We have thus far considered the deities of Homer as they are, or are represented by him to be, in themselves individually, and in their mutual relations. We have now to consider the relation which subsisted between them and the race of man, especially on its human side; the state of religious sentiment and obligation, and of the moral law, both as towards heaven and likewise as between man and man, so far as it is immediately associated with the system of which they are the representatives. Another large part of morals, which was already in great part detached from visible relation to religion, will remain for separate consideration.

And here we may remark, that the Homeric Greeks apparently knew nothing of any periodical religious observance of commanding authority, such as to form a centre either for national union, or for the life of the individual. Had there been such an observance, we must, without doubt, have found a trace of it on the Shield of Achilles. The only festival, of which we have clear information, is that of Apollo in the Odyssey, on the first day of the month. More obscurely, one of Minerva appears to be indicated in Il. ii. 551. No religious worship, properly to be so called, accompanied the funeral of Patroclus, or the games which followed it. The Winds[717] were called in aid for a special purpose. The invocation of Spercheus[718] is an apology for devoting to Patroclus the hair which Peleus had, on his son’s behalf, vowed to that River-god. Neither is there any notice whatever of religion in the brief summary of the proceedings in Troy after the ransom of the corpse of Hector[719].

But although not sustained or organized by the self-acting machinery of periodical celebrations, nor by the appropriation of the services of a particular class of society, the life, thoughts, and actions of the better Greeks were in a close and pervading proximity, so to speak, to their religion. I say of the better Greeks; for there is an almost total absence of reference to the gods in the language, as well as in the actions, of the profligate Suitors of the Odyssey. When it first appears, it is ironical[720]: and only in the last distress does it assume any other character.

In general terms, every thing was ascribed to the gods. They know all things, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα ἴσασιν[721]: They can do every thing, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται[722]; and δύναται γὰρ ἅπαντα[723] is said of Jupiter, in the character of Providence. They are the givers of all blessings, mental as well as corporal[724]; the disposers of events; the ordainers, or even authors of calamities. They are said also to do for us what we ourselves have done for ourselves; as where Ulysses tells Eumæus, that the gods broke his bonds, and the gods hid him[725]; acts which he himself had performed. Also what they effect, they commonly effect with ease, as in both the last-mentioned cases.

However faulty, and however feeble, the religion of the Greeks had not yet ceased to be a religion; for it was believed in. Men might resent or fear the communications made to them on the part of the deity; but they did not venture to repudiate their authority.

In Homer, except with the dissolute Suitors, (Od. ii. 180, 201.) the Seer stands as the faithful exponent of the will of Heaven; and Agamemnon, even when smarting under the declarations of Calchas, and reviling him accordingly in his individual capacity (i. 106), does not presume to intimate any suspicion that what he has said is of his own invention. But time passed on: corruption accumulated, and festered more and more. Accordingly in Euripides, Agamemnon and Menelaus seem to speak of the whole class of prophets as if they deserved no belief. See the Iphigenia in Aulis, v. 10, 11. So in the same play, vv. 783–9, the Chorus speaks of the birth of Helen from Leda and Jupiter, with the proviso, ‘whether it were true or whether fabulous.’

Again, we have in the same play, vv. 945–7:

The mind of man had travelled far onward in its career, and great changes had passed upon his moral tone, before the place of the Prophet, in the estimation of the public, could be so strikingly reversed as we find from these quotations.

In the Homeric age, religion was a real power; and the veneration paid to deity extended so far, at least, to the persons of its ministers, that scarce any human thought could conceive the possibility of their falsifying the awful communications of which they were the vehicles.

But it will be replied, if religion was a power, if whatever it covered with its mantle was accepted and held in honour, then what a deluge of corruption must have spread over Greece from a religion of which Jupiter was the head, and which had Venus for one of its recognised divinities!

Now the age of Homer shows us the religion of Olympus in a state, in which it had not yet become sufficiently the object of scrutiny to suggest, on a large scale, either the depraved imitation which was to be its too speedy result, or the unbelief which formed, in the moral chain of cause and effect, its necessary consummation.

In fact, we do not find that the corrupting influence of the Greek mythology on manners had been fully felt in the time of Homer. Though vices are in particular cases represented as the gifts of particular deities to particular individuals, it does not appear that these were yet regarded as examples for general imitation[726]. But the beginnings of mischief, so vigorous and abundant, did not fail in time to produce their fruit: and in the historic ages of Greece, the models supplied by the conduct of deities were freely pleaded in defence of debauchery and crime[727].

This is in conformity with ordinary experience. The vices of the great are first passed by, as if it were profane to suffer the eye to rest upon them; then they are regarded for a time with depraved admiration; and when the last stage is reached, they are too faithfully copied by the small.

It was hardly possible that men could be effectually swayed for a length of time by the moral government of deities, themselves privileged by human invention for unbounded immorality: but it was naturally the first stage of the destructive process to vitiate the character of the gods, and the next and later one to break down the credit of their administration of human affairs, which only became incredible even to the enlightened part of the community after their moral worthlessness had been fully and long developed.

The Homeric poems expose to our view two standards not mutually accordant, the objective and the subjective. If we pay attention to the impressions current among men respecting the gods, they are the guardians of some moral and social principles of the highest order. But if we take their own word for it, the mere Olympian deities seem ordinarily to appreciate no quality or conduct, except the practice of offering up numerous and well fed animals in sacrifice, each with the accompanying tribute of the appointed portion; that so they may draw, not a moral but a physical, though a comparatively refined, gratification from the savour and the taste[728].

The protection, too, which the deities usually accord to man, is not only given on selfish principles, but is liable to be withdrawn for causes wholly independent of his deserts. Quarrels about men are settled, not by each foregoing his animosities, but by each surrendering and abandoning his clients. ‘I will give up Troy to you,’ says Jupiter; ‘but mind that I shall be at liberty to destroy the cities which you love, when I may be so minded[729].’ ‘You are quite welcome,’ answers Juno, ‘and indeed I could not prevent you: but let me have Troy destroyed.’ Why, says even Apollo to Neptune, should we quarrel about miserable mortals? It is not worth our while: let us leave them to themselves[730]. No Homeric deity ever will be found to make a personal sacrifice on behalf of a human client.

In the next Section, I shall endeavour to show that the practice of sacrifice was not so entirely disconnected from morality, as we are perhaps too apt to suppose. I think we may, on the contrary, find in it at least a witness to the essential harmony between morality and divine worship, and to the difficulty of tearing them asunder.

We are here met, indeed, by the case of Autolycus, which proves to us that the better elements of this practice were already on their way to corruption, inasmuch as in that instance they had reached it. It was a case, let it be remembered, of sacrifices, not to the gods in general, nor to the higher or the better deities, but to Mercury, a purely mythical divinity; and therefore what we see in it is, a false religion in a state of ripeness at one particular point. Now the worship of Mercury, the god of gain, was perhaps the first point at which the morality of the system might be expected to give way: and it is therefore quite in the natural course that a case like that of Autolycus should be presented to us without any corresponding case for any other deity[731]. As it stands in Homer, it represents what was then the exception, though it was gradually to become the rule.

There are, however, in particular connection with one of the great traditive deities, glimpses of better things, even in Olympus. When urged by Minerva on behalf of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Jupiter half rebukes her for having insinuated a doubt, by replying, ‘How could I forget Ulysses, who excels others both in his intellect, and in the sacrifices which he offers to the gods?’[732]

It may indeed be said that in this passage, if it be construed strictly, it is mental power or intelligence, and not any moral quality, which, as second to liberality in sacrifice, is recognised as fit to be taken into account by the gods.

Still it is, I think, manifest that Homer, like the Holy Scripture, includes a moral element in the idea of wisdom, which is represented by the word νόος, commonly or always used of men in a good sense.

And in the second divine Council of the Odyssey, the moral tone rises higher. Minerva, grown more daring, pleads plainly the discouraging effect which the indifference of the gods, if continued, will have upon the moral conduct of sovereigns. ‘Let them,’ she says, ‘cast away all moral restraint: for the virtuous Ulysses is forgotten by his people, and is detained in great affliction by Calypso[733].’

For us, in the present inquiry, the main question evidently is, not what are the sentiments which the Poet has represented as proceeding from his divinities on Olympus, but what are those which the people at large believed them to entertain. There is a considerable difference between these two standards: and it is the latter one by which we have now to abide.

The deities of Homer, thus measured, are susceptible of various forms of sentiment in contemplating the fortunes and deeds of men.

1. In general, they regard virtue and obedience with approbation.

2. They regard crime with dissatisfaction and a disposition to punish it.

3. But they also observe any excess, or marked continuity, of good fortune in the virtuous man with a kind of envy: as if they could not permit the human race, on any conditions, to attain to a prosperity or abundance which should have any semblance of rivalling their own.

As respects the first, it is indeed a pale and feeble sentiment; but still it exists. They listen readily to those who obey them[734]. Prayer appeases them, as well as sacrifice[735]. They love not perverse deeds like those of the Suitors, but they honour justice and righteousness[736]. Upon the whole it may be observed, that much more just and elevated sentiments are predicated of the gods as a body, than when they appear as individuals. For it is as a body that they still retain a certain relation to true Godhead.

As respects the second proposition, they wander in disguise to examine the conduct of men[737]. A man who is hardly used may become to his oppressor a θεῶν μήνιμα, an occasion of divine vengeance. They view iniquity with a sentiment sometimes called by Homer ὄπις, an after-regard that remembers and avenges it. For this ὄπις the wicked do not care[738], and such indifference is a chief sign of their depravity. Especially they watch, backed by the Ἐρινύες, over wrongs done to the poor[739]; and Jupiter interferes by storm and flood to testify his displeasure at unrighteous governors, who administer crooked judgments[740]. Ægisthus is warned and punished by them. It is Minerva who plans the vengeance upon the Suitors[741]. At the same time, revenge for affronts is a much more powerful and common motive with them, than zeal for the administration of justice. The latter is lazy and doubtful; but their sentiments in regard to the former are of keen edge, and have an irrepressible promptitude and activity.

As respects the third point, the gods grudged to Ulysses and Penelope an unbroken continuance of the blessings of their domestic life[742]. It is in like manner, as it would seem, that, after a long course of prosperity, the gallant and good Bellerophon became odious, on account of his good fortune only, to the gods[743]. And this same idea is perhaps the groundwork of the alternative destinies of Achilles, either a long life without great glory, or transcendent glory and a short career[744].

While in the later stages of heathen religion the former and nobler ideas gradually lost ground, this less worthy one became more and more pronounced; and Solon, in Herodotus, describes himself as knowing τὸ θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες[745].

In vague and general terms, the gods of Homer are represented as givers of blessings, particularly of external goods. Sometimes they are rashly and wildly charged as the authors of calamities[746], which the folly of man himself has caused. But according to the more grave and serious teaching of the day, they were conceived to enforce, as against mortals, laws from which they were certainly themselves exempt; and allow to mankind no alternative, except that of mixed good or else unmixed evil. Two caskets stand upon the floor by Jupiter: one of them is filled with wretchedness and shame; the other is vicissitude, which oscillates incessantly between prosperity and sorrow. And there rankles in the mind of mankind a sentiment, which tells them that the gods, while they thus dispense afflictions upon earth which are neither sweetened by love, nor elevated by a distinct disciplinary purpose, take care to keep themselves beyond all touch of grief or care[747]:

The best thing that can be said for their fainthearted encouragement to virtue is, that the good man is certainly understood in most cases, though not always, to prosper in the end: let us take, for example, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Ajax and Agamemnon meet unhappy ends; but Ajax was stern and sullen, while Agamemnon cannot be acquitted of cupidity and selfishness. On the other hand, as punishers of wrong, the gods of Olympus do not visit all wrongs and all vices alike. Especially they take little notice, in their moral government as in their lives, of the law of purity: there is no express notice of their displeasure against the crime of Paris; and Jupiter, the guardian of the judgment seat, the friend of the suppliant, the stranger, and the poor, makes no pretension to defend the marriage bed from the contamination he had himself so often wrought. However, in a very aggravated instance, namely, that of Ægisthus, his adulterous marriage with Clytemnestra[748] is noticed explicitly in the Olympian Council, as contributing to the enormity of his offence. But in such a case many other elements, besides that of purity, are involved: the whole social and political order of the world is at stake.

Thus upon the whole there was but little more in the sentiments than in the conduct of the Immortals, to maintain among men a sense of piety towards Heaven. Yet a good deal of authority and support were lent to important principles of relative duty, by the belief that the deities would or might avenge its infraction. We must in short fully embrace the fact that man, as represented in Homer, was inconsistent with respect to his religion, in the sense opposite to that in which inconsistency commonly affects that relation. He had more still remaining in him of ancient and natural morality, than his belief could either adequately account for in theory, or permanently sustain in action.

It should at the same time be borne in mind, that, while the vices of Olympus appertain to the individual deities, its obscure and qualified virtues, in the championship of duty, and the avenging of crime upon earth, are not the properties of this or that mythological impersonation, but either of the deities considered as a whole with one united will, or else of those among them in whose characters Homer still enables us to read the vestiges of primitive tradition.

Saint Augustine observes[749], that some defenders of the Pagan mythology in later times quoted the fall of Troy as an instance of Divine retribution coming upon the descendants of Laomedon for his perjury, and some, to the same effect, as a punishment of the adultery committed by Paris. To which he replies truly, that the heathen deities had no right to punish in Paris an act which had the sanction of Venus, as she bore Æneas to Anchises, and of Mars as the father of Romulus: Æneas and Romulus being the two great reputed fountain-heads of the highest Roman lineage.

Now, though Homer has practically represented the gods as avenging the pollution of the nuptial bed, it may be observed that he nowhere seems to put prominently forward the adultery of Paris as the main gist of his offence. In fact, the idea of adultery is very much absorbed, as we shall see, according to the poems, in the act of violent abduction. The Greeks on their side, with the single exception of Menelaus himself, treat Paris as a robber, or else a coward; not as one who had, like Ægisthus with Clytemnestra, corrupted the wife of one of their princes. And so Hector is, I think, not quite accurately criticized by Mure[750] for failing to find fault with Paris on the ground of adultery. Hector does reproach his brother for having abused the friendly intercourse of life to carry off another man’s wife, and then not having the courage to meet the husband in the field. This seems to me in perfect keeping with the ideas of the time, especially if I am right in the view, which I shall endeavour to sustain by argument, that Hector himself is not the elder, but the younger brother of the two. What did the Greeks aim at avenging? Not, we shall find, the wrong done to Menelaus in his conjugal character, but the sorrows and sufferings of Helen were evidently the prominent and conspicuous idea in the mind of the Poet, and in the mind, as he represents it, of the Greeks. So that, while Menelaus himself is the only person who in the Iliad shows a resentment of his own conjugal wrongs, the Greeks appear to think partly of Helen, partly of their nation’s honour, partly of their allegiance to the Pelopids; and partly, perhaps chiefly, of the booty which, in requital of their arduous labours, they are to gain upon the sack of Troy[751].

The defence, therefore, of the heathen deities which St. Augustine notices as having been put forward, was a late afterthought. The Poet appears indeed to treat the lustful effeminacy of Paris in general with a grave and marked contempt; but this is rather his own personal sentiment, than a result directly connected with his religious belief or system. And, more at large, I do not find it clear that in any place of the Poems any deity appears, either as the guardian of purity, or as the avenger of its infraction. Under these circumstances we shall have the more cause to wonder, that that virtue could still have been held, as it was held, by Homer and the Greeks, in partial but evidently real admiration.

Although retribution was limited to public and social sins, and did not touch the inner and finer parts of human conduct, it is not difficult to trace the advantages which flowed from that sensible remainder of religion which still subsisted in the Heroic age; not from those parts of the system which were due to human invention, but from the elements which it still contained of the ancient theism, and which invention had not yet wholly smothered.

Thus, for example, it was thought that the anger of the gods might be brought down upon a country by the misconduct of its governors[752];

and the fear of the temporal calamities thus to be incurred would, naturally, tend to the maintenance of integrity in the administration of justice.

As between governors and governed, so between rich and poor. We cannot doubt that the worthy Eumæus expresses the general sentiment of his age, when, having been reproached by the haughty Suitor Antinous with having invited a beggar into the palace of Ulysses, he answers, not by denial, but by showing that the idea is self-condemned by its absurdity. Those indeed, he replies, may be solicited to come to a house who exercise the agreeable or the useful professions; the Seer, the Doctor, the Artificer, the Bard, these are the people who get invited all over the world;

With this standard of sentiment, not peculiar to that age, except in the simple frankness with which it is avowed, it was surely of the utmost importance for the needy and afflicted, that they should be placed by the popular belief in the special charge of the deity;

So that, though none would invite them, yet few would take the responsibility of rejecting their supplications for what was needful to supply their wants.

And the standing distinction in the Odyssey between a virtuous and a vicious people is, that the former is insolent, fierce, and unrighteous, while the latter is kind to strangers and of god-fearing mind[754];

It was thus a clear fact in the heroic age, that religious belief was a foundation and support to the exercise of charitable offices between man and man. I think we may further assert, that it is a fact of all time; that in all ages and countries the strength and liveliness of belief in God is a measure which determines the aggregate amount and activity of mutual love. Hence, as the Olympian religion became more and more hollow, public oppression increased, and private charity and hospitality declined. Yet, even in its most corrupt and decrepit period, it was on the steps of temples that the congregations of mendicants assembled; spontaneous and unconscious witnesses to the fact that, next to God their Friend in heaven, the reflection of God, however faint, in the mind of man, is their best friend on earth. And of the many great social results of Christianity, one standing in the very foremost rank has been, that it has for the first time made the rights of the poor a social axiom, which, though it may in practice be evaded, none are hardy enough to deny. Perhaps the very strongest of all the proofs of the connection between religious belief, and duties to the needy, is to be found in the instinctive horror which is created in the minds of men, when a prominent profession of the first is accidentally and occasionally exhibited by persons, who show a palpable disregard of the second.

Side by side with the powerful obligation, of the indeterminate species, which binds man to man in the name of charity or brotherly kindness, stands the corresponding determinate principle of truth and justice, which aims at preserving entire to each individual the definite rights to which he is entitled.

An important part of these definite rights belongs immediately to the relations between the private person and the civil power. But the capacity of any human authority to do justice, even where the will cannot be found fault with, is of necessity defective: and no government can do its duties for a day, irrespective of the aid which each private person renders to it in reference to every other. Nor is this enough; it wants, and cannot dispense with, the assistance of an auxiliary within the breast, in order to guard itself against delusion, and to secure the requisite conformity between thought, word, and act. In other words, the state wants an instrument by which to induce men to speak the truth.

No such end can be reached by force. Force, in the shape of torture, will doubtless in the long run avail to make men asseverate that, be it what it may, by which they may obtain release from an intolerable suffering. But the first effect of torture is to make the sufferer indifferent to the truth or falsehood of his confessions, so he can but obtain relief by means of them. The second, and still more detrimental effect, must be to undermine the very basis of inward truthfulness, and to create a mental habit of indifference as between what is true and what is false.

Hence, the desideratum for the state can only be found in some power which works in and with the will of the private person.

It has indeed been argued, and I believe with justice, that the atheist ought on his own principles to speak the truth; that is, if he does not shut his eyes to the testimony borne by the daily experience of life to the existence of a moral government in the world, even on this side of the grave. But this supposes, at any rate, some degree of mental culture; and it is essential to public order to find the means of operating upon those who have received no such training.

The question is how to obtain the voluntary disclosure of truth, in cases where neither interest or inclination are of themselves sufficient to secure it.

To this question the experience of the world, up to this time, renders one and but one answer. The requisite influence may be found, and can only be found, in an appeal to the Majesty on high, and to the sanctions of a future life.

Here, then, does the Venerable Oath stand forth in all its majesty. The act of calling the Deity in the most solemn of its various forms to witness, has been found at once to make the word of a man the stoutest bond of human society: for the perjurer strips himself of all divine aid[755];

and exposes himself to the most terrible penalties[756];

Under the operation of the oath, the chances, so to speak, are doubled in favour of the veracity of the witness: first, he may not be wicked enough to forswear himself; and secondly, if he is wicked enough, yet he may not have the requisite amount of daring in his wickedness.

These views will, I think, receive material confirmation when we come to consider the relative positions of the oath in Greece and in Troy. For the present, I leave the subject with the observation, that four short words describe the props of human society: they are, γάμος, ὅρκος, θέμις, θεός.

All these sanctions, however partial and remote, thus given to human duty by belief in the gods, could not but be of great practical value.

And indeed it may with truth be said, that the mere idea of the presence of an overruling power in the world was of inestimable advantage in repressing human passion, in moderating desire, and in limiting the excesses of caprice, wilfulness, and violence.

But it is obvious that these beneficial results from belief in the gods belonged not to the particular development, but to the theistical principle which lay within and under it. The idea of a moral Governor of the universe was, and ever will be, an unfailing seed of good wherever it may exist. The Pagan mythology, at every step of its unfolding into detail, enfeebled and degraded that great idea, but it could not be destroyed all at once. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus; and a system, like a man, requires time to reach the extreme of depravation. As, among men, a judge is not supposed to lose all regard for justice, because it may be that in some particular of private life he has transgressed, so the Olympian divinities might have credit as administrators of moral government, even after they had begun to be charged with instances of immorality. But an unscrupulous order and succession of judges, would in time put an end to the idea of public justice; and so the continuing and growing degradation of the Immortals, in time put an end to the sense of religion, and made even its fanes[757] smoky, and its pomps contemptible.

And certainly, when we look at the evils, of which the mythological system was the source, we cannot but be struck with their overwhelming magnitude, and with the highly instructive fact, that in every case they so manifestly belong, not to the original principle of belief and worship due from man to his Creator, but to the departure from a pure, and the lapse into an impure belief.

The credit for moral results, which has thus been allowed to the probable operation of the Homeric Theo-mythology in the world, must be steadily denied to its influence upon the poems, where it appears before us as in the main a lowering and corrupting agency. In fact, the religion and the morality of the Homeric poems appear to separate, and to run in opposite directions. The rights of the question at issue, in an ethical point of view, are plainly with the Greeks: they vindicate by arms not one only, but two principles, both of them vital to the order of society, and to individual happiness and virtue: the sanctity, first, of the family and of marriage ties; secondly, of the relation created by the rites of hospitality. And with the rights go the fortunes of the cause. The capture and fall of Troy constitute a great triumph of justice over wrong.

But the mythological elements of the question are cast in a mould entirely different. The royal family of Troy has been all along in singular favour with the deities, notwithstanding the perjury of Laomedon; and that favour does not appear to be in any degree diminished by the gross and shameful crimes that stand against Paris in the poem, or by the unfailing and extraordinary obtuseness of his moral sense. Ganymede, Tithonus, Anchises, as well as Paris, have all been especial objects of divine regard. Not only did a full half of the other deities take part with the Trojans in the war, but Jupiter himself, apart from his concession to Thetis, was concerned for them, and says[758], ‘They interest me even while they perish’ (μέλουσί μοι ὀλλύμενοί περ).

Again, in the meeting of the gods, he describes Hector[759] as dear to them for his regular and abundant sacrifices, taking no note whatever of his personal virtues. Of the three deities who were actively hostile to Troy, Neptune, Juno, and Minerva, all had personal causes of offence: the first, the fraud of Laomedon, which, however, was also an offence against the moral law; both the others had the spretæ injuria formæ, and Juno had also special predilections to gratify. The fall of Ilios, and the death of Hector, are just: but the wonder is, with the favourable relations that subsisted between the Trojans and the father of gods, as well as men, which were in no respect impaired by crime, how Hector came to die, or Troy to fall. While the fall of Troy is justice, it does not seem to come about because it is agreeable to justice, but rather as the result of the balance of force among the gods, and of their remembrance of personal injuries. It appears all along, as though it were the right-mindedness of the Poet which keeps the wheels of the machine going, while those who should be the drivers are at fault.

Again, in the Odyssey, the Providence of the poem, if we may so speak, is on the side of Virtue; and a prosperous remainder of life, with a happy death, is promised to the hero. Of this providence Minerva, with the approval of Jupiter, is the wise and indefatigable organ. But while the general idea of providence moves in the right direction, the polytheistic formations work powerfully in a wrong one. David and his companions ate the show-bread in the temple, and were blameless, because it was to relieve a hunger that they had no other means of satisfying: but even impending famine does not excuse or palliate the offence of the companions of Ulysses, who use for food a portion of the oxen of the Sun. The jealousy and cruelty of Neptune, the gifts of Mercury to Autolycus, the savage crimes of Polyphemus, which do not detract from his relation to a deity of the highest rank, the disparagement of the highest human virtues in Calypso, the hostility to human peace and happiness in Circe and the Sirens, place the divine life of the Odyssey on a much lower level than the human and heroic, and to a certain extent depress by their admixture the sound ethical tone of the poem. All along, while Homer luxuriates, poetically, in the abundance and brilliancy of his materials, he has morally to repair their deficiencies, and to contend with and overrule their bias.

I cannot therefore but differ greatly from Nitzsch, who, in his Essay on the Anger of Neptune[760], seems to elevate it to the dignity of a providential resentment, and to conceive of the sufferings of Ulysses as a punishment for a moral offence in the treatment of Polyphemus. In this way I grant that a sort of parallel is established between his case and the chastisements which Achilles receives in the Iliad, through the death of Patroclus, and the surrender of the body of Hector. Both heroes seem thus to stand upon a level: both favoured children of the gods, honoured in the main, but chastised for their faults. But even this seeming parallelism fails when we remember the respective sequels. The curtain of the Iliad falls on the eve of the premature death of Achilles: as that of the Odyssey is dropping over the head of Ulysses, we perceive, in perspective, the picture of his serene old age.

As regards the important question of purity, the impression made on my own mind in reading the poems of Homer is this: that, but for his mythology, they would have been unimpeachable, at least in one point of virtue; they would have been absolutely pure. Whatever is dissolute in their moral tendency as regards this particular subject, evidently and directly flows from that source. We rarely meet a sentiment that can arouse anything like revulsion: the worst by far that has struck me is the advice given to Achilles by his mother Thetis (Il. xxiv. 130), as a mode of solace for his grief. The narrative of the Net of Vulcan in the Odyssey is one, that Homer would have been far too modest to recite with reference to human beings: and the only other passage, which seems to be marked with a tinge of grossness, is that which relates to the stratagem of Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad.