The earliest Scriptural narrative presents to our view, with considerable distinctness, three main objects. These are, respectively, God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One. Nor do we pass even through the Book of Genesis without finding, that it shadows forth some mysterious combination of Unity with Trinity in the Divine Nature.
From the general expectation which prevailed in the East at the period of the Advent, and from the prophecies collected and carefully preserved in Rome under the name of the Sibylline books, we are at once led to presume, that the knowledge of the early promise of a Deliverer had not been confined to the Jewish nation. Their exclusive character, and that of their religion; their small significance in the political system and intellectual movement of the world; and the false as well as imperfect notions which seem to have prevailed elsewhere respecting them and their law[34]; all make it highly improbable that these expectations and predictions should have been drawn from them and their sacred books exclusively. Further, Holy Scripture distinctly exhibits to us the existence of channels of traditional knowledge severed from theirs. Thus much we learn particularly from the cases of Job, who was a prophet and servant of God, though he lived in a country where idolatry was practised[35]; and of Balaam, who, not being an Israelite, nor an upright man, was nevertheless a prophet also. Our Lord, in his answer respecting God as the God of Abraham[36], points to a great article of belief, not expressly propounded in the Mosaic books. And again, there are traditions adopted in the New Testament by apostolic authority, which prove to us that there were some fragments at least of early tradition remaining, even at a late date, among the Jews themselves, over and above what had been committed to writing in the older Scriptures. Such are those given by St. Jude respecting Balaam himself, the body of Moses, and the prophecy of Enoch[37]. Such is the record mentioned by St. Paul[38] of Jannes and Jambres, who are believed to have been the chief magicians of Pharaoh, referred to in Exodus, c. vii: and whose names are mentioned by Pliny, and, according to Eusebius, by Numenius the Philosopher[39]. But it is not necessary, and it might not be safe, to make any large assumption respecting a traditional knowledge of any parts of early revelation beyond what Scripture actually contains.
Dwelling therefore on what may be gathered from the Sacred Volume, we have seen that at the very earliest date it has set before men the ideas of God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One, and that it has spoken concerning God as in some sense Three in One. When we take the whole of the older Sacred Records into view, we may add some particulars respecting the other two great objects.
And first, as to the Deliverer of man. The Redeemer promised was to be human, for He was to be of human birth. As death was the type of the primeval curse, so it was from death that He was to deliver. Again, the woman became a portion of the prophecy, for He was to be the seed of the woman: and while He is thus plainly indicated to us as incarnate, He is, on the other hand, mysteriously identified with the Λόγος, the Divine Word or Wisdom, existing before the world and the race with which He was to be numbered, and invested with the attributes of supreme Deity. Although from a certain period the Wisdom and the Deliverer appear to stand visibly identified, yet the earliest forms of the traditions, as they stand in Holy Writ, are, to a certain extent, ideally separate or separable; and the personality of the former is less clearly, or at least less sharply, marked than that of the latter.
It was always the prevailing tendency of the speculative religions of the East to withdraw the Supreme Being from direct relations with the world, and to assign its ordinary government to the Wisdom, more or less directly impersonated. ‘This,’ says Dean Milman, ‘was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus: it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism: it was pure Platonism: it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian School[40].’
Neither were the traditions of the Evil One, more than those respecting the Messiah, limited to a single aspect. On the contrary, they were twofold, and they centred round two ideas: the one, that of force; the other that of fraud: the one, that of a rebellious spirit, whom the Almighty had cast down, with his abettors, from bliss to torment[41]; and the other, that of a deceiver, who lured man by the promise of what he desired, and through the medium of his own free will, away from duty, to his own harm or destruction.
We may venture rudely to sum up these principal traditions of the first ages as follows:
First, with respect to the Deity.
1. The Unity and supremacy of the Godhead.
2. A combination with this Unity of a Trinity, in which Trinity the several Persons, in whatever way their personality be understood, and whatever distinctions may obtain between them, are in some way of coequal honour.
Secondly, with respect to the Redeemer, or Messiah.
1. A Redeemer from the curse of death, invested with full humanity, by whom the divine kingdom was to be vindicated and reestablished, in despite of its enemies.
2. A Wisdom, which is personal as well as divine, the highest and first in order, concerned in the foundation and continuing government of the world[42]. This is the Wisdom which ‘the Lord possessed from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was[43].’ ‘I Wisdom dwell with prudence; and find out knowledge of witty inventions[44].’ ‘This is with all flesh according to his gift: and he hath given her to them that love him[45].’
3. The connection of the Redeemer with our race through his descent from the woman.
Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.
1. A rebellion of great angels or powers against the Supreme Being; the defeat of the rebels, and their being cast into the abyss.
2. The going forth among men of a power who tempts them to their destruction.
A tradition of minor moment, but clearly declared in the earliest Scripture, may be added: namely,
The announcement of the rainbow, as a token which was to convey an assurance or covenant from God to man, with respect to the annual order of nature; an order on which the continuance of the human race depends.
It is impossible to survey these traditions, in their outline, without seeing how easy it was to find a way from them, by the aid of ideas on which they seemed to border, and which they brought within easy reach of wayward thought, towards the principal corruptions of heathenism. They shadow forth, as they stand, the great dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation: but from the doctrine of the Trinity, thus shadowed forth, the next step might be into polytheism; while in the doctrine of the Incarnation, similarly projected, seemed to be laid the foundation of the Greek anthropomorphism, or the reflection of humanity upon the supernatural world. Abstract truth has not been found sufficient to sustain itself among mankind: and in the dispensations of the All-Wise the promulgation of it has always been associated with the establishment of a teaching organ, which should bear living witness to its authority.
Let us now observe how these traditions severally find their imperfect and deranged counterparts in the heroic age of Greece.
First, as to the Godhead.
Its unity and supremacy is represented in Jupiter, as the administrator of sovereign power.
The combination of Trinity with Unity is reproduced in the three Kronid brothers, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto or Aidoneus; all born of the same parents, and having different regions of the material creation severally assigned to them by lot.
Next as to the Redeemer.
The first form of this tradition is represented chiefly in Apollo. But neither the various attributes which were conceived as belonging to the Deliverer, nor the twofold manifestation of his character as it appears in Holy Writ, could, we must conclude, be held in combination by the heathen mind. The character, therefore, underwent a marked disintegration by severance into distinct parts: and while it continues, in the main, to form the groundwork of the Homeric Apollo, certain of its qualities are apparently transferred to his sister Diana, and others of them are, as it were, repeated in her.
The second form of the tradition is that of the Wisdom, or Λόγος, of the Gospel of Saint John; and this appears to be represented in the sublime Minerva of the Homeric system.
Lastly, Latona, the mother of the twin deities, Apollo and Diana, appears to represent the tradition of the woman, from whom the Deliverer was to descend.
Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.
As the derivative idea of sin depended upon that of goodness, and as the shadow ceases to be visible when the object shadowed has become more dim, we might well expect that the contraction and obscuration of the true idea of goodness would bring about a more than proportionate loss of knowledge concerning the true nature of evil. The impersonation of evil could only be upheld in a lively or effectual manner, as the opposite of the impersonation of good: and when the moral standard of godhead had so greatly degenerated, as we find to be the case even in the works of Homer, the negation of that standard could not but cease to be either interesting or intelligible.
Accordingly we find that the process of disintegration, followed by that of arbitrary reassortment and combination of elements, had proceeded to a more advanced stage with respect to the tradition of the Evil One, than in the other cases.
The general form of the disintegration is this: that the idea of a rebellion, menacing the divine dominion with violence, is now clothed in a variety of detached and more or less conflicting forms: while the far more subtle idea of an influence acting immediately on the spirit of man, and aiming a blow at the glory of the Deity through his creatures, whose allegiance it seeks by the perversion of their own spontaneous agency to withdraw, remains in Homer, still indeed both visible and single, but enfeebled and obscured to such a degree, that it, as it were, stands on tiptoe, ready for its final flight from the sphere of the common perceptions of mankind.
The first, the idea of evil acting by violence, is represented, not indeed exclusively, but most conspicuously, in the Titans and Giants.
The second, or the idea of evil acting by deceit, is represented in the Ἄτη of Homer.
Lastly: the rainbow of Holy Scripture is represented in the Homeric Iris.
These, then, speaking generally, are the principal remnants from primitive traditions, of which, if of any thing of the kind, we may expect to find the vestiges within the Olympian Court.
In order to throw a fuller light upon the subject, I shall chiefly examine the characters of the Homeric deities, and of the more important among them in particular, not as a body but individually. An opposite practice has for the most part prevailed. It has been assumed that they are homogeneous; they have been treated as a class, subject to the same laws; and variations, not to be accounted for from mythological data, have been viewed as mere solecisms in the conception of the class. This has mainly tended, I believe, to thrust the truth of the case into dark corners. But the properties which distinguish the Homeric Immortals in common from men are in reality less important than those which establish rules of discrimination within their own body, and which point to the very different sources that have supplied the materials incorporated into different portions of the scheme.
In the enumeration which it will be requisite to make, it might be allowable to treat Neptune and Pluto as traditive divinities, because in their relation to Jupiter, which abstractedly is one of equal birth and equal honour, they appear to share in representing the primitive tradition, which combined a trine personality with unity in the godhead. Effect was given to this tradition by supposing the existence of three deities, who were united by the bond of brotherhood, and of whom each had an important portion of the universe assigned to his immediate superintendence. But for the assignment of attributes to these personages, when severally constituted, tradition seems to have afforded no aid. Jupiter, as the eldest and most powerful, became heir general, as it were, to whatever ideas were current respecting the one supreme God: or the point might be otherwise stated, as for instance thus, that the conception which the Greeks derived from elsewhere of a supreme God, they, on taking it over, shaped into the Eldest Brother of their Trinity. But the concentration of ideas of supremacy upon him was at variance with, and enfeebled the notion of, the trine combination. The tradition itself, moreover, did not determine provinces for Neptune or Pluto; and consequently, though these deities may be considered traditional with regard to their basis, they belonged to the invented class as respects character and attributes, and it is in conjunction with that class that I propose to consider them.
Again, Jupiter does not fully represent any one specific tradition: but he assembles irregularly around him the fragments of such traditions as belonged to the relation between men and the One Ruler of the universe. On the one hand he is in competition with other impersonations; on the other hand, with abstractions, which, if they wanted the life, yet had not forfeited the purity of godhead.
Latona, again, will be known rather by relative and negative, than by absolute and positive, signs; except as to the point of her maternity.
So Diana does not equally divide with Apollo, her twin brother, the substance of the tradition that they jointly represent; but rather is the figure of a person on whom the residue, consisting of properties that the Homeric Apollo could not receive, is bestowed. It is mainly in her ancillary relation to Apollo that she should be viewed.
It will of course be my object to bring out, as clearly and fully as I can, that portion of the evidence, which proves the presence of a strong traditive element in the Theomythology of Homer.
But it is not free from difficulty to determine the best mode of proceeding with this view. The traditive part of the materials is not separated by a broad and direct line from the inventive; nor has it been lodged without admixture in any of the members of the Olympian system. Like the fables of the East, it has undergone the transforming action of the Greek mind, and it is throughout the scheme variously mingled and combined with ideas of human manufacture. There is scarcely any element of the old revelation that is presented to our view under unaltered conditions: scarcely any personage of the divine order, as represented by the Poet, stands in the same relation of resemblance to those primeval traditions, which are to be traced in his figure and attributes. The ancient truths are not merely imperfect; they are dislocated, and, with heavy waste of material in the process, afterwards recast.
On account of this bewildering diversity, it will, I conceive, be most conducive to my purpose if I commence the inquiry with those deities in whom the propositions I maintain are best represented: for the present putting aside others, in whom the representation of tradition, either from the overpowering presence of other elements, or from the general insignificance of the character, is less effective.
I have spoken, thus far, of the ancient traditions, as they are delivered either in the ancient or in the more recent books of the Bible. And I hope it will not be thought to savour of mere paradox, if the result of my search into the text of Homer shall be to exhibit the religion of the Greeks, in the heroic age, as possessed of more resemblances to a primitive revelation, than those religions of the East from which they must have borrowed largely, and which we presume to have stood between them and the fountain-head.
We have doubtless to consider the Greeks, as to their religion, in three capacities: first, as receivers of the remains of pristine tradition; secondly, as having imported, along with it, from abroad the depraved forms of human fable; thirdly, as themselves powerful inventors, working upon and adding to both descriptions of material. But, before we conclude that the religion of Homer must needs be farther from that of the patriarchs than the religions, as we now read them, of Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, we ought to be assured that the editions, so to speak, in which we study those religions, are older than the Homeric poems. Whereas, with respect to the great bulk of the records at our command, this, I apprehend, is the very reverse of the truth.
There is, however, one source to which we may legitimately repair, as next in authority to the Holy Scriptures themselves with respect to the forms of primitive tradition: I mean the earliest and most authentic sacred literature of the Hebrews. Not that in kind it can resemble the sacred records; but that it is at least likely to indicate what were the earliest forms of development, and the initial tendencies to deviation.
Since that nation became unhappily committed, through its chief traditional authorities, to the repudiation of the Redeemer, a sinister bias has operated upon its retrospective, as well as upon its present and prospective theology. There are nevertheless three depositaries of knowledge from which we may hope to learn what were the views, entertained by the ancient Hebrews themselves, with regard to the all-absorbing subject of the Messianic traditions.
In the first place it would appear, from the very nature of the prophecies of the Old Testament, that there must, in all likelihood, have existed along with them a system of authoritative contemporary exposition, in order that holy men might be enabled to derive from them the consolation and instruction which, apart from their other purposes, they were divinely intended to convey. The highly figurative character and frequent obscurity of their language supports, if it does not require, this belief: and the constant practice, attested by the later Scriptures, of public explanation of the sacred Books, including the Prophets, in the synagogues of the Jews, brings it as near as such a case admits to demonstration.
These expositions of the Sacred Text began, as it appears, to be committed to writing about the time of the Babylonish captivity; when the Chaldee tongue became the vernacular, and the old Hebrew disappeared from common use. They were collected in the Paraphrases or Targumim: and the fragments of the oldest of them, which had consisted of marginal notes, were consolidated into a continuous Targum by Onkelos, Jonathan, and others[46].
Apart from the Targumim, the sacred literature of the Jews appears, from the time of the captivity onwards, to have run in two main channels. One class of teachers and writers rested chiefly on the dry traditionary system condemned by our Saviour in the Gospels, and gave less and less heed, as time went on, to the doctrine of Scripture, and of their forefathers, concerning the Messiah. In the second century after Christ, this traditionary system was reduced by the Rabbi Jehuda into a volume called the Mischna. And in the sixth or seventh, there was composed a larger work, the Gemara or Talmud, which purported in part to comment on the Mischna, and which also presented a more extensive and more promiscuous collection of Rabbinical traditions. In the midst of the ordure of this work, says Schöttgen, are to be found here and there certain pearls[47].
Parallel with this stream of chiefly spurious learning, there was a succession of pious writers, who both searched the Scriptures, and studied to maintain and propagate the Messianic interpretations of them. Of this succession the Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai was the great ornament; and by his disciples was compiled, some sixty years after his death, or about A. D. 170, the work termed the Sohar, which is so Christian in its sense, as to have convinced Schöttgen that Simeon was himself a Christian; although, perhaps from not being understood, he was not repudiated by the Jews[48]. Upon this work was founded the Cabbalistic or mystical learning.
From these sources may be derived many Messianic ideas and interpretations that were current among the ancient Jews.
Of them I proceed to extract some, from the work of Schöttgen, which may throw light upon the interior system of the Homeric mythology in its most important aspects.
1. First and foremost, these traditions appear to bear witness to the extraordinary elevation of the Messiah, and they fully recognise his title to the great Tetragrammaton[49].
2. Next, that introduction of the female principle into the sphere of deity, which the Greeks seem to have adopted, after their anthropophuistic manner, with a view to the family order among the Immortals rather than as a mere metaphysical conception, appears to have its prototype in the Hebrew traditions.
When in the Holy Scriptures we find wisdom personified in the feminine, we regard this only as a mode of speech, though as one evidently tending to account for the sex of Minerva. But the Jewish traditions went far beyond this[50]. The two natures of our Lord would appear from the Sohar to have been distinguished under the figure of mother and daughter. The Schechina, or ‘glory of God,’ is of the feminine gender: and the relation of His divinity to His humanity is set forth under the figure of a marriage. He is therefore called mother and matron; temporibus futuris omnes hostes tradentur in manus Matronæ, as Schöttgen renders the Sohar[51].
The Λόγος, or Word of the Lord, is also shown to have been, according to the genuine traditions of the Jews, a common expression for the Messiah. The relation thus exhibited is in marked analogy with that between Minerva and Jupiter. This expression of the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos is also in correspondence with the language of Philo, De Confusione Linguarum, pp. 255, 267[52].
4. The ideas of sonship and primogeniture[53] are likewise recognised among the titles of the Messiah, according to the Sohar and other Jewish authorities. We shall have to inquire what Homeric deities there are, who, by the distinction between their mode and time of birth, and that of others, may appear to represent these characteristics.
5. The Lord of Hosts, or Zebaoth[54], is another title of the Messiah: and we may therefore expect, in any traditionary remnant found elsewhere, to discover some strong and commanding martial development.
6. The Messiah was preeminently conceived of by the Jews as being the Light[55]. This property is in immediate connection with the idea of the Λόγος. It cannot fail to be observed, how vividly such an idea is represented in the ancient name Φοῖβος attaching to Apollo, and probably also in that of Λυκηγένης or ‘light-born.’ The same idea appears in the characteristic epithet Γλαυκῶπις, as it is now rightly interpreted, for Minerva. This indeed is not merely an epithet, but it forms one of her titles: as in Il. viii. 406.
7. Again, the name Metatron[56] is one of those properly applied to the Messiah by the Jews. It is supposed to have denoted originally the sense of the Latin word metator, as having reference to the guiding of the Israelites through the desert, and the marking or measuring out of their camps there. But it appears to have acquired afterwards the sense of Mediator, as implying that the Messiah was the organ, through whom the counsels of the Most High God took effect upon man.
8. The performance of miracles was to be a peculiar mark of the Messiah[57].
9. Another was the conquest he was to achieve over Satan, and the liberation of the dead from the grave and from the power of hell[58].
With these great gifts and powers was associated an assemblage of the most winning and endearing moral qualities. ‘The Schechina (or Messiah) is the image of God; as He is gentle, so is She: as He is gracious, so is She: as He is mighty, so is She mistress over all nations: He is truth, She is faith: He the prophet, She the prophetess: He the just, She the just: He the king, She the queen: He wise, She wisdom: He intelligent, She His intelligence: He the crown, She the diadem[59].’
The central idea of these old traditions, as we conceive it, and as it stands apart from simple theism, was that of redemption by means of a person clothed in the attributions of humanity, but also invested with the nature and powers of Godhead. Of these two sides of the tradition, one was exhibited in the Word or Wisdom of God, and the other in the Seed of the woman. The first is appropriated to Minerva, and the second in the main to Apollo. But as the divine and human could not in the tradition long continue completely harmonized and united, so neither are they wholly severed. The Wisdom assumes a human configuration: the Seed of the woman does not cease to be divine. Now Pallas and Apollo preserve, relatively to one another, the place of their prototypes in these two cardinal respects. As the tradition of the Λόγος was more immediately divine, so Pallas is more copiously invested with the higher powers, prerogatives, and offices of deity. On the other hand, as the deliverance was to be wrought out by the immediate agency of the Seed of the woman, so Apollo is more human, and is invested with the larger and more varied assemblage of active endowments, appertaining to the health, welfare, safety, purification, and chastisement of mankind. And one main reason of the anthropomorphous character of the Greek mythology as a whole may very probably be found in the fact, that it was an old and a pure tradition which first gave to men the idea of God in human form; the idea which, when once more purified, became that of Emmanuel, God with us[60].
The personages of the Homeric Theo-mythology who might most reasonably be distinguished as having their basis in tradition are:
Of these, Jupiter is so mixed a conception, and has such important relations to the whole genesis of the Greek mythology, that I place him in another class, and postpone the attempt to give a view of his person and offices until we have gone through the deities, in whom the traditional element is less disguised and also less contaminated.
And of these I commence with Minerva and Apollo, not only because they are the most dignified, but also as they are the most characteristic representatives of the class, and because it is in their persons that we may best test the amount and quality of the evidence in support of the assertion, that a traditional basis for the religion of the heroic age of Greece is still traceable in the poems of Homer.
Again: it is the effect of this evidence in general both to separate Minerva and Apollo by many important differences from the general mass of the Olympian deities, and likewise to associate them together in a great number of common signs and properties.
For these reasons I shall begin by considering them jointly: and I believe that in a just comprehension of their position lies the key to the whole Homeric system.
The lines of description for these two deities will, however, cross and recross one another. Their strong and pervading essential resemblances do not preclude much diversity of detail; and it will not unfrequently be found to happen, either that a given sign, perhaps even one of peculiar elevation, and thus of traditive origin, is found in one of the two and not in the other, or else that such a sign is developed more fully in one than in the other, or that the properties of an idea are divided between them, as if it was felt that, where the one was, the other must in greater or less measure be.
It will also be remembered that I do not aim at including, even in this detailed discussion, all that is ascribed by Homer to his Apollo and his Minerva; but only at exhibiting, with such fulness and clearness as I can, the distinctive character which on the whole they may be said to possess in common, and which I believe to constitute both the most curious, and by far the most important feature of the whole Homeric Theo-mythology.
The signs which appear to mark these great deities of tradition, and which accompany them with a deliberate consistency through the poems, present themselves with various bearings. Some affect their position in the Olympian system, others their individual characters; and lastly, a third class appertain to their dealings with man, and to their place and power in regard to the sphere of nature both animal and inanimate. Or more briefly, we may regard them in their Olympian relations, their personal characters, and their terrestrial aspects. We will begin with the first of these three divisions.
1. Their position in the Olympian system, if we are to adopt the common genesis of the Olympian system, is one of hopeless and unaccountable solecism.
The gods of Olympus are arranged generally in two generations. If we put Apollo and Minerva out of view, then, with the exception of a deity like Dione, introduced to serve as a mere vehicle of maternity, and inferior in weight, if not in rank, to her own offspring, the majesty and might of Olympus, following the order of nature, are entirely in the elder of these generations, and reside with Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and Aidoneus or Pluto. The greater spheres have been shared among these divinities; nothing, except what is secondary, remains for the rest. But the position of Apollo and Minerva is in no respect inferior to those of the elder gods, save Jupiter alone: in many points it is higher; it has approximations to the very summit, which they have not; nay, in particular points, Jupiter himself is exceeded. It is so entirely different as a whole from that of the other deities of the second generation, that we must seek out a cause for the difference. Now it cannot be made to depend, at least in the case of Apollo, on the paramount magnitude of any one of his functions, such as the bow, the lyre, or even the gift of divination. It would have been natural to anticipate that war, which is the business of Mars, might have made a greater deity than divination, had both started from the same point. In later times, perhaps, it did so; but in Homer the inferiority of Mars is immeasurable. Now if we cannot account for this and other cases of inferiority to Apollo in the heroic age by function, we must, I think, of necessity look for it in difference of origin.
2. Although the relation of Apollo and Minerva to Jupiter places them in the generation next to his, (all the Homeric divinities alike are subject to the condition of being conceived to have a beginning,) yet there are marked differences in antiquity between these two, and all the other deities who, like them, stand as children to Jupiter: while the simple fact, that they stand as his children, is precisely what the ancient traditions would have led us to expect, with a difference which we find represented in the respective modes of their derivation from him.
Of the other deities of the same generation, there are some so recent, as Greek deities, that their childhood is made matter of record: there is not one who bears any mark that will throw him back to the period when the Pelasgians ruled in Greece, like Jupiter as the father of the old Hellic houses and the Dodonæan worship, or Neptune as the parent of Neleus and of Actor; or indeed that in any manner suggests great antiquity. But now let us look at Minerva and Apollo. That Minerva was born from the head of Jupiter, is a legend which I apprehend signifies that, in the oldest mythology, she had no mother: that, even if not in the Olympian order, yet in the history of her worship she was prior to Juno. She would otherwise have been the daughter of Juno, or of some other mother; and the sole parentage of Jupiter is a proof, that the tradition she represented was in vogue before motherhood among the Immortals was invented. So strictly is this true, that, as the constructive process went on, a mother was found for Minerva under the name of Metis[61]; who was at the same time placed as the oldest among the wives of Jupiter. In Homer, whether Tritogeneia is to be interpreted head-born[62] or not, it is indubitable that Minerva has no mother named, and is not the child of any known female divinity: and the sole parentage of Jupiter appears to be declared with sufficient clearness in the expostulation of Mars to Jupiter[63];
This is the only sense, so far as I can see, that can properly be given to the word αὐτός.
Apollo, on the other hand, is the son of Λήτω or Latona. For her name there appears to be but one satisfactory meaning, and it is this; that her origin was before the memory of man, that is, before the period within which the Greek mythological system had been constructed.
It cannot fail to be remarked, that the relation between the mythical origin of Apollo and that of Minerva exhibit a difference entirely analogous to that found in the traditions which they represent respectively; and which would give to Apollo a mother, but to Minerva none. In both, however, we may here trace a strong resemblance to the Messianic traditions of Holy Scripture and of the Jews.
3. These deities have a great variety of functions, of which the secondary forms, or the executive applications, are delegated to others, of less power and pre-eminence, but still also in most cases strictly Olympian gods. These satellite-divinities it may be convenient to designate by the name of Secondaries.
The Secondaries of Olympus are so important a class, that they deserve, as a class, a distinct consideration.
They are as follows:
First, for Minerva, in her great characters as goddess of wisdom, of war, of polity, and of industrial art.
In the first, Mercury is her Secondary: for both are presiding divinities or patrons of that calculating faculty applied to conduct, which, on the side of virtue, reads as prudence, and which in its degenerate form is craft (κέρδεα or κερδοσύνη).
In treating the god Mercury, with respect to this capital particular, as a secondary of Minerva, I do not mean that he is nothing else: but that the traditions about Hermes were found capable of, and were allowed to bear, such a form, that it is impossible to describe fully the function of the one deity without including something that is also annexed to the other, or to draw any clear line between them.
In later times Mercury at Athens was, according to Müller[64], a Secondary also to Apollo, charged with the exoteric and material parts of several among his functions. And in Homer it seems probable, that his office with respect to the dead ought to be viewed as ministerial to that of Apollo.
In the next of her great offices, as goddess of war, Mars is a Secondary to Minerva; and he is absolutely nothing more. It may be enough in this place to refer to what will be said of him in the next Section.
The Minerva of polity, the λαοσσόος, ἀγελείη, and ἐρυσιπτόλις, is represented by Themis as a Secondary: whose name betokens her character as a simple personification of the idea of political and social rights, reflected from earth upon the Olympian life.
In the last of the four functions, Vulcan is her Secondary. It is true that the traditions do not exactly square. He is something more, because he is the element of fire, as well as the workman who operates by it: and he is also something less, because he has no concern with tissues, which fire has no share in creating, and which in Greece, but not in Egypt[65], were exclusively the business of women. But the relation between the two is indisputable: nor is it less plain that in that relation he fills, taken generally, the place of Olympian workman, she of a presiding mind operating upon man. And again, she is the goddess of construction; he has relations only with one particular department of it.
Next for Apollo, in his characters, first, of the Healer, and secondly, of the Bard, with that of the Seer or Prophet.
In the first of these he is, so to speak, assisted by a pure Secondary, Paieon; who disappears from the later and less refined Greek mythology, and is replaced by an Æsculapius, reflected from the purely human Asclepius of Homer. Paieon is a simply executive officer, and exercises his gift, or as we should now say practises, exclusively, as does Vulcan, except on special occasions, for the benefit of the Olympian community; while the original possession of the gift, and the power of distributing it, is with Apollo.
There is a further and more subtle relation between this deity and Apollo, indicated by the use of the name παιήων for the hymn of victory[66]. Whatever be the ground of this usage, it supplies another point, in which Paieon reflects Apollo the god of help, and so far tends to exhibit Apollo as also the god of victory. Paieon heals by the use of his hands, like an ordinary surgeon; Apollo without personal presence, and without the use of second causes, in answer to prayer[67].
In the second of his great offices, the Muses are the derivative deities, who conjointly form a Secondary divinity to Apollo.
Their relation to him, and the combination in themselves of the plural with the singular, are very curious. His immediate concern is with the lyre, theirs with the voice. They sometimes appear as one; for instance, in the first verse of each of the poems: sometimes as many; for instance, in the invocation before the Catalogue. Even their action is so combined, that what at one time they do as one, at others they do as many. It is the Muses who maim Thamyris: it is the Muse, who greatly loves Demodocus, who lays upon him the burden of blindness, but endows him with the gift of song: and again, who instructs and loves the tribe of Bards in general[68].
The Muses are, with Homer, of Olympian rank; but we can hardly deal with them as to many distinct impersonations: or at least we must not follow out that idea to its consequences. And for this reason; they were not in contact with the popular mind, and formed no part of the public religion: they were formations of the Poet for his own purposes, whom he might make and unmake at his will, and the conditions of whose existence he might modify, without being bound to any further degree of consistency than might for the occasion answer the purpose of his art. We must not, then, ask him whether he really means his Muse to be one or many, and if many, how many (it is, indeed, only in the second νεκυΐα that he mentions them as nine[69]), but must simply take them as a poetical, rather than mythological, impersonation of Vocal Music.
And here we at once perceive both the ground of their plurality, and their ministerial relation to Apollo. The former, probably, lay in the nature of harmony, or simultaneous combination of tones, requiring, of course, a combination of different voices, to effect what on the instrument is done by different strings. And if it did not spring from, it was at least suited to, that succession of alternate parts, which was, as we know, used in Israel even more anciently than in Homer’s time, and which may, though I do not, for one, feel certain that it must, have been signified by the term ἀμειβόμεναι, a name clearly relating to part-singing in one sense or another. Their subordinate relation to Apollo is represented in the combination[70] of the voice with the instrument. He, as the Original, remains in possession of the indivisible gift: they assist him in one which is essentially distributive. And as they share in his music, so also in his knowledge: but only in that which relates to the past: with the future they have no concern[71]. But as either Minerva or Vulcan can teach a smith, so either Apollo or the Muse can inspire a bard[72].