 JVVENTVS MUNDI. [chIp. 
 
 lawless connection! ; and Laertes, from an appre- 
 hension of conjugal trouble, respected the maidenhood 
 of his young bondwoman 2. These instances, if they 
 show that the man was not exempt from passion, 
 bear very emphatic testimony to the position of the 
 wife. 
 
 The relations of youth and maiden generally are 
 indicated with extreme beauty and tenderness in the 
 Iliad ^; and those of the unmarried woman to a suitor, 
 or probable spouse, are so pourtrayed, in the case of the 
 incomparable Nausicaa^ as to show a delicacy and 
 freedom that no period of history or state of manners 
 can surpass*. On her return home, Alkinoos, far from 
 reproving her, thinks she should have shown more 
 forwardness to entertain the shipwrecked stranger. 
 We often hear of a parent, who gives or promises a 
 daughter in marriage: but like expressions * are applied 
 to sons. The very fact that the profligate and violent 
 Suitors always confine themselves to a moral pressure, 
 and profess to submit to the choice of Penelope, is of 
 itself a probable witness to the recognised free-agency 
 of the woman of the period. 
 
 In that early state of society we hear of no such 
 personage as an elderly bachelor or spinster. Nor, 
 within due limits of age, could there, I presume, be a 
 prolonged widowhood. The apparent connection of 
 Helen with Deiphobos^, after the death of Paris, should 
 probably be read in the light of Trojan usage. But 
 whenever Penelope, or others in her name, contemplate 
 the death of Odysseus, and her consequent release, that 
 
 ^ II. ix. SI. 2 Od. i. 433. 
 
 ' II. xviii. 567, 593; xxii. 127, 128. * Od. vi. 275-288. 
 
 ° II. ix. 394. Od. iv. 10, ^ Od. iv. 276. 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 409 
 
 change is always treated as the immediate preface to 
 another crisis, in the choice of a second husband. 
 
 Marriage, in Homer, is the very pivot of life. War 
 is the deadly enemy of woman. On the capture of a 
 city, her lot is exile, and the conqueror's bed. The 
 familiarity of this idea renders it remarkable that we 
 should not hear much more than we do hear of con- 
 cubinage among the Greeks of Homer. Of professional 
 prostitution, we have no trace at all. 
 
 As the restraints imposed upon marriage are in 
 general among the proofs of its high estimation, I 
 proceed to observe that the Greeks regarded incest 
 with horror, even when, as in the instance of Oidipous 
 and Epicaste, it was involuntary. Passing on from 
 extreme cases, we may observe, that the connection 
 of Phoenix with a woman at once presented an insur- 
 mountable bar to the unlawful passion of his father for 
 the same person. It appears however probable, though 
 not certain, that Diomed was married to his mother's 
 sisteri. j^ Scherie, the king Alkinoos had his niece 
 for his wife^ : but this is in the Phoenician circle. In 
 Troy, Iphidamas marries the sister of his mother^. 
 
 It is observed that, in the classical period, the law of 
 incest in Greece, instead of being tightened, was re- 
 laxed*. The older sentiment about it is the more 
 remarkable, because of the extreme looseness of the 
 code applied to supernatural beings ^. 
 
 A series of words for the different relationships by 
 affinity, includes the word einater for the husband's 
 brother's wife, to which we have no correlative in 
 
 ^ II. iv. 121. '' Od. vii. 65, 66. ' II. xi. 220-226, 
 
 * Friedreich's Realien, iii. 2. 
 • * II. iv. 441 ; xvi. 432. Od. x. 2. 
 
410 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 English; and the terms, in which these relationships' 
 are spoken of, testify to the definiteness and solidity of 
 the marriage bond. 
 
 We have a single case of a woman who attempts 
 the breach of her own marriage-vow. It is Anteia, 
 the wife of Proitos ; but the family was Phoenician. 
 
 Thus, then, we have in the Poems a picture of Greek 
 marriage as to its unity, freedom, perpetuity ; as to the 
 restraints upon it, and as to the manner in which 
 breaches of it, and substitutes for it, were regarded. 
 This picture, so striking in itself, becomes yet more so 
 by comparison with Eastern manners, even as they 
 were exhibited in the Hebrew race. It is also in 
 glaring and painful contrast with the loysrered estimate 
 of woman among the Greeks of the classical period, 
 and with their loathsome immorality. 
 
 More important, however, than any particulars is 
 the general tone of the intercourse between husband 
 and wife. It is thoroughly natural: full of warmth, 
 dignity, reciprocal deference, and substantial, if not 
 conventional, delicacy. The fulness of moral and in- 
 telligent being is alike complete, and alike acknow- 
 ledged, on the one side and on the other. Nor is this 
 description confined to the scenes properly Hellenic. 
 It embraces the conversation of Hector with Andro- 
 mache, and is nowhere more applicable than to the 
 whole character and demeanour of Nausicaa — delinea- 
 tions probably due rather to the Hellenic experience 
 of the Poet, than to any minute observation either of 
 Phoenician or of Trojan manners. Of rude manners 
 to a woman there is not a real instance in the Poems. 
 And to this circumstance we may add its true cor- 
 relative, that the women of Homer are truly and pro- 
 
X.] ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 41 T- 
 
 foundly feminine. As to the intensity of conjugal love, 
 it has never passed the climax which it reaches in 
 Odysseus and Penelope. 
 
 Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom; 
 dowries sometimes given with the bride. With a wife 
 returning in widowhood to the parental home, the dowry 
 returned also'. On the other hand it would appear, 
 from the Lay of the Net, that a fine was imposed upon 
 the detected adulterer 2, as well as on the manslayer. In 
 some instances, personal and mental gifts serve in lieu 
 of possessions, as recommendations in suing for a wife. 
 
 Lastly, with respect to the employments of women. 
 
 It appears to be at least open to question whether 
 they were not capable of political sovereignty 3. The 
 suggestion of the text seems to be that Chloris was 
 queen in Pulos when Neleus married her ; and the 
 mention of Hupsipule with Jason is best accounted 
 for by supposing, conformably to tradition, that she 
 reigned inLemnos*. On the departure of Agamemnon 
 Clutaimnestra was left in charge, with the Bard as an 
 adviser 5; and in Ithaca Penelope had a similar regency, 
 apparently with the aid of Mentor 6. 
 
 Priesthood appears not to have existed among the 
 Hellenes of the Homeric age ; but in Troas, where we 
 find it, a woman was priestess of Athene. This was 
 Theano, the wife of Antenor ; and she is said to have 
 been appointed to her office by the Trojans, The 
 seizure of Marpessa, or Alcuone, by Apollo, may have 
 had reference to some religious ministry at Delphi. 
 
 ^ Od. ii. 132. "^ Od. viii. 329, 
 
 ' II. vii. 468, 469. Od. xi. 281-285. 
 * II. vii. 469. ° Od. iii. 263 268. 
 
 » Od. ii. 223-227; xix. 317 ; xx. 129-133. II. vi. 297-300. 
 
413 JUVENTVS MVNDI. 
 
 The domestic employments of women are pretty 
 clearly indicated in the descriptions of the Palaces of 
 Kirke and of Odysseus. The outdoor offices were 
 performed in Ithaca by men, who likewise prepared the 
 firewood, killed, cut up, and carved the animals, and 
 carried to the farm the manure that accumulated about 
 the house. The Suitors also had male personal at- 
 tendants. The women performed the indoor operations 
 generally, including the fetching of water and the 
 grinding of flour. 
 
 Another employment discharged by women has given 
 rise to misunderstanding; namely, their waiting on 
 men for purposes connected with the bath. Damsels 
 of the highest rank performed this duty for strangers. 
 But the delicacy of the early Greeks, with regard to 
 any undue exposure of the person i, was extreme; and, 
 though they may have differed from our merely con- 
 ventional usages, it cannot be imagined that they 
 departed from propriety in a point where a people far 
 less scrupulous would have respected it. The error has 
 lain principally in failure to observe that in the words 
 used for washing, bathing, and anointing, the actual 
 operation is described by the middle voice ^, and the 
 words louo, chrio, nipto, in the active, in general 
 signify supplying another person with the means of 
 performing these offices for himself 3. The same rule 
 I believe to hold good with respect to the word which 
 describes dressing after the bath (ball 6). 
 
 ' II. ii. 260-264. 
 
 ^ So Wakefield. See II. x. 572-577 ; Od. vi. 96, 219, 220, 
 et alibi, 
 
 ' Od. vi. 210, 218, 222; vii. 296. Even Od. x. 361 need not 
 be an exception. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Polity of the Heroic Age. 
 
 The Poems of Homer are the seed-plot of what is 
 best and soundest in the Greek politics of the historic 
 period. Nor are we, the moderns^ and, as I think, the 
 British in particular, without a special relation to the 
 subject. In part we owe to these ancient societies a 
 debt. In part we may trace with reasonable pleasure 
 an original similitude between the Homeric picture 
 and the best ideas of our European and our British 
 ancestry. What are those ideas ? Among the soundest 
 of them we reckon the power of opinion and persuasion 
 as opposed to force ; the sense of responsibility in 
 governing men ; the hatred, not only of tyranny, but 
 of all unlimited power ; the love and the habit of public 
 in preference to secret action ; the reconciliation and 
 harmony between the spirit of freedom on the one 
 hand, the spirit of order and reverence on the other ; 
 and a practical belief in right as relative, and in duty 
 as reciprocal. Out of these elements, whether in an- 
 cient or in modern times, great governments have been 
 made. The Homeric Poems exhibit them all^ if not 
 in methodical development, yet in vigorous life. 
 
i]X4 yUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Even war required a basis of right, perhaps rudely 
 defined; and retribution a corpus delicti. Hence the 
 readiness with which the offer of Paris ^ to decide the 
 war by single combat is accepted; and hence it may 
 be that when Agamemnon anticipates the death of 
 Menelaos from his wound, he judges also that, on that 
 event, the army will return home. 
 
 Personal reverence for sovereigns is undoubtedly 
 a powerful principle in the governments of the heroic 
 age. There is for them a kind of divinity that doth 
 ' hedge a king.' Odysseus, wishing to arrest the sudden 
 impulse of the army to return, furnishes himself with 
 the famed Sceptre of Agamemnon, as a token of his 
 title to be heard. This principle, which has survived 
 almost every modification of political forms, could not 
 but be lively at a period when probably no great num- 
 ber of generations had passed since thp exchange of 
 nomad for settled life. For society, in the nomad 
 stage, has something of the organization of the army ; 
 and it is still either in view or in actual experience of 
 the time when the family, forming itself around its 
 head, had not yet grown into the tribe ; much less the 
 tribe into the people. 
 
 But, while this reverence existed under all social 
 forms, the characteristic difference of the Homeric 
 states is to be foUnd in the qualifications by which 
 on every side it was hindered from passing into excess. 
 The monarch was controlled by the princes or chiefs 
 assembled in the council (fiov\r\) ; an institution which 
 the Odyssey mentions in Scherie, and the Iliad (in- 
 formally) in Troy ; so that we must presume it to have 
 been in the view of the Greeks not a merely local 
 ^ II. iii. 96-112. 
 
XI.J POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 415 
 
 institution, but a prime element of human society. 
 The mass, however, of the free citizens were also 
 called together in the Agore, or Assembly, to consider 
 any matter of cardinal importance; and appeal was 
 made to their reason in speeches which, for aptitude 
 and force, to this day extort the admiration, and 
 perhaps defy the rivalry, of the moderns. 
 
 It is upon a just balance of forces that good govern- 
 ment now mainly depends. In the Homeric age, there 
 were no detailed or even defined provisions to secure this 
 balance. Even the name of law (nomos) is unknown^ 
 though the name of public right (themis) is familiar 
 and revered. Into the Greek Constitutions, described by 
 Aristotle, a multitude of expedients for that purpose 
 had been introduced by human ingenuity. Yet those 
 constitutions were subject to frequent and most violent 
 changes, usually attended by the absolute ejectment of 
 the defeated party from house and field. And even 
 when not under disturbance they commonly exhibited 
 a strong bias towards excess in one quarter or another. 
 To the Troic period, too, revolutions were not un- 
 known. But the idea of government, which then pre- 
 vailed, was perhaps both more strongly fortified by 
 religious reverence, and likewise better founded in 
 reciprocal duty, than that of later times. The separa- 
 tion and conflict of interests between the different 
 parts of the community had not become a familiar 
 idea ; particular classes did not plot against the whole ; 
 we hear little of the tyranny of kings, or the insubordi- 
 nation of subjects. A worse era was about to follow. 
 As in the case of the Crusades, so during the War of 
 Troy, the absence of the rulers prepared the way for 
 social convulsion. And Hesiod, living at a time later 
 
4r6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 probably by some generations, looks back from his iron 
 age with an admiring envy on the heroic period. 
 
 'The early monarchies,' says Thucydides, 'enjoyed 
 specified 1 prerogatives j' and Aristotle assures us that 
 they were monarchies^ upon terms, and depended on 
 a voluntary allegiance. The threefold function of the 
 King among the Hellenes was {a) chiefly perhaps, though 
 not exclusively, to administer justice^ between man 
 and man ; {l>) to command the army, and (c) to conduct 
 the rites of religion. Sometimes the sovereignty was 
 local, or subaltern ; sometimes, as perhaps in the case of 
 Minos* and of Priam, and even of Peleus, but clearly 
 and broadly in that of Agamemnon^, it was a suzerainty 
 over other Kings and princes, as well as a direct do- 
 minion over territory specially appropriated, and perhaps 
 also over an unclaimed residue of minor settlements 
 and communities. Besides the towns, which supplied 
 Aganiemnon with his division of the army, he claimed 
 to dispose' of the sovereignty of other towns, which lay 
 in the south-west of the Peloponnesos*'. 
 
 The Homeric Kings, however, constitute in the Iliad 
 a class by themselves. The greater part of the chiefs 
 do not bear the title of Bas ileus, but had probably 
 that of anax, prince, or lord. Some of these were like 
 Phoinix under Peleus ; but most of them in no other 
 subordination than to Agamemnon. The only duty to 
 the suzerain of which we hear is that of military 
 service. His superior rank'' is acknowledged j so that 
 both he, and apparently Menelaos, on account of his 
 
 ' i. 13. ^ Arist. Pol. Hi. 14, 15, ver. 10. ' II. ii. 204-206. 
 * Thucydides, i. 4, says that Minos appointed his sons to be 
 local or deputed Governors. 
 ° II. ix. 483 ; xxiii. 25-90. " II. ix. 149-153. '^ II. i. 186. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 417 
 
 relationship, are termed ' more kingly i' than the other 
 K-ings. These gradations in the order may perhaps be 
 compared to those of a modern Peerage or Noblesse. 
 
 The King, as such, stands in a special relation to 
 deity. The epithet theios, divine, is only applied to 
 such among the living as have this relation. The King 
 is also Diotrephes, or reared by Zeus, and Diogenes, or 
 born of Zeus ; and these titles are given rarely below 
 the kingly order even to a prince or ruler^ if of inferior 
 degree or eminence. It is expressly declared that 
 Kings derive the right to rule^ from Zeus, from whom 
 descended, by successive deliveries, the sceptre of 
 Agamemnon. In the Greek army the Kings alone 
 seem to constitute the council of the Generalissimo. 
 Scarcely on any occasion does a ruler of the second 
 order appear there. The Kings are called Basilges, or 
 Gerontes (elders), or perhaps Koiranoi; but the 
 leaders at large are Archoi, or Hegemones, or 
 (dptoT^es) the aristocracy. 
 
 In the Catalogue, the command of some of the di- 
 visions is held as it were in commission ; or, in other 
 words, rests with two or more persons jointly and 
 severally, on a footing of parity between themselves. 
 But wherever there is a King, he either appears alone, 
 in his capacity of General, as Agamemnon, Menelaos, 
 Odysseus, Nestor, Achilles, the greater and the lesser 
 Ajax; or with other leaders who are distinctly under 
 him, as Diomed^ and Idomeneus*. These nine persons 
 
 ' II. ix. 160 ; X. 239. ^ II. ii. loi, 205. ' II. ii. 563-566. 
 ' * The Catalogue, II. ii. 645-652, might leave doubtful the po- 
 sition of Meriones ; but it is fixed by the terms depdirmv and 
 dirdav, applied to him in II. x. 58, xxiii. 113, et alibi j which, 
 though perhaps more than Squire, means less than Colleague. 
 
 E e 
 
41 8 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 are the only undeniable Kings of the Iliad, as may ap- 
 pear from comparing together II. ii. 404-409, II. xix. 
 309-311, and from the transactions of II. x. 34-197. 
 Particular phrases or passages might raise the question 
 whether four others, Meges, Eurupulos, Patroclos, and 
 Phoinix, were not viewed by Homer as being also 
 Kings. Probably his idea of the class was not so 
 definite as oursj but on the whole the line, which 
 excludes these and all the other chiefs from the kingly 
 rank, is drawn with considerable clearness. The King, 
 as viewed in the Iliad, must be a person combining 
 three conditions: first, he is subordinate to none but 
 Agamemnon J secondly, he has in all cases marked 
 personal vigour and prowess ; thirdly, if his dominions 
 are small, he must either be of surpassing strength of 
 body at least, like the Telamonian Ajax, or of vast 
 powers of mind as well as limb, like Odysseus. 
 
 Among the bodily qualities of the Kings, one is 
 personal beauty. This attaches peculiarly to the Trojan 
 royal family, and it is recorded even of the aged Priam 
 in his griefi. At the head of all stands Achilles. 
 Odysseus has this endowment, though in a less marked 
 degree. Ajax, in the Odyssey, appears to compete with 
 Nireus, in the Iliad, for the second place. It is never 
 predicated individually, 1 think, of any single man 
 below the princely station, although when the crew of 
 Odysseus were re-transformed, at Aiaie, into human 
 shape, they are collectively said to have been by far 
 larger and mgre beautiful than before 2, 
 
 Personal vigour is also a condition, not only of as- 
 suming, but almost of continuing in, the exercise of 
 
 ■* II. xxiv. 631. ' Od, X. 396. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE BERQIC AGE. 4I9 
 
 sovereignty!. Laertes quitted his throne at a time 
 anterior to the departure of Odysseus for the war,, long 
 before the period of decrepitude ''^ and probably when 
 his activity had but begun to diminish. Achilles, in 
 the Shades^, inquires whether Peleus still occupies the 
 throne, or has retired from it on account of his years. 
 Nestor, indeed, yet occupies the royal seat ; but perhaps 
 it is on account of his notable talents, combined with 
 the greenness of his old age. The word aizeos, which 
 signifies a man in his full strength, when joined with 
 Diotrephes, or royal, is applied to princes as a class, 
 and thus testifies to the custom I have described*. 
 Telemachos was the proper heir to his father's throne* j 
 but he was only coming to, though close upon, full age, 
 and he had not yet assumed its privileges at the point 
 where the action of the Poem begins. 
 
 Over and above the work of battle^ the Prince is 
 peerless in the Games. Of the eight contests of the 
 Twenty-third Iliad, seven are conducted entirely by the 
 Kings and chiefs. The exception is the boxing-match. 
 And Epsios, the winner in this match, himself declares" 
 that he does not possess the gifts necessary for dis- 
 tinction in battle j an indication by the way, among 
 many, of the immense value set by Homer upon skill 
 as compared with mere strength'. The prizes, too, 
 which are given in the boxing-match appear, when 
 compared with the other rewards, to show the reputed 
 inferiority of this accomplishment. 
 
 So likewise with the gifts of music and song. 
 Usually, of course, we look for them to the Bards. 
 
 ' Grote, Hist. Greece, vol..ii..p. 87. * Od. xi. 174, 184. 
 
 ' Od. xi. 495. * II. ii. 660. Comp. II. xvi. 716. 
 
 " Od. i. 386. ' II. xxiii. 670. ' Comp, II. xxiii. 315-318. 
 E e a 
 
430 
 
 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Upon the Shield, in the procession of youths and 
 maidens who bear the grapes from the vineyard, a boy 
 attends them to play and sing, probably because it did 
 not comport with the dignity of the Bard to exercise his 
 art while in bodily motion ; for presently we come to 
 another scene, where he plays, without moving, to the 
 dancers^. There are but two certain indications of (so 
 to speak) amateur song and playing. The lyre which 
 Achilles used was among the spoils of the city of 
 Eetion, and may possibly have belonged to that King- 
 himself ^ On this lyre Achilles himself played during 
 his retirement. And our other musician is Paris 8. 
 
 But the kingly character, in Homer is also all-com- 
 prehensive; and it sometimes embraces even the manual 
 employments of honourable industry. Odysseus, in the 
 Island of Calypso*, is a wood-cutter and ship-builder: 
 Odysseus on his throne was the carpenter and artisan 
 of his own bed 5, so elaborately wrought : Odysseus, in 
 disguise, challenges Eurumachos the Suitor to try which 
 of them would soonest mow a meadow 6, and which 
 drive the straightest furrow down a four-acre field. 
 
 Such were the corporal accomplishments of the 
 Homeric King. He was also, in the exercise of higher 
 faculties. Judge, General, and Priest. In addition to 
 all these, and as binding them all together, he was em- 
 phatically a gentleman. In Agamemnon, indeed, there 
 is a half-sordid vein, which mars the higher type; 
 though he corresponds in general to the eulogy of 
 Helen'', as a good King and a valiant soldier. Nestor, 
 Diomed, Menelaos, are markedly gentlemen in their 
 
 ' II. xviii. 569, 604. ' II. ix. 186-188. 5 II. Hi. 54. 
 
 * Od. V. 243, 261. ' Od. xxiii. 195-201. 
 
 « Od. xviii. 366-375. '' II. iii. 179. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 431 
 
 demeanour. The character of Odysseus, caricatured 
 and debased by the later tradition, abounds in Homer 
 with similar notes. Quick in the sense of undeserved 
 reproof from his chief, he appeals only to the con- 
 futation which his conduct in the field will supply^. 
 When grossly insulted by Eurualos, his stern and 
 masterful rebuke is so justly measured as to excite the 
 sympathy of strangers^. But the best exhibition of the 
 profound refinement inhering in the character of 
 Odysseus is^ perhaps, afforded by the scene in which 
 he first appears before Nausicaa^, after his escape from 
 the devouring waters. 
 
 It is, however, in Achilles that courtesy reaches to 
 its acme. In the First Iliad, he hails with a genial 
 kindness the heralds who came on the odious errand of 
 enforcing the removal of Briseis, and he at once re- 
 assures them by acquitting them of blame* j though as 
 
 we know 
 
 ' The messenger of evil tidings 
 Hath but a losing office.' 
 
 In the Ninth Book, while still in the Wrath, we find, 
 him bidding the envoys of Agamemnon a hearty wel- 
 come. In both cases he anticipates the new comers 
 with a speech, of which the promptitude is itself a 
 delicate stroke of the best manners. The most refined, 
 however, of his attentions is perhaps that shown to 
 Agamemnon, after the reconciliation, on the occasion 
 of the Games. It was difficult to exclude the chief 
 King from the sport of Kings j inadmissible to let him 
 be worsted; impossible either to make him conquer 
 those who were his superiors in strength, or to place 
 
 ^ II. iv. 349-355. ^ Od. viii. 165, 396. ^ Od. vi. 115 seqq. 
 ' II. i. 334. 
 
422 yuVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 him in competition with secondary persons. Achilles 
 avoids all these difficulties by proposing a ninth, or 
 supernumerary match, with the sling j and then at once 
 presenting the prize to Agamemnon with the observa- 
 tion that, as his excellence is known to be paramount, 
 there need be no actual trial ^. 
 
 Yet these great chiefs, so strong in every form of 
 power, bravery, and skill, can upon occasion weep like a 
 woman or a child. A list of the passages, in which the 
 tears of heroes flow, would probably by its length cause 
 astonishment even to those who are aware that a sus- 
 ceptible temperament prompted them, and that a false 
 shame did not forbid them, thus to give vent to their 
 emotions 2. Every one of them, unless it be the aged Nes- 
 tor, would be included: we should find there even Aga- 
 memnon, whom we may probably consider as the prince 
 least richly fixrnished in this department of our nature. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken mainly of the persons. 
 The office, which these persons bore, was hereditary, 
 in the line of the eldest son. Yet though the practice 
 prevailed, the definition was, in this and in other cases, 
 not so sharp as ours. Menelaos, the brother of Aga- 
 memnon, partakes in a certain limited degree of his 
 dignity : is specially solicited, with him, by the priest 
 Chruses^; receives, jointly with him, the presents 
 offered by Euneos* for leave to trade with the army; 
 and is held moi-e royal than the other chieftains ». 
 Probably when Thuestes succeeded Atreus, it was on 
 account of the childhood of Agamemnon, which pre- 
 vented his fulfilling the conditions of strength and 
 vigour necessary for holding the monarchy. 
 
 ' II. xxiii. 884-897. " Corap. Juv. Sat. xv. 131-133. 
 
 ^ II. i. 16. * II. vii. 470. « II. X. 32 and 239. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 423 
 
 I 
 
 The case of Telemachos supplies us with an express 
 declaration of the title of the son to succeed his father ^ 
 But Antinoos the Suitor, at a time when Odysseus was 
 supposed to be dead, states his hope that Zeus will 
 never make the youth king of Ithaca. The answer is 
 far from claiming that unconditional right to the 
 throne of the islands, which it asserts to the estates 
 of Odysseus 2 j and leaves room for the supposition, that 
 the succession was liable to be more or less aflFected by 
 personal qualifications, and by the assent or dissent of 
 the nobles, or even of the community. Even at this 
 time, however, Telemachos assumed in the Assembly 
 the seat of his father. 
 
 Telemachos, indeed, is an only son. But, in the 
 case of the Pelopids, Agamemnon appears to succeed 
 to the paternal throne, and Menelaos to govern Sparta 
 in right of his wife. Of the two brothers, Protesilaos 
 and Podarkes, in the Catalogue, the former, who is the 
 elder, commands the force from Phulake and its sister 
 towns ^. He was, however, we are expressly told, 
 braver, as well as older. The position of Antilochos 
 in the Iliad as the eldest son of Nestor, and of Thrasu- 
 medes, after his death, in the Odyssey, appear to be 
 sufficiently marked*. In four cases of the Catalogue, 
 pairs of brothers are named as in command, without 
 any distinction formally drawn between them. 
 
 The Olympian arrangements bear, perhaps, the most 
 emphatic testimony to the higher dignity and authority 
 of the elder brother. For it is only in that capacity, 
 that the superiority of Zeus is confessed by his juniors -% 
 
 ^ Od. i. 387. ^ Od. i. 396. 
 
 ^ II. ii. 695-708. * Od. iii. 402, 439-446. 
 
 ° II. XV. 204-207. Od. xiii. 141. 
 
424 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 They are not, however, excluded from inheritance ; and 
 the respective provinces are taken by lot. 
 
 On the whole, we seem to have the custom or law of 
 primogeniture sufficiently, but not over-sharply, defined. 
 
 The Homeric King, decked out with attributes 
 almost ideal, appears before us, so far as Greece is 
 concerned, in not a threefold only, but a fourfold, 
 character j besides being Priest, Judge, and General, 
 he is also, as King, a great Proprietor. 
 
 Priesthood is a function touching the daily course of 
 life. Besides the solemn and public sacrifices, the 
 meat of each meal is an offering; the word 'to sacrifice,' 
 hiereuein is used as meaning 'to kill;' the animal 
 ready to be killed is hiereion, a sacrifice. Yet there 
 appears to be no professional priest among the Hellenes. 
 We hear of many priests in the Poems : but of none of 
 them can we positively assert that they were Greek. 
 The priest is referred to, together with the prophet and 
 dream-teller, in the first Assembly of the Iliad : but the 
 Greeks are there ^ in a land of priests; and as Achilles 
 plainly points to the prophet Calchas, who immediately 
 afterwards rises to speak, so it is probable that he may 
 point to the priest Chruses, who had already visited the 
 camp. Among the chief professions of a Greek com- 
 munity, enumerated in the Odyssey^, the priest does not 
 appear. Though priests are wanting, prophets are not ; 
 and in this important passage, the class of prophets is 
 the first named. One passage only speaks of priests 
 within the local limits of Greece ^ : it refers to a gene- 
 ration before the War ; and it is quite possible that, both 
 then and subsequently, there may have been priests in 
 Greece of Pelasgian institution. Wherever there was a 
 
 ^ II. i. 62. ' Od. xvii. 385. s II. ix. 575. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 425 
 
 temenos, or glebe^ probably there was a priest to 
 live upon the proceeds. But the only sacred glebes 
 of which we hear in Greece are (I think) the glebes of 
 Spercheios and of Demeter^, both of them old Pelasgian 
 deities. 
 
 In conformity with this view, we find that among 
 the Hellenes, in the public and solemn sacrifices, the 
 priestly office is performed by the King. Moreover, 
 the assistants are termed neoi^, young men. This 
 supports a conjecture suggested to me by the resem- 
 blance of the words, that hieros and geron have been 
 originally identical in root. In Greece down to the 
 present day the monk is called calo-gero (the French 
 caloyer). It was to the Father, as such, that in the 
 origin of society the offices both of King and Priest 
 generally accrued. To the Father, in the time of 
 Homer, the ordinary consecration or offering of the 
 meal appertains, as he presides at the domestic 
 board. 
 
 The office of the Judge seems to be, more than any 
 other, proper to the King. It probably constituted his 
 only official employment which was at once permanent 
 (that of war being occasional), and of a nature ^ to 
 weigh upon the mind. But it should be understood 
 as including all deliberative work. On the Shield*, 
 the trial of a cause is conducted by the Elders j perhaps 
 in the character of delegates. Causes must have been 
 conducted by natural equity, or by what in Ireland was 
 called Brehon, that is judge-made, law. Probably 
 custom had already established some rules with respect 
 
 1 II. xxiii. 148 ; ii. 696. "^ II. i. 463- Od. iii. 460. 
 
 = II. i. 237; ii. 204; ix. 98; xvi. 386. * II. xviii. 506. 
 
4a6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 to fines for homicide and adultery, if not for other 
 offences. 
 
 The duty of the King as General is best exhibited 
 by the whole plan of the Iliad. Here the King, if in 
 full vigour, assumes the captain's office as a matter of 
 course, and quits his house and throne to discharge it. 
 Peleus^, the father of Achilles, remains at home, because 
 he is disabled by old age. Nestor, retaining more of his 
 bodily vigour, goes to war, but acts in the camp chiefly 
 as a counsellor, and at no time actually handles arms. 
 
 Never has the idea of regal duty and responsibility, 
 both in general and with respect to war in particular, 
 been more nobly set forth than in the speech of Sarpe- 
 don to Glaucos^, in the Twelfth Iliad ; before the high- 
 souled speaker proceeded to execute what was, on the 
 Trojan side, by far the greatest exploit of the War. 
 
 Lastly. In consideration of the duties and burdens 
 of his office, the King was a great Proprietor. A 
 domain 3 (temenos) was set apart for him out of 
 the common stock of territory (from temnein, to 
 cut, to carve out). The class had apparently two other 
 sources of revenue. They received presents from 
 merchants, for leave to trade; of which we find an 
 example also in the Book of Genesis*. The practice 
 of offering such gifts is probably to be regarded as the 
 germ of Customs-duties, or taxes on the import and 
 export of goods. The other was from fees on the 
 administration of justice \ Of these, we have the 
 
 ^ II. xxiv. 487. Od. xi. 497. "^ 11. xii. 310-328. 
 
 ' II. xii. 313 ; vi. 194; ix. 574 ; xx. 184. Od. vi. 293 ; xi. 184; 
 xvii. 299. 
 * xliii. II. II. vii. 467-475. Od.vii. 8-11. 
 " II, ix. 155. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 42^- 
 
 earliest rudiment represented on the Shield; where 
 lay two talents of gold, to be awarded to the judge 
 whose sentence in the cause should be most approved 1. 
 In time of war, too, Agamemnon was charged with 
 appropriating a very large share of the prizes to 
 himself^. 
 
 But the King was expected to be liberal in his 
 official entertainments, so to call them, to his chiefs 
 and nobles, over and above the general duty of hospi- 
 tality 3. This, probably, was the excuse of the Suitors 
 for devouring the substance of Odysseus. It appears, 
 at any rate, that friends of the royal house frequented 
 the table at the palace, as well as its enemies, though 
 perhaps not so constantly*. 
 
 The King might also obtain private property. 
 Laertes lived, in his old age, on an estate thus ac- 
 quired^ And, in the First Odyssey, we find a dis- 
 tinction between the house of Odysseus with the lands 
 about it, to which Telemachos was to succeed as of 
 right, and the kingly dignity with whatever might 
 attach to its. 
 
 Such was the position of the King. Agamemnon, 
 however, was a King of Kings : more or less resembling 
 what we now call a Suzerain, or the highest feudal supe- 
 rior of the middle age. Thucydides is of opinion that the 
 fear of him? had more to do than good will, or than the 
 oath of Tundareus, in the formation of the confederacy 
 which undertook the war of Troy. National sentiment, 
 and the hope of booty, might also contribute powerfully 
 to this extraordinary effort. We have, however, no 
 
 1 II. xviii. 508. ^ II. ix. 333. '' II. ix. 70. Od. vii. 49, 108. 
 * Od. xvii. 68. " Od. xxiv. 206. 
 
 ^ Od. i. 397, 402. ' i. 9- 
 
428 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 means of tracing in the Poems any interference of the 
 Suzerain, beyond his own proper dominions, in the 
 ordinary government of the country 5 or any duty owed 
 to him, except in war. 
 
 The general reverence for rank and station, the safe- 
 guard of publicity, and the influence of persuasion, are 
 the usual and sufficient instruments for governing the 
 army, even as they governed the civil societies, of 
 Greece. The few words quoted by Aristotle^ from 
 some text of the Iliad which was current in his day and 
 place, signifying that Agamemnon had a right of life and 
 death, cannot reasonably, without a context, be made 
 to convey a theory of military discipline out of harmony 
 with the tone and analogies of the poem, and belonging 
 to the definite ideas of the present rather than to the 
 free life of the older time. Moreover, as these words 
 {■nap yap epiol Oavaros) afterwards disappeared from the 
 text of the Poem, the most natural inference seems to 
 be that they were not finally approved as genuine. 
 
 It is in the Assemblies, that the great transactions of 
 the army are decided. There, arises the quarrel with 
 Achilles; there, the tumultuary impulse homewards; 
 there, that impulse having been checked, it is deli- 
 berately resolved to see what can be done by the 
 strong hand against Troy. There it is settled to ask 
 a truce for burials, and to erect the rampart. There 
 the second proposition of Agamemnon to return to 
 Greece is made, and is summarily overruled 2. There 
 the Council is appointed to sit, which despatches the 
 abortive mission to Achilles. There Agamemnon con- 
 fesses and laments his fault, and the reconciliation with 
 the great chief is sealed. There, finally, arises the 
 '■ Aristot. Pol. iii. 14. 15. * II. ix. 26-28, 50. 
 
XI.] POLfPy OF THE HEROIC AGE, 439 
 
 dissension of the two sons of Atreus, after the fall of 
 Troyi. 
 
 The ranks traceable in the army are : 
 
 1. The Kings: Basileis or Koiranoi. 
 
 2. The Leaders under the rank of King. 
 
 3. The officers of minor command. 
 
 Both these last come under the name of hege- 
 mones. The ships had each her kubernetes or 
 pilot, who probably commanded as well as steered : and 
 there were a number of tamiai, or stewards, whom 
 we may regard as the commissariat of that day 2. 
 
 The privates of the army are called by the names of 
 laos, the people; demos, the community; and 
 plethus, the multitude. But no notice is taken, 
 throughout the Poem, of the exploits of any soldie 
 below the rank of a high officer. Still, all attend the 
 Assemblies. On the whole, the Greek host is not so 
 much an army, as a community in arms. 
 
 On the nature of the arms employed by the bulk 
 of the force, it is not easy to pronounce with con- 
 fidence. There were heavy-armed, who fought with 
 spear, sword, axe, and stone ; javelin-men, who used a 
 lighter dart; archers; and hippeis, those who fought 
 from the chariot. Though the art of riding, in our 
 sense of it, was known, it was not used in battle. 
 One passage appears to speak of the Trojans as at- 
 tacking with javelins and arrows, and of the Greeks 
 as resisting with the weapons proper to the heavy- 
 armed S; another distinctly describes the first in the 
 same manner*: and on the whole I judge that the 
 Greek soldiery, with its solid march, were combatants, 
 
 ^ Od. Hi. 139. 2 II. xix. 42-45. 
 
 * II. XV. 707-712. * Od. xviii. 264. 
 
430 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 in the main, using weapons of weight; the Trojans 
 somewhat less so. Only the Trojans distinguish them- 
 selves as archers, in the persons of Pandaros and Paris : 
 but there were bowmen in the Greek army also \ 
 
 Two modes of fighting were in use : the open battle 
 of main force, without strategy or tactics, and liable to 
 panic. The other was the lochos, or ambuscade. As 
 a severer trial of nerve and moral fortitude, this latter 
 was held in higher estimation, and was reserved to the 
 chiefs^. We must not say that Achilles would have 
 been inferior to any man in any act of martial skill 
 or daring: but in the Poems, as they stand, Odysseus 
 has been chosen as the prince of ambush ^. 
 
 The Council was composed of chief persons, who 
 bore the name of gerontes*, or elders: a name which 
 was probably in its origin personal, and had by degrees 
 become, like that of Senator in later times, official. 
 In the Council of the Army, Nestor is old, Idomeneus 
 near upon old age: Odysseus might be called elderly, 
 though still in the perfection of strength ^. 
 
 In the Second Book, the Boule or Council is sum- 
 moned by Agamemnon, to prepare for the Assembly 6. 
 The same persons meet before the solemn sacrifice?, 
 without being called a Council. They meet again, 
 as a Council, by appointment of the Assembly, in the 
 Ninth Book s ; and send the Envoys to supplicate 
 Achilles. In the Seventh Book, this body plans the truce 
 and the rampart 9. It is spoken of as an institution 
 
 ' II. ii. 720; iii. 79. 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 509 ; xiii. 20, 276-286 ; i. 226. 
 ^ Od. iv. 277-288. * II. ii. 52. s II xxiii. 791. 
 
 ' II- ii. 52. ' II. ii. 404-408. 8 II jx. 10^ gg, 
 
 ^ II. vii. 344, 382. 
 
XL J POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 431 
 
 evidently familiar 1. The disorganised society of Ithaca 
 does not afford scope for a regular Council ; but a place 
 is set apart for the elders in the Agore 2, and Odysseus- 
 in his youth had been sent on a mission by Laertes and 
 his Council 3. In Scherie, Nausicaa meets her father * 
 on his way to the Boule. The members of the Army- 
 council contend freely in argument with Agamemnon ; 
 and Nestor takes the lead in that body, and observes 
 to Agamemnon that it is his duty to listen as well as 
 to speak, and to adopt the plans of others when they 
 are good ^. This institution was one utterly at variance 
 'with anything like absolutism in the command. 
 
 In the Homeric ideas upon Polity, perhaps the most 
 remarkable of all is the distinction accorded to the 
 power of speech. The voice and the sword are the 
 twin powers, by which the Greek world is governed ; 
 and there is no precedency of rank between them. 
 The power of public speech is essentially a power over 
 large numbers ; and, wherever it prevails, it is the surest 
 test of the presence of the spirit and practice of 
 freedom. The world has repeatedly seen absolutism 
 deck itself with the titles and mere forms of liberty, 
 or seek shelter under its naked abstractions ; but from 
 the use of free speech as the instrument of governing 
 the people, it has always shrunk with an instinctive 
 horror. The epithets and incidental passages with which 
 Homer honours it, show much of his mind ". But the 
 most emphatic testimony to its importance, and to the 
 state of things which it betokens, is the free, signal, 
 and varied excellence of the Homeric Speeches. 
 
 1 Od. iii. 127. 2 Od. ii. 14. ^ Od. xxi. 51. 
 
 * Od. vi. 33-55. ^ II- ix. 100-102. 
 
 '^ II. i. 490; ix. 438-443. Od..xi. 510-516; ii. 150; viii. i7o-i73- 
 
433 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 In the case of speakers. Homer is less chary of 
 description than his wont : and he has exhibited to us 
 in action too a great variety of manners. There is 
 Thersites, glib, vain, and saucy i. There is Telemachos, 
 full of the gracious diffidence of youth, but commended 
 by Nestor for a power and a tact of expression beyond 
 his years ^. Menelaos harangues with a laconic ease ^- 
 We have the Trojan elders, whose volubility, and their 
 shrill thread of voice. Homer compares to the chirp of 
 grasshoppers *. Nestor's tones of happy and benevolent 
 egotism flow sweeter than a stream of honey *. Phoinix 
 would, in unskilful hands, have been a pale reflex 
 of Nestor's garrulity without his sagacity j but his 
 speaking is redeemed by his profound and absorbing 
 affection for Achilles, which gives him as it were 
 a different centre of gravity. Far above all these soars 
 Odysseus, who when he first rises, with all his energies 
 concentrated within him, seems to give no promise of 
 display ; but when his deep voice issues from his chest, 
 and his words drive like the flakes of winter snow, then, 
 says the Poet, for mortal to compete with him is 
 hopeless s. 
 
 But yet there is another speaker who, when he rises 
 to his noblest, seems as though he were scarcely mortal. 
 Homer leaves the eloquence of Achilles to stand self- 
 described. That chief modestly pronounces himself to 
 be below Odysseus in the use of oratory. It seems to me 
 that his speeches may challenge comparison with all that" 
 we find in Homer ; and with all that the ebb and flow 
 of three thousand years have added to our records of 
 true human eloquence. Even here. Homer's resources 
 
 ^11. ii. 212. "0(1.111.2 3,124; ' II. iii. 213. 
 
 * II. iii. 150. ^ II. i. 243. 6 II. iii. 216-223. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 433 
 
 are not exhausted. The decision of Diomed, the irre- 
 solution of Agamemnon, the bluntness of Ajax, are all 
 admirably marked in the series of speeches allotted to 
 each respectively. Scarcely anywhere is mediocrity to 
 be found ; and perhaps the greatest example on record 
 of a perfectly simple nobleness is to be found in the 
 speech of Sarpedon to Glaucos on the duties of Kings ^. 
 
 With respect to the power of speech, and the capacity 
 of being moved by it, the performances of the Poet are 
 truly the best picture of the age itself. Unlike great 
 poems, great speeches cannot be made, except in an 
 age and place where they are understood and felt. The 
 work of the orator is cast in the mould offered him by 
 the mind of his hearers. He cannot follow nor frame 
 ideals at his own willj his choice is to be what his 
 time will have him, what it requires in order to be 
 moved by him, or not to be at all. 
 
 If the power of oratory proper is remarkable in 
 Homer, so likewise, and perhaps yet more, is the 
 faculty of what in England is called 'debate.' In 
 Homer's discussions, every speech after the first is 
 commonly a reply. It belongs not only to the sub- 
 ject, but to the speech that went before; it exhibits, 
 given the question and the aims of the speaker, the 
 exact degree of ascent and descent, of expansion or 
 contraction, which the circumstances of the case, in 
 the state up to which they were brought by the preced- 
 ing address, may require. The debate in the Assembly 
 of the First Book, and that in the Encampment of 
 Achilles 2, are, as oratorical structures, complete and 
 consummate. 
 
 A people cannot act in its corporate capacity without 
 ^ II. xii. 310-328. ^ II. ix. 225-655. 
 
 Ff' 
 
434 JVVENTUS MUNDl. [cHAP. 
 
 intermission ; and the King is the standing representa- 
 tive of the community. But though he be the pivot of 
 its functional and administrative activity, the Agore, 
 or Assembly, is the centre of its life and vital motion. 
 The greatest ultimate power possessed by the King is 
 that of exercising an influence upon his subjects, there 
 gathered into one focus, through the combined medium 
 of their reverence for his person, and of his powers of 
 persuasion. There is no decision by numbers; the 
 doctrine of majorities is an invention, an expedient, erf 
 a more advanced social development. In Olympos, 
 a minority of influential gods carry the day against 
 the majority, and against their head, in the great 
 matter of the Trojan war. 
 
 The interference of Thersites in the Debate of 
 the Second Iliad, and his attempt to bring the As- 
 sembly back to the impulse of returning home, were 
 followed by sharp corporal chastisement, and by the 
 menace of the last degree of personal disgrace. But 
 the very attempt to interfere by suggesting such auda- 
 cious proposals, and these from a person so contempt- 
 ible, may perhaps be taken as an indication that freedom 
 of debate generally prevailed. 
 
 In one of the scenes represented on the Shield of 
 Achilles, new evidence is afforded us, that the people 
 took a real part in the conduct of affairs. An Assembly 
 is sitting. A criminal suit is in progress. The parties 
 plead on either side, and challenge a decision ; and the 
 people, taking part some one way and some the other, 
 encourage them by cheering. The heralds keep order, 
 and stay the interruptions when the time arrives for 
 the judges to speak ^. This applause of itself asserts 
 * II. xviii. 502. Cf. ii. 211. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 435 
 
 the recognised interest and participation of the people ; 
 for it contributes both to the decision, and to the spirit 
 and efficacy of the means of persuasion, by which that 
 decision is to be influenced. Not only so j but it seems 
 to have been by popular vote that the two talents were 
 to be awarded, which lay on the floor^ and were to be 
 given to the Elder who might pronounce the soundest 
 judgment^. Finally, in the Assembly of the Seventh 
 Iliad, Idaios arrives from Troy with an ofFer to restore 
 the stolen property, but not Helen herself. Diomed 
 repudiates it, and his opinion is echoed back in the 
 cheers of the army. Agamemnon then addresses him- 
 self to the herald, 'Idaios, you hear the sense of the 
 Achaians, how they answer youj and I think with 
 them.' Thus the acclamation was also the vote 2. 
 
 That which we do not find in Homer is, the submis- 
 sion of the minority to the majority in any public or 
 deliberative meeting. This without doubt is an expe- 
 dient of much later date. But where difference of 
 opinion prevails, the Assembly breaks into opposing 
 factions. So it was in the drunken Assembly mentioned 
 in the Odyssey 3 ; and the minority which then set sail 
 was afterwards again divided K In like manner, of the 
 Ithacan Assembly in the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, the 
 majority determined on neutrality, but the minority 
 took arms. And, throughout the Voyages, we see how 
 freely the crews of Odysseus both spoke and acted, 
 when they thought fit, in opposition to his views. 
 These illustrations might be yet further extended. 
 
 The truth is, that everywhere among the Greeks of 
 
 ' II. xviii. 508. ^ II, vii. 381. ' Od. iii. 139. 
 
 * Od. iii. 162. 
 
 F f 3 
 
436 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Homer we find the signs of an intense corporate or 
 public life, subsisting, and working side by side, with 
 that of the individual. Of this corporate life, the 
 Agore is the proper organ. If a man is to be described 
 as great, he is always great, in debate and on the field : 
 if as insignificant, then he is of no account either in 
 battle or in council. The two grand forms of common 
 and public action are taken for the tests of the indi- 
 vidual man. 
 
 When Homer wishes to describe the Kuklopes as 
 living in a state of barbarism, he says, not that they 
 have no kings, or no towns, or no army, but that they 
 have no Assemblies, and no administration of justice ^■ 
 The source of life lay in the community, and the com- 
 munity met in the Agore. So deeply imbedded is this 
 sentiment in the mind of the Poet, that it seems as if 
 he could not conceive an assemblage of persons having 
 any kind of common function, without their having, so 
 to speak, a common soul too in respect of it. 
 
 Of this common soul, the organ, in Homer, is the 
 Tis or 'Somebody:' by no means one of the least 
 remarkable, though he has been perhaps the least 
 regarded, among the personages of the Poems. The 
 Tis of Homer seems to be what in England we 
 now call Public Opinion : the immediate impression 
 created in the general mind by public affairs, or by the 
 conduct of the chiefs. We constantly come upon oc- 
 casions, when the Poet has to tell us what was the 
 prevailing sentiment of the Greek army. He might 
 have done this didactically, or by way of narrative. 
 He has adopted a method more poetical and less ob- 
 
 ^ Od. ix. 112. 
 
XI.J POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 437 
 
 trusive. He proceeds dramatically, through the medium 
 of a person and of a formula, ' Hereupon, thus spoke 
 somebody :' 
 
 S8e Sf Tis e"iT((TKev. 
 
 This would be suflSciently noteworthy if we found it 
 only among the Greeks in war, and again in peace: 
 for, when Odysseus causes music and dancing in his 
 palace, with a view to producing an impression 
 on the people of the town of Ithaca, it is Tis who 
 tells what it was^ But it is not only in a normal 
 state of things among his own people, that Tis is 
 found. When Greeks and Trojans meet for the pur- 
 pose of the Pact, there is a Tis for the Trojans also 2. 
 The Suitors, again, are a body of dissolute and selfish 
 youths, and are competitors with each other for a prize 
 which but one among them can enjoy. Yet in some 
 sense they are bound together by a common interest 
 of iniquity ; and, although we are introduced to many 
 of them individually by their speeches, yet they too 
 have a Tis 5 who expresses their general sentiment oa 
 occurrences as they pass. Too broad to be confined 
 to Greece, this conception is not even restricted to 
 mankind : and Tis appears in Olympos, expressing the 
 common or average sentiment of the assembled gods *. 
 
 This remarkable and characteristic creation remains, 
 1 believe, the exclusive property of Homer. But per- 
 haps we may discern in the Homeric Tis the primary 
 ancestor of the famous Greek Chorus. Like Tis, the 
 Greek Chorus is severed from all mere individuality, 
 and expresses the generalised sentiment of the body or 
 
 1 Od. xxiii. 148-152. ^ II. iii- 3i9- 
 
 3 Od. ii. 324. * Od. viii. 328. 
 
438 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 people to which it belongs, in the highest and best sense 
 which their prevailing standard will allow. 
 
 Except in the mouth of the scoundrel Thersites, 
 nothing like political discontent appears in any part 
 of the Poems of Homer. The popular sentiment adverse 
 to Odysseus on his return to Ithaca is probably a per- 
 sonal resentment, not only for the death of the Suitors, 
 but for all the crews of his good ships lost in the War 
 and on the Voyage. There is no invidious distinction 
 between class and class, nor any of the social feuds 
 which might be its result. No recognised portion of 
 the community is imagined to require repression or 
 restraint from the government. The King, or Chief^ 
 is uplifted to set a high example, to lead the common 
 counsels to common ends, to conduct the public and 
 common intercourse with heaven, to decide the strifes 
 of private persons, which might bring danger to the 
 common weal, and to defend the borders of the com- 
 mon territory from invasion. 
 
 For the chief component parts of Greek society, we 
 have first the King and his family. Round him are 
 his Kerukes, Serjeants or heralds, his only executive 
 government: his Bard, ever giving delight, and re- 
 ceiving respect : his Seniors, who assist in council, and 
 in judgment: his Nobles, the only wealthy of the period. 
 From them the Prince or King seems to be in general 
 pretty broadly distinguished 5 for the rule is that the 
 legitimate son, the heir-apparent, contracts marriage 
 beyond his own borders. But Megapenthes, the serf- 
 born son of Menelaos, marries in Sparta itself 1. 
 
 Under the name of demioergoi% which includes 
 both the professional men and the skilled labourers of 
 
 ^ Od. iv. 5, 10, 797 ; xi. 87 ; et alibi. 2 od. xvii. 383. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 439 
 
 the community. Homer includes the prophet, the physi- 
 cian or wound-healer, the carpenter or wright, and the 
 Bard^. The fact that the worker in metals is not 
 included, tends to show, in accordance with all the 
 other evidence of the Homeric text, that this kind of 
 labour had not attained to any great degree of develop- 
 ment in Greece. 
 
 That the pursuits of manual labour were not below 
 the notice even of princes, we find from the case not 
 only of Odysseus, but of Paris 2, who joined in the 
 building of his own palace j and of Lucaon, who was 
 cutting young wood for his chariot, when, for the first 
 time, he fell into the hands of Achilles ^. Bards, heralds, 
 and seers, are all persons of general influence and 
 importance *. We hear of merchants only within the 
 Phoenician circle : as Mentes of the Taphians, and again 
 from the mouth of Eurualos in Scherie ^. We have also 
 in Scherie aisumnetai, or masters of the ceremonies, 
 who make the arrangements needful for the dance ^. 
 
 There are inferior professions of partially skilled 
 hand-labourers ; among whom it is interesting to notice 
 the drain-digger; the fisherman, named only in Ithaca '; 
 the charioteer, and the woodman, for both of whom, says 
 the Poet, as well as for the pilot, skill avails far more 
 than force". 
 
 But the persons named in connection with special 
 employments are rather classes, distinguished from the 
 general body of the community, than the parts which 
 make up the aggregate. They seem all to be picked 
 
 1 In another place he adds the herald, Od. xix. 135. 
 
 ^ II. vi, 314. ' II. xxi. 35. 
 
 * Od. iii. 267 ; xvii, 263 ; xxiv. 439. ° Od. i. 183 ; viii. 161. 
 
 « Od, viii, 258. ' Od. xxiv. 418. * II. xxiii. 315-318. 
 
449 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 men. Considering on the one hand the position of the 
 masses in the Assemblies, and the appeals there made to 
 them, on the other, the absence, in both the Poems, of 
 anything like an extended personal following attaclied 
 to the kings or chiefs, I come slowly to the conclusion, 
 as most agreeable to the evidence, which is far from 
 demonstrative, that the bulk of the community were 
 probably small or peasant proprietors, tilling their own 
 lands. The mode of their equipment as heavy, not 
 light, armed soldiers, tends to sustain this conclusion. 
 Even the sons of the slave Dolios appear to put on the 
 ordinary armour i. We have then probably before us, 
 in the composition of early Greek society, that mixture 
 and gradation of fortunes, which so much contribute 
 to the unity and strength of a community : the eminent 
 men leading because they were the best, and the mass 
 content to follow them for the same good reason. 
 
 The representation of the state of society and of 
 opinion in Ithaca, contained in the Odyssey is ex- 
 tremely curious. The term BaaiAfis, so carefiilly limited 
 in the Iliad, is here extended to the chief nobles j 
 as it is in Scherie to the twelve principal persons who 
 were counsellors of Alkinoos: and, along with it the 
 epithet AioTpecjyqs undergoes a similar enlargement. 
 Since Homer drew from hearsay his materials for treat- 
 ing of Scherie, we cannot reason confidently upon its 
 institutions in their minute detail. But, when he 
 speaks of Greek society, the case is diflFerent. And, 
 in effect, what the Poet shows us in the dominions 
 of Odysseus is, a great political change, brought about 
 by the absence, through a prolonged period, of a powerful 
 influence much more personal than traditional. King- 
 ' Od. xxiv. 596. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 44I 
 
 ship subsisted at that period in virtue of the strong 
 mind and strong hand of the King. Only the aizeos, 
 the man within the flower of his manfiood, was equal 
 to it. Laertes from his age, Telemachos from his 
 youth, Penelope as a woman, and thus open to the access 
 of suitors, were unequal to the charge. In the absence, 
 then, of the true King, each minor personage of the 
 order of nobles apparently set up as king. Moreover 
 local attachment prevailed over central influences ; and 
 the people, at least of the town, were with the op- 
 ponents of Odysseus. Except on his own estate, the 
 influence of his family, after a course of years, was 
 gone. Telemachos can only say that by no means are 
 the whole of the demos 1 or people averse to him. 
 The Suitors, shut within the palace for the terrible 
 assault of Odysseus^ feel that, if they could but get 
 out into the town, so as to give the alarm, they should 
 be safe. After the fact, Odysseus proposes by a strata- 
 gem to arrest any rumour of the slaughter 2. On 
 finding Laertes, he declares, 'we have no time to 
 lose 3/ He had quitted the town at once, evidently 
 as having no hope there. A civil war is the sequel 
 to the return of the legitimate Sovereign, who has only 
 to rely, after the favour of the gods and his own 
 powerful mind, upon a mere handful of dependents. 
 Odysseus calls the Suitors, whom he had destroyed, the 
 stay or strength* of the community; and the Shade 
 of Agamemnon recognises them as the flower of men ^. 
 Doubtless their party was strengthened by their King's 
 having lost all his comrades, and by the biting appeal ^ 
 
 ^ Od. xvi. 114. ^ Od. xxiii. 137-140. ^ Od. xxiv. 324. 
 
 * Od. xxiii. 121. ^ Od. xxiv. 106-108 ; cf. 429. 
 
 ' Od. xxiv. 428. 
 
442 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 they were thus enabled to make to the relatives of the 
 dead. His sources of aid seem to have lain in Pulos and 
 in Elis^. Of the Ithacan Assembly, near half^ went 
 to take arms against Odysseus ; while the others stood 
 neuter. The great Chief had on the moment but twelve 
 men in all to resist them : three of his family, nine 
 serfs. 
 
 A flood of light is tlirown, from this picture in 
 miniature, upon the structure of society, and the nature 
 of political power among the Hellenes of the heroic, 
 or the immediately post-heroic, age. 
 
 Laws can hardly exist without writing ; and, in the 
 age of Homer, writing, or what stood in its place, was 
 at most no more than the secret of a few families of 
 Phoenician extraction. It was certainly unavailable 
 for any purpose of general interest. A Greek word for 
 ' law ' is not to be found in Homer. With him, rojiiis 
 means a tract of pasture^. We find however {a) Ukt) 
 and hUai, {h) flejutoTes. The latter appear to be the 
 principles of right j the former, those principles of right 
 put into action by judicial proceedings, when they have 
 become matter of contention; the two* are clearly 
 enough to be distinguished. 
 
 In the absence of law, strictly so called, the Oath was 
 of peculiar importance. It was so solemn, that the only 
 special offence, expressly marked out for punishment in 
 the other world, is the offence of perjury s. And it was 
 so effectual, as not only to bind man to man, but deity 
 to deity*. The river Styx was the great Oath of the 
 
 * Od. xxiv. 430, 436. ' Od. xxiv. 463. ^ Od. Ix. 217. 
 
 * Od. ix. 215. ° II. iii. 279. 
 
 * IL.xiv. 278; XV. 36-46. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 443 
 
 gods\ evidently implying their liability, not indeed to 
 death, but to deposition; and the possibility that they 
 might exchange bright Olympos, as the older dynasties 
 of Nature-Powers had exchanged it, for the dreary 
 Underworld. The Trojans break faith and oath in 
 the Fourth Iliad: the Greeks never. Yet Autolucos, 
 the father of Penelope, had received from Hermes ^ the 
 gifts of pilfering and perjury; and thus moral corrup- 
 tion had begun to distil from depraved belief. 
 
 The xeinos or xenos, in the largest sense, com- 
 prehends and brings together three very different 
 classes. 
 
 I. The itinerating beggar^, ptochos pandemios, 
 who, in days when money did not exist as a circulating 
 medium, sought relief in the form of hospitality, relief 
 in kind; and in some sense paid for it by carrying 
 news'". 
 
 3. The Suppliant (hiketes), who may be of station 
 high or low, but who appears with a suit for shelter, 
 subsistence, or other aid, under the pressure of some 
 peculiar necessity or calamity. 
 
 3. The xeinos proper; the guest, whose need arises 
 simply out of the fact that, being away from home, he 
 has not his resources at hand, and therefore seeks to 
 have them supplied in the home of another. 
 
 Slavery is not a prominent feature of Greek society 
 in the Homeric age. It would appear to have been 
 nearly or perhaps wholly confined to the establish- 
 ments, in-door and but-door, of the chiefs. The lan- 
 guage of Achilles in the Underworld, ' rather would I 
 serve for hire even with a poor employer,' seems to 
 
 ^ II. XV. 37. 2 Od. xix. 369. ^ Od. xviii. i. 
 
 * Od. xviii. 7. 
 
444 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP, 
 
 imply that hire was the ordinary basis of service. If 
 Odysseus had had very numerous slaves, without doubt 
 he and Telemachos would have been represented in 
 the Odyssey as having raised and armed them against 
 the party of the Suitors ; which they did with the mere 
 handful at their command. The slaves appear to have 
 been few, in comparison with the number of the com- 
 munity. The demos or free people, who constituted 
 the Assemblies, seem also to have composed the mass 
 of the population of cultivators. 
 
 The two sources named for supplying slaves are 
 
 1. War; 
 
 2. Kidnapping. 
 
 In all cases this kidnapping is of single individuals. 
 We hear of it as practised by the Phoenicians, the Ta- 
 phians (a branch of the Phoenicians), and the Thes- 
 protians. Not by the Greeks j though Melanthios, the 
 goatherd in the Odyssey, without doubt a serf, as he 
 was the son of a serfi, among his other insolences, 
 threatens to carry away Eumaios, and sell him^. 
 
 We do not hear of any physical want or suffering in 
 connection with the condition of slaves ; nor ought we 
 to interpret too rigidly the prophecy of Hector concern- 
 ing Andromache, as proving that they were treated 
 with rudeness 3. But Homer saw both the enfeebling 
 and the depressing effect, the moral blight, of even a 
 mild slavery, and has recorded it in golden words. 
 With Homer, a slave is but one half of a man-*. 
 
 Slaves, from the circumstances of the case, were 
 often of birth and manners not unequal to those of 
 
 ' Od. xvii. 212; iy. 737. 2 Od. xvii. 249. 
 
 ^ II. vi. 454-463. Comp. II. xxi. 484-507 ; where not slavery, 
 but orphanhood, is supposed. * Od. xvii. 213. 
 
XI.] POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 445 
 
 their masters. Eumaios was the son of the ruler of his 
 country; and was brought up together with Ctimene, 
 the daughter of Laertes 1. 
 
 The slavery of Homer's time is a mitigated slavery. 
 It nowhere appears in association with wanton cruelty 
 or oppression. The slave may be familiar with his 
 master : Odysseus, on the Return, is kissed by his slaves. 
 The slave may acquire property, may be the master of 
 other slaves, as Eumaios was of Mesaulios ^ ; finally, he 
 is trusted with arms. A good master is expected to 
 supply his slave with a wife. 
 
 The absence of the chiefs and army from Greece for 
 a lengthened period, without any danger arising from 
 this source, of itself appears to prove, that slaves must 
 have constituted an element numerically insignificant 
 in that country. Another reason for this belief is to 
 be found in the fact, that no distinction appears to have 
 been drawn, as in after times, of a nature to make 
 laborious manual employments dishonourable. As it 
 was part of the prized accomplishments of a King like 
 Odysseus to be able to drive the plough, we may be 
 almost sure that field-labour could not have been, either 
 universally or generally, intrusted to the hands of 
 slaves. 
 
 The general picture presented to us is, that of free 
 self-governing agricultural societies under mild aristo- 
 cratic rule, the mass living in a self-sufficing independ- 
 ence ; and only a comparative handful, it is probable, 
 dependent in any degree, however small, on the assist- 
 ance of slaves for the management of their households 
 and estates. At the same time, as between the serf 
 and the thes or labourer for hire, it is material to 
 ^ Od. XV. 413, 363. ^ Od. xiv. 449. 
 
446 yUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 remember that, in the Homeric period, wages could 
 only be paid in kind, as there was no currency avail- 
 able. This being so, the hired freeman, if without 
 other resource, might perhaps, as to material comforts, 
 be in no better position than the bondman. 
 
 We have no trace of slavery in the Greek army, nor 
 of any large or numerous class of slaves anywhere. 
 The probable inference again, is, that slaves consti- 
 tuted but a limited proportion of the community. 
 
 It is possible that gold and silver may to a very 
 trifling extent have been used as a common measure 
 of commodities, or medium of exchange. For gold is 
 frequently mentioned as a constituent part of stored 
 wealth ; and we can hardly suppose that it was so stored 
 simply for use in the manufacture of commodities for 
 the owners by gilt plating or otherwise. But, on the 
 other hand, other commodities are not valued in gold 
 or in silver. Only the payment of the Judge's fee, or 
 prize, in gold, on the Shield of Achilles, approaches 
 to a case of the use of gold money. It is like the 
 semata or signs on the tablets of Proitos, the germ 
 of a practice rather than the practice itself. 
 
 The arms of Glaucos and of Diomed, the tripod 
 which is the first prize for wrestlers in the Games, and 
 the skilled captive woman who was the second, are all 
 valued or priced in oxen^; and the ox is the commo- 
 dity which represents in Homer what we now term the 
 measure of value, as far as it can be said to be repre- 
 sented at all. The captive Lucaon fetches for Achilles 
 the value of a hundred oxen' : Eurucleia is sold to 
 Laertes for the value of twenty a. The Suitors promise 
 
 ' II. xxiii. 702-705. ' II. xxi. 79. ' Od. i. 431. 
 
XI. J POLITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 447 
 
 to Odysseus the value of a hundred oxen each, as ran- 
 som 1. The most detailed account in the Poems of a 
 commercial transaction is in the Seventh Iliad, where 
 Euneos gives wine in exchange for slaves, hides, cop- 
 per, iron, and oxen. The four first-named commodities 
 he might well carry away from a camp for sale else- 
 where. As to slaves, for example, the skilled woman 
 of the Iliad is worth only four oxen : Eurucleia in Ithaca 
 worth twenty. They represent respectively the prices 
 of an exporting market with a glut, and of a market 
 of import with a demand from over sea scantily sup- 
 plied. The oxen which Euneos took, he possibly took 
 from those who were overstocked, and sold again on 
 the spot to such as chanced to want them 2. 
 
 Thus we can understand why ^schylus represents 
 the ox as the earliest sign impressed on money*. 
 
 Among the leading political ideas exhibited in the 
 Homeric Poems will be found the following : — 
 
 Authority to rule is derived from heaven, and the 
 abuse of this authority, the corruption and the crimes 
 of rulers, are ma,rked by divine judgments on a land. 
 
 Equality is not dreamt of; but liberty is highly 
 prized. 
 
 A strong sense of responsibility weighs upon the 
 mind of any ruler not utterly corrupt. 
 
 The possessions and honours of kings are not un- 
 conditional, but are held by them in trust for the 
 performance of public duties; among these, in order 
 that they may set an example to the people in time 
 of danger. 
 
 The gra,yest matters affecting the public interest are 
 debated and decided in the Assemblies of the people. 
 
 1 Od. xxii. 57-59. ' II. vii. 467-475. ^ Agam. 37. 
 
448 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Discussion is conducted in general by persons en- 
 joying weight from their age, station, birth, or ability ; 
 in a word, by the class possessed of leisure and social 
 influence ; but the deliberation and assent of the As- 
 semblies are free. 
 
 A public opinion readily forms and freely circulates 
 among the people, approving or condemning the acts 
 of those in authority. 
 
 Publicity attends all judicial and deliberative pro- 
 ceedings ; but a council of chiefs often privately pre- 
 pares matter for the Assembly. 
 
 The will of the Assembly takes effect in the Act of 
 the Executive 1. 
 
 Speech is the great accomplishment of man ; and is 
 the main instrument of government in peace, as the 
 sword is in war. These two powers, representing 
 moral and martial force respectively, stand in a po- 
 sition of honour peculiar to themselves. 
 
 These political ideas are traceable in the Olympian, 
 as well as in the human, society ; but their application 
 and development are less satisfactory in that upper 
 region. 
 
 The bond that held Greek society together in the 
 Homeric time, and that secured the basis on which it 
 was to be organised and developed, was fivefold; and 
 the strands of this well-knit rope are represented re- 
 spectively by single words. 
 
 I. ©eos, the Deity, and the worship of Immortal and 
 unseen Beings in all its various forms. 
 
 3. ®eius, the principle of social right and duty, 
 chiefly as between neighbours and fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 ' Od. V. 99. 
 
XI.] POLirr OF THE HEROIC AGE. 449 
 
 3. "OpKos, the ultimate sanction of good faith. 
 
 4. anvos, representing the basis of kindly and 
 
 friendly relation, and of good offices among 
 men, beyond the limits of polity and of class. 
 
 5. TaiJLOi, the great institution of marriage, deter- 
 
 mining the relation between the two varieties 
 of human kind ; constituting the family, and 
 providing for the continuance of the species. 
 The one great creative and formative idea which 
 runs through the whole of these is Reverence, that 
 powerful principle, the counter-agent to all meanness 
 and selfishness, which obliges a man to have regard to 
 some law or standard above that of force, and extrinsic 
 to his own will, his own passions, or his own pro- 
 pensities. 
 
 The five given above are the main channels into 
 which the stream is distributed. But they have many 
 subdivisions or specific forms, such as — 
 
 Reverence for Parents ; 
 
 Reverence for Kings ; 
 
 Reverence for the old ; 
 
 Reverence for beauty ; of which perhaps the very 
 noblest example ever given is the manner in 
 which Odysseus is struck by Nausicaa. One 
 much lower, and more Asiatic, is that of the 
 Trojan hrnMytpovres, or Elders, when Helen goes 
 forth to the Wall 1 ; 
 
 Reverence for the opinion of fellow men^; 
 
 Reverence for the dead ; 
 
 Reverence for the weak and poor. 
 These emotions and habits of reverence were to the 
 1 Od. vi. 149 seqq. II. iii. 154-158- ^ II- ^^- 459-4^1- 
 
45° JUVENTVS MUNDI. 
 
 Greek mind and life what the dykes in Holland are to 
 the surface of the country; shutting off passions as 
 the angry sea, and securing a broad open surface for 
 the growth of every tender and genial product of 
 the soil. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Resemblances and Differences between the Greeks 
 AND THE Trojans. 
 
 This subject, which has been treated with some 
 detail in the ' Studies on Homer i,' will now be touched 
 on only so far as to present its main heads. 
 
 Sufficient reason has perhaps been given for the 
 belief that there is a double ethnical relation between 
 the inhabitants of Troas and of Greece. The common 
 soldiery appear to correspond, without any sensible in- 
 feriority of the Trojans, who, however, appear to have 
 been in greater proportion lightly armed ; and all that 
 we learn of the people tends to associate them, in blood 
 and language, with what we may largely call the Pelas- 
 gian and more archaic element in Greece. The ruling 
 houses, again, are connected in the bonds of hospitality, 
 as appears from the visit of Paris to Menelaos. The 
 son of Anchises resided in Greece 2. Diomed has the 
 xenial relation with the Lycian Glaucos. Relations to, 
 the line of the personage termed Aiolos, so powerful 
 in Greece, are visible in the Dardanian royal family. 
 ^ Vol. iii. Ilios, pp. 145-247. ^ II. xxiii. 296,, 
 
45* JUVENTUS MITNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 When We turn to language, a near relation, perhaps 
 that of substantial identity, seems probable. A Greek 
 name, Astuanax, lord of the city, is expressly stated 
 to have been given by the Trojans to the son of Hector. 
 The Trojan army, indeed, is stated to have spoken 
 various tongues ; but this is placed in immediate con- 
 nection with the presence of the Epicouroi or allies^, 
 one race of whom, the Carians, are called speakers 
 of a barbarous, meaning probably a wholly foreign, 
 language. 
 
 In the matter of religion there is little, if any, 
 difference between the mere names of such gods as are 
 brought prominently forward. As the great controversy 
 was to be fought out in Olympos, no less than on earth, 
 Homer was in a manner compelled to find a meeting- 
 point for the mythologies of the respective parties. 
 We find mentioned expressly the worship in Troas of 
 Zeus, Athene, Apollo, and Hephaistos. Leto and 
 Artemis attend in the temple of Apollo on Pergamos. 
 Ares must have been known as a god to those, for 
 whom he fights. Aphrodite was eminently Trojan, as 
 we see from her favour for Paris j her . passion for 
 Anchises; her marriage-gift to Andromache; her mi- 
 nisterial charge over the body of Hector^; and from 
 the biting taunts of Pallas, of Helen, and of Diomed'. 
 Hermes is said to give increase to the flocks of 
 Phorbas* ; yet does not appear to be recognised as a 
 known. Trojan deity by Priam, when he gives his name, 
 and specifies in addition that he is an immortal god^ 
 Poseidon had a deadly quaiTel with Troy, but was in 
 
 1 II. ii. 803-806. 2 ji_ xxiii. 184-187. 
 
 ^ II. iii. 400-402 ; V. 348-351, 4:0-425, ' II. xiv. 490, 
 " II. xxiv. 461, 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TkOJANS. 453 
 
 close and friendly relations with the Dardanian branch^. 
 Her^ is named as the wife of Zeus, and as slighted 
 in the Judgment of Paris '^ 
 
 Now, a great River — not the humanised spirit of a 
 River, but the River itself — the Scamandros,. or Xanthos, 
 of the Ilian plain, appears in the Theomachy, and 
 fights on the side of Troy against Hephaistos. Here is 
 an indication, which cannot be mistaken, that a 
 Nature-worship, alien to tlie Olympian system, pre- 
 vailed in Troas. We have other signs of this great and, 
 probably, fundamental distinction of the two religions. 
 While Here is so fuintly sketched, her Pelasgian proto- 
 type, Gaia, is an object of ordinary worship in Troas, 
 although in Greece she is banished to the Underworld. 
 And the Sun (Helios) of the Iliad sympathises with the 
 Trojans, while the Apollo of the First Book shows signs 
 of affinity with that luminary, that are rooted perhaps 
 in his name Phoibos, but that are not allowed any 
 place or recognition in the Olympian scheme. Of all 
 single passages, that which most gives the key to the 
 distinction is the speech of Menelaos before the Pact 3, 
 where he proposes a joint act of religion to be per- 
 formed on behalf of both parties. The Greeks are to 
 offer a single lamb to Zeus ; and the Trojans two, one 
 of them to the Earth, the other to the Sun. Eos, the 
 morning, another Nature-Power, is made known to us 
 as the bride of Tithonos, and may therefore be set down 
 among the deities of Troy. It does not seem cle&r 
 that she was in any way impersonated in Greece. 
 
 It is very probable, that Hephaistos and other deitieg 
 may have been known under forms of tradition variously 
 
 ' II. XX. 290-292. ' II. X. 329; xiii. 827; xxiv. 29. 
 
 '- . ^ II, iii. 103. ; 
 
454 jnVENTUS MUNDI. ^ [cfiAP/ 
 
 modified, in Troas and in Greece respectively; and,, 
 indeed, in different portions of one and the same 
 country. These forms, however distinct or discordant, 
 the plan of Homer required him in some manner to 
 amalgamate. 
 
 So much for abstract belief. As to the modes of its 
 development, they would appear to have been on the 
 Trojan side sacerdotal, on the Greek imaginative. In 
 the Greek system, besides the great Olympian deities, 
 we have the gods of the older dynasty, and of the 
 Underworld ; the Giants ; the Nymphs, and other per- 
 sonages, anthropomorphically conceived, and presiding 
 pver groves, rivers, meadows ; the great ethical figures 
 of the Destinies and the Erinues, of Ate and the 
 Prayers ; and a multitude of purely poetical impersona- 
 tions, such as Terror, Rumour, and the like. In Troas, 
 we seem to find none of this large and varied ap- 
 paratus, except the names of certain Nymphs, who are 
 mentioned as mothers of human children. Indeed, 
 even the future state seems to have been feebly con- 
 ceived in Troy*; and the oath of Hector to Dolon^ 
 makes no allusion to the penalty of perjury, which, as 
 we see, was incurred by Pandaros without shame or 
 hesitation. Not only do we still hear of the illustrious 
 Shade of Patroclos after death, but the passage of the 
 souls of the Suitors from Ithaca is vividly described in 
 the Odyssey 3; but of the Trojans nothing is ever told 
 us beyond the grave, except one or two repetitions of 
 the mere formula that they went to Hades. A ma- 
 terialising religion is not favourable to the retention 
 of the belief in a future state ; and human experience 
 seems to have established widely, up to the present 
 ' II. vi. 422 ; xxii. 482. ' II.. Xi 329. 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS. 455 
 
 point of the history of the race^ the connection be- 
 tween such a belief and the repression of perjury. 
 
 But when we turn to sacerdotal institutions and 
 ritual forms, again the contrast is a striking one. 
 
 The three subjects of priesthood, temples, and glebes, 
 seem to be closely connected ; especially the first and 
 third : for where there was an estate, we may be pretty 
 sure that there was some official person, namely the 
 priest, to live upon the proceeds. 
 
 Now we never hear of a temenos, or consecrated 
 glebe-land, for any deity, except four times. There 
 is the temenos of Zeus in Gargaros^; of Demeter in 
 Thessaly^ ; of Aphrodite at Paphos^ ; and of the River 
 Spercheios in Thessaly*. The first is in Troasj the 
 third in Cyprus ; the other two stand in evident con- 
 nection with the old or Pelasgian worship. 
 
 Let us next look to the Priests of the Poems. We 
 have Chruses, the priest of Apollo in Troas ; Maron, 
 a priest of the same deity at Ismaros, among the 
 Kikones, allies of Troy- and again in Troas, Dares, 
 priest of Hephaistos ; Dolopion (areter, literally pray-er) 
 of Scamandros j Theano, priestess of Athen^ ; Onetor, 
 priest of the Zeus of Ida. But neither in the Greek, 
 army, nor in Greece itself, have we any mention of 
 a priest contemporary with the Poems. Especially in 
 the case of Ithaca this negative evidence is strong. 
 I refer .jback to what has been already said on this 
 subject in the description of the kingly oflBce. 
 
 Besides the Priests, there is the separate order of 
 Prophets. ; These are fully known in Greece under 
 different names, and are recognised as one of the 
 1 II. viii. 48. ' II. ii. 696, s od^ yiii, 363. 
 
 ,:, , * Il.xxiii. 148. 
 
456 juvMntus mundi. [chap.' 
 
 regulaf standing professions in a community at peace, 
 while Calchas is the mantis or prophet of the army. 
 These organs of the deity interpret sometimes from 
 signs and omensj sometimes without them. There 
 was some degree of approximation between the twa 
 characters. A prophet, or seer, might be an inspector 
 of sacrifices, though he did not oiFer them^. On the 
 other hand, a priest was supposed to be capable of 
 interpreting the divine will^. But distinctions of the 
 social state serve sufficiently to manifest the separation 
 of the two characters, even independently of the fact 
 that the seer or prophet never offers sacrifice. For the 
 last-named personage is distinguished from the rest of 
 the community only by the possession of his gift; whereas 
 the priest appears to be wholly exempted from military 
 service, and a kind of sanctity attaches to his character, 
 as is most of all clearly shown by the fact that the 
 offence . of Agamemnon, which brought the Pest upon 
 the Greek army^ consisted only in his refiisal to take 
 ransom for the captive daughter of a priest, an act 
 which he probably might have ventured with impunity 
 in the case of the child even of a prince. Yet the 
 teaching office, as far as we can trace it at all, seems 
 to lie less with the priest, than with the prophet^. 
 
 With respect to temples, it is plain that Apollo had 
 a temple at Putho, and probable that Pallas also had 
 one at Athens. No temple is named in Ithaca. They 
 seem to have abounded in Troas: and, in the Sixth 
 Odyssey, the building of temples* is named as one of 
 the elements of the construction of a city. It does not 
 follow that these temples were in all cases roofed 
 
 ■" IJ. xxiv. 231. Od. xxii. 318. '' II. i. 62. 
 
 ^ Od. xxii. 313-315. . * Od. vi. 10. 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS. 457 
 
 buildings: they may have been in some instances no 
 more than consecrated inclosures. Even in the Greek 
 camp, there was a central place for Assemblies, and for 
 Suits: and here were the altars of the gods^. We 
 are not entitled to infer from the existence of a temple 
 in any particular place, the existence of a priesthood. 
 
 The grove (alsos) appears to have been a common 
 form for the site of religious worship, both in and out 
 of Greece. 
 
 In Troy, we hear of a statue or image of Athene ^, 
 to which was offered the Robe, presented by the Trojan 
 women in their solemn procession. And on the Shield 
 of Achilles there are delineated figures^ of that goddess 
 and of Ares respectively, together with those of the 
 armed bands under their several patronage. But 
 no sanctity attends these figures ; they are simple 
 representations of Art. We have no trustworthy trace 
 of a statue used in worship, , except the solitary case 
 just named in Troy. And the common expression of 
 Homer, that the disposition of events lies in the lap 
 of the gods, is perhaps sufficiently explained by the 
 anthropomorphic character of the Olympic scheme, if 
 indeed it requires even that explanation. 
 
 Lastly, the Trojans appear to be distinguished* for. 
 punctuality and liberality in sacrifice. But we hear of 
 much neglect of this matter on the part of the Greeks. 
 Menelaos, one of the best and purest characters among 
 the Greek chieftains, was punished for his omission to 
 offer up the proper hecatombs, by a long and trying 
 detention in Egypt \ A like neglect was the cause 
 of difficulties in the general Return of the Greek 
 
 ' ' II. xi. 806-868. ^ II. vi. 303. ^ II. xviii; 516-519. 
 
 * II. iv. 48. ° Od. iv. 351-353. 
 
458 JVVENTUS MUNDI. fl 
 
 CHAJ. 
 
 armyi. And before Troy, in the hasty construction of 
 the trench and rampart, the whole of the army forgot the 
 proper hecatombs 2. The Trojans, then, much excelled 
 their enemies in religious observance. It seems also 
 true that, as between Greek and Greek, the pious 
 observers of the law of sacrifice were the better men. 
 But we can in no manner claim for the Trojans a 
 morality superior to that of their opponents. 
 
 Rather, indeed, the reverse. In the War of Troy, 
 justice is plainly with the Greeks. Of course I speak 
 of the delineation of the case such as we have it in 
 Homer, and do not inquire how far the Poet may have 
 caused the scale to incline on behalf of his country by 
 the weight of his own thoughts and wishes. The crime 
 of Paris would have been gross, had it been merely an 
 elopement. But it was an abduction ; and an abduc- 
 tion too, attended with mere thievery of goods. These 
 features in our eyes are aggravations j probably, in 
 those of Homer and his contemporaries, they may have 
 tended to mitigate the offence, by imparting to it some of 
 the features of war 8. And, in those days, abduction was 
 probably not regarded as criminal in itself. But there 
 always remains the grave offence of violated hospitality. 
 And accordingly, while Helen shows marks of aversion 
 for Paris, the Trojan people hate him like black death-i. 
 He contrives to hold his place by effrontery, and by 
 bribes" J and he is the object of sharp rebuke from 
 Hector*. With the exception of Menelaos, we find 
 much less indignation among the Greek chiefs, than 
 
 ^ Od. iii. 141-145. ^ II. vli. 450. 
 
 * Compare the case of Heracles and Iphitos, Od. xxi. 22-30. 
 
 * II. iii. 428-436; vi. 352. ° II. vii. 354-364; xi. 123. 
 ■° II. iii. 46-53. 
 
xn.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS. 4^9 
 
 we might have expected. Perhaps we may reasonably 
 consider that in this, as in many later cases, the 
 original causes of the quarrel were to a great extent 
 lost and absorbed in its following incidents. Christian 
 ideas, again, would fix a deeper guilt on Paris, especially 
 under the actual circumstances, according as his adul- 
 terous connection was more prolonged. But the offence 
 of Paris is regarded in Homer as arising from want of 
 self-control, rather than from hardened wickedness. It 
 is always treated as an ate, into which weakness 
 enters, and not, 'like the conduct of the Suitors, as an 
 atasthalie, which is purely deliberate and hardened. 
 The evil act once perpetrated, Paris had a marriage of 
 fact with Helen, who was installed into the family of 
 Priam : and of this marriage, odious as his character 
 must be held, he is in some sort the defender. It was 
 not wholly unlike the stealing of a birthright ; which, 
 once acquired, was valid. So the ofFence of Helen 
 did not lie in living with a man who was not her 
 husband, so much as having taken one husband in 
 exchange for another. 
 
 It is not unlikely that a more base and less manly 
 morality among the Trojans may help to account for 
 the patient endurance of so much privation and 
 calamity for the sake of a man, who did not even 
 redeem his vices (so to speak) by personal courage, or by 
 refinement of manners ^. This conjecture is certainly 
 sustained ^ by the remark of the Senators on the wall. 
 In Ithaca the same idea is ascribed to the dissolute 
 Suitors ^. But much of the cause must, I think, have 
 lain in a difference of institutions. The outward forms 
 
 . ^ See the whole of II. iii. ^ II. iii. 156. 
 
 ^ Od. xviii. i6o-2i2. 
 
460 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 of polity were not, indeed, broadly different. We have 
 on both sides a King ; a Council, or Councillors at the 
 least J and an Assembly. But we have no indications 
 of that spirit of freedom in the Trojan community, 
 which found such noble scope in masculine debate, 
 and even in positive action, among the Greeks. On 
 both sides we find the germ of after-history: the 
 Trojans bearing in many points the more Asiatic, the 
 Greeks the more European stamp. The one type leans 
 to fraud, where the other inclines to force. King Lao- 
 medon defrauds Poseidon and Apollo; Anchises steals 
 from Laomedon, Paris from Menelaos : when Pandaros 
 most grossly breaks the public faith, there is no 
 reproach: Euphorbos wounds Patroclos in the back. 
 The mild Menelaos declares, that the sons of Priam 
 cannot be trusted 1. Though a single passage in the 
 Odyssey places flat perjury, as well as theft, under the 
 patronage of Hermes 2, the Greeks appear, throughout 
 the Iliad, to pursue an honourable course of conduct. 
 
 A tendency, again, to sensual excess appears to run 
 in the royal line of Troy, under much less of restraint 
 than we find in the Greek houses. This is especially 
 remarkable in the mythology. Aphrodite and Eos, 
 goddesses 1 markedly Trojan, and Demeter, who is at 
 least Pelasgian, condescended to irregular relations 
 with men 3. So it is with the Naiad nymphs of 
 Troas*. But about the goddesses recognised by the 
 Homeric Greeks, Pallas, Artemis, Persephone, and 
 even Here, we hear nothing of the kind. 
 
 The polygamy of Priam is wholly without counter- 
 
 ' Jl. iii, 105. • '^ Od. xix. 369. ' Od. v. 121-127. 
 
 * II, vi. 21 ; xiv. 44; XX. 384. 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS, 46J 
 
 part in Greece. It seems, howeverj to be not that of 
 a dissolute man, but of the head of a family regularly 
 organised : not personal, but traditional. He had fifty 
 sons, nineteen of them from the single womb of 
 Hecuba ^i and twelve daughters. Besides Hecuba, 
 who was the principal queen, there were other 
 recognised wives; and behind them again were con- 
 cubines, or else, which seems less probable, women 
 in no permanent relation whatever to the King. As 
 ten sons of Antenor (besides one spurious son) are 
 mentioned in the Iliad, all within the fighting age, 
 and as his wife Theano is still blooming (callipareos)^ 
 it seems highly probable that he, too, may have had 
 more wives than one. 
 
 Again, while the guilty act of Paris appears to have 
 been regarded without moral disapproval in Troy, the 
 first act of Aigisthos, the corruption of Clutaimnestra, 
 was regarded by the gods as a crime ^, even apart from 
 the murder of Agamemnon : and their sentiment prob- 
 ably expresses the average moral judgment of the 
 country. Again, it was the main part of the guilt 
 of the Suitors, which drew down so terrible a retribu- 
 tion, that they sought to wed Penelope while her 
 husband might still be supposed to be alive ^. 
 
 The prevalence of polygamy, even in the highest 
 families, is obviously adverse to the rule of an here- 
 ditary succession to the crown. And it seems more 
 than doubtful, from the Poems, whether this rule was 
 observed on the Trojan side as fully as in Greece. 
 Sarpedon and Glaucos are both called Kings : yet they 
 belonged to the same kingdom, and they were cousins. 
 Again, Sarpedon evidently had the chief place: yet 
 
 ' II. xxiv. 496 ; vi. 248. '^ Od. i. 35- ' Od. xxii. i;. 
 
46a JUVENTUS MVNDI. [CHA*. 
 
 Glaucos was the representative of the royal house in 
 the male line, Sarpedon only in the female. Among 
 the Greeks the title of King is only given to one 
 person in one country, who must be either in pos- 
 session, or heir-apparent. 
 
 In the recital of the genealogy from Dardanos, 
 iEneas does not give a precedence of superiority to 
 either branch; and he leaves ^ us to doubt, or to 
 inquire from some other sources, which line was 
 the senior, the Trojan or the Dardanian. Again, 
 Achilles expressly taunts that chieftain as a candi- 
 date for the succession in Troy after the death of 
 Priam ^. 
 
 Further, it appears open to much question, which of 
 the sons of Priam himself we are to understand to have 
 been the eldest. The whole responsibility of command 
 evidently lay upon Hector ; and there can be no dou^t, 
 even if it were only from the name given to his infant 
 son by the people, that he was already the king- 
 designate in the public view. But that name would 
 have had little special significance, had Hector been 
 sure of the succession by mere seniority. While the 
 ability and value of Hector are of themselves sufficient 
 to account for his prominent place, it is very difficult, 
 except upon the supposition that seniority was more or 
 less the competing element with merit, to account 
 for various features in the position of Paris. Alone 
 among the children of Priam, he enjoys the title of 
 Basileus or King, which is never given to Hector. 
 Although utterly insignificant as a warrior, he is the 
 chief in command of the second among the five 
 
 ' II. XX. 231-240, « II. XX. 178-183. 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS. 463 
 
 divisions of Trojans in the great battle of the Twelfth 
 Book, as Hector is of the First \ Except Hector, Paris 
 is the only prince who has a separate dwelling of his 
 own on the hill of Pergamos. The other princes all, 
 married as well as unmarried, sleep in the palace 
 of their father. His expedition to Greece does 
 not absolutely imply his being the eldest son; but 
 perhaps best accords with that otherwise far from im- 
 probable supposition. 
 
 Again ; Paris, according to the representation of the 
 Iliad, had been in manhood for at least twenty years. 
 But Hector had one child only, a babe in arms. The 
 word he be, which expresses a full-grown, but still a 
 blooming, manhood, is applied to Hector 2, but not to 
 Paris. It is applied indeed to Odysseus in Scherie; 
 but this is when he had been preternaturally beautified 
 under the restoring hand of Athene; and also in the 
 complimentary speech of a host ^. We cannot suppose 
 Hector to have been very different in age from 
 Andromache : but she must still have been young, 
 for her own grandfather had been alive during 
 the War*. And finally, in her lament over her 
 husband, she distinctly calls him young *. So much 
 as to the apparent seniority of Paris; and, with this, 
 for the less defined and more lax law of succession 
 in Troy. 
 
 The relation of Priam to the districts or countries, 
 which supplied the several contingents of his force, is 
 but indistinctly conveyed to us. Yet it is probable 
 from the arrangement and expressions of the Trojan 
 
 ' II. xii. 93. ^ II. xxii. 363. ' Od. viii. 135. 
 
 * II. vi. 426-428, ' II. xxiv, 725. 
 
,464 JUVENTUS ■ MUXDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Catalogue, and from minor circumstances, that, besides 
 his kingdom of Ilion, he exercised over Dardania, and 
 at least three other districts^ an authority more or less 
 like to that of Agamemnon over the Greek chieftains. 
 However this may be, even the ancients justly described 
 the Trojan war as the conflict of the Eastern with 
 the Western world. And it foreshadowed other yet 
 greater conflicts, down to our own day. 
 
 Within the kingdom of Troy, we can more clearly 
 discern the inferior compactness of political society, 
 and its lower spirit of intelligence and freedom. We 
 have every sign that the Trojan Elders did not act 
 collectively as a Council 1. This is an important 
 defect in such a body with reference to the means of 
 moral influence. But Assemblies met. There Antenor 
 proposed, and Paris refused, the surrender of Helen : 
 popular discontent was expressed; and we are expressly 
 told, that he was able to procure the defeat of other 
 such proposals only by corruption 2. An Assembly 
 agreed to ask a truce for the burial of the dead. In 
 an Assembly, Hector somewhat curtly put down the 
 opposition of Poludamas as a stranger ^. 
 
 But we have to remark, in the Trojan Assembly, as 
 follows : — 
 
 1 . That there is no sign of its having been guided 
 by men of wisdom and valour, but only by age and 
 rank. 
 
 2. That oratory does not seem to have been em- 
 ployed in it as an instrument of persuasion. 
 
 3. That tlie Elders, who assist Priam in public 
 afFairSj are simply the old men, and not, as with the 
 
 ' II. ii. 788, 789. 2 II. vii. 379. 
 
 ' II. xii. 211-214. 
 
XII.] THE GREEKS AND THE TROJANS. 465 
 
 Greeks, the chief arid able men, belonging to the high 
 families of the State. 
 
 4. The Trojan Assembly does not clearly appear 
 to have been convened on special occasions : but per- 
 haps rather to have sat in permanence, in the sense 
 of having only consisted of such persons as might 
 chance to be present, at any given moment, in the 
 places of public resort ^. 
 
 There seems in Troy — as in the institutions we now 
 term Asiatic — to be nothing to stand between royalty 
 and the people. There was thus less balance of forces, 
 less security against precipitate action ; a state of facts 
 in all likelihood accompanied by less respect for pub- 
 lic morality, less security for private rights. 
 
 The Poet has given us, evidently of set purpose, 
 a minor indication of Trojan inferiority, in the con- 
 trasts he presents of the silence and self-possession 
 of the Greeks, with the din and buzz of the Trojans, 
 as they marched to battle. At the burying of the dead, 
 both armies wept and were silent : but the silence of 
 the Trojans was because great Priam forbade a noise 2. 
 A Trojan Assembly is uneasy and excitable S; never 
 a Greek one. Even for the expressions of approval, 
 different words are used: the Greeks were eager and 
 vehement, the noise of the Trojans was promiscuous 
 and tumultuous. In a word, all through the Poems, 
 the Greek mind is evidently endowed with a finer 
 sense, and a higher intelligence. 
 
 ' II. ii. 788 ; vii. 414- Studies, pp. 237 seqq. 
 
 '' II. vii. 426-432. ^ II. vii. 346; iii. 2, 8 ; iv. 429, 436. 
 
 Hh 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Geography of Homer. 
 
 Section I. The Catalogue. 
 
 The Catalogue of Homer is a great attempt to 
 construct what may, for those times, be justly called a 
 cadastral account of Greece ; together with an outline 
 of the Trojan force, sufficient for the purposes of the 
 Poem. 
 
 In 348 lines, it contains 501 proper names, spread 
 over diverse and very irregular tracts of country, and 
 including many which belong to personal history and 
 genealogy. To recite this part of the Poem with accu- 
 racy evidently required a great effort of memory. 
 To write it, would have required no more eiFort, per- 
 haps indeed less, than the average tenour of the Iliad. 
 Now the Invocation to the Muses at the commence- 
 ment, the most formal and elaborate which the Poems 
 contain, clearly shows that the Bard was about to un- 
 dertake a weighty task. Thus the Catalogue, together 
 with its introduction, becomes a powerful piece of 
 evidence to show that the Iliad was not written but 
 recited. 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 467 
 
 Next; the Genealogies of the Greek Catalogue, 
 eleven in number, testify in a remarkable manner to 
 the historic aims of the Poet, which led him to connect 
 all his leading personages with the past, at the very time 
 when he was securing to them a deathless heritage in 
 the future. Again, the Poet has avoided the error of 
 confounding his primary with his secondary leaders. 
 The greater chiefs have their descents traced singly, in 
 various parts of the Iliad, so as to give them due pro- 
 minence. But in the Catalogue a number of secondary 
 genealogies are massed together. 
 
 In his performance of this operation, where a re- 
 citing Bard was to lose the aid commonly afforded him 
 by the natural continuity of his subject-matter. Homer 
 has sought for a substitute in a kind of mental figure- 
 drawing. He divides the whole territory of Greece 
 and the Islands into three circles, more or less regular 
 and perfect; with a fourth figure of the nature of a 
 zigzag. 
 
 The first circle begins with the Boeotians and ends 
 with Mycense; containing nine contingents'. 
 
 The second is a zigzag, beginning with Lacedaemon, 
 and ending with the Aitoloi ; and comprises seven 
 contingents 2. 
 
 The third is part of a circle of islands, beginning 
 with Crete, and ending with Carpathos and other small 
 islands. This portion gives four contingents^. 
 
 In the fourth, or Thessalian portion *, it is more dif- 
 ficult, and in some cases hardly feasible, to identify the 
 sites J but, as far as may be, the Poet appears to adhere 
 
 II. ii. 424-580. ^ 581-644. ' 645-680. 
 
 * 681-759. 
 H h 2 
 
468 JUVENTUS MUNDI. ■ [cHAP. 
 
 to the same circular arrangement. Here also we have 
 nine contingents. 
 
 In each, then, of these four divisions of the territory, 
 the Poet makes his figure his guide, and proceeds from 
 each district to the one lying next to it on the proper 
 line, until the figure is completed. Water sometimes 
 intervenes j but no territory seems to be skipped over. 
 
 Thus there is a clue all along, except indeed at the 
 points of transition from one division to another. For 
 tjaese, also, he seems to have provided. In each case 
 he ends with a district, the neighbour to which, accord- 
 ing to the line of his figure, has already been disposed of. 
 Thus in the first, were he to go beyond Mycense, he 
 would find himself among the Boeotians again. So that 
 he is as it were reminded, by this contrivance, to re- 
 commence. 
 
 In the Trojan Catalogue, I find but two genealogies j 
 and one of them is that of the Pelasgian leader. Now 
 the Pelasgian blood, it will be remembered, seems to 
 be the common bond between the masses on each 
 side. 
 
 In the Greek Catalogue, Homer specifies the respec- 
 tive amounts of the contingents of force supplied from 
 the different poitions of the country. This is evidently 
 meant to give to each chief and district his due position, 
 relatively to the rest. In Troas he pursues no such 
 arrangement ; for he had no such object. And among 
 the Epicouroi, or Allies 1, there was another difficulty; 
 as they came and went in successive reliefs, whereas 
 the Achaians were a permanent force. 
 
 Generally, I cannot but think that the comparison 
 
 ^ II. ii. 816-839 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 469 
 
 of the two Catalogues is highly unfavourable to the 
 theory which regards Homer as an Asiatic Greek: a 
 theory which, in my opinion, should also be repudiated 
 upon more comprehensive grounds. The Greek Cata- 
 logue is charged throughout with what I may call 
 local colour and with visual epithets: epithets which 
 imply some personal familiarity, and raise up a pro- 
 spect or scene before the mental eye of a reader or 
 a hearer. In the fifty-two lines of the Trojan Cata- 
 logue, it would be difficult to point out more than 
 eight of these: the precipitous tops of Tereie and 
 Mucale; the fertile Larissa- the wide-flowing of the 
 limpid Axios; the eddying Xanthos; the dark water 
 of Aisepos; the lofty Eruthinoij the wooded hill of 
 Phtheiroi K Four only of these come from Asia Minor 
 to the south of Troas, with which Homer is supposed 
 to be so familiar. On the other side of the ^gean, 
 ten at least of such epithets are found within the thir- 
 teen lines that describe the places, which supplied the 
 Boeotian contingent. 
 
 ' II. ii. 823, 829, 841, 849, 855, 868, 869, 877. 
 
470 yuvENTus mundi. [chap. 
 
 Section II. The Plain of Troy' - 
 
 The leading topical points in the plain of Troy are 
 as follows : — 
 
 1. The Scamandrian plain 2, near the river Scaman- 
 droSj forming the northern and western part of the 
 Trojan plain, and reaching up to or near the En- 
 campment. 
 
 2. The Ileian plain ^, near the city, lying south and 
 perhaps east from it. 
 
 3. The Scaian Gates*, north of the city, the ordinary 
 way of exit to the plain. Near them is the phegos^. 
 
 4. The Dardanian Gates, south of the city, commu- 
 nicating with Dardania on the hill. II. xx. 316-218. 
 
 5. The junction of the rivers. II. v. 774. 
 
 6. The ford of Xanthos^ and the monument of Ilos 
 near it. II. xxiv. 
 
 7. The epLvebs, or wild fig-tree, near this ford (346-353 
 and 692-694), and the tomb of Ilos. Here was a 
 a-KOT!Lr] or place convenient for observation, and a wag- 
 gon road. All these are near the city. II. vi. 433; 
 xi. t66, 167; xxii. 145. 
 
 8. The OpaxTixos, or roll, of the plain near the northern 
 extremity, and the Encampment of the Greeks. II. x. 
 J 60; xi. 56 J XX. 3. 
 
 9 The Mound of Aisuetes, near enough to the En- 
 campment for observations. II. ii. 793. 
 
 1 o. The hillock Batieia, in the southern part of the 
 plain, at some distance from the city. II. ii. 813. 
 
 ' Of this subject, no notice was taken in the ' Studies on 
 Homer.' ^ II. ii. 465 s n ^xi. 558. 
 
 * II. iii. 145, et aim. 5 n. yi. 237. 
 
XIII. J THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 471 
 
 II. The two fountains of Scamandros. II. xxii. 147, 
 
 I a. The mouths of the two rivers, distinct one from 
 another. See II. xii. 21. 
 
 ] 3. The quarters of Achilles and of Telamonian Ajax 
 respectively, marking the extremes east and west of 
 the Greek Encampment by the shore. II. xi. 5-9. 
 
 The chief questions which arise are two. 
 
 1. In what manner can the description given by 
 Homer of the several parts be combined into a self- 
 consistent whole ? 
 
 2. In what manner can that description be reconciled 
 with the actual geography of the plain of Troy under ■ 
 stood, as it best may, from its present condition ? 
 
 The first of these two questions presents no in 
 surmountable difficulty. 
 
 We have to imagine an irregular oblong lying north 
 and south; the north end formed by the coast and the 
 Greek line of ships and cantonments, from that of 
 Achilles on the west to that of Ajax on the east, run- 
 ning along it ; the eastern side, by Simoeis ; the western 
 by Scamandros, with rough and steep banks above, and 
 with marshy lands near the mouth. The southern part 
 of the plain is closed by the roots of Ida ; and in the 
 south-western corner lies the city with a gate south- 
 wards towards the hill^ and towards Dardania which lay 
 within its recesses ; also a gate (the Scaian Gate), with 
 the ground descending towards the plain northwards. 
 
 " Passing from the north towards this gate, and having 
 on the right hand the river, we come along a waggon- 
 road to the wild fig-tree, where is the mound or tomb 
 of Ilos, used apparently as a place of observation, like 
 Batieia and the tomb of Aisuetesi, at the other end of 
 ' II. ii. 793' 
 
473 JITVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 the plain. This is hard by the river. We then have 
 the Scaian Gate on the left; and farther on are the 
 two fountains of the Scamandros, near to which Hector 
 passes, in making the circuit of the city. 
 
 It is plain, that there was a communication between 
 the rivers ; but probably one dry in summer ; and we 
 may take notice that it was not in the fierce Scaman- 
 dros, but in Simoeis, that there lay both heroes and their 
 spoils ; and this in the dust, not in the waters, as Virgil 
 has vividly, but carelessly^ represented ^. 
 
 The ford of Xanthos we must understand to be a 
 ford leading to the westward, not one crossed between 
 the city and the camp. With these suppositions, the 
 topography of the plain appears to be self-consistent. 
 
 The best examination I have been able to make of 
 the second question leads me to the conclusion that 
 the description of Homer cannot be accurately fitted to 
 the natural features of the plain, as they now are, or 
 even as we can probably suppose them to have been 
 some three thousand years ago. 
 
 There is no site near the two fountains, on which 
 the city can have been placed, of such a nature as ta 
 allow of the threefold circuit ascribed to Hector flying, 
 and to Achilles pursuing him. 
 
 The general idea conveyed by the Iliad of the dis- 
 tance between the city and the encampment is, that it 
 was short. After the second Battle, in Book viii. 
 Hector holds an Assembly. The Trojans had pressed 
 upon the Greek entrenchment, and their gathering is 
 away from the ships, v6(t^i vemv (v. 490) ; but this 
 seems to be explained by what follows as meaning 
 simply clear of the field of battle, whereon lay the dead 
 ^ jEn. i. 100, 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 473 
 
 bodies. And it is expressly called ' near ' (eyyvs) that is, 
 near the ships, in II. ix. 232. But Hector proceeds to 
 give directions for fetching oxen and sheep, with wine 
 and corn, from Ilion for the immediate repast ; and here- 
 with the wood for cooking and for watchfires (505-507). 
 
 Again, in II. viii. 532, Hector says, 'to-morrow we 
 shall see whether Diomed will drive me from the ships 
 to the wall (evidently of the city), or whether I shall 
 slay and spoil him.' Now the idea of the pursuit from 
 the ships to the wall and the corresponding movement 
 of the armies, are wholly inapplicable to a distance of 
 five or six or more miles. 
 
 On the whole, the length of the plain, and the dis- 
 tance of the two fountains from the shore, are not 
 in harmony with the descriptions of the forward and 
 retrograde operations of the armies which took place 
 on the -great day of battles, ending with the unwilling 
 retirement of the Sun in II. xviii. 239. Other incon- 
 sistencies of a like nature might be pointed out. 
 
 On the other hand, the number of the natural fea- 
 tures pourtrayed, and the actual correspondence of most 
 of them, when taken individually, with those we now 
 discern, establish the general authenticity of the scene. 
 They also lead to the conclusion that Homer may have 
 seen it in person ; or may, by the power of a vigorous 
 imagination, have conceived its general character, and 
 the relative position of the points, from the narratives 
 of eye-witnesses. 
 
 But it seems plain, that he did not sing either on the 
 spot, or to persons minutely acquainted with the topo- 
 graphy ; and not unlikely, that he generalised his mate- 
 rials, and used them with a certain licence, as a poet, 
 for the purposes of his art. 
 
474 yuVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 Lastly: I cannot but observe the analogy between 
 this loose placement of objects, each of which singly 
 had been vividly conceived, and the indefinite method 
 of handling geographical points on a large scale, in the 
 Outer Voyage of the Odyssey. In the latter case we 
 are morally certain that he spoke at secondhand ; and 
 this tends to diminish the unlikelihood that the Song 
 of Troy was composed without personal experience of 
 the spot to aid the work. 
 
 Section III. The Outer Geography. 
 
 The geography of Greek experience, as exhibited by 
 Homer, is limited, speaking generally, to the ^gean 
 and its coasts, with the Propontis as its limit in the 
 North-east, with Crete for a southern boundary, and 
 with the addition of the western coast of the peninsula 
 and its islands, as far northward as the Leucadian rock. 
 Respecting that rock, and respecting the conformation 
 of Corfu (Scherie) and the shape of Ithaca, Homer had 
 some accurate information. But a visit to that region 
 in 1858-9 convinced me that the Poet, who described 
 the view of Corfu ^ from the north as lying on the sea 
 like a shield, never could have seen it ; that he was not 
 personally acquainted with the topography of Ithaca; 
 that he guessed at, and over-estimated, its size ; and, as 
 is demonstrable from several passages in the Odyssey 2, 
 that he has given it a wrong relative position. 
 
 1 Od. V. 281. 
 
 2 Especially Od. iv. 844-847 and Od. ix. 25-26 ; lines which it 
 has in vain been attempted to force into conformity with actual 
 geography. 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 475 
 
 Beyond the limits I have named, all ordinary navi- 
 gation was conducted by the Phoenicians; and upon 
 these mariners, possibly in a few cases on their settlers 
 or colonists in Greece, Homer must have depended for 
 his information. At any period, such information could 
 only give rise to very inaccurate geographical results. 
 But we cannot even expect a resemblance to the actual 
 face of earth, in a case where not only are the points 
 described by those who would naturally seek both to 
 excite and to deter, but where they could be nowhere 
 arranged and digested, except only in the brain of the 
 Poet, ideally compounding in the mind what fell upon 
 the ear. 
 
 It appears to me, that interpreters have been wholly 
 wrong, when they have laboriously strained their endea- 
 vours to fit the Outer Geography of Homer to the actual 
 surface of the globe. Unwilling to recognise error in his 
 descriptions, they have closed their eyes to much really 
 indisputable evidence of it that the text supplies ; and 
 have, after a sort, assigned to him geographical know- 
 ledge which he did not possess, at the expense of that 
 mental self-consistency, and that plastic power, with 
 both of which he was endowed in a degree never sur- 
 passed among the sons of men. It was no reproach to 
 him, if he believed in a great sea, connecting the Adriatic 
 and the Euxine ; but it would have been at variance 
 with all the rules of his mental action, if he had spoken 
 without any definite meaning, when he treats of sailing 
 and floating distances, of the direction of the wind, or 
 of the position of the stars : if he had forgotten his dis- 
 tinction between land of the continent and island, or 
 if he had placed the sunrise in the West. 
 
 No doubt his descriptions are very vague in some 
 
476 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 cases, and especially as to the Island of Calypso. The 
 fact seems to be, that he was misled not only by false- 
 hood, but by truth. When informants, speaking of the 
 same region, described it as one of all but perpetual 
 day, and also as one of night all but perpetual, although 
 both these statements were true, he had not the key to 
 their truth in the annual revolution of the earth com- 
 bined with the declension of its axis from the perpendi- 
 cular; and thus he could only seek refuge in vagueness 
 from contradiction. Again, when he heard of great sea- 
 currents, which set through the Bosphorus, the Straits 
 of Messina, the Straits of Yenikale, and the Straits of 
 Gibraltar respectively, what means could he possess, 
 considering the palpable points of resemblance, of effec- 
 tually separating each one of these from the others? 
 Hence it is, as we shall find, that he carries his Thri- 
 nakie (or Sicily) to the immediate vicinity of the Bos- 
 phorus, consecrates it to the Sun, and places there the 
 Oxen and the Nymphs belonging to that deity. 
 
 The proper object of our search is, not a forced ac- 
 commodation of Homer's conceptions to a basis of fact 
 with which he was unacquainted, but simply a copy, if 
 we can get it, of the map, which he constructed in his 
 brain from the materials supplied by Phoenician dis- 
 course or legend. And the proper mode of search must 
 be, to take for our primary authority his own state- 
 ments of distance, direction, and physical features ; and 
 then, but only in subordination to this rule, to see 
 where and how far they fit any portion of what actually 
 exists i moreover, whether they so correspond with it as 
 it is situate in its proper place, or as he has arbitrarily 
 transplanted it to some other. 
 
 There are fractions of border-land, between the Inner 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 477 
 
 or home, and the Outer or wholly foreign sphere, which 
 receive somewhat of a mixed treatment. To this group 
 Scherie belongs: and the land of the Lotos-eaters possibly 
 may be but another phase of Egypt. Epirus again, and 
 the country of the Glactophagoi and -other nations, over 
 whom Zeus directs his view at the outset of the Thir- 
 teenth Iliad ^, belong to this zone, as does Phoenicia, 
 if not Cyprus. 
 
 Our data for constructing an Homeric map of the 
 Outer Geography seems to be chiefly as follows : — 
 
 I. The points of the horizon, marked for morning 
 and evening respectively, connect themselves with two 
 of Homer's winds. His Zephuros is akin to zophos, 
 and knephas, the darkness": his Euros to eos^ the 
 morning, and perhaps to his euroeis, an epithet used ■ 
 by him four times only, and in each case to describe 
 the Underworld. Sunrise and sunset, with him, verge, 
 though not perhaps with uniform precision, to the 
 south of East, and to the north of West respectively. 
 
 3. And such are the directions, from which Zephuros 
 and Euros blow. But it is plain, as Zephuros blows 
 from Thrace upon the ^gean*, that his range also 
 approximates to the north pole on the western side : 
 and further, that, as Boreas blows from the same 
 quarter, he takes up the next arc of the horizon, and 
 may be defined as a north-north-east wind j a title which 
 the same wind, as far as my memory serves me, still 
 bears in the Adriatic. Again, Euros and Notos, the third 
 and fourth of Homer's winds, are associated together as 
 a pair, raising the ^gean from the South nearly as 
 
 ^ II. xiii. 3-6. " Buttmann, Lexil. in vqc. KiKaivoa 
 
 ' Liddell and Scott, in voc. * II. ix. 4. 
 
478 JVVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Boreas and Zephuros catch it from the North. The 
 greater portion however of the arc covered by the 
 southern pair is to the east of the Pole, by the nor- 
 thern pair to the west. It is not probable that Homer 
 had names for winds from all points of the compass, 
 or that he did more than mark inartificially the direc- 
 tions from which the winds of his actual experience 
 principally blew. Notos may probably be a South 
 wind, blowing from near that pole on either side : 
 Euros is between Notos and the east. 
 
 3. Next to these, we have to mark Homer's mea- 
 sures of sea distances. Of extended land distances, 
 he has no measures at all ; a separate proof of the very 
 limited range of the land experience of the Greeks. 
 
 {a) H omer measures the time of a voyage from Troas 
 to Phthiaj and from Crete to Egypt 1. The result 
 of these measurements is, to give some ninety miles 
 as a good average day's journey of a ship using sails 
 or oars, under favourable circumstances. With peculiar 
 good fortune, that distance might be exceeded. 
 
 {h) In a floating or drift passage on the waves, we 
 can trace Homer's idea of what was possible by the 
 supposed transit of Odysseus from a point near Crete 
 to the Thesprotoi. It appears to be about half the 
 rate of a ship's motion, or two miles an hour. 
 
 {c) The floating of a raft may probably be taken at 
 a little more, or two and a half. 
 
 Thus we should have ninety-six miles, forty-eight • 
 miles, and sixty miles a day as our results respectively. 
 
 These are, of course, but rude measures, yet they 
 are not unimportant aids in our inquiry. 
 
 {d) The rate of a Scherian ship is described by com- 
 ' II. ix. 362. Od. xiv. 257. 
 
y 
 
 Xin.J THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 479 
 
 parison with a bird's flight, or a four-horse chariot 
 scouring the plain. ' It would go/ says Alkinoos, ' to 
 Euboea (or perhaps to Euboea and back) in a day.' We 
 cannot, I think, put it at less than thrice the speed 
 of the ordinary ship. 
 
 The key to the great contrast between the Outer 
 Geography and the facts of nature lies in the belief 
 of Homer, that a great sea occupied the space, where 
 we know the heart of the European Continent to lie. 
 Proofs and indications of this belief are to be found, 
 such as to place it beyond denial or even doubt. 
 
 (a) For example, we find one of these in the voyage 
 of the Phaiakes to Euboea, which was certainly not 
 supposed to take place round the whole coast of the 
 Greek Peninsula, for the Phaiakes are supposed to hang 
 as strangers on the outer skirt of the Greek world, not 
 to traverse all its chief waters^. It must therefore 
 have been a passage by a supposed northern sea. 
 
 (^) When Hermes travels from Olympos to the Island 
 of Calypso, he passes over Pieria, and then sweeps 
 down upon the sea 2. That sea must therefore have been 
 in the north or north-east. The journey of Here over 
 Pieria to Emathia and Lemnos^ shows the acquaint- 
 ance of the Poet with the general direction of those 
 countries. 
 
 {c) The Shades of the Suitors, on their way to the 
 Underworld, take a northerly direction, past the Leu- 
 cadian rock, in a journey towards the stream of Ocean, 
 and the gates of the Sun*. Can there be a clearer 
 declaration than this that they were to pass into the 
 
 * Od. vii. 19-26. ^ Od. V, 43-58. 
 
 ^ II. xiv, 225-230. ' Od. xxiv. 11-14. 
 
480 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 east along the Adriatic — apparently avoiding the known 
 land of Greece on their journey ? 
 
 Next, Homer appears to have compounded into one 
 group two sets of Phoenician reports concerning the 
 entrance from without to the Thalassa or Medi- 
 terranean : one of them referring to the Straits of 
 Messina, with their Scylla and Charybdis; the other 
 to the Bosphorus and its Planctai. It is also very 
 easy to believe, that with each of these narrow passages 
 he associated another strait beyond it at a distance 
 of sever?.! hundred miles, namely the Straits of Gib- 
 raltar with the first, and the Straits of Yenikale with 
 the second : and the striking resemblance of these last 
 to one another, in the cardinal point of presenting 
 at all times an inward flowing current, would tend 
 to favour the confusion. The Ocean was, in Homer's 
 system, the feeder of the Sea : he tells us in the Odyssey 
 distinctly enough of one sea-passage to the Ocean, but he 
 nowhere glances at the existence of any second access. 
 
 This Ocean mouth, to which he conducts Odysseus, 
 is unequivocally placed in the East, near the island of 
 Aiaia, and the rising Sun. To the left and North, lie 
 the people of the Kimmerians hid in fog, for which the 
 Black Sea is even now said to be remarkable. Kirke is 
 the daughter of Aietes, to whose country Jason had sailed 
 through the Bosphorus. And giving the darkness a place 
 near the dawn is a proceeding necessary to complete 
 the idea of morning. The mouth of the Underworld is 
 farther southward, inasmuch as Odysseus is carried to it 
 by the Wind Boreas, up the Ocean-Stream. The whole 
 of his voyage, up to this point, is accomplished without 
 his being obliged to traverse any dangerous narrows. 
 But, pursued by the vengeance of Poseidon, who rules 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 481 
 
 the outer or Phoenician Thalassa, he eschews re- 
 turning by the same open, lengthened, and menacing 
 route. Kirke accordingly apprises him of a short 
 passage, by which he may soon find himself once more 
 within the margin of the Greek or iEgean waters. 
 This is the Bosphorusj near which the Poet plants 
 Thrinakie, an island evidently projected in his mind 
 on the basis of ideas derived from Sicily, and with it 
 the Scylla and Charybdis of the Straits of Messina. 
 
 This transportation of western features to the East 
 is further illustrated by the Homeric treatment of 
 Atlas. For, associated though he be in general tradi- 
 tion with the coast of Africa, and the Straits of Gib- 
 raltar, he is with Homer the Father of Calypso, whose 
 island plainly lies in the northern and eastern waters, 
 since it seems to be Boreas who brings Odysseus from 
 thence to Ithaca. 
 
 The general result of this blending is, that the supposed 
 Ocean mouth in the Euxine gets the benefit of the open 
 sea-route which really leads to the Straits of Gibraltar ; 
 and the real Ocean mouth at Gibraltar has credit for 
 being placed in a northern latitude and a distant eastern 
 longitude ; while the Faro and the Bosphorus, in 
 consequence of this identification, are brought near to 
 one another : each group of reports thus throwing 
 its own separate attributes into the common stock. 
 
 The Bosphorus must be considered not as belonging 
 to the Greek world, but yet as fast linked to it^ and 
 therefore as a point fixed by practical experience, and 
 pot to be removed. And even if we could not give 
 probable ground for Homer's having placed the Faro 
 near it, the fact would still be undeniable from the 
 evidence of the text, and. must be recognised in any 
 
 I i 
 
48a yUVENTVS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 transcript of the Outer Geography which we may 
 attempt. 
 
 The island of Calypso, again, must be in the north : 
 
 {a) From the direction taken, as we have seen, by 
 Hermes. 
 
 {l>) Because fire is kept burning there, which indicates 
 a climate requiring it. Kirke has none in her island ^ 
 
 {c) Because it is the omphalos^, or central point 
 of a vast sea, spreading on all sides, with which nothing 
 to the east, west, or south of Greece corresponds 
 either in nature, or in the ideas of Homer. 
 
 {d) Because the meaning of her name, the Concealer, 
 and the length of the voyage back to Scherie, indicate 
 her dwelling as belonging to a region wholly untravelled 
 and unknown to the Greeks. 
 
 {e) Because Odysseus ^ is apparently carried to it by 
 Notos. And the general rule of the Wanderings is, 
 that southerly winds bear Odysseus away from home, 
 while northerly ones carry him towards it. 
 
 Again, the association of Calypso with the Eastern 
 mythology prevents us from placing her in the North- 
 west, where lies the country of the Laistrugones ; and 
 keeps her in relation with the east rather than the 
 west of North. 
 
 The island of Aiaie is bound to an eastward position 
 by the name and character of Kirke; by its relation 
 to Aietes, and thus to Jason, and his voyage; by the 
 names of Helios, the father of Calypso, and of her 
 mother Perse, an appellation savouring, in Homer, of the 
 far East, to which the Persians of that day belonged * j 
 
 ' Od. V. 60; X. 210 seqq. ^ Od, i. 50, 
 
 ^ Od. xii. 426, 447. 
 
 * Rawlinson, Anc, Monarchies, vol. iv. p. 349. 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 483 
 
 by its being the point of Sunrisej and by the residence 
 of Dawn. 
 
 All particular conjecture respecting any position for 
 these islands is, however, vague : the several points of 
 the scheme of Homer in the Outer Geography were 
 determined by relation to each other broadly conceived, 
 and by directions generally taken, rather than by any 
 attempt at exactitude even in mental measurement. 
 
 With these data^ I now proceed to note the several 
 stages of the Voyage of Odysseus. 
 
 I. From Troy to the Kikones on the north coast 
 of the ^gean; in a region strictly belonging to the 
 Inner Geography 1. 
 
 3. From the Kikones, Boreas (N. N. E. wind) carries 
 Odysseus to Cape Malea, prevents him from rounding 
 it, and drives him out to sea, where nine days of bad 
 or plaguy winds (olooi anemoi) bring him to the 
 land of the Lotos-Eaters, wliich appears to be like an 
 Egypt in a new dress. As five days ^ drive a ship from 
 Crete to Egypt, we must suppose that nine imply some 
 considerable westing, and place the Lotos-Eaters on the 
 African coast along the Syrtis Major. We are now in 
 the Outer Sphere ^. 
 
 3. From the Lotophagoi to the Kuklopes, we have 
 no direct guide afforded by the text, except that it was 
 a voyage onward, and that the Kuklopes live on a 
 mainland *, not an island. From this mainland they 
 had, at an earlier date, displaced their neighbours the 
 Phaiakes, who, being a nautical people, passed over and 
 settled in Scherie. Therefore we are probably to 
 
 ' Od. ix. 39. ^ Od. xiv. 253. 
 
 =* Od. ix. 67, 80-84. * Od. vi. 4-8. 
 
 I i 2 
 
484 JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 place them in lapugia, the heel of Italy, over against 
 Scherie ^. 
 
 4. From the land of the Kuklopes, perhaps called 
 by Homer Hupereie^j Odysseus proceeds to the island 
 Aiolie ^, and Aiolos gives him a Zephyr (N. W. wind) 
 which would carry him home to Ithaca. Therefore the 
 island of Aiolos (whether related to Stromboli as its 
 prototype or not) lies to the north and west of Ithaca, 
 with a clear sea-passage between^,. Then a tempest 
 drives him back to Aiolie, after nine days of Zephuros, 
 and when the ships were in full sight of Ithaca s. Thus 
 we have a very good measurement from the direct 
 evidence of the text : and Aiolie lies at sea and at from 
 eight hundred to a thousand miles from Ithaca, in a 
 north-westerly direction. 
 
 5. From Aiolie, Odysseus comes, in seven days of 
 rowing, to Laistrugonie, the city of Lamos, evidently 
 far north, as it is the land where one day runs into 
 another «. We are now seventeen days from Ithaca in 
 a direction north and west. There can be little doubt 
 that the prototype of this place was supplied by a tra- 
 dition brought from the north-western main. The 
 very marked description of the harbour, and the epithet 
 (aipu) applied to the city, correspond closely, I am told, 
 with one or more of those on the south Devonshire and 
 south Cornish coasts. But the site in the open sea, and 
 the description of the continuous day, might more 
 properly be taken from the Faro Islands. The size 
 -oi the people, especially of the women?, suggests a 
 Scandinavian race j the want of cultivation ^ a position 
 
 ^ Od. ix. 105. 2 Od. vi. 4. ' Od. ix. 565 ; x. i. 
 
 * Od. X. 25, 46. « Od. X. 28, 54. « Od. X. 80-83. 
 
 ' Od. X. 113. 8 Od. X. 98. 
 
XJII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 485 
 
 in the far north, and with a climate suited for pas- 
 ture, not for tillage. 
 
 6. From Laistrugonie we pass, without indication, 
 to Aiaiei. I have already shown that this island is 
 absolutely fixed, according to the mind of Homer, in 
 the East, as Aiolie is in the West. It cannot be in 
 the remote North, because no fire is used. It is not 
 very likely to lie to the south of East, because of the 
 neighbourhood of Kimmerian fog. This is a diflhculty 
 for Homer, since his Dawn ought to be somewhat to 
 the south of East. He tries (it may seem) to escape, 
 like some of his Trojan heroes, in a fog; for he de- 
 clares that, on arriving here, Odysseus could make out 
 nothing about his position relatively to the Dark and 
 the Dawn, the Sunset and the Sunrise ^. This dif- 
 ficulty of course cannot wholly be removed : but it 
 rather bears upon latitudes, than on longitude or, dis- 
 tance eastwards. I place Aiaie at a spot near the 
 Colchis of Aietes; adding that we are by no means 
 to assert positively that the island lies to the northward 
 of East, even though the balance of evidence may lie 
 in that direction. 
 
 From Aiaie, one day's favouring wind takes Odysseus 
 to the Ocean-mouth, hard by the Kimmerian darkness ^. 
 It is Boreas that carries him southward, or up the 
 stream, it is hard to say which*. After landing, the 
 party pursue the course of the shore, in the same di- 
 rection, to the entrance of the Underworld ; we know 
 not at what distance. Thence they return to Aiaie. 
 No fresh indication is given. 
 
 7. From Aiaie to the Island of the Sirens. No 
 
 1 Od. X. 133-135. ^ Od. X. 189-192. 
 
 5 Od, xi. 1-19. * Od. X. 507. 
 
486 yuVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 specific indication is afforded us ; except tiiat apparently 
 the passage is a short one. We are now within the 
 virtual limits of the eastern and southern Euxine ^. 
 
 8. From the Sirens, by Scylla and Charybdis, leaving 
 the (neighbouring) Planctai aside, to Thrinakie. This 
 evidently is also a short passage 2. Odysseus is here 
 detained by Notos (S. S. W.) chiefly, but also by Euros j 
 both of them blowing from the southern hemisphere. 
 
 9. From Thrinakie, Notos having ceased to blow, he 
 is able to pursue the homeward route. The ship founders 
 in a violent gale from the North -west 3. Notos 
 carries him back in one night to Scylla and Charybdis, 
 which he traverses in safety* after great peril; and 
 theuj drifting on, apparently with the same wind, he 
 reaches, on the tenth day, Ogugie, the Island of 
 Calypso, the quasi-central point of the great (northern) 
 sea •''. 
 
 10. From Ogugie to Scherie ; never called an island, 
 but called the land of the Phaiakes, which may be on 
 account of its size, for the Poet appears to have con- 
 sidered it as an island s. This is a raft voyage, and the 
 eighteenth day brings him within view of Scherie. Then 
 comes the storm, with a hurricane of all the winds''. 
 The raft founders « • and Odysseus drifts, with a wind 
 (Boreas) sent by Athene, to Scherie, where he arrives 
 on the third day ^. 
 
 In this passage he is ordered to observe the stars, 
 
 ' Od. xii. 149-154, 165-167; also 39, and xxiii. 326. 
 ^ Od. xii. 201, 261, 262; xi. 166, 167; xxiii. 327-329. 
 ' Od. xii. 403. * Od. xii. 424, 427-430, 442-446. 
 
 ' Od. xii. 447, 448 ; xxiii. 333 ; i- 5°. ' Od. vi. 204. 
 
 '' Od. V. 263, 278, 293, 331, 345. 8 Od. V. 370. 
 
 = Od. V. 382-398. 
 
XIII.] THE QEOGRAPHr OF HOMER. 487 
 
 and to steer with Arctos looking over against, or op- 
 posite, his left 1 J that is to say, on his right. The 
 exact phrase used is not a common one in Homer, and 
 it has usually been translated ' on his right.' If this were 
 correct, the island of Calypso must lie in the north- 
 west. This would not so well agree with the winds 
 indicated, though not expressed; namely, Boreas for 
 the passage home, and Notos for the passage from the 
 Bosphorus to Ogugie. Nor would it agree as well 
 with the time allowed for reaching Ogugie from the 
 Bosphorus. Besides, we have to keep in mind the fact, 
 that all other associations draw Calypso eastward. 
 
 II. From Scherie to Ithaca; a passage of some six- 
 teen or eighteen hours in the hawk-ship; beginning 
 early in the day, and ending before the next dawn 2. 
 
 Allowing for the rapidity of the voyage, it is plain 
 that Homer placed his Scheri^ farther north than the 
 original Corfu, which may be eighty miles from Ithaca. 
 Eighteen days of raft voyage, with an allowance for 
 the distance of Scherie, when first seen, will place 
 Ogugie at more than eleven hundred miles from Ithaca. 
 Ten days of floatage from the Bosphorus will give five 
 hundred miles, or thereabouts, from that point. We 
 have already found that Laistrugonie is near seven- 
 teen hundred miles from Ithaca. All these routes are 
 over the open sea. Speaking generally. Homer gives to 
 the voyage of Odysseus all the world he knows of, 
 lying from South, round by West and North, and then 
 far to the East of Greece ; except only what in terms 
 of slight outline he gives to the tour of Menelaos, 
 between the East and South 2. The two routes diverge 
 
 1 Od. V. 277. ^ Od. xiii. 18, 78, 86, 93-95. 
 
 = Od. iv. 80-85. 
 
488 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 at the Malean promontory 1. Perhaps it is because the 
 real Phoenicia lies on the border of the Outer world, in 
 the south, that he has given us an idealised Phoenician 
 people upon the border-line towards the north, and the 
 name Scherie is possibly Surie (Syria), travestied for 
 the ear, as the Phaiakes are the Phoinikes. 
 
 The general arrangements of Homer show that he 
 thought the Earth and Sea had a great extension north- 
 wards, but give no idea of great distances in the longi- 
 tudinal line, or from east to west. How far he carried 
 it to the south, we have no means of judging. We 
 know that the Shield of Achilles represented the form 
 of the Earth, with the River Okeanos for its rim^. 
 Now a shield in general is sometimes compared with 
 the moon by Homer j but he does not say the full moon : 
 and the prevailing epithets for the shield would tend to 
 show an oval form, or one adapted to cover the entire 
 figure^ J the same form as that indicated in the formula 
 of the Spartan mother for a soldier son: ' bring it, or be 
 brought upon it.' The natural shape of the hide, of 
 which the name is often applied to a shield, likewise 
 seems to favour this belief. And such a form of the 
 shield apparently agrees with the figure which the de- 
 scriptions of the Outer Geography tend to give to the 
 Earth, in conjunction with the representation of the 
 Shield of Achilles. 
 
 The noble conception of a great circumfluent River 
 was probably founded on a combination of a double set 
 of reports ; the one, of great currents setting into the 
 Thalassa, or Mediterranean Sea, and seeming to feed 
 it, such as those of Yenikale, the Bosphorus, Gibraltar j 
 
 ' Od. iil. 318. ^ II. xix. 374. 
 
 ^ II. xi, 32 ; XXV. 646 ; and xiii. 130 ; ix. 537 ; x. 15. 
 
XIII.] THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMER. 489 
 
 the other, of Outer Waters, such as the Caspian, the 
 Persian Gulph, and probably the Red Sea. 
 
 The name Kimmeria is derived by some from the 
 Arabic iahm, black 5 Maiotis from maneth^ meaning 
 death^j arid Tartaros is taken to be the reduplication 
 of the tar in tarlk^ the Persian word for darkness. 
 The seeming contradiction of perpetual light and per- 
 petual darkness in the north is of course removed for 
 us, who know that both reports are true, but for different 
 seasons of the year. 
 
 ^ Welsford on the English Language, pp. 75, 76, 88. Bleek, 
 Persian Vocab. (Grammar, p. 170). 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Plots, Characters, and Similes. 
 Section I. The Plots of the Poems ; especially of the Iliad. 
 
 The works of Homer are not constructed upon 
 speculative models. His is the fresco painting of 
 poetry. He is a man singing to men, and to men 
 immensely his inferiors. He is perhaps more under the 
 conditions of the orator, than of the modern poet. He 
 cannot store up or record his thought ; there is but one 
 depository for it, upon the living tablets of the heart, 
 and within its deep recesses. Hence, in both the Iliad 
 and the Odyssey, we have that rush and exuberance of 
 life, which result from the common action between the 
 Bard and his hearers, the separate currents of whose 
 existences seem to be thrown into one great volume, 
 never exhausted, though gently slackened from time 
 to time to meet the conditions of our nature. 
 
 He is also an artist, living by his art ; addressing 
 himself by his genius to universal nature, but by his 
 circumstances to his country, and to the several squares 
 of that tesselated nation, each with its local patriotism 
 and limited traditions, as well as with its portion in 
 the common inheritance of Hellenism. 
 
' PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 49I 
 
 Viewed in the light of considerations such as these, 
 the plot of the Odyssey is simple, without knots or 
 breaks of texture, and generally well-devised if not 
 uniformly sustained ; but that of the Iliad is, as far as 
 I may presume to judge, in the main a consummate 
 work of art. The mechanism is double throughout. 
 But the train of action on Olympos never clashes with 
 that in Troas, and nowhere impairs the free, natural, 
 and thoroughly human character of that part of the 
 business, which is in the hands of mortals. At the 
 same time, it is so contrived as to assist the Poet in 
 overcoming one of his greatest difficulties j which was, 
 to maintain a clear and ample martial superiority on 
 the part of the Greek chieftains, and yet to give them 
 in Troy a thoroughly worthy and sufficient object for 
 their prowess. What in this respect was lacking in the 
 Trojan leaders, has been supplied by the Theotechny, or 
 divine movement of the Poem. 
 
 The most favourite topic of objectors to the plot of 
 the Iliad has been the length of time during which 
 Achilles is kept out of sight. From the Second to the 
 Eighth Book inclusive, and again from the Twelfth to 
 the Fifteenth, he does not appear upon the stage. 
 
 Now it is by this withdrawal of Achilles that Homer 
 obtains scope for his other heroes, who were dwarfed 
 by the presence of that colossal figure. The moment he 
 appears they become insignificant ; they are almost 
 invisible in the blaze of his light. But, by means of 
 his absence, Diomed, Ajax, Agamemnon, Idomeneus, 
 and likewise Odysseus in the Doloneia, and Menelaos in 
 the Seventeenth Book as well as in the Third, have each 
 their opportunities of distinction. In this manner a 
 double object is gained. First, satisfaction is given to 
 
493 JVVSNTUS MVNDI. - [cHAP. 
 
 the local sentiment of the parts of Greece, with which 
 these heroes are severally connected. In the second 
 place, by this series of personages, embodying the idea 
 and practice of martial prowess as it was commonly 
 understood. Homer constructs, as it were, a platform, 
 on and from which he can build upwards the astonishing 
 figure of his Achilles, for which the reader has been 
 prepared by a propaideia^ or preliminary course of great- 
 ness, on the scale on which it commonly (as far as it is 
 common at all) appears among men. 
 
 But perhaps the most emphatic confutation of such 
 objections is to be found in the total failure of all 
 attempts to combine the ideas of the objectors into 
 anything like one positive sense or view, or to improve 
 the Iliad by the process of excision. While this negative 
 criticism treads its hopeless and dreary circle of doubt 
 without progress or achievement, the Poem itself con- 
 firms and enlarges, from generation to generation, its 
 hold upon civilised mankind ; and the translations in 
 which it is (of necessity so imperfectly) represented, 
 but which carry it beyond the limited circle of Greek 
 scholarship, multiply in this nineteenth century of ours, 
 and in the very focus of its keenest activity, at a rate 
 beyond all precedent. 
 
 The main steps of the action of the Iliad seem to be 
 these. Upon the Wrong perpetrated by Agamemnon 
 arises the Wrath, and thereupon the Secession^ of the 
 prime hero, in whose marvellous character the Greek 
 nationality is to find its supreme satisfaction. And 
 this character, not the fate of Troy, is the true central 
 thread of the great epic. On the absence of Achilles, 
 the Greeks, after a panic and recovery, decide upon 
 doing as well as they can without him. Though their 
 
XIV.] : PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 493 
 
 superior prowess is fully maintained, they are losers on 
 the whole ; and they seek the aid of a rampart, which 
 previously they had disdained. Here is the first marked 
 triumph of the Wrath. Driven back upon their works, 
 they are themselves threatened with a siege. The 
 infirm spirit of Agamemnon gives way, and he a second 
 time utters counsels of flight, to which the chivalrous 
 spirit of the other chiefs will not submit. A mission 
 to the tent of Achilles is substituted, offering splendid 
 gifts and the maid Briseis ; a reparation morally imper- 
 fect, for there is no confession of the wrong. To the 
 inflamed and inexorable spirit of Achilles they aflFord 
 matter for fresh exasperation, and the Envoys return 
 bafHed in their aim. Here is the second triumph of the 
 Wrath. Not till the ships are about to burn, will he 
 entertain the thought to interfere. 
 
 The Greeks fight again ; and, a second time, with 
 martial superiority, yet with an unfavourable issue. 
 The rampart is broken by the brave Sarpedon, a chief 
 be it remarked of Greek associations, and apparently 
 the best warrior fighting on the side of Troy. Fire 
 reaches the fleet. But Achilles does not go forth. In 
 his towering pride, he will even now only send Patro- 
 clos, a semblance of himself; and this, too, with the 
 vindictive wish that they two, all else having perished, 
 may alone dash down the sacred battlements of Troy^. 
 
 This, the third great triumph of the Wrath, seems 
 also to mark the point of its overflow into excess ; and 
 the moraP order must avenge itself, in the divine de- 
 
 ' II. xvi. 97-100. 
 
 ^ See a fuller discussion on the Plots of the two Poems in 
 Studies on Homer, vol. iii. Aoidos, Sect. 5. 
 
494 yvvENTUs mundi. [chap, 
 
 crees, and through the persons of men. By divine inter- 
 vention, after acts of might unsurpassed by the other 
 chiefs, Patroclos is slain, and Achilles receives a punish- 
 ment, in recesses of his nature more profound even 
 than those penetrated and possessed by the Wrath; those 
 recesses, wherein dwelt his intense affection for his 
 friend. That which was to have been the last triumph 
 of his wounded pride, namely, that not he but his 
 deputy should repel the attack which all the other chiefs 
 had failed to baffle, now becomes the cause of an agony 
 so intense, as by far to surpass, both in duration and 
 in intensity, the emotions he had suffered from anger. 
 
 The remainder of the fiery current, thus diverted 
 from the Greeks, he turns upon the Trojans. When he 
 goes forth as a warrior, we seem to feel as if we had seen 
 or heard of no warriors before. The King repents, and 
 makes restitution. Hector is slain. The Greeks have 
 been punished for the wrong which they did, or allowed. 
 Achilles has been punished for allowing indignation 
 to degenerate into revenge. The mutilation and dis- 
 honouring of the body of his slain antagonist now 
 became to him a second idol, stirring the great deep of 
 his passions, and bewildering his mind. Thus, in 
 paying off his old debt to the eternal laws, he has 
 already contracted a new one. Again, then, his proud 
 will must be taught to bow. Hence, as Mr. Penn has 
 well shown^, the necessity of the Twenty-fourth Book, 
 with its beautiful machinery. 
 
 On the other side, the death of Hector opens the 
 way for the retribution due to the great guilt of Troy. 
 The recovery of his remains is a tribute to his personal 
 
 ' Primary Argument of the Iliad, pp. 241-273. 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 495 
 
 piety J and, after the fierce excitement of the action 
 of the Poem, sheds a softened light upon its close. If 
 the plot of the Iliad is to be condemned, where is the 
 epic that can claim either admiration or acquittal ? 
 
 Section II. Some Characters'^ 0/ the Poems. 
 1. Achilles. 
 
 The character of Achilles, as I view it, differs from 
 that of all other heroes of poetry and romance in these 
 respects : it is more intense j it is more colossal in 
 scale ; it ranges over a wider compass, from the borders 
 of savagery to the most tender emotions and the most 
 delicate refinements. Yet all its parts are so accurately 
 graduated, and so nicely interwoven, that the whole 
 tissue is perfectly consistent with itself. 
 
 The self-government of such a character is 4ndeed 
 very partial. But any degree of self-government is a 
 wonder, when we consider over what volcanic forces it 
 is exercised. It is a constantly recurring effort at rule 
 over a constantly recurring rebellion ; and there is a 
 noble contrast between the strain put upon his strength, 
 in order to suppress his own passion, and the masterful 
 ease with which he prostrates all his enemies in the 
 field. The command, always in danger, is never wholly 
 lost. It is commonly re-established by a supreme and 
 desperate struggle- and sometimes, as in the first 
 Ass^fe' after the intervention of Athene 2, we see 
 
 ' The reader should, on the Greek characters of Homer, con- 
 sult Col. Mure's History of Greek Literature, vol. i. 
 ^ IL i. 219-346. 
 
49^ JTTVENTUS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 the tide of passion flowing to a point at which it re- 
 sembles a horse that has gained its utmost speed, yet 
 -remains under the full control of its rider. 
 
 Ferocity is an element in his character, but is not 
 its base. It is always grounded in, and springing 
 from, some deeper sentiment, of which it is the mani- 
 festation. His ferocity towards the Greeks grows out 
 of the intensity of his indignation at the foul wrong 
 done, with every heightening circumstance of outward 
 insult, not merely to him, but in his person to every 
 principle of honour, right, and justice, in the matter of 
 Briseis ; as well as to the real attachment he felt for 
 her. His ferocity towards Hector is the counterpart 
 and recoil of the intensity of his passionate love for 
 the dead Patroclos. 
 
 Magnitude, grandeur, majesty, form the framework 
 on which Homer has projected the character of Achilles. 
 Andftliese are in their truest forms ; those forms which 
 contract to touch the smaller, as they expand to grasp 
 the greater things. The scope of this character is like 
 the sweep of an organ over the whole gamut, from the 
 lowest bass to the highest treble, with all its diversities 
 of tone and force as well as pitch. From the fury of 
 the first Assembly, he calms down to receive with 
 courtesy the pursuivants who demand Briseis. From 
 the gentle pleasure of the lyre, he kindles into the 
 stern excitement of the magnificent Debate of the 
 Ninth Book. From his terrible vengeance against the 
 torn limbs of Hector he melts into tears^t the 
 view and the discourse of Priam. The JHfKiat 
 home of marvels, presents lio wider, no grajider 
 trasts, nor. offers us an image more perfectTaccordfl 
 to its kind in each of its varying moods. 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, ANIf.. SIMILES. '49^ 
 
 too^ are employed , with skill to exalt the hero. 
 The half-animated bulk and strength of Ajax (who was 
 also greatly beautiful i) exhibit to us the mere clay of 
 Achilles, without the vivifying fire. The beauty of 
 Nireus^, wedded to effeminacy, sets off the trans- 
 cendant, and yef manful and heroic, beauty of Achilles; 
 and the very ornaments of gold, which in Nastes the 
 Carian^ only suggest Asiatic luxury and relaxation, 
 when they are borne on the person of the great Achaian 
 hero, seem but a new form of tribute to his glorious 
 manhood. 
 
 2. Odysseus. 
 
 The high quality of Homer's portraitures is in no 
 way better apprehended, than by the clearness of the 
 distinctions between the personages who most approxir 
 mate. Odysseus receives in the Odyssey a develoMient, 
 which raises him, as. a protagonist, almost to tlWevel 
 of Achilles ; but in the Iliad, while he is separated froni 
 Nestor by some twenty years of juniority, these two 
 characters bear a resemblance which some might mis- 
 take for repetition. But, in truth, they are radically 
 distinct, both in speech and action. Nestor's eloquence 
 is gentle and flowing, with a decided flavour of egotisni 
 and of garrulity. Jhat of Odysseus is masculine and 
 compressed: w hen he~r efers'"To himself, it is only to 
 enhance his own obligation,^ in a~great crisis, to act 
 as~It~demands * ; and he never wastes^aT word. The 
 l^^!^k)f Nestor is addressed to questions where cairn 
 j^ment, and the weight, given by age and great ex- 
 
 Od.-xi. 469. j Ml. ii. 671. Ml. ii. 872. 
 
 / * II. ii. 259-264. ' 
 
 j Kk 
 
498 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAT. 
 
 perience,, are alone required; the interpositions of 
 Odysseus are in cases, where vehement impulses and 
 strong passions are to be encountered, and where 
 the presence of mind, which can face a crisis, is indis- 
 pensable. He checks and recalls the whole army from 
 its tumultuous rush homewards; he undertakes the 
 burden of the remonstrance and petition to Achilles. 
 But the interposition of Nestor, in the great Debate of 
 the First Book, is only employed by the Poet when 
 .the matter has already, by the direct interposition of 
 Athene, been reduced to an issue of words alone. To 
 untie a knot is the office of Nestor ; to stem a torrent, 
 or scale a frowning barrier, is the business of Odysseus. 
 Again, and more generally, Nestor heals differences by 
 a soothing interposition, and offers suggestions : Odys- 
 seus . constructs wider plans, but the specialty of his 
 case is this, that he executes what he designs. He has 
 touched that period of life when the faculties of the 
 mind are fully ripened, and the bodily powers are con- 
 solidated, but not yet decayed. Nestor belongs to one 
 more advanced; when the mind, without acquiring 
 vigour, in the main retains it, but when the province 
 of bodily action is narrowed by comparative infirmity, 
 and the person becomes as it were a head without a 
 ■hand, a dependent instead of a self-subsistent organism. 
 The character of Odysseus, as a whole, is admirably 
 balanced between daring and prudence, both of which 
 are carried in him to the highest degree. The picture is 
 however diversified by two occasions^ on each of which 
 he records his having failed in his usual circumspection. 
 On visiting the cave of Poluphemos, his companions ad- 
 vise him to be content with carrying ofFa supply of cheese, 
 and retiring ; but he determines to remain and see the 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 4^9 
 
 monster \ And after the escape from the cave and the 
 re-embarkation, while his men try to keep hirii quiet, 
 he persists in exasperating the Cyclops with his stinging 
 addresses 2. In both these cases we may discern a 
 fault J yet not a fault alone, but the irresistible aspira- 
 tion of genius to measure itself with danger, and to 
 pierce boldly into the unknown. 
 
 Odysseus is represented as somewhat wanting in one 
 element of the beauty of the Homeric heroj namely, 
 amplitude of stature, Menelaos is taller by the head 
 and shoulders 3 ; and the Cyclops despises him for his 
 deficiency in height *. But that his frame was other- 
 wise well developed and powerful is manifest, as he 
 was more majestic than Menelaos when they sate 
 down 5 J and also from bis wrestling on equal terms 
 with the huge Ajax «, and from his extraordinary feats 
 of strength and endurance in the Odyssey, But it is 
 observable that, amidst the long list of epithets be- 
 stowed upon him, none have reference to personal 
 beauty, except when, in Scheri^, Athene had endowed 
 him with it in a manner, which seems to have gone 
 much beyond mere restoration from his weather-beaten 
 aspect 7, He seems to speak of himself, even among 
 the Phaiakes, as not possess sd of this special gift equally 
 with them *. On the other hand, we ought perhaps to 
 set the attachment of Calypso as tending in the opposite 
 direction; and when he returns to Ithaca, Athene dis- 
 guises him by wrinkling his fair flesh, and by spoiling his 
 hair, now auburn but elsewhere hyacinlhine *. His age, 
 
 ^ Od. ix. 224. ^ Od. ix. 492-502. ^ II. iii. 210. 
 
 * Od. ix. 515. ^ II. iii. 211. * II. xxiv. 709 seqq. 
 
 ' Od. vi. 227-235. * Od. viii. 166-175, 
 
 ^ " Od. vi. 231 ; xiii. 299. 
 
 ^ K k a 
 
5Q0 • JUVENTPS MUNDI. \CBAP'. 
 
 too, is of course to be taken into account. Perhaps it 
 is on this ground that Homer may have meant to ascribe 
 to ' him majesty, rather than simple beauty, of coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 Although a prudence ever wakeful, arid sometimes 
 leaning towards craft, is the most commonly noticed 
 characteristic of Odysseus, and became in after ages 
 the key-note of the character, it is in Homer only one 
 of several! features highly distinctive, by means of which 
 the Poet has raised' this extraordinary conception to 
 something very near a parity of rank with his Achilles. 
 Though he does not compete with the son of Peleus in 
 his grand prerogatives^ in each one of them he is left 
 second to no other hero. He wrestles with Ajax in 
 the Twenty-third Iliad, and beats him in the contest' 
 for the Arms of Achilles, thereby establishing for him- 
 self the second place among the Greek chieftains. The 
 depth of his passion, and the power of his eloquence, as 
 they are exhibited jn the encounter with Eurualos, if 
 they are still behind Achilles in each point, are before 
 those of every other Greek. But by way of compensation 
 for their being only second, Homer has awarded to him 
 a many-sidedness, siich as is possessed by no other hero. 
 He is a master not only in war, but in government,' 
 and in every industrial pursuit ; and the sole approach 
 that we find in the Poem's to anything like Fine Art- 
 from the hand of a Greek, is in the bed^ which he had ' 
 wrought'. There is yet another capacity in which Homer 
 has assigned him a clear pre-eminence ; the capacity of 
 father and. husband, of a model of the domestic affec- 
 tions. ■ Miev an absence of near twenty years, he is 
 still yearning for the day of escape from the arms of 
 ■ \ Od. xxiii. 193-201. 
 
?1V.] PLOTS,' CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 501 
 
 a goddess, that he may returp to his wife and child j; 
 and the very smoke of Ithaca, would bs^dear to his 
 eyes '. Of the Odyssey^ this is.:the theme. But the 
 Iliad, too, sustains by its slighter. indications the sister 
 poem; for he alone among the Greek. chieftains, dgr 
 sires to be known as the father pf his sofi ; arid touch-r 
 ingly sets forth his sense of the -hardship of being 
 detained, even but a single month, aw^y from a vy^ife 2. 
 The faculty of tears is generally ascribed to the 
 Greek chiefs and soldiery j and the Poet did not thinl? 
 their susceptibility derogated from their, manhood. But 
 even here Odysseus has a specialty, . This man of iron 
 nerve and soul, who within the House's ribs saved th,e 
 lives of his comrades by sternly compelling silence ; who 
 in the cave of Poluphemos executed his vengeance, and 
 then clung beneath the great ram as the blinded monster 
 felt its back ; and who again gave place to a profound 
 and inexorable wrath not only against the Suitors, but 
 even against their helpless and miserable minions ; even 
 this same man it is, who weeps at t&e recognition given 
 of his return by the dog Argos in his twentieth year ^, 
 
 1 3. Agamemnon. ■ 
 
 The Agamemnoii of Homer is described as a gooc} 
 king and a stout warrior. He shows a natural .afection 
 to his brother, and is not deficient , in, the courtesy 
 which, then ^s now, marked hi§ race ; but he is iiot in 
 other respects an amiable, nor a decidedly estimable 
 man : and Homer seems to take care that we shall nqt 
 love him. His besetting sin is personal; it is an avarice, 
 which seems to make him both pruel in war, with 
 
 .\Qd.!i. 58. - . . . ^ II. a. 060,-9^2..]: ,.: ^ Od, scviii. .3o<f. 
 
502 JVVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 a view to spoil, and niggardly in general conduct. His 
 marked virtue is official; he has a profound sense of 
 responsibility to the army. To this responsibility. he 
 greatly defers ; and though avarice, appetite, and pride, 
 were alike gratified in the acquisition of Chryseis, he 
 yields her up ^. And a circumstance, disclosed later in 
 the Poem, shows us that, doubtless from motives of 
 policy, he did not assume an absolute possession of the 
 wotnan he had taken from Achilles. Yet he has neither 
 the fire of genius, nor any gift of profound political 
 sagacity. On the contrary, while, like so many poli- 
 ticians, he is a practitioner in finesse, he contrives by 
 it to outwit himself. This seems to be, in part at least, 
 the explanation of the unhappy device in the Second 
 Iliad, where he seeks to provoke the people to an attack 
 on Troy, by counselling them to go home forthwith ^ ; 
 which they would have done, to his utter confusion, 
 unless the error had been retrieved by Odysseus. 
 
 It is a remarkable illustration of the power of the 
 Hellenic anthropomorphism, that the characters of the 
 Olympian and the Pelopid chief have some close re- 
 semblances. Zeus, wielding the highest power, is 
 strong in the sense of responsibility, while inferior in 
 intellect to some members of the group around himj 
 and he partially redeems the meaner elements of his 
 character by a strong touch of natural affection for 
 his son Sarpedon, just as that of Agamemnon is in 
 a degree ennobled by his fraternal love for Menelaos *. 
 He may be in part the reflection of a human prototype. 
 Whether he be or not, it is in great part true that 
 Zeus is the Agamemnon of Olympos, and Agahiemnon 
 the Zeus of Greece. 
 
 ' II. i. 117. ^ 11. ii. 139-145. ^ II. iv. 148; vii. 107. 
 
XIV. J PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 503 
 
 4. DiOMED and AjAX. 
 
 In the same manner the characters of Ajax and 
 Diomed, allied by resemblances in action, are pro- 
 foundly and broadly distinguished. Each is superlative 
 in its degree; but while Diomed is gallant, Ajax is 
 sturdy. Diomed is impassioned, Ajax is calm ; Diomed 
 is rapid, Ajax is slow. Diomed can brag ; Ajax moves 
 in a simple unquestioning self-reliance. Diomed is not 
 above taking a circuitous advantage, as we find when, in 
 the act of fulfilling the duties of guestship, he makes an 
 extraordinarily profitable exchange with Glaucos : Ajax 
 ever goes direct to his point. With a fine discernment, 
 the Poet selects Ajax and Odysseus as the envoys to 
 Achilles, in the Ninth Book, to attempt a conciliation. 
 The favourable prepossessions of the great warrior are 
 commanded by his sympathy with the powerfulintellect 
 of the one, and the straightforward simplicity of the 
 other. A certain vein of craft and of talk in Diomed 
 carried him away from the type of the first without 
 giving him the weighty attractions of the second. 
 And it may also be observed that, although Achilles 
 is in truth incomparable, yet the combination of in- 
 tellect and spil-it with activity and rapid force in 
 Diomed make him the one chieftain of the Iliad, who, if 
 any, would be placed in a direct competition with the 
 hero of heroes. Hence probably there was a latent 
 estrangement. And hence, probably, Achilles selects 
 Diomed for the chief subject of the matchless passage 
 in which, gloating over the miscarriages of the Greeks, 
 he combines bitter taunt with fiery exultation \ 
 
 ' II. xvi. 74-78. 
 
504 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 Diomed, indeed, possesses every quality necessary to 
 make up a complete Achaian hero. Acute, prompt, 
 intelligent, decided in mindj daring, constant and re- 
 solved in spirit, active, strong, and seemingly resistless 
 in strength of body, he is more than able to cope with 
 the brute strength of the god Ares. Of any other 
 poem he might have been the model man. But even 
 the extraordinary composition of his gifts is artfully 
 employed by Homer with a view to the greater glory 
 of that one character, which, in all qualities and all pro- 
 portions of intellect and soul and body, without devi- 
 ating from true humanity, is nevertheless colossal. 
 
 5. Helen. 
 
 The Helen of the Homeric Poems has been conceived 
 by the Poet, himself of peculiar delicacy, with great 
 truth of nature, and evidently with no intention to 
 deprive her of a share in the sympathy of his hearers. 
 He has made her a woman, not cast in the mould of 
 martyrs or of saints, nor elevated in her moral ideas to 
 a capacity of comprehension, and of endurance, beyond 
 her age; but yet endowed with much tenderness of 
 feeling, with the highest grace and refinement, and with 
 a deiep and peculiar sense of shame for the offence into 
 which she has been forced or tempted, and from the 
 consequences of which she is unable to escape. 
 
 In order justly to appreciate the character of the 
 Homeric Helen, we must begin by casting aside, if we 
 can, all which later times have added, and which poets 
 more widely familiar than Homer have conveyed into the 
 modern mind. That she was a willing partner in- the 
 crime of Paris at its inception, we are not informed by 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 505 
 
 the Poems ; in which, on the contrary, Paris describes 
 himself as having carried her off by violence \ We 
 only know that she acquiesced in the consequences of it, 
 by which she became his mate through a series of years, 
 and by which also, on his death, like other widows, she 
 was apparently transferred to another husband,, his 
 brother Deiphobos^. In this no general baseness or 
 depravity of character is implied, but only the absence 
 of a power of resistance, which would have exceeded that 
 of Penelope, and would have been almost preterhuman 
 at a period, when the condition of a woman withdrawn 
 from the regular family order was one of great, nay 
 total, helplessness. 
 
 After the fall of Troy, Helen resumes her place in 
 the palace of Menelaos, as his Queen. The subdued 
 tone of her character, and the absence of self-assertion 
 in her, are still observable ; but by: her husband, and by 
 all around them, she is treated with the same senti- 
 ments, as if nothing had happened to break the original 
 tenor of her married life. Indeed we find in the 
 Odyssey a passage, which seems to indicate a remark- 
 able tenderness on the part of Menelaos, in connection 
 with the most questionable act recorded of the conduct 
 of Helen during the war. When the Greeks were 
 inclosed within the frame of the Horse, the Trojans, 
 suspecting the ambush, brought her down to the spot, 
 and she imitated the voices of the wives of the chief- 
 tains, in the hope that they, if there, would reply. This 
 act, done against the Greeks, savours of that slight- 
 ness of character, which seems to be represented as 
 the source of her great error, But Menelaos, when 
 he msntions the subject, shifts the blarne from her. 
 ^ II. iii. 400-402. . - ^ Od. iv. 276. 
 
50(5 yuvENTus mundi. [chap. 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 ' Thither,' he says, ' thou earnest ; but .no doubt it was 
 some deity, favourable to Troyj that prompted thee i.' 
 
 Helen was the object of much reproach in Troy; 
 not, however, from the mild Priam ^, nor from the 
 virtuous Hector % but from Hecuba, or from the princes 
 and princesses. This is amply to be accounted for, from 
 their natural sense of the suffering which by her means,) 
 had been brought upon their family and country, without 
 presuming unfavourably of her beyond what has been 
 already stated. But it could hardly have been the 
 general rule ; for when her sister-in-law J-^aodike sum- 
 mons her to the Wall in the Third Iliad, she addresses 
 her by the title of ' dear bride y 
 
 Among the Greeks of the War, she is never made the 
 subject of reproach. In one verse of the Iliad, Achilles 
 speaks of her as that dreadful Helen. But this is in the 
 agony of his mind: and in his conference with the 
 Envoys, where it would greatly have enhanced the force '' 
 of his argument if he could have represented her as 
 worthless, he does nothing of the kind^. Penelope ' 
 says of her, that the deity impelled her to do an evil 
 deed *. But in the context of this very passage, she speaks 
 of Helen simply as deluded, without any maUce pre- 
 pense, and Uses the deplorable result to justify her own 
 extraordinary circumspection in the matter of the recog- 
 nition of Odysseus. Compare this with the words in 
 which the Poet describes the sin of Clytemnestra, < To 
 his home Aigisthos led her, as willing as himself'.' 
 
 In truth. Homer awards to Helen, when in his own 
 person he speaks of her, an honourable, not a dishonour- 
 
 ' Od. iv. 276. ' II. XKiv. 770. ° II. xxiv. 771. 
 
 * II. lii. 130. ° II. ix. 337. 6 Od. xxiii. 222. ' 
 
 ' Od. iii. 272, 
 
ILIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 507 
 
 ,1 
 
 able treatment. The epithets attached to her name 
 are chiefly descriptive of beauty and birth; but they 
 are never coloured with any tint of blame. And when 
 in the Odyssey he compares her to his Artemis \ we see 
 on the positive side that favourable bias of his mind, 
 of which we may recognise the negative side in the fact 
 that he never once compares her to Aphrodite. In 
 truth, the only censures of her that we read in the 
 Poems, are those pronounced by herself. 
 
 The scene between her and Aphrodite in the Third 
 Iliad exhibits the highest aspect of her character. The 
 goddess endeavours to excite her passions, by a glowing 
 description of Paris in his beauty and his splendid 
 garments, and desires her to repair to him. Struck at 
 first with fear when she perceives who it is that is 
 addressing her, she then kindles into indignation, and 
 makes a bitter and stinging reply ; reproaches Aphrodite 
 for interfering to prevent Menelaos from taking her 
 home, and bids her assume to herself the odious cha- 
 racter she was seeking to force on another, who had too 
 long borne it. It is only under violent threats, that 
 she , at length and with shame complies ; and, on ar- 
 riving in the presence of Paris, she addresses him in 
 terms of scorn and aversion ^. 
 
 Upon the whole, I think that no one, forming his esti- 
 mate of Helen from Homer only, could fall into the gross 
 error of looking upon her as a type of deprave'd character. 
 From the odious Helen * of the Second ^neid she is 
 immeasurably apart. Her beauty, grace, refinement, are 
 not contaminated by vicious appetites ; they are only not 
 sustained by an heroic, almost a superhuman, firmness, 
 
 ' Od. iv, 122. ^ II. iii. 390-436. 
 
 " ^n. ii. 567-587. 
 
5o8 yuvENTus mvndi. [chap. 
 
 Her fall once incurred, she finds herself bound by the 
 iron chain of circumstance, from which she can obtain no 
 extrication. . But to the world, beneath whose standard 
 of morality she has sunk, she makes at least this repara- 
 tion, that the sharp condemnation of herself is ever in 
 her mouth, and that she does not seek to throw off the 
 burden of her shame on her more guilty partner. Nay, 
 more than thisj her self-abasing and self-renouncing 
 humility come nearer, perhaps, than any other heathen 
 example, to the type of Christian penitence. 
 
 6. Hector. 
 
 The character of the Homeric Hector has been so 
 exaggerated, and so defaced, by the later tradition, that 
 it has lost every distinctive feature of the original, and 
 has come to stand as a symbol of the highest bravery 
 and chivalry. But neither bravery nor chivalry are, in 
 a proper sense, distinctive features of the Homeric 
 Hector. 
 
 In the original portraiture itself, which is perfectly 
 simple and intelligible, there is nothing to account for 
 this change. Hector, in the Iliad, is a person of warm 
 domestic affections, of upright purpose, of feeble will, 
 of considerable, but not first-rate, fighting force j with 
 all the convictions of a good citizen, though without the 
 light of imagination or the fire of enthusiasm. He seems 
 to be born in a family of lower tone, and weaker fibre, 
 than his own j hence upon him is laid the whole burden 
 of war and government in a terrjble crisis, and his 
 responsibilities are beyond his powers. Hence, prOr 
 bably, . come the discords of his character ; between 
 boastfulness, feebleaess, and even shabtjiness on one 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND' SIMILES. '509 
 
 side, and fundamental rectitude, worth, and attachment 
 to virtue oh another. The contrast seems to result 
 from an overstrain. And hence it may be that, though 
 much looked up to in the Poems by his own family, he 
 does not seem to enjoy the confidence or respect either 
 of the self-centred ^neas, or of the circumspect Polu- 
 damas ^, or even of the gallant and good Sarpedon 'K 
 
 It may be truly said, that Hector is the most incon- 
 sistent character in the Iliad. No man is braver, than 
 he is at times : on the other hand, no man shows more 
 palpable signs of cowardice. No man is more rash; 
 yet none has a deeper presentiment of the future. No 
 man is so improvident, it might almost be said so 
 insolent, in repelling wise counsel tendered to him ; 
 and yet none shows more unequivocal signs of personal 
 humility. But the faults in his character, though 
 numerous and glaring, do not form its main tissue. 
 They are flaws in a delineation essentially good, and 
 occasionally noble. No act of cruelty or bad faith 
 or violence, of greed or lust or selfishness, associates 
 itself with his character ; the stream of his thought is 
 pure ; the love he has for his country, his parents, his 
 wife, his child, overflows even in a protective care for 
 Helen ^. In the measure open to his day and people, 
 he is one who fears God, and regards man ; and perhaps 
 the total absence of vice, as it is contradistinguished 
 from infirmity, in his character, co-operated with other 
 causes in bringing about his adoption in the Christian 
 literature of the middle ages, as the model, for the 
 olden time, of the heroic man. 
 
 But the very inconsistency of Hector aflFords a marked 
 
 ' II. xii. 211 ; xiii. 726. ' II. v. 472 seqq. 
 
 ' II. xxiv. 767-772. 
 
^10 yVVENTVS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 testimony to the skill of the Poet. Had he been con- 
 sistently great, he would have been a real rival to those 
 prime Achaian chieftains, to whom Homer sought to 
 secure an undisputed supremacy of admiration. Had 
 he been consistently mean and small, he would have 
 been a foe so unworthy, that no honour could redound 
 to them from overcoming him. One of these dangers 
 he has avoided by the flaws in the character of Hector ; 
 the other by his virtues and his merits. It is not easy 
 to see by what other means he could effectually have 
 attained the ends of his art. And he has further con- 
 trived, that the virtues of Hector shall be mainly of 
 a stamp, in which the Achaian chieftains shall not be 
 tempted to compete with him ; the affectionate sorrow 
 of his anticipations of the future, the stern rebuke of 
 an unworthy brother, the dignified endurance of mis- 
 fortune, and that form of resigned heroism, which can 
 only be exhibited in the extremity of disaster. 
 
 7. Paris. 
 
 The character of Paris is as worthy, as any other in 
 the Poems, of the powerful hand and just judgment of 
 Homer. It is neither on the one hand too slightly, nor 
 on the other too elaborately, drawn ; the touches are just 
 such and so many, as his pontic purpose seemed on the one 
 hand to demand", and on the other to admit. Paris is 
 not indeed the gentleman, but he is the fine gentleman, 
 and the pattern voluptuary, of the heroic ages ; and all 
 his successors in these capacities may well be v/ished 
 joy of their illustrious prototype. The redeeming, or 
 at least relieving, point in his character, is one which 
 
XIV.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 511 
 
 would condemn any personage of higher intellectual or 
 moral pretensions j it is a total want of earnestness, 
 the unbroken sway of levity and of indifference to all 
 serious and manly considerations. He completely fulfils 
 the idea of the foco-curante, except as to the display of 
 his personal beauty, the enjoyment of luxury, and the 
 resort to sensuality as the best refuge from pain and 
 care. He is not a monster, for he is neither savage 
 nor revengeful ; but still further is he from being one 
 of Homer's . heroes, for he has neither honour, courage, 
 eloquence, thought, nor prudence. That he bears the 
 reproaches of Hector without irritation, is due to that 
 same moral apathy, and that narrowness of intelligence, 
 which makes him insensible to those he receives from 
 Helen. No man can seriously resent what he does not 
 really feel. He is wholly destitute even of the delicacy 
 and refinement, which soften many of the features of 
 vice; and the sensuality he shows in the Third Book^ 
 partakes largely of that brutal character which marks 
 the lusts of Jupiter. No wise, no generous word ever 
 passes from his lips. On one subject only he is deter- 
 mined enough; it is, that he will not give up the 
 woman whom he well knows to be without attachment 
 to him 2, and whom he keeps not as the object of his 
 affections, but merely as the instrument of his plea- 
 sures. One solicitude only he cherishes : it is to de- 
 corate his person, to exhibit his beauty, to brighten 
 with care the arms that he would fain parade, but 
 has not the courage to employ against the warriors of 
 Greece. 
 
 Paris, though effeminate and apathetic, is not gentle, 
 either to his wife or his enemies; and, when he has 
 1 II. iii. 437-44ST * II- iii- 428- 
 
_5ia , JVVENTUS MUNDI. ' [CHAP. 
 
 wounded Diomed, he wishes the shot had been a fatal 
 one. The reply of Diomed cuts deeper than any arrow 
 when he addresses him as 
 
 'Bowman! ribald! well-frizzled girl-hunter!" 
 
 Again, the Poet tells us, as if by accident, that when, 
 after the battle with Menelaos, he could not be found, 
 it was not because the Trojans were unwilling to give 
 him up, for they hated him with the hatred which men 
 feel to dark Death 2. And again we learn, how he uses 
 bribery to keep his ground in the Assembly; how he 
 refuses to recognise even his own military inferiority, 
 but lamely accounts for the success of Menelaos by 
 isaying that all men have their turn ^ ; and how he 
 causes shame to his own countrymen^ and exultation 
 to the Greeks, when they contrast the pretensions of. 
 his splendid appearance with his miserable perform- 
 ances in the field*. 
 
 The immediate transition, in the Third Book, from 
 the field of battle, where he was disgraced, to the bed 
 of luxury, is admirably suited to impress upon the 
 mind, by the strong contrast, the real character of 
 Paris. Nor let it be thought, that Homer has gratuit- 
 ously forced upon us the scene between him and his 
 reluctant partner. It was just that he should mark as a 
 bad man him who had sinned grossly, selfishly, and 
 fatally, alike against Greece and his own family and 
 country. This impression would not have been con- 
 sistent and thorough in all its parts, if we had been 
 even allowed to suppose that, as a refined, affectionate, 
 and tender companion, he made such amends to Helen, 
 
 ' II. xi. 385. " II. iii. 454. s II. vi. 339. 
 
 * II. iii. 4?, 51- 
 
XIT.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 513 
 
 as the case permitted, for the wrong done her in his hot 
 and heady youth. Such a supposition might excusably 
 have been entertained, and it would have been sup- 
 ported by the very feebleness of the character of Paris, 
 and by his part in the war, had Homer been silent 
 upon the subject. He, therefore, though with cautious 
 hand, lifts the veil so far as to show us that, in our 
 variously compounded nature, animal desire can use up 
 and absorb the strength which ought to nerve our higher 
 faculties, and that, as none are more cruel than the 
 timid, so none are more coarse than the effeminate. 
 
 Section III. TAe Stmiles of the Poems. 
 
 The detailed similes of the Iliad are about 194 in 
 number; besides near sixty comparisons without any 
 detail or varied ornament. 
 
 They are very unequally distributed. The First 
 Book has none ; the Sixth only one. In both these the 
 action is of highly sustained and varied interest. On 
 the other hand, the Books occupied exclusively with 
 battle are largely embellished with them. The Fif- 
 teenth has sixteen similes, the Sixteenth has eighteen, 
 and the Seventeenth has nineteen. In the Second 
 there are thirteen, all of them intended to set off" the 
 gatherings and array of the Army. 
 
 In the Odyssey, the greater or detailed similes be- 
 come very much fewer. They are only forty-one j and 
 this not only before the arrival in Ithaca, where the 
 action is highly varied, and the movement quick; but 
 also in the latter half of the Poem, after the arrival of 
 
 l1 
 
514 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP, 
 
 Odysseus in Ithaca^ when it is more relaxed : since the 
 lower tone of the diction and of the subject does not 
 call for, or perhaps even admit, this kind of gorgeous 
 ornament J perhaps also, according to a very natural 
 and reasonable supposition, because these books were 
 composed in the declining years of Homer, as they 
 certainly indicate, with some noble and brilliant ex- 
 ceptions, a lower standard of power. 
 
 The character, too, of the greater similes in the 
 Odyssey entirely changes. The lion appears but four 
 times!, the vulture once 2, war never, storm never. In- 
 dustry, domestic life, the phenomena of outward nature 
 when she is tranquil, now supply the materials to the 
 hand of the Poet 
 
 The similes of the Odyssey, then, have the same 
 harmonious relation to the Poem they embellish, as we 
 find in the Iliad. And we should bear in mind, that in 
 nothing has Homer more emphatically established a 
 type of his own, than in the matter of similes. This 
 being so, a treatment so remarkable and characteristic, 
 found in each of the two Poems, furnishes of itself one 
 among the very large number of particulars, which go 
 to make up an inductive argument for the unity of their 
 authorship. 
 
 The similes of Homer may in one sense be con- 
 sidered as a miniature of the Poems themselves. Ac- 
 companying the movement of the action, they sweep 
 the entire round of human life. There is in them the 
 same elasticity and variety, as in the thought and the 
 style : these they follow over hill and dale, as the faith- 
 ful dog follows the step of his master. Their tone 
 
 ' Od. iv. 335, 791 ; vi. 130; xxii. 402. ^ Od. xxii. 303. 
 
XW.] PLOTS, CHARACTERS, AND SIMILES. 515 
 
 changes in precise proportion to that of the subject, 
 and of the effect that the Poet seeks to produce. 
 
 The similes afford, as I conceive, one among the 
 incidental proofs that, if Homer was indeed blind, he 
 was blind not from his birth, but from subsequent 
 failure of the organ, or calamity. The experience of 
 hunting in the woods and among the mountains, for 
 example, is detailed with a vivid exactness which im- 
 plies a knowledge founded on experience, just as expe- 
 rience in this case seems probably to imply vigorous 
 limbs, hardy habits, and the perfection of the organs 
 of sense. 
 
 L 1 2 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 Section I. The Idea of Beauty in Homer. 
 
 The conception of beauty in the Poems of Homer is 
 alike intense and chaste. He never associates Beauty 
 with evil in such a manner, as to attract our sympa- 
 thies towards a bad or contemptible person. This is 
 markedly shown by his treatment of Aphrodite, of 
 Nireus, and of Paris, on whose personal beauty he 
 never dwells as he does on that of Nausicaa^ or of 
 Euphorbos^. Only on the one occasion when he has 
 shown some sense of shame and duty, and is going forth 
 full-armed to battle, is this prince allowed to appear 
 for a moment otherwise than despicable^. It is not by 
 a didactic morality, but by a genuine impulse and habit 
 of nature, that Homer thus joins and severs, as far as 
 in him lies, what ought to be joined and severed re^ 
 spectively. The legend of Ganymede*, which was 
 afterwards perverted to the purposes of depravity, is 
 
 ' Od. vi. 149-169. ^ II. xvii. 30-60. 
 
 ■* II. vi. 333-505. * II. XX. 233-235. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 517 
 
 in Homer perfectly pure, and indeed seems to recall, 
 though it is in a lower form, the tradition of Enoch, 
 who ' was not, for God took him^/ 
 
 We may, however, mark the downward course of 
 these traditions, following the lapse of time. Two 
 generations after Ganymede, Tithonos, of the same 
 family, is appropriated by the goddess Eos as a hus- 
 band 2. One generation more gives us the lawless love 
 of Aphrodite and Anchises^; and the same goddess, in 
 the next generation, promises to Paris a beautifiil wife, 
 whom he was to obtain by treachery and violence as 
 well as adultery. Priam seems wholly without rule on 
 this subject; he charges the fall of Helen* on the gods, 
 and, even when reviling Paris inclusively with his sur- 
 viving sons, makes no reference to his peculiar 
 crimes^. 
 
 It would appear that in ascribing so much beauty to 
 the royal family of Troy, Homer may have been follow- 
 ing tradition. When treating of the Greeks, he appears 
 to award it in pretty close proportion to general excel- 
 lence. Achilles, the greatest hero of the Greeks, is the 
 most beautiful*; and Thersites, their basest wretch, is 
 loaded with ugliness and deformity^. Odysseus, the 
 counterpart without being the rival, of Achilles, has 
 undoubted beauty of a different kind, although with- 
 out lofty stature* ; and Ajax, the second of the army 
 in strength, is in the Odyssey called second in beauty 
 also 9. 
 
 We may trace the value set by Homer on personal 
 
 1 Gen. V. 24. ^ II. xi. i. Od. v. i. ' II. ii. 821. 
 
 * II. iii. 164. " II. xxiv. 260. 
 
 * II. ii. 674; xxiv. 629. Od. xi. 470. ' II. ii. 216-219. 
 
 * II. iii, 169. ' Od. xi. 470. 
 
51 8 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 beauty not only in the loving spirit of passages such as 
 those that relate to Euphorbos and Nausicaa, and in 
 his assignment of the gift to his two protagonists, 
 but also in some notes appertaining to the two nations 
 respectively. No Trojan is allowed the glory of that 
 auburn hair which is ascribed to Achilles % in one place 
 to Odysseus 2, and habitually to Menelaos. Nor are 
 they ever adorned collectively with epithets of personal 
 attractiveness such as those given to the Greeks of the 
 flashing eye (iXiKMires) ^, of the flowing hair (/capTjuo- 
 /xo'mrrej) *, and of the admirable beauty (eiSos dyjjro^^ 
 And while, in the case of Nireus, Homer has carefully 
 discriminated between mind and body, he has so 
 marked his perfection of form that no reader of the 
 Iliad, however careless, can fail to be impressed by the 
 record. Manifestly, too, he delivers his own sentiments 
 from the mouth of Odysseus at the Court of Alkinoos, 
 where he speaks of beauty, the power of thought, and 
 the power of speech, as the three great gifts of the gods 
 to the individual man 6. 
 
 Stature, as well as form, entered very much into the 
 conception of beauty among the ancients ; and this for 
 women as well as men. Yet he was sensible, at least 
 with respect to women, that tallness might pass into 
 excess. Accordingly, among the Laistrugones, when 
 two comrades of Odysseus meet tlie queen, ' they found 
 her big as a mountain's top, and loathed her".' 
 
 Homer had a profound perception of the beauty of 
 animals, at least in the case of the horse, as to colour, 
 form, and especially movement. We trace in him a 
 
 ^ II. i. 197. ' Od. xiii. 397. ^ II. i. 389, et alibi. 
 
 * II. ii. II, et passim. ' II. v. 787 ; viii. 2 28. 
 
 '* Od. viii. 167-177. ' Od. x. 112. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 519 
 
 commencement of the pedigrees of this animal i. It is 
 with an intense sympathy that the Poet describes the 
 lordly creature and his motions, which he has idealised 
 up to the highest point by the tears of horses, their 
 speech, and their scouring the expanse of sea and the 
 tips of standing corn 2. The whole series of passages 
 relating to the horse in the Iliad is noble and emphatic 
 throughout ; and in no parts of the Poems can we more 
 distinctly trace, by the slower or quicker movement of 
 his verse, his adaptation of sound to sense. Space 
 does not permit me here to exhibit in detail the proofs 
 of Homer's admiration for the beauty of the horse ^. 
 
 The appreciation of landscape was a faculty less 
 highly developed in Homer; yet it surely existed. 
 The mountainous country of Lacedsemon, which he 
 calls hollow, he also calls lovely*; the epithet employed 
 (erateinos) being the same which he uses to describe 
 Hermione, the daughter of Helen, a person endowed 
 with the beauty of golden Aphrodite 5_ Corfu, to which 
 he applies the same descriptive word*, is in our day of 
 the highest fame for the beauty of its scenery. 
 
 Again, Telemachos apprises Menelaos that Ithaca is 
 a goat- feeding island, without meadows, and more 
 ep e ratos than a horse-feeding country'. The epithet is 
 equivalent to the one last before mentioned ; and as the 
 meaning is that a hill-country is more beautiful to the 
 eye than champaign, we seem here to have a distinct 
 appreciation of the beauty of scenery. The famous 
 simile of the watch-fires and the sky by night appears to 
 
 1 II. V. 265-273 ; XX. 221. ^ II. XX. 225. 
 ^ See Studies on Homer, iii. 410-416. 
 
 * II. ii. 581 ; iii. 239. Od. iv. i. ' Od. iv. 13. 
 
 « Od. vii. 79. ' Od. iv. 606. 
 
5aO JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 carry something of a like interpretation^. And as re- 
 gards the more limited combinations of what may be 
 termed home-views, we have at the least two great 
 instances in the Odyssey: one of them the garden of 
 Alkinoos^ ; the other the grotto of Calypso, of which 
 he closes his description by saying that ' even an Im- 
 mortal, on beholding it, would be seized with wonder 
 and delight 3.' 
 
 At the same time, I do not doubt that life, and not 
 repose, is the grand and vital element of beauty in the 
 conceptions of Homer, whether they are applied to 
 nature, or to the animated world. 
 
 Section II. TAe Idea of Art in Homer. 
 
 The Homeric Poems give us a view substantially 
 clear of the stat2 of art in the time of the Poet. They 
 also contain conceptions of the principle of art, so 
 vivid as perhaps never to have been surpassed. And, 
 unless I am mistaken, they indicate to us the source 
 from which the specific excellence of Greek Art, in its 
 highest form, proceeded. By the term Art, I understand 
 the production of beauty in material forms palpable 
 to the eye ; whether associated with industrial purposes 
 or not. 
 
 First, then, there are many works of art mentioned 
 in Homer : but, in the whole of them, it is associated 
 with some purpose of utility. The greatest of them all 
 is the Shield of Achilles. Next to which, perhaps, 
 
 * II. viii. 557. ''■ Od. vii. 112-132. ' Od. v. 63-75. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 52I 
 
 comes the armour of Agamemnon i; various bowls, 
 mentioned in different places ^ ; the baldric of 
 Heracles 3; and the golden clasp of the mantle of 
 Odysseus *. In all of them, living form is represented. 
 There are other objects of a less defined class, but 
 belonging rather to mere decoration. Such are the 
 necklace of gold and amber, carried by the Phoinikes 
 to Surie ^ ; the couch or chair of Penelope, with a stool 
 to match e ; and the burnished sheets of copper in the 
 palaces of Alkinoos and Menelaos ?. There are also 
 works of simple mechanical skill, such as the airy net 
 of metal worked by Hephaistos", We find in the Poems 
 no production of what is termed pure art : everything, 
 to which art is applied, has an object beyond itself: 
 utility aspires to be decked with beauty ; and beauty is 
 never dissociated from utility. 
 
 Next, as to the material of art. We have in Homer 
 no sign of the use of any material, except metal, for the 
 production of beautiful forms; and, specifically, the 
 metals of gold, silver, tin, and copper. It seems 
 probable that there were, at least in Troy, statues of 
 the gods. But probably also these were rude images 
 of wood, such as Pausanias describes under the name 
 of xoana, in which- Homer would find nothing 
 answering to his conception of beauty. 
 
 As to the range of art in point of subjects, we must 
 consider it, in all likelihood, as almost entirely confined 
 to the exhibition of form, and of form too, in the solid. 
 Of painting proper, and therefore of colours as connected 
 
 ^ II. xi. 15-46. ^ II. xxiii. 740-750. Od. iv. 613-619. 
 ^ Od. xi. 609-614. * Od. xiii. 226-231. 
 
 " Od. XV. 459. * Od. xix. 55-58. 
 
 ' Od. iv. 72 ; vii. 86. ' Od. viii. 277, 
 
53a yuvENTUs mundi. [chap. 
 
 with painting, we have no sign ; though we have one 
 case of the use of a single colour, in the staining of 
 ivory 1. But the use of the sheets of copper, already 
 mentioned, is a step in that direction ; and the inter- 
 mixture of varieties of metal, especially on the Shield 
 of Achilles, and in the armour of Agamemnon, show 
 what was perhaps the fullest resort to the principle of 
 colour that the limited command of material permitted. 
 As to the seat of art, we cannot affirm that it had as 
 yet for any purpose been practically established in 
 Greece. No single operation is recorded in the Poems 
 which gives an indication of high metallic skill as 
 having been attained anywhere in that country. By 
 far the most considerable is the bedstead of Odysseus, 
 which is adorned with gold, silver, and copper: but 
 then Odysseus is a master in every art, almost a 
 magician : and we are not told that even his art 
 included the representation of living form 2. The 
 colouring process, to which reference has been made, 
 is supposed to be carried on, not by a Greek, but by 
 a Meonian or a Carian woman. And in most of the 
 cases where a true work of art is mentioned, it is 
 referred directly to Sidon or the Phoenician ; in one or 
 two instances to Thrace, on the shore of which the Phoe- 
 nicians seem to have had settlements. In other cases 
 it is referred, like the Shield^ to Hephaistos, a god of 
 Phoenician associations. In the case of the bowl, pre- 
 sented by the king of the Sidonians to Menelaos^ 
 we are told expressly that it was the work of Hephais- 
 tos. The gold-beater and the xa\Kf.vi, or smith, are 
 known to Homer; but only, as far as appears, for 
 the simplest operations; the former simply attaches a 
 
 ' II, iv. 141. ^ Od. xxiii. 195-201. ' Od. iv. 615-619. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 533 
 
 plate or band of gold to the horns of the sacrificial ox, 
 and it appears from the passage that he did not ply a 
 separate trade, but was merely the copper-smith en- 
 gaged in beating gold^, inasmuch as he is called 
 chalkeus, as well as chrusochoos. All that related 
 to the execution of works of art, so far as we can 
 judge from the Poems, the Achaian Greeks had yet to 
 learn. 
 
 But as in other points, so in this, the Poet opened 
 the way for his countrymen^ and taught them how they 
 should walk along it in the after-time. As his per- 
 ception of beauty in living form was most keen, so 
 his idea of art in forms inanimate, copied from nature, 
 was alike powerful and simple : it was that which 
 brought them up to life. In the nature of things, we 
 perhaps may say, it cannot be carried farther. The 
 chairs of Hephaistos moved spontaneously 2. The 
 porter-dogs of Alkinoos, wrought in gold and silver s, 
 were of an immortal youth. The metallic handmaids 
 of the god himself were endowed with thought as well 
 as motion *. In the ploughing scene upon the Shield, 
 as the furrow is turned, the earth darkens, though it is 
 of gold 5. And in the battle compartment, the sculp- 
 tured warriors fight, and the dead are dragged ofF the 
 field, with actual movement as in a scene of war 6. 
 Such is the bold delineation by which the oldest poet 
 of Art has given the challenge to his successors, and 
 bids them excel him if they can. 
 
 But all these representations, however raised into sub- 
 limity by genius, must have had a basis in fact; and it 
 seems difficult to resist the conclusion that Homer, 
 
 '■ Od. iii. 432-438. '' II. xviii. 375. ' Od. vii. 91. 
 
 * II. xviii. 417. = II. xviii. 549. " II. xviii. 533-54«> 
 
534 JUVENfVS MVNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 and the Greeks of his time, must have seen, though 
 they had not yet learned to make, art-works of a high 
 order, imported, without doubt, in general from Phoe- 
 nicia, and produced either there or fiirther eastwards. 
 
 The Sidonian works themselves, if executed, as 
 Homer commonly represents, in gold and silver, were 
 doomed without doubt to perish, so soon as the time 
 should arrive when men might come to prize the 
 workmanship less, than the application of the mere 
 material to other uses. But if we may judge from 
 the testimony of such remains as are now accessible, 
 there were two great schools, with which Phoenician 
 artists must have been in relation, alike from their 
 political and their geographical connections: the 
 Egyptian and the Assyrian. It is not, I suppose, too 
 much to say, that we perceive, in a portion at least of 
 the actual remains of these schools, the attainment of 
 high excellence in intention and design, with no incon- 
 siderable progress in execution. They seem, however, 
 to me to represent different principles : the Assyrian 
 appears to embody the principle of life and motion; 
 the Egyptian, the principle of repose. If this be true, 
 there can be little doubt, I presume, that the ideas of 
 Homer had their base and fountain-head much more 
 in the former than in the latter. But in any case, 
 it would really seem probable, from the vivid and 
 stirring descriptions of Homer, that these Phoenician 
 importations supplied patterns, and suggested ideas, 
 which might well, in process of time, become the 
 nucleus of the first great efforts of Greek art. 
 
 When that nucleus was once supplied, and when 
 
 the new life began to grow, then the Olympian system 
 
 . of religion provided it, through the union dF the divine 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 535 
 
 nature to the human form, with that lofty aim, which 
 braced it to a perpetual efFort upwards, and so con- 
 veyed to it the pledge and the. talisman of all tran- 
 scendent excellence. Every idea, appertaining to deity, 
 was held capable of representation iii mattery but it 
 could only be matter moulded according to the shape 
 of man. Thus Greek art was a perpetual untiring 
 pursuit of the highest standard of the ideal, while it 
 seems to have had for its starting-point foreign models 
 which, though not similarly inspired, were of such high 
 merit as to suggest to Homer that imitation might run 
 no unsuccessful race with nature. This happy union 
 of the most fundamental conditions of design and exe- 
 cution was seconded by the lights of a fine climate, 
 by the possession of the purest marbles, and by the 
 corporal perfection of a race abounding in the noblest 
 models. We cannot wonder that, with these advan- 
 tages, Greece, within her limits of knowledge and 
 experience, should have held down to our own day the 
 throne of Art. 
 • 
 
 Section III. Physics of Homer. 
 
 Homer's ideas of physics were extremely simple, as 
 well as apparently few. He perceived that rivers were 
 fed by rain and snow; and therefore he calls them 
 AuTTer^es, Zeus-fallen, which we should probably under- 
 stand to mean ' cgming from the realm of Zeus.' Fire 
 is the single element which he seems in any direct 
 mode to identify with an Olympian Deity, and this 
 only in one undoubted instance, where he calls it 
 Hephaistos. He considered the human body to be 
 
536 yUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 composed of the elements which make up earth and 
 water, for he treats it as resolvable by Death into 
 these substances ^. It is not easy to arrive at a positive 
 conclusion about his conception of the figure of the 
 Earth, beyond the fact that he considered it to be oblong, 
 which may be probably shown from a comparison of 
 many passages in the Poems. The land, as known to 
 his experience, was limited. A circle, of from 350 to 
 400 miles in diameter, would have comprised more 
 than all the places, that were within the limits of 
 ordinary Greek knowledge and experience. All his 
 ideas of vastness were connected with the sea. From 
 his placing the River Ocean at all points of the com- 
 pass, and his making it flow round the Earth, together 
 with the general disposition of objects on the Shield of 
 Achilles, he may be imagined to have conceived of our 
 planet as a flat surface. On the other hand, he seems 
 to connect the extreme East with the farthest West, 
 Sunset with Sunrise, as if he thought it were a surface 
 wrapped (so to speak) round a cylinder. For, placing 
 in the far east the Island of Thrinakie§ind the Oxen 
 of the Sun, he makes that deity declare that with these 
 animals he amused himself not only when he rose, but 
 when he returned from heaven to earth j that is to 
 say, at the time of his setting. To this idea there is 
 a partial approximation in the formation of a shield, 
 such as it appears either uniformly or commonly to 
 have been in the time of Homer, namely an oval, or 
 oblong. The Homeric shield is called djOK^t^porrj as 
 covering the human figure. But it is also called evKVKkos. 
 Does this refer to a rounding at the top and bottom ? 
 or does it more probably mean that an horizontal sec- 
 ' II. vii. 99. 
 
XV. J MISCELLANEOUS. ^1% 
 
 tion of the shield represented a segment of a well- 
 drawn circle? If the latter be the meaning, the two 
 epithets are placed in thorough harmony. For, the 
 more the shield is rounded horizontally, the more does 
 it shelter the warrior who uses it. And this form 
 might agree with the passage in Od. xii. 380', where 
 the 'return' of the Sun may mean his passing from 
 the point at which men lose him in the West, to his 
 bed or place of rising [avTokaX) in the East 2. 
 
 The amusing threat of the Sun, that he will go down 
 to Hades and shine there, is not so strange or far- 
 fetched, relatively to Homeric ideas, as might at first 
 sight appear. For, while he set and rose in the irept- 
 KaW^s XCjxvT]^, the exceeding beautiful expanse of 
 Okeanos, as he had to make his way from the Okeanos 
 of the West to the Okeanos of the East, he might easily 
 be thought, in doing this, to pass through, or near, that 
 underground region, in which dwelt the Gods- Avengers, 
 and which was the realm of Aides and Persephone. 
 Aides, says Poseidon^ obtained by lot the fo'c^os ij€po6i9 *. 
 Now zophos in Homer is used to signify the West: 
 and yet Odysseus enters the realm of Ai'doneus in the 
 East, near the Sunrise. With all that dark subterra- 
 nean space between, the Olympian Immortals had no 
 concern : for them, as for us, the light of the Sun both 
 came and went ; ' He rose on gods and men, over the 
 teeming earth *.' The change threatened to be made 
 
 ' We might be tempted to treat as Phoenician this piece of 
 cosmology. But we should then perhaps be pushing to an extreme 
 the doctrine of a Phoenician origin for the Theotechny of the 
 middle Odyssey, which would hardly reach so far into details. 
 
 ^ Od. xiii. 4. ^ Od. iii. i. * II. xv. 191. 
 
 = Od. iii. 3. 
 
528 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 may have been only this, that the Sun^ instead of pass- 
 ing through or round the dwelling of Aides, would 
 remain there. Zeus therefore takes his menace as 
 perfectly serious, and replies in effect, ' Do as hereto- 
 fore, and all shall be right ^' 
 
 Section IV. Metals in Homer. 
 
 Archaeological inquiry is now teaching us to inves- 
 tigate and to mark off the periods of human progress, 
 among other methods, by the materials employed from 
 age to age for making utensils and implements. And 
 the Poems of Homer have this among their many 
 peculiarities; they exhibit to us, with as much clear- 
 ness perhaps as any archaeological investigation, one 
 of the metallic ages. It is moreover the first and oldest 
 of the metallic ages, the age of copper, which precedes 
 the general knowledge of the art of fusing metals; 
 which (as far as general rules can be laid down) im- 
 mediately follows the age of stone, and which in its 
 turn is probably often followed by the age of bronze, 
 when the combination of copper with tin has come 
 within the resources of human art. 
 
 The grand metallic operation of the Poems is that 
 of Hephaistos in the production of the Shield. The 
 metals used^ were gold, silver, tin, and chalcos, which 
 has been by mere licence of translators interpreted as 
 brass, for there was no brass till long ages after Homer 
 had rolled away : which has been more plausibly taken 
 to mean bronze : but which, after a good deal of 
 inquiry, I am satisfied can only mean copper, either 
 
 ' Od. xii. 384-388. 2 ii_ xviii. 474. 
 
X\ ] MISCELLANEOUS. 529 
 
 universally and absolutely, or as a general rule, with 
 very insignificant exceptions. 
 
 The discussion would be too long for this place. 
 But the passage immediately before us of itself affords 
 filmost sufficient instruction. 
 
 In the formation of the Shield, there is no mixture 
 or fusion of metals. The same, and all the same, which 
 are put into the roaring fire, reappear, each by its 
 original name, in various portions of the Shield. There 
 is indeed one passage, where a trench is represented, 
 and this is called kuanee, a word meaning either 
 made of kuanos, or like kuanos in colour. There 
 are two reasons for giving the latter signification to 
 the word. One, that it commonly bears that sense 
 in Homer ; the other, that though kuanos may have 
 been a mixed metal, yet there is no sign of founding 
 or casting in this great masterpiece of Hephaistos. 
 '- He could only mix by melting; and had he melted 
 metals, we must have heard of moulds to receive them. 
 Instead of this, the only instruments which he makes 
 ready for the work ^ are 
 
 I. The anvil. 
 
 3. The hammer in his (right) hand. 
 
 3. The pincers in his left. 
 It is plain, then, that he was supposed not to melt, 
 but only to soften the metals by heating, and then 
 to beat them into the forms he wished to produce. 
 
 Had Homer been conversant with the fusing or 
 casting of metals, this is the very place where we must 
 have become aware of it; especially as his works of 
 skilled art are all of Phoenician origin or kin, and 
 his Hephaistos is a god of Phoenician associations. 
 ' II. xviii. 476, 477. 
 M m 
 
5^0 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP, 
 
 If chalcos be not copper, then copper is neyer 
 mentioned in Homer. But, in an early stage of society, 
 copper was commonly by far the cheapest and most 
 accessible of metals ; and it is quite impossible to sup- 
 pose, that we never once hear of copper, from an author, 
 who incessantly makes mention (so it is argued) of 
 another metal, whereof it is by far the largest, com- 
 ponent part. 
 
 One of Homer's epithets for chalcos is eruthros, 
 xedj and this it is impossible under any conditions 
 to apply to bronze. 
 
 There is abundant evidence of a correspondency 
 between the seven metals of Homer, and the seven 
 metals. of, the ancient planetary worship of the East: 
 but one of these is copper, and from it Cyprus was 
 named ; and Homer introduces Mentes sailing to 
 a port of Cyprus (Temese) for chalcos i. 
 
 We find chalcos in Homer a. very cheap and 
 common metal j tin a very scarce and rare metal, only 
 used in very small quantities, and even approaching in 
 some degree to the character of what we now term a 
 precious metal. It is very improbable that the defensive 
 armour, and all the meaner utensils, in Homer could 
 have contained an eighth part, or thereabouts, of tin. 
 
 So Hesiod, in his age of chalcos, represents not only 
 the arms and implements, but the dwellings as made 
 of that material ^. This could not have been bronze. 
 
 And I have high metallurgical authority for stating, 
 that the sheathing of chalcos on walls as already men- 
 tioned must, for mechanical reasons, have been some 
 material other than bronze. 
 
 It is said that chalcos cannot be hardened so as to 
 ' Od. i. 184. 2 0pp. 143-155. 
 
XV,] MISCELLANEOUS. tjjl 
 
 make a cutting tool; whereas this material is named 
 in Homer as used for peeling bark, and cutting twigs 
 and young branches, as well as for making weapons 
 of war ^. We have, however, in at least one place its 
 imperfection by reason of softness noticed K But, as 
 portions of tin are found in some copper ores, may 
 it not be that there were also small portions of it 
 in virgin copper used for these purposes ? I find, 
 moreover, that ancient nails have been discovered, 
 containing g'^^ per cwt. of copper, and only af of 
 tin: and surgical instruments made of copper alone 
 have been discovered recently in a tomb at Athens ^ 
 
 But although it seems clear that chalcos in general 
 means copper, this may not compel us absolutely to 
 exclude from its signification all compositions of the 
 nature of bronze. In later times the word appears 
 to have included both senses. The Latin %s without 
 an epithet described a compound metal; with the 
 epithet cyprium it meant copper. Some bronzes with 
 a polish are not wholly unlike copper, though they 
 want its redness. Possibly some sharp instruments of 
 this composition might be imported into Greece, with- 
 out at once leading to a distinction of name, especially 
 if there were native copper, or kinds of copper, in 
 use, which had some slight natural admixture of tin. 
 But these cases must have been exceptional, so far 
 as the use of the word in the Poems is concerned. 
 
 Kuanos is generally the type of a very dark colour 
 in Homer, and the word may possibly mean bronze. 
 The Greeks had it in small quantities : it was more 
 
 ' II. i. 236; xxi. 37. '' II. xi. 237. 
 
 ' Gobel, Einfluss der Chimie auf die Ermittelung der Volker 
 der Vorzeit, pp. 25, 35. 
 
 M m a 
 
^^2 JUVENTUS MVNItl. [CHAP: 
 
 valuable than copper, but apparently less prized than tin. 
 In the planetary worship of the East, six deities were con- 
 nected with six pure metals, and one with kuanos. In 
 Homer we find the six metals, and the kuanos. .Now as 
 the septiform system was apparently represented in the 
 seven gates of Thebes, and as the Greeks evidently 
 depended on the Phoenicians for imported metals, I 
 conclude that kuanos is the seventh metal, a mixed 
 one ; and I know no conclusive reason why it should 
 not be bronze. It was used only for ornamentation, 
 and in small quantities : if we except the cornice of 
 kuanos in the quasi-Phoenician palace of Alkinoos \ 
 Metals in those days seem to have been the great basis 
 of commerce, when there was no apparatus available 
 for storing, sheltering, or distributing with rapidity, 
 perishable materials. 
 
 The metals of Homer, then, are — ■ 
 I. Gold. 5. Iron. 
 
 2,. Silver. 6. Chalcos or Copper. 
 
 3. Tin, 7, Lead. 
 
 4. Kuanos. 
 
 Silver appears to have been rarer than gold : as might 
 be expected, considering that it is chiefly obtained by 
 scientific means, It came but from one place ^, Alube 
 in Asia Minor. We do not hear of it as used in ex- 
 change, nor, I think, in stored wealth j but, in plating 
 only, and in works of art. 
 
 The respective order of value for the metals is, I 
 believe, that in which I have just placed them. Not 
 so their quantities. Of lead we hear very little in- 
 deed. Iron was greatly more esteemed than copper, 
 and was very rare, though seemingly more abundant 
 1 Od. vii. 86. 2 II. ii. 857. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. ^33 
 
 than tin or kuanos. We hear of it, together with 
 gold and copper, as an article of stored wealth i. It 
 was only used for cutting instruments ; and chiefly, as 
 far as appears, for woodmen's axes. The quantities of 
 all the metals would seem to have been very limited, 
 except of chalcos only. 
 
 Gold was employed in plating, for works of art j it 
 appears also as stored wealth, and moreover, as in the 
 Suit on the Shield, with a slight approach to the charac- 
 ter of a measure of value ^. 
 
 Tin was used in small quantities for ornament, and 
 was plated on copper 3. The only articles entirely 
 made of it were the greaves of Achilles; and these 
 proceeded from a divine, not a human, workman *. 
 
 Section V. The Measure of Value in Homer. 
 
 Although the Greek of the heroic age was eminently 
 temperate, and abhorrent of excess, the spirit of acqui- 
 sition was already strong within him. Not only were 
 the crude elements of wealth carefully stored, but works 
 of art had begun to be prized; and beautiful armour, 
 garments, and even personal ornaments, were in use 
 among the great. We have, however, no distinct case 
 recorded of inland commerce as among the Greeks; 
 and the business of exchange had not passed beyond 
 the form of barter. 
 
 Yet it appears that gold had begun to be used as a 
 convenient material for the requital of service, and 
 probably also for the liquidation of penalty. On the 
 
 • II. vi. 48, et alibi. '' H. xviii. 507. 
 
 ^ II. xxiii. 561 ; xx. 271. * II. xxi. 5.82, 590-594. 
 
534 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [cSAP. 
 
 Shield, the most approved Judge was to receive two 
 talents of that metaP for his sentence. And as we 
 hear of the payment of fines on various occasions? 
 (distinguished, in the terms of the Pact, from the 
 restitution of the stolen property), it is probable that 
 there is a reference to a precious metal. The epithets 
 Tiii'fjw and eptnij.0% or ' priceful ^ applied to goldj and 
 to that only, may have a relation to this custom. In 
 the Twenty-second Odyssey, we have a rt/i^ or fine of 
 gold and copper *. 
 
 But a measure of service is one thing, and a measure 
 of value for exchange is another ^ and we have no sign 
 that gold or silver was used as a common standard, to 
 place commodities in any definite relation of value to 
 one another ; although the hoarding, of gold in^ parti- 
 cular, was a step towards this further development. An- 
 other initial sign was the division of the metal into 
 fixed and equal quantities, which is recorded on the 
 Shield. 
 
 The only commodity which approximates, in the 
 actual usage exhibited by the Poems, to a measure of 
 value, is the 0x5 for in this alone other commodities 
 are priced. The arms of Diomed are worth nine oxen ; 
 those of Glaucos are worth a hundred ». The tripod, 
 which was the first prize for wrestlers in the Twenty- 
 third Iliad, was valued at twelve oxen- the woman 
 captive, skilled in works of industry, at four ^. This 
 case does not probably exhibit the normal relations j for 
 in the camp women-captives would be cheap, and oxen 
 
 ^ II. xviii. 507, 
 
 ^ II. ix. 632-634; xiii. 699. Od. ii. 192. 
 
 " II. xviii. 475 ; cf. ix. 268. * Od. xxii. 57-59. 
 
 " II. vi. 236. « II. xxiii. 702-705. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 535 
 
 dear. Accordingly we find that, when Eurucleia was 
 brought to Ithaca, she was purchased by Laertes for 
 twenty oxen, or for the value of them i. 
 
 When Euneos sent ships laden with wine , to trade 
 with the Greek army, his men took in return — (i) cop- 
 per, (a) iron, (3) hides, (4) slaves, (5) oxen. Probably the 
 demand for wine was universal : each paid for it with 
 what he had to spare, in the different kinds of booty 
 acquired. It is not likely that oxen would be sent 
 away from the camp ; but it may be intended that the 
 men of Euneos took them from those who had them 
 beyond their wants, as a commodity which they could 
 easily dispose of to others of the chiefs or soldiery less 
 amply supplied 2. 
 
 And we have seen from ^schylus, in the Agamem- 
 non, that the figure of the ox was the sign first im- 
 printed upon a coin ; doubtless one intended to repre- 
 sent the equivalent in the metal of the animal ^. 
 
 Section VI. The Use 0/ Number in Homer. 
 
 The idea of number is one which, up to a certain 
 point, is readily grasped by an average adult of the 
 present day. Persons with a special gift apprehend 
 the idea, with the same clearness, on a larger scale. 
 Children fall short of those who are grown up, and in 
 early youth have no distinct conception beyond a very 
 few units. It seems that, in the childhood of the world, 
 men even of the capacity and grasp of Homer had no 
 
 ? Od. i. 431. '^ II. vii. 472-475. _ ' Agam. 37. 
 
^^6 JUVENTUS MUNDI. [CHAP. 
 
 definite idea of numbers beyond a very narrow range. 
 By a definite idea of numbers I mean that, which grasps 
 the whole without losing the separate conception of 
 the parts. 
 
 We find in Homer as round numbers the sums of 
 ten thousand, and nine thousand. An accomplished 
 person knows ten thousand things^. The shout of 
 Ares was like that of nine thousand or ten thousand 
 men 2. These expressions are evidently altogether 
 vague. 
 
 Erichthonios had three thousand horses ^. Euneos, 
 who came to trade with the Achaian army, presented 
 the two Atridai with a thousand metres of wine*. 
 At the Trojan bivouac, a thousand watchfires were 
 •kindled on the plain s, Iphidamas, having given a 
 hundred oxen to gain a wife, promises a thousand 
 -goats and sheep 6. Some of these instances are obvi^ 
 ously figurative : and it is even possible that all are so ; 
 for we find the rough and indefinite use of the numeral 
 descending as low as to the single hundred. It is 
 plain, from many passages in the Poems, that the 
 hecatomb does not mean a hundred oxen, but only 
 a batch of oxen, sufficient for one of the more solemn 
 sacrifices. Crete has in one passage a hundred cities, 
 in another ninety?. Lucaon says, that Achilles sold 
 him in Lemnos for the value of a hundred oxen *. But 
 though a prince by birth, he could only be worth a very 
 small fraction of that number of oxen, when sold as a 
 slave from the Greek camp. Every gold drop or tassel 
 
 * Od. ii. i6. 2 ii_ ^_ 86o. s II. xxi. aji. 
 
 * II. vii. 571. ^ II. viii. 562. 
 
 * II. xi, 344. '' II. ii. 649. Odrxix. 174. ? H. xxi. 79. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. _^37 
 
 of the Aigis of Athene was worth a hundred oxen^. 
 This, if taken literally, would assign to the Aigis itself 
 a weight of perhaps not less than a ton and a half, 
 which is inadmissible, since she carries it in the field 
 among the Greeks, and must be in a certain relation 
 of stature to them 2. 
 
 The negative evidence of the Poems is in consonance 
 with these instances of the positive class. The Poet 
 nowhere states the numbers of the Greek Army j not 
 even of any of the separate contingents. And when 
 he gives the number of ships for each contingent, it 
 is in every instance, except a very few, of which the 
 highest is twenty-two, a round number. In two cases 
 he states the crews 5 they are lao and 50 respectively. 
 These numbers have been taken as a key to an exact 
 computation. But it is impossible that all the chief con- 
 tingents should have been in round numbers ; and we 
 are told that Agamemnon's division was by far the 
 first in number of men 3, whereas in number of ships 
 it was but very little beyond some others. 
 
 Homer has clearly shown us how weak he felt him- 
 self in the use of numbers, by the curious passage in 
 which he compares the relative numbers of Greeks and 
 Trojans proper. Were they to be counted, says Aga- 
 memnon, the Greeks in tens, and the Trojans appointed 
 singly to serve them with wine, many a party of ten 
 would be without a cup-bearer ". Had he been in any 
 manner familiar with the use of numbers on a large 
 scale, he could not, on a point of such interest, have 
 been contented with so slight and vague an approxi- 
 
 ' II. ii. 448. ^ Studies on Homer, vol. iii. p. 430. 
 
 ? II. ii. 580. * II. ii. 123-128. 
 
538 JUVENTVS MUNDI. [cHAP. 
 
 mation. We may therefore be sure that when he 
 speaks of the thousand watchfires of the Trojan 
 bivouac, and adds that by each fire there sat fifty 
 warriors', he had never performed the mental pro- 
 cess, to us so simple, of reckoning the force in arms 
 at fifty thousand. 
 
 The largest number which I find in the Poems with 
 any sign of definite use, is that of the fat hogs under 
 the care of Eumaios. They are 360 ^ ; and, as one is 
 daily sent down to the banquet of the Suitors, they 
 correspond with the days of the year; of which it is 
 probable that, with the help of the months as an inter- 
 mediate st€p, a real computation had been made ^. 
 
 Except where aided by the revolutions of the seasons, 
 or by some fixed usage. Homer is extremely vague in 
 the specification of periods of time. Odysseus describes 
 as ' yesterday and the day beford,' which we may take 
 as the equivalent of our ' a day or two ago,' what had 
 happened at a distance of time between a fortnight and 
 three weeks back. The periods of years which go be- 
 yond a generation are never mentioned; but time is 
 always computed, and with a remarkable accuracy, by 
 the genealogies of notable persons. The generation, 
 or yei'ei], appears to have been conceived by the Poet 
 as equal to thirty years ; and yet here we ought prob- 
 ably to say, to thirty years more or less. The age of 
 Nestor was evidently about or over seventy; he was 
 bearing the kingly office in his third yevet] or genera- 
 tion *. And it seems as if the ten years of the war, 
 with ten of preparation preceding them, and ten of 
 
 ^ II. viii. 563. ^ Od. xiv. 20. 
 
 \ Od. xiv. 93- * II- h 2S2. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 539 
 
 wanderings which follow, were intended poetically to 
 make up this whole, so that an entire generation should 
 be spent upon it. Yet the first of the three terms 
 would appear incapable of a literal interpretation. We 
 may be sceptical as to the other two; but it seems 
 clear, that the Poet could hardly have intended us to 
 believe that ten years were expended in gathering the 
 force. 
 
 Only in one place does Homer refer to any actual 
 process of reckoning. He describes Proteus counting 
 his seals by the word pempassetai ^. I understand .this 
 to mean no more than that he reckoned them on his 
 five fingers. It is however somewhat remarkable, that 
 this only reference to any part or element of the decimal 
 scale, which we are still supposed to derive from the 
 East, should be found upon an Eastern scene, and in 
 connection with a personage of purely Phoenician asso- 
 ciations.. 
 
 Section VII. The Sense of Colour in Homer. 
 
 In the 'Studies on Homer,' I have considered at 
 some length the manner in which Homer handles the 
 subject of colour. I can in this place only lay down 
 certain propositions without attempting the proof of 
 them in detail. 
 
 To us of the present day, colour, and its broader 
 distinctions, are familiar from childhood upwards. But, 
 in the first place, it is to be borne in mind, that the 
 acquired knowledge of one generation becomes in time 
 the inherited aptitude of another. In the second place, 
 much of our varied experience in colour is due to 
 ' Od. iv. 412, 431, 
 
54° JUVENTUS MVNDI. [cilAP, 
 
 chemistry, and to commerce, which brings to us the pro- 
 ductions of all the regions of the world. Mere Nature, 
 at any one spot, does not present to us a full and well- 
 marked series of the principal colours such as to be 
 habitually before the mind's eye. Thirdly, the curious 
 investigations ^ of late years have shown us that, even 
 now and in our own country, no inconsiderable pro- 
 portion of persons are without the faculty of perceiving, 
 some of the primary distinctions of colour. 
 
 With respect to Homer, my main conclusions are 
 
 1. That his perceptions of colour, considered as light 
 decomposed, though highly poetical, are also very inde-' 
 terminate* 
 
 2. But that his perceptions of light not decomposed, 
 as varying between light and dark, white and black,, 
 were most ^yid and eiFective, 
 
 3. That accordingly his descriptions of colour gene- 
 rally tend a good deal to range themselves in a scale 
 (so to speak) of degrees, rather than of kinds, of light. 
 
 The primitive experience of the prismatic colours 
 must have been principally drawn from the rainbow. 
 But Homer only once mentions the rainbow 2, and here 
 he compares it with the snakes of dark metal on the 
 breastplate of Agamemnon; of which comparison I 
 can discern no other ground than that they would flash 
 a varying light as the chieftain moved. 
 
 His goddess Iris is in evident relation to the rain- 
 bow. Yet he never gives her an epithet of colour ^ • 
 though he calls her golden-winged. I think these facts 
 go some way towards proving my main theses. 
 
 ' See Wilson on Colour Blindness. 2 ji_ ,£;_ ^y. 
 
 , ' II. viii. 398. 
 
XV.] MISCELLANEOUS. 54T 
 
 There are no words in Homer which can with any 
 certainty be held to mean any one of these three colours : 
 orange, green, and blue. His word kuaneos, which is 
 more like indigo, does not seem to have been clearly 
 separated in his mind from black ^ ; while he also ap- 
 plies it to wet sand ^. His word porphureos for violet, 
 runs into his word eruthros for red. His word xan- 
 thos for yellow is applied to auburn or red hair, to the 
 ears of corn, to a chestnut horse, to a river (apt to be 
 swollen I suppose, and darkened by mud). In truth, 
 there is not one single epithet of colour which we can 
 affirm to be thoroughly defined. The word phoinix, 
 which seems to intermix with xanthos, is also used as 
 the equivalents of the words which would be rendered 
 purple and red. Only a minute examination could 
 collect the whole evidence in the case ; bu' will close 
 with observing that oil is once called rosy ^, iron and 
 wool violet, and oxen wine-coloured. But in the use 
 of the words white and black, light and dark, which is 
 abundant. Homer's eye seems rarely or never to go 
 astray. 
 
 1 See II. xxiv. 94. ^ Od. xii. 243. ^ II. xxiii. i86.