They do not harmonize with Olympus.Again, as these great deities are anomalies in themselves, so are they likewise in the Olympian order.If we were to remove Minerva and Apollo from Olympus, we should indeed take away the breadth and boldness of its sublimity, but we should add greatly to its mere symmetry: especially as some other minor figures would for the same reasons follow. There would then remain there the polygamous monarch of the skies, with his chief and secondary wives, the ranks of earth supplying him from time to time with further satisfaction for his passions; and in his various children or companions would be represented the various essential functions, as they were then estimated, of an organized community. Themis would represent policy, Mercury gain, the Muses song, and with it all knowledge; Vulcan, manual skill; Mars, the soldier; Paieon, the surgeon; Venus, that relaxed relation of the sexes to which mankind has ever leaned. For corn there would be Demeter or Ceres, and for wine, Dionysus or Bacchus. I grant that there is here inserted one single ingredient not known to the Homeric Olympus. His Muses are not stated to have any foreknowledge. But, after allowing for this trifling exception, I think it remains clear that though the ethics and the poetry of that region would be fatally damaged by the removal of Apollo and Minerva, its mere statistics might be visibly improved.The discussions which have arisen upon the etymology of the name Apollo, are in themselves significant of the difficulty of accounting for his origin mythologically. Müller mentions the derivation from the sun (Ἠϝέλιος,ΑΠέλιος) in order to reject it; as he repudiates (and very justly) the whole theory, which treats this deity as an elemental power. Passing over others as unworthy of serious notice, he rejectsἀπόλλυμι[241], as‘founded on a partial and occasional attribute of the god,’ and adoptsἀπέλλωνtheaverter(sc.of evil) or defender, as most expressive of his general function: in other words, though he does not go on to say so, he is the darkened shadow of the Saviour. But the really characteristic name of Apollo he conceives to beΦοῖβος, the bright and clear[242]. Clemens Alexandrinus, in theStromata, fancifully derives the name fromἀprivative, andπόλλων, and interprets the name as signifying the negation of plurality, and thus the unity of the Godhead[243].The name of Athene would appear to be formed by transposition from the Egyptian Neith[244], to whom, according to ancient inscriptions, very high and comprehensive dignities were assigned. It does not follow that we are to regard the Athene of Homer as an Egyptian divinity; though an Egyptian name may have been the centre, around which gathered the remarkable and even august fragments of the Messianic traditions that we have found represented in her.Summary of distinctive traits.In quitting a subject of so much importance, I will now endeavour to sum up, in the most concise form of which it is susceptible, the evidence to be drawn from Homer of the different position held by Apollo and Minerva from that of the other Olympian deities.I. Points of distinction in their relations to the Olympian Court and its members.1. The dignity accorded to them is quite out ofkeeping with their rank, as belonging to the junior generation of the mythological family, which was, as such, inferior in rank and power to the senior one[245].2. They bear visible marks, even in the mythological order, of an antiquity greater than that of the other deities in general.3. The external administration, or subordinate parts of the functions assigned to them in the mythological system, are commonly devolved upon another set of deities, here called Secondaries.4. A peculiar dignity, in the nature of precedence, is accorded especially to Minerva.5. We have next noted the singular union of Apollo with Jupiter in will and affection, and the relation of both to him, as the proper and regular ministers of the supreme dispensations of heaven, apart from the partial and individual action of particular gods.6. The defence of heaven against rebellion is dimly recorded to have been the act of Apollo; and indispensable assistance was also rendered on another occasion to Jupiter by Minerva.7. These great divinities are never baffled, disgraced, or worsted in any transaction between themselves and any other deity; nor ever exhibited by the Poet in a disadvantageous or disparaging position.II. Points of distinction in their terrestrial relations and their conditions of physical existence.1. They were known by men to be entitled, either alone, or in common with Jupiter only, to a peculiar reverence or honour.2. They were the objects of worship in all parts of the Homeric world.3. Neither of them are bound to any local residencein particular; and for Apollo there is no trace of any such residence at all.4. They are both the objects, Minerva more particularly, of general invocation and prayer, irrespective of place and circumstances.5. They are exempted from the chief physical limitations, as of time, place, and perceptive organs, which are generally imposed upon the deities of invention.6. They have a separate and independent power to punish those who offend them, without any need of an appeal to Jupiter, or to the Olympian Court.7. They are admitted, exclusively, or in common with Juno only, to a share in certain peculiar mythological functions of Jupiter himself.8. They have a power of making revelations to men, through signs or portents significant of the future.9. They have a general power of extraordinary or miraculous action upon nature, to which scarcely any other deity approaches.10. The peculiar and mysterious relation of Apollo, with his sister Diana, to death, cannot be understood or accounted for from mythologicaldata.11. In the exercise of their power over nature, Minerva and Apollo are, more than other deities, exempt from the need of resort to symbolic actions by way of cooperative means.III. Points of distinction with regard to their personal characters.1. Their moral tone is far superior to that of the Olympian Court in general.2. They are both peculiarly associated with Jupiter in the original administration of Providential functions, and are particularly concerned with the highest, most ethical, and most inward parts of them.3. Their relation to their mythological attributes is different in kind from that of the ordinary Olympian divinities.4. They have a number and range of attributes quite without parallel in the Olympian system: and yet with this a capacity of receiving new ones.5. Both in themselves, and in reference to that system, the whole conception of Apollo and Minerva, if it be viewed mythologically, is full of inexplicable anomaly: and the only solution to be found is in the recognition of the traditional basis, on which the Homeric representations of them must be founded.Although what I have built upon this evidence may be termed an hypothesis, the whole of the evidence itself is circumstantial: and I feel that the effect of it is not only to draw a broad line, but almost to place an impassable gulf, between such divinities as the Homeric Minerva and Apollo, on the one hand, and the Homeric Mars, Venus, Vulcan, and Mercury on the other. The differences between them are, however, graduated and shaded off by the interposition, first, of the minor traditive deities, such as Latona and Diana; and, secondly, of the greatest among the Olympian personages chiefly or wholly mythological, such as Neptune and Juno: and it is probably this graduation, running through the Olympian body, which has prevented our duly appreciating the immense interval that lies between its extremes.It is to the indefatigable students of Germany that we, the less laborious English, are, along with the rest of the world, indebted for what may be called the systematic treatment of the Homeric poems with respect to the facts they contain. To amass evidence is one thing; to penetrate into its heart and spirit, isanother. The former without the latter is insufficient; but the former is to the latter an indispensable preliminary. The works of Homer should be viewed, and their testimony registered, like the phenomena of a geological period: so unencumbered is he with speculation or the bias of opinion; so true, clear, direct, and unmixed is his exhibition of historical and moral fact. This method of investigation, honestly pursued, carries with it an adequate and a self-acting provision for the correction of its own errors.Explanation by Friedreich.Since I commenced the examination of the question now before us, there has appeared the second edition of a work, which I believe to be the latest compendium of what may be called the facts of the Homeric poems, by J. B. Friedreich. I find that this writer has been struck by the overpowering evidence of the vestiges of an early revelation in the characters of the Homeric Minerva and Apollo[246]. He observes the separate character of their relations both to Jupiter and to mankind; assigns to them an unbounded power over all events and the whole of human life; and says, ‘This Triad of Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, bears an unmistakeable analogy to the Christian Trinity, of Father, Holy Ghost, and Son: Jupiter answering to God the Father, Athene to the Holy Ghost, and Apollo to the Son of God, the Declarer of the will of His Heavenly Father: like as, furthermore, the early Christians have largely compared Christ with Apollo.’In this representation I find a fundamental agreement with the views expressed in the present work.But I venture to think that the particular mode of the relation between the Homeric and the primitive tradition, which has been set forth in this work, is more natural and probable than that asserted by Friedreich. As it has been here represented, we are to consider the primitive tradition as disintegrated and subdivided. First, that of the Redeemer is severed from that of the Holy Trinity. Next, its two aspects of the Wisdom and the Messiah, become two impersonations. And then the impersonation which represents the tradition properly Messianic, is itself again subjected to duplication. As the result of this threefold operation, wehave—1. The trine Kronid brotherhood.2. Minerva and Apollo.3. Apollo and Diana.The principle of the severance always being, to get rid of some difficulty, encountered by the human apprehension in embracing the integral tradition.The difficulty at the first step was to reconcile equality, or what the Christian dogma more profoundly terms consubstantiality, with a ministerial manifestation.The difficulty at the second step probably was to combine in one impersonation two groups of images, the one (the Wisdom), relating to function that dwells purely in the Godhead; the other, to function containing the element of humanity; it was, in short, to grasp the doctrine, ‘One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.’The difficulty at the third step apparently was, as has been stated, to associate the ideal of a strict and severe chastity with any but a female nature.There is no question now before us as to Apollo: the point at issue is, whether we are to regard theAthene, or Minerva, of Homer as derived from traditions of the Logos, or from traditions of the Holy Spirit.I urge the former, for the following reasons:1. Setting aside what was involved in the doctrine of a Trinity (which is otherwise represented), we have no evidence that there was any such substantive body of primitive tradition respecting the Holy Spirit, as would be likely to form the nucleus of a separate mythological impersonation, and especially of one endowed with such comprehensiveness, solidity, and activity of function as Minerva. Whereas it appears that there was that kind of substantive tradition with respect to theΛόγος, the Word or Wisdom of God.2. In the order of primitive tradition, the Son of God would precede the Holy Spirit, as is the case in the order of the Christian dogma; and the fragments of such tradition, when carried into mythology, would preserve and probably exaggerate, at any rate would not invert, the relation. But in the Homeric mythology, Minerva has a decided practical precedence over Apollo, and above all, when they come into collision, it is Apollo that yields, as in the incidents of the Seventh and Tenth Iliads, and in the general issue of the Trojan war.3. But this difference is just what might be expected to follow, upon the natural divergence of the two traditions of the Word and the Incarnate Messiah respectively. The latter, as more human, would take rank after the former as more Divine.4. We have also found a greater tendency on the part of Minerva to act independently of Jupiter. This is no unnatural diversion from the tradition of theΛόγος, but it would be hard to connect ideally withthe Holy Spirit, who has not, in the ancient tradition, the same amount or kind of separate development as the Messiah.Müller’s treatment of Apollo.The functions of Apollo, and the nature, extent, and history of his worship have been investigated at great length by Müller, in the Second Book of his learned and able History and Antiquities of the Doric race. He has shown the immense importance of this deity in Greek history and religion, reaching every where, and embracing every object and purpose. He recognises the apparent antagonism subsisting among his infinitely varied functions; which he makes elaborate and ingenious, but I think necessarily insufficient, efforts to trace ideally to an union of origin within the mythological system. His hypothesis, that the worship of Apollo was wholly due to Dorian influence, requires the support of the most violently strained assumptions; as for example, that its prevalence, apparently at all points, in Troas is to be accounted for by Cretan influences there, which, at the most, tradition would only warrant us in believing to have existed in a very contracted form, and with influence altogether secondary. Altogether, this sheer Dorianism of Apollo is at variance with the whole spirit and effect of the Homeric testimony; for in Homer the Dorians are insignificant and undeveloped, while the power and worship of Apollo had attained, as we have seen, to an extraordinary height, and to the very broadest range. Again, Müller[247]acknowledges the great difficulty of the dualism presented to us by the figures, concurring as they do in such remarkable functions, of Apollo and Diana: a difficulty, which he seems to think incapable of fullexplanation. While attaching great value to his treatise, I have the less hesitation in adopting conclusions that he does not authorize, because his work is based in some degree upon that (as I presume to think) defective mode of appreciation of the Homeric as compared with the later traditions, against which I have ventured to protest, and from the consequences of which it is one of my main objects to effect at least a partial escape.It will have appeared from this general account of the traditive characters of Apollo and Minerva, that the former represented the tradition of a person, and the latter of an idea. Accordingly, the original character of Apollo, which he bore during the infancy of the mythical system, is in many points the more significantly marked; as for example, by his share in the War with the Giants, and by his mysterious relation to Death.But it was natural that, in the course of time, as tradition in general grew weaker with the increasing distance from its source, and as the inventive system enlarged its development, those particular traditions, which were self-explained by having their root in an intelligible idea, should hold their ground much better than such as had become mythical and arbitrary by having lost their key. The traditional Minerva had an anchorage in the great function of Wisdom; the traditional Apollo had no support equal to this in breadth and depth; and his attributes, the band of revelation being removed, lost their harmony and could ill be held together.Accordingly we find that in the later ages of the mythology Apollo had lost much of what was transcendant in his importance, but that Minerva retained her full rank. One and the same Ode of Horace suppliesthe proof of both. He places Apollo on a level not only with Diana, but with Bacchus[248]:Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,Liber: et sævis inimica virgoBelluis; nec te mutuende certâ,Phœbe, sagittâ.But, after having described the supreme and transcendant dignity of Jupiter, he at once proceeds to place Pallas before every other deity without exception[249]:Unde nîl majus generatur ipso:Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum;Proximos illi tamen occupavitPallas honores.I will now pass on to consider the remaining vestiges of original tradition perceivable in Homer.The Diana of Homer.Like the Moon to the Sun, an analogy maintained by their respective assumption of the two characters in the later mythology, Diana is a reflection, and in most respects a faint reflection, of Apollo.She was worshipped, says Müller[250], in the character of ‘as it were a part of the same deity.’ He collects and reviews, from the whole circle of Greek history and mythology, the points of coincidence between them: and notices particularly, that like him she is bothλυκείαandοὐλία, both the destroyer and the preserver; that she administers her office as angel of Death, sometimes in wrath and sometimes without it; and that her name Artemis, meaning, as he conceives, healthy and uninjured, is in close correspondence with those of Phœbus Apollo.All this is in conformity with what we gather from the poems of Homer: but those poems have spared us many of the confused and perplexing phenomena, which are presented by the later mythology.One side of the divided Messianic tradition, its purity, is best represented in Diana, through her severe and spotless chastity. Its force and scope are much more largely developed in Apollo. But this high purity, and the double aspect of the ministry of Death, appear to be of themselves sufficient to stamp her beyond mistake with a traditionary origin. Small resemblances, too, as well as great ones, are traceable in Homer between her and Apollo, such as her golden throne and golden distaff, which may be compared to his golden sword, the sword of primeval light: and even these minor correspondences may in their own degree bear witness to the original and integral shape of the tradition.If she is thus clothed in a sort of lunar light, and is in the main a reflection of Apollo upon earth, such we may probably consider Persephone in the Shades[251].Let us, however, consider what can be gathered from Homer as to the attributes of Diana.This deity would appear to have been, according to him, a deity of universal worship. We may perhaps safely infer thus much from the single fact of her ministry of Death. She is also represented as extending her agency to Troy, where she taught Scamandrius to hunt[252]; probably to Crete, in the case of the daughters of Pandareos; she is invoked in Ithaca by Penelope, puts Ariadne to death in Dia, exercises a similar function for the women inΣυρίη, sends the Calydonian boar for a defect of homage in Ætolia, and is familiarly mentioned in connection with the Greeks generally, while her place in the Theomachy may suffice to mark her as also a Pelasgian goddess. In most points, however, she partakes largely, as might be expected, of the characteristics of the ordinary deities of invention. Had she repeated all the chief notes of Apollo, and with any thing like an equal force, the question of traditional origin would perhaps have been more doubtful than it now is.When she is invoked by Penelope, it is in connection with her share of the special ministry of death[253]. She is nowhere else made the object of prayer.It is her deep resentment at the omission of sacrifice which provokes her to send the Calydonian boar[254]. In the Fifth Iliad, she and her mother Latona appear as deities purely subsidiary to Apollo. He deposits Æneas in his temple: there, not in a temple of their own, Latona and Diana attend upon and heal him[255].In the Theomachy, she is treated with the same ignominy as Mars and Venus, but by Juno instead of Minerva. Her railing address to Apollo is conceived in the lower and not in the higher spirit (Il. xxi. 472–7).She never assumes a general power, either over man in mind or body, or over outward nature.She has no share in the general movement of either poem, and is introduced in the great majority of instances by way of allusion only.Her near relation to Apollo gives a certain grandeur to her position: but the inventive elements of the representation greatly obscure and even partially overbear the traditional.Her side in the Trojan war is to be explained byher relation to Apollo. In all other points she seems to be a goddess of associations more properly Greek, perhaps in consequence of their greater addiction to hunting.In treating the Homeric Diana as a personage principally ancillary to Apollo, and equipped with reflections, or stray fragments, of prerogatives chiefly belonging to him, I do not attempt to foreclose the question what may have been the origin of her name, or whether she may be connected with any mythological original in the religions of the East or of Egypt.Döllinger conceives that the union of Diana with Apollo was Greek, and that they were not originally in relation with one another; while he justly observes, that this deity, like Apollo, has a great and inexplicable diversity of function. She, like other deities of Greece, has been thought to represent the Astarte of the Syrians. Again, Herodotus[256]has given us most curious information respecting the gods of the Scythians, whom we have found to be related to the Pelasgi. They worship, he states, the Celestial Venus under the name of Artimpasa. This name, it has been ingeniously conjectured[257], is composed (1) of the name Mitra, which the Persians gave to Venus[258], and which reversed becomes Artim, and (2) of the SanscritBhas, meaningshine, and thus corresponding with theΦοῖβοςof Apollo, and theΓλαυκῶπιςof Pallas: all of them being, as it were, shreds of the tradition fully represented in the Shechinah of the Jews, and the ‘Light’ of Saint John. This also corresponds with the cluster of golden epithets, theχρυσηλάκατος, χρυσήνιος,andχρυσόθρονος, which Homer applies to Diana: and the very feebleness of Diana in the Theomachy suggests that the Eastern prototype of Venus, the Mitra of the Persians, was originally no more than a degenerate derivation from a higher tradition, which found a more natural, but still only a partial, expression in the majestic and chaste, as well as beautiful, Artemis.The Latona of Homer.We have next to consider the Homeric delineation of Latona, the mother of Apollo and of Diana.It is scarcely possible to avoid being struck, on turning to this portraiture, with the contrast between the slightness of the outline and the real dignity of the features and position. This contrast, like the greater one relating to Apollo, seems to have its key in the traditional origin of the representation: and there is no one Homeric deity, whose case, when fully considered, can afford a more marked testimony to the hypothesis of a strong element of traditive theology in the religious system of the Poems.Why has she a position so different from that of any other wife or concubine of Jupiter: such, for example, as Dione or Demeter?Why is it so much elevated above that of any among them, except only Juno?How comes she to have a son so incomparably superior in rank, in power, and in the affections of his father, to any child of Juno herself, theπρεσβὰ θεά?Why, being thus great, is she wholly unfurnished with attributes or functions, either general or specific?Why, on the other hand, does so much obscurity hang about her origin, and what are we to say as to her divinity, in answer to the question, whether it was original or acquired?The name of Latona appears to have been a perpetual puzzle to the expounders of Greek mythology. It is taken to mean Night, which, combined with Day, produces the Sun[259]; or ‘obscure,’ or ‘concealed,’ as that from which issues the visible deity, the Sun in heaven. But surely these explanations can have no bearing upon the Homeric mythology, where it is matter of question even whether Apollo and the Sun have any mutual relations at all, and where it is quite clear that the personality of Apollo is far older and riper, as well as far higher and more comprehensive; which implies of necessity, that Latona must have been known, and must have held her place, quite apart from any relation to the Sun. An explanation of this kind is simply an indication, that the problem has not yet been solved.But now, if we presume Apollo to be the representative of the Messianic tradition, that the Seed of the woman should crush the serpent’s head, the state of the case is entirely changed. And the explanation of the name in particular, instead of being hopeless, becomes easy, and even auxiliary to the general hypothesis. For now Latona stands in the tradition as a person anterior to the whole Olympian mythology: a person for whose extraction that mythology does not and ought not to account. Its Jupiter and Juno are referred to a parentage, that ofΚρόνοςandῬέα, and through these perhaps afresh to Oceanus and Tethys as their ultimate source. Everything, again, that is connected with the genesis of the Olympian system, properly so called, is made to conform to anthropomorphous ideas: but here are two of its deities, one of them among its very greatest, who have a mother that forms part of the earliest known tradition respecting them, whilethat mother is herself without an origin. What could be more natural, than that a name should fasten itself upon her, simply importing that, illustrious as was her motherhood, the fountain-head of her own life and destiny was lost in oblivion? For it lay beyond the point from which all mythical knowledge was held to spring. A certain motherhood was known of her, and that was all.Again, the mother of the Deliverer was to be a woman. But in the Greek mythology it could not be, that a woman should stand as the giver of life to one of its most august divinities. Yet the woman of the tradition could not be transferred from the tradition as a great substantive personage into the Greek mythology, because in the tradition she stood an unembellished figure, wholly without attributes. Hence invention would, on taking over the tradition, be at fault; and could not but present to us an ambiguous and inconsistent picture, such as now stands before us in the Latona of Homer.Let us next set forth the facts regarding Latona, as they stand in the poems.In the first place, then, her divinity is beyond all doubt; for she is one of those deities who take part in the war[260], and this although, almost alone among them, she has no office whatever to associate her with it, and no part to play in the conduct of it. She ranges herself on the side of the Trojans; apparently, like Diana, drawn in that direction by Apollo, the central and really important figure of the group. While Venus, who appears in the first enumeration, is omitted in the array[261]of deities for action, Latona has Mercury assigned to her for an antagonist. And, when the crisiscomes, we observe in her case a marked instance of that care, with which Homer preserves her, like the greater traditive deities, from anything like discredit. Mercury declines the combat, on the ground that it is hard to fight against the wives of Jupiter; and tells her she is at liberty to announce that she has vanquished him. Whence has this pale and colourless figure such very high honour so jealously asserted for her[262]?When Niobe, proud of her numerous offspring, taunts Latona as the mother of only two children, summary and awful punishment follows: the children are slain, the unhappy mother is turned to stone. Yet she herself takes no part in the vengeance, a fact remarkably in harmony with her place as defined by the primitive tradition of Holy Scripture. Of the three or four suffering figures in the Shades, only one has the cause of his punishment stated, and it is much the severest of all. It is Tityus, whose entrails are continually devoured by vultures, because he offered violence to Latona as she was going to the Pythian temple of her son.When, in the Fourteenth Iliad, Jupiter recites the mothers of certain of his offspring, beginning with women and ending with goddesses, Latona appears in the latter category, after Ceres and before Juno: and, as the scale is an ascending one, she must clearly rank before the first and next to the last named deity.There are, however, various indications that this had not always been so: but that, according to original tradition, she had been of the human order, and had undergone a sort of translation into the ranks of the Immortals.The first of these is the taunt of Niobe. The boastof richer fecundity is natural in a human mother’s mouth, as against another mother reputed to be human[263]; but entirely strange and absurd, if we suppose it directed against a deity. Dione and Demeter have but one child each. Nor is there a marked difference in this respect between the Latona and the Juno of Homer; for Juno’s children are but two, or at most three[264].Next, we can account for the origin and parentage of all the great Olympian deities of Homer, with the single exception of Latona. She is no one’s daughter, no one’s sister: but is a wife (that also equivocally), and a mother only. When, indeed, we part company with Homer, the scene changes, and a father is found for her in the Hymns: she is the daughter, according to one reading, of Saturn,κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].In Hesiod she is the daughter of a Titan: but even here she retains this mark of a most ancient tradition, that she is said to have been married to Jupiter before the great Juno[266]: though she comes after Metis, or Wisdom, the oldest of all his consorts; an order not at variance with the traditional ideas.Her anomalous position in mythology.But there must have been some cause or process that brought her into the Homeric Olympus, an anomaly alike among mortals and Immortals. What could it have been, except an illustrious maternity, to account for her elevation, and at the same time her original womanhood to account for the blank in thedescent and consanguinity, and for her total want of attributes?It must be granted that there is a certain degree of resemblance between Latona and Dione: turning mainly upon this, that Dione seems to be in Olympus without either dignity or power, and simply as the vehicle, through which her daughter Venus was brought into existence. But then the want of basis is in her case immediately made evident by results. Even in Homer she is not among the gods of the Theomachy; nor is she named among the mothers in the Fourteenth Book; and Hesiod, though she is invoked in the suspected Proem of his Theogony, entirely passes her over in the body of it, and furnishes Venus with another origin. She remains all but a cipher ever after.Again, the epithets attached to Latona are such as to leave her, and her alone among all deities of such dignity, wholly functionless, and also wholly inactive. I distinguish the two, because Juno has only a limited function, but she has power, and an immense activity. Latona has beauty and majesty, qualities which appertain to every goddess as such: she isκαλλιπάρῃος,εὐπλόκαμος,καλλιπλόκαμος,χρυσοπλόκαμος,ἠΰκομος,κυδρὴ,πότνια, andἐρικύδης: and we may observe in the more personal portion of these epithets how Homer, with his usual skill, has avoided placing her in any kind of rivalry with Juno, who is usually praised for her eyes and arms, not her cheeks and hair. But they all leave her void of purpose; and she must stand as a sheer anomaly, unless there is some better explanation of her being and place in mythology, than mythology itself can supply.Her relation to primitive Tradition.Even in the later tradition, Latona never gains a definite office: she remains all along without anymeaning or purpose intrinsic to herself: she shines only in the reflected glory of her offspring, and is commonly worshipped only in union with them[267]. If therefore it has been shown, that the mythological character of Apollo is clearly the vehicle of the ancient tradition, known to us in the Book of Genesis, respecting the Seed of the woman, it seems plain that in Latona is represented the woman from whom that Seed was to spring.I do not presume to enter into the question whether we ought to consider that the Latona of Homer represents the Blessed Virgin, who was divinely elected to be the actual mother of our Lord; or rather our ancient mother Eve, whose seed He was also in a peculiar sense to be.So far as personal application is concerned, the same arguments might be used upon the subject, as upon the interpretation of the original promise recorded in Scripture: and the question is one rather of the interpretation of Scripture, than of Homer. The relation which appears to me to be proved from the text of the poems, is between the deity called Latona and the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis. As to all beyond this, I should suppose it perhaps more just to regard her as a typical person, exhibiting through womanhood the truth of our Blessed Lord’s humanity, than as the mere representative of any individual personage.Backward as is the position of Latona in the practical religion of Homer, the universal recognition of the deity is sufficiently established: on the one hand by her place among the deities of the Trojan party; on the other, by the punishment of Niobe for an offence against her either in Greece, or at the least in a recognised Greek legend; by the punishment of Tityus; and by her inclusion in the Catalogue of the Fourteenth Iliad.Her slightness of action.To this very remarkable deity no utterance of any kind is ever ascribed by Homer, and with, I think, three small exceptions, nothing of personal and individual action. Even when she takes her place among the deities in the array of battle, it is not said that she stood up against Mercury, but simply that Mercury stood up against her[268].The three cases are as follows. First, when he makes over to her the victory in waiving the fight, she offers no reply; but simply picks up her daughter Diana’s bow and arrows, and goes after her, apparently with the intention of offering her comfort. The next action[269]attributed to her is this: that when Apollo[270]has carried the bruised and stunned Æneas into his temple on Pergamus, Latona and Diana tend him there. Thus both of these actions exhibit her in strict ideal subordination, so to speak, to one of her children, as though by tradition she existed only for them. But the second is especially remarkable, and alike illustrative of the traditional basis of the Mother and of the Son.In the first place, as it appears to me, there can hardly be a circumstance more singular, according to the principles of the Greek mythology, than that any one deity should be introduced as acting, not in her own temple, but in the temple of another. Such however is here the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo.Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him.They do not enter into the fray: it is he who has been there, and who, having deposited Æneas, immediately prosecutes the affairs of the battle-field, while they, as his satellites, give effect to his purpose in setting about the restoration of the disabled warrior.Lastly, the significance of this action is raised to the highest point, when we recollect that this is a mother executing the design of her son. Latona’s action in the Twenty-first Book, like that of Dione with Venus, can be accounted for by her maternal character. But there is no case in the Homeric poems besides this, where we see a parent-god thus acting ministerially in the execution of the plans of his or her offspring. The primeval tradition, once admitted as the basis of the mythological group, furnishes us with the key to what would otherwise be another great anomaly.The third case is in entire harmony with the other two. Tityus, the son of Earth, is tortured in the nether world for having offered violence to Latona, and the crime was committed when she was on her way through Panopeus to Delphi. This was probably the route from Delos to that place: so that again the poet seems to represent Latona in close but subordinate connection with her son, by making her travel between the seats of his two already famous oracles.Apollo, then, with Latona and Diana, forms a group; and the origin of the combination is to be sought in primitive tradition. It is not necessary to show that the personages thus associated maintained their association in all the religions of the East. I admit that we are not to suppose, that the idea of this combination passed direct from the patriarchs into Greece. The most natural place in which to seek for traces of it would be, in the religion of the Persians, anterior to thetime of Homer. Unfortunately we have no accounts of it at any such date. But our failing to find these three deities in a company, or to find any germ which might have been developed into that company, in accounts later by probably five or six centuries at least, raises no presumption whatever against the hypothesis that we may owe the representation, as it stands in Homer, to historical derivation through the forefathers of the Hellic tribes, from some such period as that when, for example, Abraham dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees[271].
They do not harmonize with Olympus.
Again, as these great deities are anomalies in themselves, so are they likewise in the Olympian order.
If we were to remove Minerva and Apollo from Olympus, we should indeed take away the breadth and boldness of its sublimity, but we should add greatly to its mere symmetry: especially as some other minor figures would for the same reasons follow. There would then remain there the polygamous monarch of the skies, with his chief and secondary wives, the ranks of earth supplying him from time to time with further satisfaction for his passions; and in his various children or companions would be represented the various essential functions, as they were then estimated, of an organized community. Themis would represent policy, Mercury gain, the Muses song, and with it all knowledge; Vulcan, manual skill; Mars, the soldier; Paieon, the surgeon; Venus, that relaxed relation of the sexes to which mankind has ever leaned. For corn there would be Demeter or Ceres, and for wine, Dionysus or Bacchus. I grant that there is here inserted one single ingredient not known to the Homeric Olympus. His Muses are not stated to have any foreknowledge. But, after allowing for this trifling exception, I think it remains clear that though the ethics and the poetry of that region would be fatally damaged by the removal of Apollo and Minerva, its mere statistics might be visibly improved.
The discussions which have arisen upon the etymology of the name Apollo, are in themselves significant of the difficulty of accounting for his origin mythologically. Müller mentions the derivation from the sun (Ἠϝέλιος,ΑΠέλιος) in order to reject it; as he repudiates (and very justly) the whole theory, which treats this deity as an elemental power. Passing over others as unworthy of serious notice, he rejectsἀπόλλυμι[241], as‘founded on a partial and occasional attribute of the god,’ and adoptsἀπέλλωνtheaverter(sc.of evil) or defender, as most expressive of his general function: in other words, though he does not go on to say so, he is the darkened shadow of the Saviour. But the really characteristic name of Apollo he conceives to beΦοῖβος, the bright and clear[242]. Clemens Alexandrinus, in theStromata, fancifully derives the name fromἀprivative, andπόλλων, and interprets the name as signifying the negation of plurality, and thus the unity of the Godhead[243].
The name of Athene would appear to be formed by transposition from the Egyptian Neith[244], to whom, according to ancient inscriptions, very high and comprehensive dignities were assigned. It does not follow that we are to regard the Athene of Homer as an Egyptian divinity; though an Egyptian name may have been the centre, around which gathered the remarkable and even august fragments of the Messianic traditions that we have found represented in her.
Summary of distinctive traits.
In quitting a subject of so much importance, I will now endeavour to sum up, in the most concise form of which it is susceptible, the evidence to be drawn from Homer of the different position held by Apollo and Minerva from that of the other Olympian deities.
I. Points of distinction in their relations to the Olympian Court and its members.
1. The dignity accorded to them is quite out ofkeeping with their rank, as belonging to the junior generation of the mythological family, which was, as such, inferior in rank and power to the senior one[245].
2. They bear visible marks, even in the mythological order, of an antiquity greater than that of the other deities in general.
3. The external administration, or subordinate parts of the functions assigned to them in the mythological system, are commonly devolved upon another set of deities, here called Secondaries.
4. A peculiar dignity, in the nature of precedence, is accorded especially to Minerva.
5. We have next noted the singular union of Apollo with Jupiter in will and affection, and the relation of both to him, as the proper and regular ministers of the supreme dispensations of heaven, apart from the partial and individual action of particular gods.
6. The defence of heaven against rebellion is dimly recorded to have been the act of Apollo; and indispensable assistance was also rendered on another occasion to Jupiter by Minerva.
7. These great divinities are never baffled, disgraced, or worsted in any transaction between themselves and any other deity; nor ever exhibited by the Poet in a disadvantageous or disparaging position.
II. Points of distinction in their terrestrial relations and their conditions of physical existence.
1. They were known by men to be entitled, either alone, or in common with Jupiter only, to a peculiar reverence or honour.
2. They were the objects of worship in all parts of the Homeric world.
3. Neither of them are bound to any local residencein particular; and for Apollo there is no trace of any such residence at all.
4. They are both the objects, Minerva more particularly, of general invocation and prayer, irrespective of place and circumstances.
5. They are exempted from the chief physical limitations, as of time, place, and perceptive organs, which are generally imposed upon the deities of invention.
6. They have a separate and independent power to punish those who offend them, without any need of an appeal to Jupiter, or to the Olympian Court.
7. They are admitted, exclusively, or in common with Juno only, to a share in certain peculiar mythological functions of Jupiter himself.
8. They have a power of making revelations to men, through signs or portents significant of the future.
9. They have a general power of extraordinary or miraculous action upon nature, to which scarcely any other deity approaches.
10. The peculiar and mysterious relation of Apollo, with his sister Diana, to death, cannot be understood or accounted for from mythologicaldata.
11. In the exercise of their power over nature, Minerva and Apollo are, more than other deities, exempt from the need of resort to symbolic actions by way of cooperative means.
III. Points of distinction with regard to their personal characters.
1. Their moral tone is far superior to that of the Olympian Court in general.
2. They are both peculiarly associated with Jupiter in the original administration of Providential functions, and are particularly concerned with the highest, most ethical, and most inward parts of them.
3. Their relation to their mythological attributes is different in kind from that of the ordinary Olympian divinities.
4. They have a number and range of attributes quite without parallel in the Olympian system: and yet with this a capacity of receiving new ones.
5. Both in themselves, and in reference to that system, the whole conception of Apollo and Minerva, if it be viewed mythologically, is full of inexplicable anomaly: and the only solution to be found is in the recognition of the traditional basis, on which the Homeric representations of them must be founded.
Although what I have built upon this evidence may be termed an hypothesis, the whole of the evidence itself is circumstantial: and I feel that the effect of it is not only to draw a broad line, but almost to place an impassable gulf, between such divinities as the Homeric Minerva and Apollo, on the one hand, and the Homeric Mars, Venus, Vulcan, and Mercury on the other. The differences between them are, however, graduated and shaded off by the interposition, first, of the minor traditive deities, such as Latona and Diana; and, secondly, of the greatest among the Olympian personages chiefly or wholly mythological, such as Neptune and Juno: and it is probably this graduation, running through the Olympian body, which has prevented our duly appreciating the immense interval that lies between its extremes.
It is to the indefatigable students of Germany that we, the less laborious English, are, along with the rest of the world, indebted for what may be called the systematic treatment of the Homeric poems with respect to the facts they contain. To amass evidence is one thing; to penetrate into its heart and spirit, isanother. The former without the latter is insufficient; but the former is to the latter an indispensable preliminary. The works of Homer should be viewed, and their testimony registered, like the phenomena of a geological period: so unencumbered is he with speculation or the bias of opinion; so true, clear, direct, and unmixed is his exhibition of historical and moral fact. This method of investigation, honestly pursued, carries with it an adequate and a self-acting provision for the correction of its own errors.
Explanation by Friedreich.
Since I commenced the examination of the question now before us, there has appeared the second edition of a work, which I believe to be the latest compendium of what may be called the facts of the Homeric poems, by J. B. Friedreich. I find that this writer has been struck by the overpowering evidence of the vestiges of an early revelation in the characters of the Homeric Minerva and Apollo[246]. He observes the separate character of their relations both to Jupiter and to mankind; assigns to them an unbounded power over all events and the whole of human life; and says, ‘This Triad of Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, bears an unmistakeable analogy to the Christian Trinity, of Father, Holy Ghost, and Son: Jupiter answering to God the Father, Athene to the Holy Ghost, and Apollo to the Son of God, the Declarer of the will of His Heavenly Father: like as, furthermore, the early Christians have largely compared Christ with Apollo.’
In this representation I find a fundamental agreement with the views expressed in the present work.But I venture to think that the particular mode of the relation between the Homeric and the primitive tradition, which has been set forth in this work, is more natural and probable than that asserted by Friedreich. As it has been here represented, we are to consider the primitive tradition as disintegrated and subdivided. First, that of the Redeemer is severed from that of the Holy Trinity. Next, its two aspects of the Wisdom and the Messiah, become two impersonations. And then the impersonation which represents the tradition properly Messianic, is itself again subjected to duplication. As the result of this threefold operation, wehave—
1. The trine Kronid brotherhood.
2. Minerva and Apollo.
3. Apollo and Diana.
The principle of the severance always being, to get rid of some difficulty, encountered by the human apprehension in embracing the integral tradition.
The difficulty at the first step was to reconcile equality, or what the Christian dogma more profoundly terms consubstantiality, with a ministerial manifestation.
The difficulty at the second step probably was to combine in one impersonation two groups of images, the one (the Wisdom), relating to function that dwells purely in the Godhead; the other, to function containing the element of humanity; it was, in short, to grasp the doctrine, ‘One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person.’
The difficulty at the third step apparently was, as has been stated, to associate the ideal of a strict and severe chastity with any but a female nature.
There is no question now before us as to Apollo: the point at issue is, whether we are to regard theAthene, or Minerva, of Homer as derived from traditions of the Logos, or from traditions of the Holy Spirit.
I urge the former, for the following reasons:
1. Setting aside what was involved in the doctrine of a Trinity (which is otherwise represented), we have no evidence that there was any such substantive body of primitive tradition respecting the Holy Spirit, as would be likely to form the nucleus of a separate mythological impersonation, and especially of one endowed with such comprehensiveness, solidity, and activity of function as Minerva. Whereas it appears that there was that kind of substantive tradition with respect to theΛόγος, the Word or Wisdom of God.
2. In the order of primitive tradition, the Son of God would precede the Holy Spirit, as is the case in the order of the Christian dogma; and the fragments of such tradition, when carried into mythology, would preserve and probably exaggerate, at any rate would not invert, the relation. But in the Homeric mythology, Minerva has a decided practical precedence over Apollo, and above all, when they come into collision, it is Apollo that yields, as in the incidents of the Seventh and Tenth Iliads, and in the general issue of the Trojan war.
3. But this difference is just what might be expected to follow, upon the natural divergence of the two traditions of the Word and the Incarnate Messiah respectively. The latter, as more human, would take rank after the former as more Divine.
4. We have also found a greater tendency on the part of Minerva to act independently of Jupiter. This is no unnatural diversion from the tradition of theΛόγος, but it would be hard to connect ideally withthe Holy Spirit, who has not, in the ancient tradition, the same amount or kind of separate development as the Messiah.
Müller’s treatment of Apollo.
The functions of Apollo, and the nature, extent, and history of his worship have been investigated at great length by Müller, in the Second Book of his learned and able History and Antiquities of the Doric race. He has shown the immense importance of this deity in Greek history and religion, reaching every where, and embracing every object and purpose. He recognises the apparent antagonism subsisting among his infinitely varied functions; which he makes elaborate and ingenious, but I think necessarily insufficient, efforts to trace ideally to an union of origin within the mythological system. His hypothesis, that the worship of Apollo was wholly due to Dorian influence, requires the support of the most violently strained assumptions; as for example, that its prevalence, apparently at all points, in Troas is to be accounted for by Cretan influences there, which, at the most, tradition would only warrant us in believing to have existed in a very contracted form, and with influence altogether secondary. Altogether, this sheer Dorianism of Apollo is at variance with the whole spirit and effect of the Homeric testimony; for in Homer the Dorians are insignificant and undeveloped, while the power and worship of Apollo had attained, as we have seen, to an extraordinary height, and to the very broadest range. Again, Müller[247]acknowledges the great difficulty of the dualism presented to us by the figures, concurring as they do in such remarkable functions, of Apollo and Diana: a difficulty, which he seems to think incapable of fullexplanation. While attaching great value to his treatise, I have the less hesitation in adopting conclusions that he does not authorize, because his work is based in some degree upon that (as I presume to think) defective mode of appreciation of the Homeric as compared with the later traditions, against which I have ventured to protest, and from the consequences of which it is one of my main objects to effect at least a partial escape.
It will have appeared from this general account of the traditive characters of Apollo and Minerva, that the former represented the tradition of a person, and the latter of an idea. Accordingly, the original character of Apollo, which he bore during the infancy of the mythical system, is in many points the more significantly marked; as for example, by his share in the War with the Giants, and by his mysterious relation to Death.
But it was natural that, in the course of time, as tradition in general grew weaker with the increasing distance from its source, and as the inventive system enlarged its development, those particular traditions, which were self-explained by having their root in an intelligible idea, should hold their ground much better than such as had become mythical and arbitrary by having lost their key. The traditional Minerva had an anchorage in the great function of Wisdom; the traditional Apollo had no support equal to this in breadth and depth; and his attributes, the band of revelation being removed, lost their harmony and could ill be held together.
Accordingly we find that in the later ages of the mythology Apollo had lost much of what was transcendant in his importance, but that Minerva retained her full rank. One and the same Ode of Horace suppliesthe proof of both. He places Apollo on a level not only with Diana, but with Bacchus[248]:
Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,Liber: et sævis inimica virgoBelluis; nec te mutuende certâ,Phœbe, sagittâ.
Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,Liber: et sævis inimica virgoBelluis; nec te mutuende certâ,Phœbe, sagittâ.
Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,Liber: et sævis inimica virgoBelluis; nec te mutuende certâ,Phœbe, sagittâ.
Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,
Liber: et sævis inimica virgo
Belluis; nec te mutuende certâ,
Phœbe, sagittâ.
But, after having described the supreme and transcendant dignity of Jupiter, he at once proceeds to place Pallas before every other deity without exception[249]:
Unde nîl majus generatur ipso:Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum;Proximos illi tamen occupavitPallas honores.
Unde nîl majus generatur ipso:Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum;Proximos illi tamen occupavitPallas honores.
Unde nîl majus generatur ipso:Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum;Proximos illi tamen occupavitPallas honores.
Unde nîl majus generatur ipso:
Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum;
Proximos illi tamen occupavit
Pallas honores.
I will now pass on to consider the remaining vestiges of original tradition perceivable in Homer.
The Diana of Homer.
Like the Moon to the Sun, an analogy maintained by their respective assumption of the two characters in the later mythology, Diana is a reflection, and in most respects a faint reflection, of Apollo.
She was worshipped, says Müller[250], in the character of ‘as it were a part of the same deity.’ He collects and reviews, from the whole circle of Greek history and mythology, the points of coincidence between them: and notices particularly, that like him she is bothλυκείαandοὐλία, both the destroyer and the preserver; that she administers her office as angel of Death, sometimes in wrath and sometimes without it; and that her name Artemis, meaning, as he conceives, healthy and uninjured, is in close correspondence with those of Phœbus Apollo.
All this is in conformity with what we gather from the poems of Homer: but those poems have spared us many of the confused and perplexing phenomena, which are presented by the later mythology.
One side of the divided Messianic tradition, its purity, is best represented in Diana, through her severe and spotless chastity. Its force and scope are much more largely developed in Apollo. But this high purity, and the double aspect of the ministry of Death, appear to be of themselves sufficient to stamp her beyond mistake with a traditionary origin. Small resemblances, too, as well as great ones, are traceable in Homer between her and Apollo, such as her golden throne and golden distaff, which may be compared to his golden sword, the sword of primeval light: and even these minor correspondences may in their own degree bear witness to the original and integral shape of the tradition.
If she is thus clothed in a sort of lunar light, and is in the main a reflection of Apollo upon earth, such we may probably consider Persephone in the Shades[251].
Let us, however, consider what can be gathered from Homer as to the attributes of Diana.
This deity would appear to have been, according to him, a deity of universal worship. We may perhaps safely infer thus much from the single fact of her ministry of Death. She is also represented as extending her agency to Troy, where she taught Scamandrius to hunt[252]; probably to Crete, in the case of the daughters of Pandareos; she is invoked in Ithaca by Penelope, puts Ariadne to death in Dia, exercises a similar function for the women inΣυρίη, sends the Calydonian boar for a defect of homage in Ætolia, and is familiarly mentioned in connection with the Greeks generally, while her place in the Theomachy may suffice to mark her as also a Pelasgian goddess. In most points, however, she partakes largely, as might be expected, of the characteristics of the ordinary deities of invention. Had she repeated all the chief notes of Apollo, and with any thing like an equal force, the question of traditional origin would perhaps have been more doubtful than it now is.
When she is invoked by Penelope, it is in connection with her share of the special ministry of death[253]. She is nowhere else made the object of prayer.
It is her deep resentment at the omission of sacrifice which provokes her to send the Calydonian boar[254]. In the Fifth Iliad, she and her mother Latona appear as deities purely subsidiary to Apollo. He deposits Æneas in his temple: there, not in a temple of their own, Latona and Diana attend upon and heal him[255].
In the Theomachy, she is treated with the same ignominy as Mars and Venus, but by Juno instead of Minerva. Her railing address to Apollo is conceived in the lower and not in the higher spirit (Il. xxi. 472–7).
She never assumes a general power, either over man in mind or body, or over outward nature.
She has no share in the general movement of either poem, and is introduced in the great majority of instances by way of allusion only.
Her near relation to Apollo gives a certain grandeur to her position: but the inventive elements of the representation greatly obscure and even partially overbear the traditional.
Her side in the Trojan war is to be explained byher relation to Apollo. In all other points she seems to be a goddess of associations more properly Greek, perhaps in consequence of their greater addiction to hunting.
In treating the Homeric Diana as a personage principally ancillary to Apollo, and equipped with reflections, or stray fragments, of prerogatives chiefly belonging to him, I do not attempt to foreclose the question what may have been the origin of her name, or whether she may be connected with any mythological original in the religions of the East or of Egypt.
Döllinger conceives that the union of Diana with Apollo was Greek, and that they were not originally in relation with one another; while he justly observes, that this deity, like Apollo, has a great and inexplicable diversity of function. She, like other deities of Greece, has been thought to represent the Astarte of the Syrians. Again, Herodotus[256]has given us most curious information respecting the gods of the Scythians, whom we have found to be related to the Pelasgi. They worship, he states, the Celestial Venus under the name of Artimpasa. This name, it has been ingeniously conjectured[257], is composed (1) of the name Mitra, which the Persians gave to Venus[258], and which reversed becomes Artim, and (2) of the SanscritBhas, meaningshine, and thus corresponding with theΦοῖβοςof Apollo, and theΓλαυκῶπιςof Pallas: all of them being, as it were, shreds of the tradition fully represented in the Shechinah of the Jews, and the ‘Light’ of Saint John. This also corresponds with the cluster of golden epithets, theχρυσηλάκατος, χρυσήνιος,andχρυσόθρονος, which Homer applies to Diana: and the very feebleness of Diana in the Theomachy suggests that the Eastern prototype of Venus, the Mitra of the Persians, was originally no more than a degenerate derivation from a higher tradition, which found a more natural, but still only a partial, expression in the majestic and chaste, as well as beautiful, Artemis.
The Latona of Homer.
We have next to consider the Homeric delineation of Latona, the mother of Apollo and of Diana.
It is scarcely possible to avoid being struck, on turning to this portraiture, with the contrast between the slightness of the outline and the real dignity of the features and position. This contrast, like the greater one relating to Apollo, seems to have its key in the traditional origin of the representation: and there is no one Homeric deity, whose case, when fully considered, can afford a more marked testimony to the hypothesis of a strong element of traditive theology in the religious system of the Poems.
Why has she a position so different from that of any other wife or concubine of Jupiter: such, for example, as Dione or Demeter?
Why is it so much elevated above that of any among them, except only Juno?
How comes she to have a son so incomparably superior in rank, in power, and in the affections of his father, to any child of Juno herself, theπρεσβὰ θεά?
Why, being thus great, is she wholly unfurnished with attributes or functions, either general or specific?
Why, on the other hand, does so much obscurity hang about her origin, and what are we to say as to her divinity, in answer to the question, whether it was original or acquired?
The name of Latona appears to have been a perpetual puzzle to the expounders of Greek mythology. It is taken to mean Night, which, combined with Day, produces the Sun[259]; or ‘obscure,’ or ‘concealed,’ as that from which issues the visible deity, the Sun in heaven. But surely these explanations can have no bearing upon the Homeric mythology, where it is matter of question even whether Apollo and the Sun have any mutual relations at all, and where it is quite clear that the personality of Apollo is far older and riper, as well as far higher and more comprehensive; which implies of necessity, that Latona must have been known, and must have held her place, quite apart from any relation to the Sun. An explanation of this kind is simply an indication, that the problem has not yet been solved.
But now, if we presume Apollo to be the representative of the Messianic tradition, that the Seed of the woman should crush the serpent’s head, the state of the case is entirely changed. And the explanation of the name in particular, instead of being hopeless, becomes easy, and even auxiliary to the general hypothesis. For now Latona stands in the tradition as a person anterior to the whole Olympian mythology: a person for whose extraction that mythology does not and ought not to account. Its Jupiter and Juno are referred to a parentage, that ofΚρόνοςandῬέα, and through these perhaps afresh to Oceanus and Tethys as their ultimate source. Everything, again, that is connected with the genesis of the Olympian system, properly so called, is made to conform to anthropomorphous ideas: but here are two of its deities, one of them among its very greatest, who have a mother that forms part of the earliest known tradition respecting them, whilethat mother is herself without an origin. What could be more natural, than that a name should fasten itself upon her, simply importing that, illustrious as was her motherhood, the fountain-head of her own life and destiny was lost in oblivion? For it lay beyond the point from which all mythical knowledge was held to spring. A certain motherhood was known of her, and that was all.
Again, the mother of the Deliverer was to be a woman. But in the Greek mythology it could not be, that a woman should stand as the giver of life to one of its most august divinities. Yet the woman of the tradition could not be transferred from the tradition as a great substantive personage into the Greek mythology, because in the tradition she stood an unembellished figure, wholly without attributes. Hence invention would, on taking over the tradition, be at fault; and could not but present to us an ambiguous and inconsistent picture, such as now stands before us in the Latona of Homer.
Let us next set forth the facts regarding Latona, as they stand in the poems.
In the first place, then, her divinity is beyond all doubt; for she is one of those deities who take part in the war[260], and this although, almost alone among them, she has no office whatever to associate her with it, and no part to play in the conduct of it. She ranges herself on the side of the Trojans; apparently, like Diana, drawn in that direction by Apollo, the central and really important figure of the group. While Venus, who appears in the first enumeration, is omitted in the array[261]of deities for action, Latona has Mercury assigned to her for an antagonist. And, when the crisiscomes, we observe in her case a marked instance of that care, with which Homer preserves her, like the greater traditive deities, from anything like discredit. Mercury declines the combat, on the ground that it is hard to fight against the wives of Jupiter; and tells her she is at liberty to announce that she has vanquished him. Whence has this pale and colourless figure such very high honour so jealously asserted for her[262]?
When Niobe, proud of her numerous offspring, taunts Latona as the mother of only two children, summary and awful punishment follows: the children are slain, the unhappy mother is turned to stone. Yet she herself takes no part in the vengeance, a fact remarkably in harmony with her place as defined by the primitive tradition of Holy Scripture. Of the three or four suffering figures in the Shades, only one has the cause of his punishment stated, and it is much the severest of all. It is Tityus, whose entrails are continually devoured by vultures, because he offered violence to Latona as she was going to the Pythian temple of her son.
When, in the Fourteenth Iliad, Jupiter recites the mothers of certain of his offspring, beginning with women and ending with goddesses, Latona appears in the latter category, after Ceres and before Juno: and, as the scale is an ascending one, she must clearly rank before the first and next to the last named deity.
There are, however, various indications that this had not always been so: but that, according to original tradition, she had been of the human order, and had undergone a sort of translation into the ranks of the Immortals.
The first of these is the taunt of Niobe. The boastof richer fecundity is natural in a human mother’s mouth, as against another mother reputed to be human[263]; but entirely strange and absurd, if we suppose it directed against a deity. Dione and Demeter have but one child each. Nor is there a marked difference in this respect between the Latona and the Juno of Homer; for Juno’s children are but two, or at most three[264].
Next, we can account for the origin and parentage of all the great Olympian deities of Homer, with the single exception of Latona. She is no one’s daughter, no one’s sister: but is a wife (that also equivocally), and a mother only. When, indeed, we part company with Homer, the scene changes, and a father is found for her in the Hymns: she is the daughter, according to one reading, of Saturn,
κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].
κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].
κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].
κυδίστη θύγατερ μεγάλοιο Κρόνοιο[265].
In Hesiod she is the daughter of a Titan: but even here she retains this mark of a most ancient tradition, that she is said to have been married to Jupiter before the great Juno[266]: though she comes after Metis, or Wisdom, the oldest of all his consorts; an order not at variance with the traditional ideas.
Her anomalous position in mythology.
But there must have been some cause or process that brought her into the Homeric Olympus, an anomaly alike among mortals and Immortals. What could it have been, except an illustrious maternity, to account for her elevation, and at the same time her original womanhood to account for the blank in thedescent and consanguinity, and for her total want of attributes?
It must be granted that there is a certain degree of resemblance between Latona and Dione: turning mainly upon this, that Dione seems to be in Olympus without either dignity or power, and simply as the vehicle, through which her daughter Venus was brought into existence. But then the want of basis is in her case immediately made evident by results. Even in Homer she is not among the gods of the Theomachy; nor is she named among the mothers in the Fourteenth Book; and Hesiod, though she is invoked in the suspected Proem of his Theogony, entirely passes her over in the body of it, and furnishes Venus with another origin. She remains all but a cipher ever after.
Again, the epithets attached to Latona are such as to leave her, and her alone among all deities of such dignity, wholly functionless, and also wholly inactive. I distinguish the two, because Juno has only a limited function, but she has power, and an immense activity. Latona has beauty and majesty, qualities which appertain to every goddess as such: she isκαλλιπάρῃος,εὐπλόκαμος,καλλιπλόκαμος,χρυσοπλόκαμος,ἠΰκομος,κυδρὴ,πότνια, andἐρικύδης: and we may observe in the more personal portion of these epithets how Homer, with his usual skill, has avoided placing her in any kind of rivalry with Juno, who is usually praised for her eyes and arms, not her cheeks and hair. But they all leave her void of purpose; and she must stand as a sheer anomaly, unless there is some better explanation of her being and place in mythology, than mythology itself can supply.
Her relation to primitive Tradition.
Even in the later tradition, Latona never gains a definite office: she remains all along without anymeaning or purpose intrinsic to herself: she shines only in the reflected glory of her offspring, and is commonly worshipped only in union with them[267]. If therefore it has been shown, that the mythological character of Apollo is clearly the vehicle of the ancient tradition, known to us in the Book of Genesis, respecting the Seed of the woman, it seems plain that in Latona is represented the woman from whom that Seed was to spring.
I do not presume to enter into the question whether we ought to consider that the Latona of Homer represents the Blessed Virgin, who was divinely elected to be the actual mother of our Lord; or rather our ancient mother Eve, whose seed He was also in a peculiar sense to be.
So far as personal application is concerned, the same arguments might be used upon the subject, as upon the interpretation of the original promise recorded in Scripture: and the question is one rather of the interpretation of Scripture, than of Homer. The relation which appears to me to be proved from the text of the poems, is between the deity called Latona and the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis. As to all beyond this, I should suppose it perhaps more just to regard her as a typical person, exhibiting through womanhood the truth of our Blessed Lord’s humanity, than as the mere representative of any individual personage.
Backward as is the position of Latona in the practical religion of Homer, the universal recognition of the deity is sufficiently established: on the one hand by her place among the deities of the Trojan party; on the other, by the punishment of Niobe for an offence against her either in Greece, or at the least in a recognised Greek legend; by the punishment of Tityus; and by her inclusion in the Catalogue of the Fourteenth Iliad.
Her slightness of action.
To this very remarkable deity no utterance of any kind is ever ascribed by Homer, and with, I think, three small exceptions, nothing of personal and individual action. Even when she takes her place among the deities in the array of battle, it is not said that she stood up against Mercury, but simply that Mercury stood up against her[268].
The three cases are as follows. First, when he makes over to her the victory in waiving the fight, she offers no reply; but simply picks up her daughter Diana’s bow and arrows, and goes after her, apparently with the intention of offering her comfort. The next action[269]attributed to her is this: that when Apollo[270]has carried the bruised and stunned Æneas into his temple on Pergamus, Latona and Diana tend him there. Thus both of these actions exhibit her in strict ideal subordination, so to speak, to one of her children, as though by tradition she existed only for them. But the second is especially remarkable, and alike illustrative of the traditional basis of the Mother and of the Son.
In the first place, as it appears to me, there can hardly be a circumstance more singular, according to the principles of the Greek mythology, than that any one deity should be introduced as acting, not in her own temple, but in the temple of another. Such however is here the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo.
Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him.They do not enter into the fray: it is he who has been there, and who, having deposited Æneas, immediately prosecutes the affairs of the battle-field, while they, as his satellites, give effect to his purpose in setting about the restoration of the disabled warrior.
Lastly, the significance of this action is raised to the highest point, when we recollect that this is a mother executing the design of her son. Latona’s action in the Twenty-first Book, like that of Dione with Venus, can be accounted for by her maternal character. But there is no case in the Homeric poems besides this, where we see a parent-god thus acting ministerially in the execution of the plans of his or her offspring. The primeval tradition, once admitted as the basis of the mythological group, furnishes us with the key to what would otherwise be another great anomaly.
The third case is in entire harmony with the other two. Tityus, the son of Earth, is tortured in the nether world for having offered violence to Latona, and the crime was committed when she was on her way through Panopeus to Delphi. This was probably the route from Delos to that place: so that again the poet seems to represent Latona in close but subordinate connection with her son, by making her travel between the seats of his two already famous oracles.
Apollo, then, with Latona and Diana, forms a group; and the origin of the combination is to be sought in primitive tradition. It is not necessary to show that the personages thus associated maintained their association in all the religions of the East. I admit that we are not to suppose, that the idea of this combination passed direct from the patriarchs into Greece. The most natural place in which to seek for traces of it would be, in the religion of the Persians, anterior to thetime of Homer. Unfortunately we have no accounts of it at any such date. But our failing to find these three deities in a company, or to find any germ which might have been developed into that company, in accounts later by probably five or six centuries at least, raises no presumption whatever against the hypothesis that we may owe the representation, as it stands in Homer, to historical derivation through the forefathers of the Hellic tribes, from some such period as that when, for example, Abraham dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees[271].