The substitution of polytheism for the monotheistic principle not only brought down deity in the measure of its attributes or faculties towards man, but created a necessity for a divine economy or polity, which should regulate the relations of the Immortals. This polity could be no other than human, and no other, as it seems, than a somewhat deteriorated copy from its earthly original.

Accordingly, the Olympian Immortals of Homer are combined in a society. They are not a mere aggregate of beings, classed together by the mind in virtue of the possession of common properties, but they live in twofold relations: first, those of the family, or at least of descent and consanguinity; secondly, those established by a political organization, which is modelled according to the forms of the Greek polities subsisting in the Homeric age.

The government of Olympus is, though the use of the word may at first excite a smile, in principle constitutional. Jupiter is its head. Its ordinary council or aristocracy is represented by the body of such deities as have palaces there, constructed for them by Vulcan, who exercises in the community the double function at once of architect and artificer[600].

The immediate relationship of nearly all these divinities to Jupiter is recorded.

As his brothers, we have Neptune, and Aidoneus, or Pluto.

As his wives, we have Juno, the chief; Latona, Dione, and probably Demeter, secondary.

As his children, we have Minerva, Apollo and Diana, Mars and Vulcan, Venus, Mercury, Hebe.

Of the Nineteen Deities who appear to be certainly Olympian, there are only four that do not fall at once into the family order: they are Themis, Ἠέλιος, Iris, and Paieon. There may have been a relationship credited in these cases also, though it is not recorded. It should be observed, that Jupiter is expressly invested with the title of Father of the gods. And perhaps the idea intended to be conveyed is that of a family which has grown into a sept or clan, having this for its distinctive character, that all the members of it, great and small, have either a nearer or a more remote relationship to the head. Of the minor deities, in various cases it is recorded, that they are daughters of Jupiter; such as the Muses, the Prayers, and the Nymphs of most orders. But these have the appearance of belonging to Homer’s poetry, more than to his mythology. Among male deities, the sons of Jupiter are all in Olympus: those of Neptune take lower rank.

Whatever be its relation to the family nucleus, the community of Olympus is fully formed. Besides Jupiter the head, and the ordinary assembly, its Council or Court, which answers to the βουλὴ of the Greeks, it has its Agorè, a greater Assembly or Parliament called together upon crises of extraordinary solemnity, such as the decision by main force of the fate of Troy.

But as we have no example, except the factious and utterly odious Thersites, of any one of the commonalty who takes an actual part in debate among men, so the minor deities, too, are mute in heaven.

Nay, the resemblance is even closer than this. The Greek βουλὴ, and also the ἀγορὴ, have their speaking or leading personages, and they likewise have each their silent members. The leaders are Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, and Diomed; the last-named chieftain always with modesty, as a person lately come to full age. Achilles doubtless would have had to be added, if the action of the poem had permitted him to appear throughout its debates. But we never hear of the Ajaxes, Idomeneus, or chiefs like Eurypylus, as taking any active share in the proceedings. Even so the discussions of Olympus appear to be conducted commonly by Jupiter, Juno, Neptune[601], Minerva, and Apollo[602]. Once Vulcan interposes, in his mother’s interest: possibly he may have been suggested to the Poet by Thersites[603] as a terrestrial counterpart. The Sun appeals to the Assembly in the Odyssey, as a party in his own cause: but neither he nor Venus, nor Mars, nor Mercury, nor any other subordinate deity, ever appears as taking part in a discussion.

The term ἀγορὴ, or assembly, is used in Homer for the meetings of the deities only on certain occasions: namely, at the openings of the Eighth and Twentieth Books[604]. The other, or ordinary meetings, have no distinctive name. We may know them by their not depending on any summons or introduction, and by the frequent mention, either of the banquet as proceeding, or of the cup as in the hands of the deities. They were standing assemblages of the deities, the law of whose life was leisure, with prolonged though not intemperate feasting; and its ordinary scene Olympus. Their correspondence with the βουλὴ must not be pressed too far, for they do not, like the Greek βουλὴ, commonly precede an Assembly. It is to be remembered, that the βουλὴ was an Hellenic institution, and that the gods were not exclusively Hellenic, though Olympus was essentially national.

The analogy between the divine and the human ἀγοραὶ is established in a pointed form by the Poet himself; who makes Themis the pursuivant or Summoner[605] for the former; and also says of her, with respect to the latter,

The acknowledgment of a rule of right, extrinsic and superior to ourselves, is general in the Assemblies of men in Homer, when meeting for business. This there could not be in the Assemblies of the Olympian gods. Neither does respect for authority and for tradition well harmonize with the idea of beings, who are possessed of unbounded, or at the least of greatly extended intelligence. Thus, like the individual deities, the divine Assemblies, and the entire Polity, are deprived of the greatest moral safeguards of their counterparts on earth. The consequence is, that their ethical tone is much lower. Force is the only effective sanction of authority among the Immortals. This is curiously exhibited in the Theomachy: for that battle takes place when the fate of Troy, which formed the matter in dispute, has already been long ago decided. Whenever a difficulty arises, which will bear that mode of treatment, Jupiter resorts to the threat of using it, even against divinities so dignified and powerful as Minerva, Neptune, and Juno. Sometimes, indeed, he parades it by anticipation, even when no symptom of disaffection has yet been exhibited.[607] So, on the other hand, fraud is the resource of the weak, as violence is of the strong. Juno, unable to organize a combination against her husband, devises a trick.

The deities, then, are not under any effective ethical restraint; and the only instances in which the highly moral sentiment of αἰδὼς is mentioned as governing them in their reciprocal conduct are cases of the two great traditive divinities, Minerva and Apollo, with reference to their uncle Neptune, and of Jupiter, in whose case it is a sentiment of politeness rather than of duty, with reference to Thetis[608].

But, although moral principle and religious reverence are absent, two principles of considerable value and utility remain. One of them is a certain courtesy or comity, which prevails in the absence of strong countervailing causes. Secondly, the power of intelligence is very visible in the working of their polity. It is not the mere wish of Jupiter, it is his counsel, which is fulfilled in the Trojan war. And again, it is not his individual counsel, but it is the decision which he adopts in compliance with the general sentiment of the gods[609]. He could be well content to let Troy stand, because of the abundance of its offerings; but he sees that if he attempts to give effect to such a plan as he would personally prefer, he must encounter the stubborn resistance of the three strongest deities, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva. Perhaps this difference of opinion might issue in the shape of a war in heaven, and that war might follow the same course as the one happily arrested by Briareus: therefore he avoids the issue, makes the concession without letting himself seem to make it, and thus preserves his general position at the head of the Olympian body.

Speaking of mythological deity as such, the difference of celestial from human intelligence is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The process of deliberation in the mind of a mortal, and the state of suspense before decision, are frequent subjects of Homeric description. And he sometimes places individual deities before us with the same, or nearly the same, detail, as in cases occurring among men, of doubt preceding determination. The essence and foundation of the process are similar, as we see in the case of Juno, and again in the instance of Jupiter himself. She ponders the question how she shall delude Jupiter[610]:

And then she decides;

So he[611], in his turn, considers long, before determining that Patroclus shall carry the war from the ships to the walls. Again, for the great decrees which are to have an extensive influence on human destiny, to argue and consider seem to be a moral necessity among the gods, as much as important subjects require public debate among men.

The method of reflecting Earth in the Olympian life is sometimes carried by the Poet down to the details of social intercourse. Thus it is a terrestrial custom of the heroic age, that strangers are entertained before they are called upon to give an account of their business[612]. And this hospitable practice extends even to the treatment of those who are charged with important communications; so that Bellerophon is entertained for nine full days by the king of Lycia, while he has in his pocket the roll containing a request for him to be put to death[613]. In exact conformity with this manner of proceeding, Mercury[614] is feasted by Calypso in Ogygia, before he delivers the weighty message, with which he had been intrusted by Jupiter in the name of the whole Olympian court.

Although we have found it difficult in one or two cases to pronounce with respect to certain divine personages, whether they are Olympian or not, yet in principle the line is clearly drawn, which marks off the superiority of the members of the Olympian Court. We find it in the express declaration of Calypso[615]. We find it perhaps yet more clearly noted in the comparison between Venus and Thetis: for we have seen, as to the former of these deities, her extreme feebleness and incapacity in everything, except as regards the particular impulse that she represents. Thetis, on the other hand, is full of activity and intelligence; and is gifted with bodily powers sufficient to fly like a hawk from Olympus, when carrying the celestial arms (whose inherent buoyancy, however, must not be forgotten[616]). Yet, doubtless because not Olympian, she yields the palm to Venus: for Apollo says to Æneas of Achilles[617];

Though the body of θεοὶ serve as an unity to point a moral in the abstract, there is practically a wonderful want of unity and of common or corporate feeling among them. This is figured in the Judgment of Paris: in the love of Neptune for the Cyclops, who renounce the authority of Jupiter: again in his aversion to the Phæacians, who are so beloved by the gods in general, that they appear in their proper shape at the religious festivals of those favoured islanders[618].

But notwithstanding this want of the genuine corporate spirit, and notwithstanding the prevalence of essentially selfish appetite as the rule of life with the greater part, at any rate, of the Immortals, it would not be just to say that the principle of unity in the Divine Government is wholly destroyed by the Homeric polytheism. The superiority of Jupiter, though it does not amount to supremacy in the stricter sense[619], is yet sufficiently decided to place him far above any other single deity in sheer power. Therefore, when considered as the executive of the Olympian system, he is upon the whole equal to his work. He may be deceived, and so baffled for a moment, as by Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad; but it is for a moment only. Or the insubordination of some particular divinity may approach to resistance, like that of Neptune in the Fifteenth: but, upon admonition, conscious inferiority soon brings the matter to a close. So much for the execution of divine behests. As to the legislative process, however, heaven strictly follows earth, with only such exceptions as are accounted for by the difference in the constituent elements.

The influence or even the menaces of a powerful leader, the moral force of persuasion, the comparison of the means of coercive action on this side and on that, and again the composition of wills and opinions to obtain a joint result, all these, the leading processes by which free institutions work on earth, with substantial identity, though with more awkwardness of form and less of genial freedom, as might be expected in transplanted ideas, are also the processes by which supreme and providential decrees are arrived at. Of the degree to which this principle of free polity prevails, we can have no better criterion than in the fate of Troy. It fell, not merely from the personal prudence of Jupiter, but because acting as a βασιλεὺς in heaven, like Agamemnon upon earth, he yielded to the preponderating influence of that section in Olympus, which was indeed apparently less numerous, but of commanding strength, influence, and activity.

Nor would it be just to Homer and his Olympus to forget, that in yielding to the powerful party led by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, Jupiter was also yielding up the vicious, and sealing the triumph of the virtuous cause.

Thus, then, while we see the spirit of anthropophuism breaking down the principle of the Unity of God, from its being too feeble and too blind to maintain the pure traditions in which it was conveyed, it is still curious to the last degree to observe the order and symmetry of the Greek mind, even in its destructive processes. For, as we have found, it arranges its groups of deities around a centre, by the principle that creates a Family: and then gives them community of counsel, and unity of action, by the principle that maintains a State. What is this, but to bring in the resources and expedients, which our human state supplied, to repair, after a sort, the havock which it had made in the Divine Idea?

But although symmetry was thus far, if not studied, yet spontaneously produced, we have ample proof that Homer neither inherited nor invented for his gods any uniform and consistent code of rules, intellectual, moral, or political. Neither, again, in the region of sense did he make any general provision to determine the conditions of divine being and action for his gods as an order, or even for particular classes of them. The want of such consistency is, indeed, among the striking proofs of the profound dualism of origin in his Theo-mythology. All that we can do is to observe his prevailing modes of treatment, and collect a general meaning from them. Proceeding thus, we shall find that the class of Immortals enjoys in various ways a marked superiority to man; but the degrees of this superiority, as they are nowhere precisely defined, so they vary greatly in the cases of the different deities: and when, striking off all the particular characteristics of individual members of the system, we attempt to embody what is common to them all, we leave but a slight and jejune residuum.

Nor is the classification of the differences a regular one. If we compare his delineations of some lower with some higher deities, we must be struck with finding considerable appearances of want of analogy between them. Some inferior persons of the same order, as we shall see, may excel in particular gifts, even those who are on the whole their superiors. Thus Circe, and even the Sirens, have powers greater apparently than, in the same subject-matter, Mercury or Vulcan. Heterogeneous origin, and imperfect assimilation, afford the true explanation of these phenomena.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that the divine life of Olympus, wherever it reproduces the human, reproduces it in a degraded form. Enjoyment and indulgence, when carried from earth to heaven, lose that limit of honourable relation to labour as necessary restoratives, which alone makes them respectable on earth.

In general, the chief note of deity with Homer is emancipation from the restraints of the moral law. Though the Homeric gods have not yet ceased to be the vindicators of morality upon earth, they have personally ceased to observe its rules either for or among themselves.

As compared with men in conduct, they are generally characterised by superior force and intellect, but by inferior morality.

They do not appear to have been governed in their relations towards one another by any motives drawn either from the law of right and justice, or from that of affection: unless—an exception which confirms the rule—where the attachment belonging to the human relation of parent and child is faintly reflected among the Immortals, as when Jupiter calls Minerva or Diana φίλον τέκος[620], and Venus τέκνον ἐμόν[621]: again, in the care taken of Venus after she is wounded by her mother Dione[622], and, more slightly indicated, in that of Diana by Latona[623]. In the conduct of Mars on the death of Ascalaphus, the impulse is momentary, and it has a strong animal tinge which seems to overpower, like a fit of drunkenness, the little reason that he possesses. The grief of Jupiter for Sarpedon is the only case of an intense affection among the Immortals. And it is remarkable, that this is felt towards, not a brother or sister divinity, but a mortal; towards one of those Lycians, whom Homer regards with such extraordinary and unvarying favour.

The general principles of government, then, among the Immortals themselves are simply those of force and terror, on the one hand, or fraud and wheedling on the other. For example, Terror subdues the adverse will of Juno[624] in the First Book, of Juno and Minerva in the Eighth[625], and of Neptune, not without much reluctance on his part, in the Fifteenth. Thetis wheedles Jupiter in the First Book[626]; Juno entirely beguiles him, besides outwitting Venus, in the Fourteenth; Minerva entraps Apollo in the Seventh into the plan of a single combat, which saves the Greeks from an impending defeat. And the difference of opinion respecting Troy in the divine Assembly does not at the last come to effect without a contest of main strength, although the virtual decision of the Olympian body had long ago been taken. Nay, these principles of force and fraud are the real principles of action, even when not altogether on the surface. When Mercury declines battle with Latona, it is because he fears the consequences of a contest with a wife of Jupiter[627]. In a manner still more curious, when Apollo has declined battle with Neptune, professedly on the ground that it is not worth the while of deities to fight about the affairs of wretched mortals, the Poet explains his conduct by a sentiment partly of deference arising out of a relationship recognised among men:

But here there may possibly have been some mixture of fear, because, as he withdraws, he is reproached bitterly by Diana, called a baby for his cowardice, and reminded, that he had himself volunteered the boast in heaven, that he was ready to fight against Neptune.

As these moral elements had been almost wholly eliminated from the general principles which govern the Homeric gods in their relations to one another, so likewise we look almost in vain for the traces of them in their individual conduct. They observe, when acting for themselves, neither courage, justice, nor prudence; but it is in regard to moral temperance or self-control, that they fall furthest below the standard even of human virtue. The Mahometan heaven of men was the heaven of the Homeric gods. Their standing employment, except when troubled by human affairs, is simply in perpetual, though not drunken or brutal, feasting; sometimes in grosser indulgences. If, says Vulcan to his mother, you quarrel about mortals, it will be a pestilent business, for there will be no pleasure in our banquets[629]. If Neptune in the Odyssey is gone among the Ethiopians[630], it is for a hecatomb of bulls and lambs. If Jupiter and all the gods make a journey to the same quarter in the Iliad, it is for a feast[631], which apparently was to last for eleven days. If Hercules has earned the reward of his labours by being taken up to heaven, his life there is described as a life entitling him to enjoy banquets among the Immortals[632]. If Ganymede is received into their company, it is that he may discharge for Jupiter the duty of cup-bearer[633], in which it would appear that both Vulcan and Hebe were likewise employed. Of all the phrases characteristic of the Homeric gods and their life, there is none that sits better than the θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες.

Deeper, even than their collective devotion to mere enjoyment, lies their intense and profound selfishness. We cannot fail to note the absence of those sentiments of justice and self-sacrifice, and those high enthusiastic emotions, which do so much to ennoble the human life of the heroic age. There is truth in the assertion that they establish and administer a one-sided law:

But beyond this, there lies a deep meaning in the sentiment of an Italian poet, Guarini[635]:

The Greek mythology, departing from the very basis of the Divine idea in the conception of its gods, converts them, by a moral necessity, not into man, but into something which is morally beneath man. There is not among all the deities what we can call one full unbroken development of noble character. They are, as a general rule, except so far as they are modified by the traditive element, Titanic creations of intellect or power, or both, without virtue. Even where, as in the cases of Minerva and Diana, they are pure, their purity does not inspire or impress the Poet with half the force and fire which he must have felt when he drew the matron Andromache, or the maid Nausicaa. But this is not the common case. With great reservation indeed as to the traditional, in comparison with the mythical divinities, and likewise as to the female deities, in comparison with the gods, we must admit that, as a general rule, the Immortals of Homer, when brought to the bar of a cool inquiry, are in their own personal conduct impure voluptuaries, and that the laws, which formed the basis of family life, and which in Homer’s time still kept human society from total corruption, for them had no restraining power, indeed no recognised existence.

There is no sense of shame accompanying the excesses of the gods, such as Homer has marked, not without tenderness, in regard to the trespass of Astyoche[636];

On the contrary, Jupiter refers with marked self-satisfaction to his affairs of this kind in the Fourteenth Iliad; and shows the very temper, described by Saint Paul as that of the most advanced depravity, which not only yields to temptation, but seals its own offence with habitual and deliberate approval[637]: Οὐ μόνον αὐτὰ ποιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνευδοκοῦσι τοῖς πράσσουσιν.

We may take Calypso as no unfair specimen of the ethics of the Immortals. In the hope of sensual pleasure, she keeps Ulysses a prisoner in her far island. She sees him pining in wretchedness for his home and family from day to day; and well knows the distress that his absence must cause to a virtuous wife and son, as well as the public evils, sure to arise from the prolonged absence of a wise and able sovereign. Yet she never relents, but still in her odorous cavern she sings to the movement of her golden distaff. (Od. v. 59.) When Hermes makes known to her the decree that she cannot resist for his return, she complains of the cruelty of the upper gods, but adds, ‘as I cannot help myself, let him perish if Zeus will.’ She promises, however, to send him off in safety, and keeps her word; but it is when she has been well warned by Mercury of the consequences of disobedience, and firmly bound by Ulysses with the oath which was terrible even to the Immortals. (Od. v. 146, 184.)

The sentiment of envy, which they had begun to entertain towards men, appears also to have been felt towards members of the divine order. It was envy with which the gods viewed the happiness enjoyed by Aurora in her union with Orion, till it ended with his death; and that moved Jupiter to destroy Iasion, the object of the choice of Demeter[638]. But this (so says Calypso) was envy of the male towards the female deities. There is no reciprocal sentiment: and it is curious here to observe the inequality of the sexes, together with so many other signs and beginnings of corruption, established among the Immortals in a manner unknown to human society at the time.

Calypso may or may not be justified in the charge she makes against the gods; but, at least, it seems clear that, though they have some regard to the prevalence of moral laws as between one man and another, they by no means impute any moral guilt to her in her cruel detention of Ulysses, even while they rectify a wrong by their decree.

The inferiority of the moral standard, which marks the order of gods, is likewise traceable in the various races which are described by Homer as claiming a special relationship to them; the Cyclopes, the Læstrygonians, and even perhaps the Phæacians. Against the last of these we can certainly charge no more than an epicurean and inglorious ease: but the two former not only do not forfeit, they even prove, their relationship to the gods by being at once more strong and more vicious than common men.

And, as it affects the kindred of the Immortals in common with themselves, so also does it extend from the sphere of morals into that of manners. While Hephæstus was ministering to them the festal cup, they laughed ungovernably at his personal deformity[639]. Now, the Greeks laugh at Thersites[640] when he has been beaten, but it is in immediate connection with his misconduct, and it has nothing whatever to do with his ugliness. Laughter at mere deformity is nowhere found in Homer: and would entirely jar with the tone of feeling that pervades Homeric manners. The action that offers the nearest approach to it confirms the spirit of this observation. It is the hurling of the stool by the Suitor Antinous[641] at the apparently decrepit Ulysses; which is sternly registered, along with the other outrages of that depraved company, for the coming day of retribution.

In a word, still setting aside in some considerable degree the deities of traditive origin, who enter little into the general picture, but have their own portraiture apart, there are to be found in Olympus, as well as in the lower earth, the relations of degree in power and intelligence; and the gods with whom it is peopled, on the whole, possess it in large measure; but the law and purpose of their life is summed up in self-will and self-indulgence. They do not debate their own duties, or even those of men, to one another: rarely, if ever, those of men even towards themselves, except with reference to the quantity of libation poured out, of flesh offered, and of steam reeking from the altars. There is a mixture in their enjoyments: some are refined, others sensual, but both are alike selfish, and the latter are wholly unrestrained. It is said by Heyne, and with much of literal truth, that the description of the day’s employment in Olympus, which the first Iliad supplies, is a transcript of hero-life[642]; but it is of one part of hero-life only; it is of hero-life in its moments of indulgence and relaxation, which exhibit to us its lower and less noble side, without any view of its great sentiments and great duties, its sense of honour, its fine feeling, its reciprocal affections as developed in the relations of consanguinity and affinity, of friendship, of guestship, of sovereign and subject, and even of master and serf. What a wretched spectacle would Hector, Achilles, Diomed, Nestor, Ulysses, and the rest present to us, were their existence devoted simply to quaffing goblets and scenting or devouring the flesh of slain animals, even though with this there were present the mitigating refinement of perpetual harp and song. And yet such is the picture offered by the Homeric mythology.

Upon the whole, while it remains true that the deification of heroes, or their promotion to a happy immortality, in Homer’s time, depended upon virtue and merit; those who thus obtained admission to Olympus really found themselves introduced to a new and far lower law of life, upon taking their places there, than that to which they had been accustomed upon earth. Thus, for example, it is with Hercules; he has indeed a reward beyond the grave; but it consists simply in a life divested of the virtues of patience, obedience, valour, and struggle by which it had itself been earned.

The superiority, however, of the intellectual over the material element, except in the matter of self-indulgence, is, as we might have expected, decisively maintained in the Grecian mythology. It is exhibited most clearly, perhaps, in the triumph of Jupiter and Olympus over the brute might of the Titans. It is also palpable, when we find that the strength of Mars, who represents nothing except fighting force, does not always insure his victory, even in contests of mere strength, but that he is overthrown by Minerva in the battle of the gods, corrected at will by her on all other occasions[643], and wounded, with her aid, by the hero Diomed beneath the walls of Troy. But when we speak of intellect as opposed to matter, the case stands so differently with respect to different deities, that it is necessary to attempt a stricter appreciation than we have yet aimed at obtaining, of their common character.

The great and perhaps only essential property by which the Homeric gods are distinguished, is that expressed in their very common appellation of ἀθάνατος: they are immortal.

There is something curious in the question, why it is that they are endowed uniformly and absolutely with this gift, but not with others; why the limitation of Death is removed from them, and yet other limitations are allowed in so many respects to remain.

It seems as if we had here an independent and impartial testimony to the truth of the representation conveyed in Holy Writ, that death has been the specific punishment ordained for sin: and that therefore in passing beyond the human order we, as a matter of course, pass beyond its range.

Had the preternatural system of the Poet exhibited to us only such divinities as are the representatives of primeval tradition, it would have been easy to account for the attribute of immortality. But here are a multitude of deities, the creatures of human invention; why was this gift bestowed on them, when others were withheld? It may be, again, because that which came last into man’s condition should, in the logical and moral order, go first out of it: that in framing the conception of an existence higher than that of man, the first step properly was, before dealing with the more positive faults or imperfections inherent in his nature, to set aside that which did not belong to it, but had been set upon it as a note of shame for a special cause, like letters branded on a deserter or a slave.

In Homer it appears that every deity, great and small alike, is exempt from death. A Fragment of Hesiod[644] proceeds on a basis abstractedly different, and by an ingenious multiplication, from the term assigned to man upwards, ascribes to the Nymphs a life of 291,600 years. In all likelihood the meaning of this passage may be not to curtail immortality, but to enlarge the practical conception of it, by carrying life up to a number which would impress the minds of a generation rude in arithmetic far more, than a merely abstract assertion of immortality: just as to us the sand of the sea, or even the hairs of the head, may more impressively convey the idea of unlimited numbers than does the phrase innumerable, although in reality the effect of either figure is to limit them.

Calypso is of the lower and of the most earthy order of the Homeric divinities. She recognises in plain terms her inferiority to the Olympian gods, by stating that she will send with Ulysses a favourable breeze, which will carry him safely home, provided they permit it, who are so far her superiors, both in planning, and in executing what they plan[645]:

Yet she distinctly contrasts herself with Penelope, in the very point that she is immortal: and the reply of Ulysses recognises this as the essential difference[646];

The only cases, perhaps, in which Homer glances at the possibility of putting a period to the existence of a god, are two, in which the semi-brutal Mars is concerned. When Otus and Ephialtes put him in chains, it seems that, but for Eeriboia, he would have perished[647]: the expressions are,

And again, under the assault of Diomed, though the Poet does not bring this last extremity into view, he might, had he not fled, perhaps have been as good as dead (ζὼς ἀμένηνος, Il. v. 887). This is not death, but it is at any rate the suspension of life, apparently without limit. A third alternative is opened in the severe reply of Jupiter, who observes to him, that he might have been thrust down into Tartarus, but for the fortunate accident of his high parentage; veiling the idea under the modest words[648],

Thus then the divine life, which, however, certainly with Ares is lodged in one of its least godlike receptacles, is liable to degradation, and to abeyance, even possibly to a lingering, though probably in no case to a rapid, process of extinction. But this last is rather the limit of calamity only, in the mathematical sense; that is to say, a limit which is never actually reached, though there is nothing short of it which may not be reached and even passed.