Chapter 18

μοῖράν τ’ ἀμμοριήν τε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων.3. Or, with an epithet, it may mean ill fortune; as inμοῖρα δυσώνυμος, Il. xii. 116.4. It seems very strongly to signify death, when used simply, and without addition, asτεῒν δ’ ἐπὶ μοῖραν ἔθηκε, in Od. xi. 560.5. Or when in apposition, asμοῖρα θανάτοιο, Od. ii. 100, or again as in Il. iii. 101,θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα.6. Or any thing ordained for mankind at large, as Od. xix. 592, theμοῖρα ὕπνου. You must sleep, saysPenelope; for the gods have so ordained it, (ἐπὶ γάρ τοι ἑκάστῳ μοῖραν ἔθηκαν ἀθάνατοι θνητοῖσιν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν).7.Μοῖρα, likeαἶσα, may be the embodied will, decree, or dispensation of the gods. Thus we haveμοῖρα θεοῦ, Od. xi. 292, whereθεὸςis either Jupiter or possibly Apollo: andμοῖρα θεῶν, Od. iii. 269, and xxii. 413. Now the namesθεὸςandθεοὶseem to be higher with Homer than any mythological name. They are his most solemn forms for the expression of the idea of deity. Thus it is remarkable that he never attachesμοῖραdirectly to any Olympian person. This testifies to its signifying something larger than is conveyed byαἶσα. But it also seems to indicate that, even if it were capable of being placed in antagonism to the will of one of the mythological persons, into whose forms theistic ideas had passed by degeneracy, yet it was not conceived as opposite to or separate from the divine principle, but rather as a power associated with it.8. Though in generalμοῖραmeans the thing ordained without reference to moral ideas, yet it is not always so.Μόρσιμοςordinarily means destined, whileαἴσιμοςmeans right. But the ideas of right and might were not yet wholly parted. In Od. xxii. 413 it is plain thatμοῖρα θεῶν, pronounced by Ulysses over the Suitors, contains a moral element: for he goes on to say,οὔτινα γὰρ τίεσκον κ.τ.λ.: and so Eurymachus, when he means to acknowledge that the death of Antinous was morally just, says,νῦν δ’ ὁ μὲν ἐν μοίρῃ πέφαται[551].The presence of the moral element in this word is entirely adverse to the theory, that it was used in the sense of fatalism. Power apart from a personal deityhas been conceived by the human mind: but moral power, I think, in such a state of severalty, has never been made the subject of serious speculation.9.Μοῖραhas yet another sense, that ofκοσμὸς, order. The force of the termκατὰ μοῖρανis generally ‘with propriety,’ whileκατ’ αἶσανis ‘with right.’Thus in Il. xix. 256 the Greeks sit still,κατὰ μοῖραν, in order to hear Agamemnon: and we have an instance ofκατὰ μοῖρανmeaning ‘with propriety’ in Il. x. 169. Here Nestor has been chidden by Diomed, not for a moral offence, but for over-activity: and he replies,ναὶ δὴ ταῦτά γε πάντα, φίλος, κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπες.He could not here have saidκατ’ αἶσαν.Under the form ofμόρος.Lastly, we come to the wordμόρος. There are several shades of distinction between it andμοῖρα.1. It is never personified in Homer, nor even approaches to impersonation.2. It draws peculiarly to the dispensation of death, in conformity with the law by which in Latin it becamemors. See Il. xviii. 465. xxi. 133: and, except in this connection, it does not seem to be used to express individual destiny.3. Accordingly it is never associated with deity; in conformity with the fixed character of the dispensation of death. We have noμόρος θεῶν, μόρος Διός.4. Yet this is not becauseμόροςis stronger thanμοῖρα. On the contrary, we have no case in Homer of a thing doneὑπὲρ μοῖραν, though it is sometimes apprehended. Thus in Il. xx. 335 Neptune warns Æneas to retire from before Achilles,μὴ καὶ ὑπὲρ μοῖραν δόμον Ἄϊδος εἰσαφικήαι.Butμόροςreceives the sense ofαἶσαas the law of right: a relationship curiously maintained inmos,moris, compared withmors,mortis. Men bring woe uponthemselvesὑπέρμορον, by obstinate wickedness: and the crimes of Ægisthus (Od. i. 35.) have been committedὑπέρμορον.General view of the Homeric Destiny.We thus see that, on the whole, the force of destiny, as it appears in Homer, although it commonly prevails, is not uniformly irresistible. We never find the deities actually fighting against it, or it against them. So full and large were Homer’s conceptions of the freedom of the human will, that fate is sometimes on the point of giving way before the energy of his heroes, and this even when the strength of some god is brought in aid of it. Thus Jupiter fears, lestὑπὲρ μόρονAchilles should dash the Trojan walls[552]to the ground. Apollo enters the city[553], lest the Greeks should take itὑπὲρ μόρονon the day of the battle with Hector. In the Second Book, after the rush from the assembly, the Greeks wouldὑπέρμοραhave returned home, unless Juno had urged Minerva to bestir herself by influence among them. Many things are done contrary toαἶσα, or the ordained law of right; whereas, althoughμοῖραis not in the abstract insurmountable, yet in fact it rarely is surmounted. But then the Fate of Homer, the thing spoken, is not in conflict with him that speaks it.We do not find in Homer the curious distinction which the speculative mind of the Greeks afterwards worked out, between a fate representing the mere will of the gods, and a fixed fate higher and stronger than they:εἰ δὲ μὴ τεταγμέναΜοῖρα τὰν ἐκ θεῶνεἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν[554].And again in Herodotus[555]:τὴν πεπρωμένην μοίρην ἀδύνατά ἐστιν ἀποφυγέειν καὶ θεῷ.While this, on the one side, was the course of speculation, the course of poetic thought was towards a complete impersonation of Destiny in the three Fates, representing an image so congenial, as a poetic image only, to the human mind, that it found its way into the romance poetry of Christian Italy.Upon the whole, it appears at any rate most probable, that Homer had not formed the conception of a law extrinsic to all volition human and divine, and so powerful as to override it.It is hardly to be conceived that Homer would have treated a successful resistance to the laws of Destiny as lying within the possible reach of mankind, had he deemed it to be a power independent of, and superior to, the Divine Will; because he always represents the latter as decisive and supreme over human fortunes.I think that the primary ideas conveyed in the termsμοῖραandFatumwill not be found, when examined, to agree.Fatumis the decree without reason; thesic volo sic jubeo; and the idea of it is the result of the long, wearisome, despairing experience of bewildered man, after the world has lost the freshness and the joy of its childhood. Theμοῖρα, or share, is a distribution made according to a law or moral purpose: it cannot, without parting from its nature, be blind: its tendency in Homer rather is, as we see in Il. xxiv. 49, to grow into a sort of rival Providence.The arguments to an opposite effect are surely inconclusive[556]. The question raised by the Scales of Jupiter is, not what the springs may be which determine the movement of the world, but simply what is his foreknowledge of the direction it will take. Theserepresentations would be perfectly consistent with belief in the supremacy (so to speak) of Chance: and while we may admit that, inasmuch as they are not produced for the information of men, they must indicate a limitation in Jupiter, we should not mistake the nature of that limitation.Again, we must not suppose that because some particular deity deplores the course of destiny, therefore that course is in opposition to the general deliberation and decision of Olympus.And when, as is commonly the case, we find the deities cooperating withμοῖρα, the assumption that they are its servants, seems to be wholly unwarranted. It seems much more natural to suppose that theμοῖρα, to which they are giving effect, is simply the divine will: especially as, though we find single gods, Neptune or Apollo, for example, cooperating withμοῖρα, I doubt whether this is ever represented of the gods at large and their supreme decrees.In order to solve the general question, what after all can be more reasonable than to look to the main action of the poems, and inquire what power or what counsel it is which takes effect through the medium of their machinery as a whole? If this be the test, there is no room for doubt upon the issue. In the Iliad it is theΔιὸς βουλὴ(Il. i. 5): the determination of Olympus, into which Jupiter had wisely allowed his own opposite inclinations to merge. In the Odyssey[557], it is the decision of the same tribunal, at the instance of Minerva, and with Neptune alone dissentient. Upon the whole, for the poems and the day of Homer, I cannot but think that both the supremacy of godhead as a whole,and the freedom of man remain, if somewhat darkened, yet certainly unsubverted. Theμοῖραof Homer may, it is probable, be no more and no less in the main than thatθέσφατον, or divinely uttered decree, which he sometimes uses in such a manner as to admit of the supposition that they were really synonymous.At the same time we do not find, nor could we expect to find, in Homer any clear assertion of the majesty of the true Divine Will, as the mainspring that moves the universe. That is emphatically a Christian sentiment, which is conveyed in the lofty formula of Dante:Così si vuol colà, dove si puoteCiò che si vuole.So is it willed above, where He, that wills,Can what he wills.The Fate of Homer may indeed logically embrace a germ, which will afterwards expand into the idea of a power extrinsic to Deity, and able to overrule it. We may argue to show that the representation, perseveringly developed, means as much as this. But then such representations in Homer are not perseveringly, much less are they unilaterally, developed. They have not been thought through even to their legitimate consequences, and far less to those which appear to arise from the following out, not of a full truth, but of some particular and severed aspect of it. Taken at the worst, Destiny in Homer broods like a cloud in a distant quarter of the sky, silently gathering the might which, when ripe, is to engage in obstinate and unending conflict with deity. But for this work the material is not yet prepared; and practically neitherμοῖραnorαἶσαmuch crosses the work of Divine government, such as it is conceived and exhibited in Homer. I pass on to the second Class.Minor impersonations from Nature.Among the Greeks, and even in Homer, every tree, every fountain, all things inanimate, that either vegetated or moved, had their indwelling deity. Homer, however, represents the infancy of that system, and though he impersonates many other local agencies, he gives to none so active a personality as to Rivers. Ulysses in his distress addresses the god of the Scherian river[558]; and is answered by the staying of the current. Simois is addressed personally by Xanthus[559]; and Xanthus himself, by virtue of his local power, is promoted to the honour of contending with Vulcan, the god of fire, a member of the Olympian Court, and a son of Jupiter and Juno. So the Spercheus[560]is invoked, and, what is more, invoked so far off as in Troas, by Achilles.The perpetual movement which inheres in the essence of a river, combined with the visibility which separates it from mere atmospherical currents, seems to connect it more closely than any other natural object with the idea of life. It is most interesting to observe how the sentiment here expressed seems to have worked in ages widely distant, upon great poets of differing nations, temperaments, and circumstances, after their differing manners. Homer does not impute feelings to a River; but he impersonates it with a treatment different to that which he applies to groves, fountain, or meadow. Now these personifications though not yet disused (especially in the English poetry of the last century), have become far less real and effective for the human mind, since the Gospel opened to us the unseen world with its crowd of ethereal inhabitants. Observe, accordingly, how a feeling identical with that of Homer, a tendency to invest outwardnature with vitality and action, in these more recent times takes a different form. The great Dante, more than two thousand years later in the line of human descent, without personifying, yet ascribes feeling to a river; he imagines the Po, after its tumultuous headlong descent with all its feeders from the mountains, longing for peace, and seeking it by repairing to the sea. Francesca da Rimini thus describes her birth-place;Siede la Terra, dove nata fui,Sulla marina, dove ’l Po discendePer aver pace co’ seguaci sui.And one of lesser indeed, (for who is not less than such as these?) but yet of both high and honoured poetic name, our own Wordsworth, in his Sonnet[561]on the River Thames, seen from London Bridge at sunrise, has the well known line,The river wanders at his own sweet will.He may also be claimed as a witness to what has been said of the truth and power of these personifications to the ancients. For in another noble Sonnet, where he complains of the deadening power and weight of worldly life, and intends to show that a system of shadows, when men really appropriate and digest the truth it has, is better for them than to have a system of substances around them, and yet to remain unpenetrated by it, he describes that system of shadows by recalling two of its vivid personifications[562].But while Homer brings into action no personifications of this class, except those of Rivers, he peopleseach with its appropriate Genius, the fountains, the grassy meadows, and the groves. In the Great Parliament of the supernal world at the beginning of the Twentieth Iliad, all are represented. Even here, however, the distinction is preserved: the Rivers attend as it were in person; but the rest by deputy, that is, by their proper indwelling and presiding Spirits;οὔτε τις οὖν Ποταμῶν ἀπέην νόσφ’ Ὠκεανοῖο,οὔτ’ ἄρα Νυμφάων, αἵτ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται,καὶ πηγὰς Ποταμῶν, καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα[563].Thus the first are impersonations: the second only residences for persons to dwell in.The Harpies of Homer.The Harpies,Ἁρπυῖαι, of Homer have been, I think, truly described as ‘nothing but personified storm-winds[564].’ They have no connection, when jointly viewed, with the moral order, except that they may, as mere carriers, take a subordinate part in the fulfilment of a moral purpose, which is quite as true of the Winds, personified or unpersonified. The HarpyΠοδάργηis personified individually, as the mother who bears to Zephyr the two deathless horses of Achilles, Xanthus and Balius[565]; but apparently for no other purpose than one purely relative. The classical passage respecting the Harpies is that in Od. xx. 61–79, which forms a part of the prayer of Penelope to Diana. The object of the matron’s petition is that, wearied out with her sorrows, she may die, and this in one of two modes: either by the arrows of the goddess; or else, that a hurricane may seize her, and, driving her along the pathsof air, deposit her in the channels of Ocean, that is to say, the place of the dead. Then she proceeds to illustrate this last mode of death, of which she has namedθύελλαas the instrument, by the tale of the daughters of Pandareus, who, having lost their parents, were in an extraordinary manner petted by the goddesses. Aphrodite fed them, Here gave them sense and beauty, Artemis stature, Pallas endowed them with skill. And, lastly, Aphrodite went to Olympus to induce Jupiter to provide for their marriage. But while she was away on this errand, the Harpies carried off these maidens, and gave them to theἘρινύες, ἀμφιπολεύειν, to be their servants, as it is sometimes rendered, but, as I should venture to construe it, ‘for them, i. e. theἘρινύες, to deal with.’ It is evident that, in this curious legend, the Harpies are introduced to exemplify nothing more than the part which Penelope had previously referred to theθύελλα; and these powers, who represent Hurricane or Squall, and in whose agency lies the gist of the story, appear to have been in this matter the ministers of theἘρινύες, beings of a very different order. These beings are evidently introduced, though entirely beyond the parallel of theθύελλα, in order to complete the moral. The only other case in which Homer introduces the Harpies is in a line, twice repeated, where Penelope supposes that they may have carried Ulysses off (ἀκλειῶς) ingloriously[566], i. e. so as to rob him in death of his due meed of fame. And this Friedreich well compares with part of a passage in the Book of Job, which is as follows, chap. xxvii. 20, 21. ‘A tempest stealeth him away in the night: the east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.’The Erinues of Homer.TheἘρινύεςare of much greater importance; and their position deserves the more careful inquiry, because it has, I think, been often misunderstood, perhaps from being appreciated only through the delusive medium of the later tradition, which appears to me to have let drop all the finer elements of the conception, by a process similar to that which it effected upon the great Homeric characters of Achilles, Helen, and Ulysses.It is quite insufficient to say of these personages, by way of description, that they are the avengers of crime[567], or that they grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of parents[568]: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them as ‘originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon a guilty criminal[569].’Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer.1. In the narrative of Phœnix we find that when, at the instigation of his mother, he had sought the embraces of aπαλλακὶς, for whom his father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked theἘρινύεςto make him childless. ‘This curse,’ he says, ‘the gods (θεοὶ) accomplished, and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,’ Il. ix. 449–57.2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her brother, invoked Aïdes and Persephone, beseeching them to slay that hero: whereupon the Erinūs, here calledἠεροφοῖτις, ‘that walketh in darkness,’ heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here the Erinūs appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet against his mother.The city is assaulted, forced, and set on fire. The family, including the mother who had cursed him, entreat Meleager to deliver them, and attempt to attract his favour by splendid promises of a demesne, to be conferred on him by the public. Only when the palace itself is assailed does he consent. He repels the enemy; the demesne is not given him: and, on account of his thus relenting only at the last moment, Phœnix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles to avoid. (Il. ix. 565–603.)3. In Il. xv. 204, when Neptune seems inclined to be refractory, Iris reminds him that the Erinūs will act with Jupiter, because he is the elder brother:οἶσθ’, ὡς πρεσβυτέροισιν Ἐρινύες αἰὲν ἕπονται.And upon this hint Neptune at once alters his tone, allows that she has spokenκατὰ μοῖραν, and complies with the command that she has brought.4. In Il. xix. Agamemnon, while he admits hisἄτη, (v. 87), throws, we might say shuffles off, the blame of it upon Jupiter, Destiny, and Erinūs:ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ αἴτιός εἰμι,ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ Μοῖρα καὶ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐρινύς.5. In vv. 258–60 of the same Book, the same personage invokes as witnesses to his asseveration concerning Briseis, 1. Jupiter, 2. the Earth, 3. the Sun, 4. theἘρινύες, ‘who dwell beneath the earth, and punish the perjured.’6. In v. 418 of the same Book, after the horse Xanthus, receiving a voice by the gift of Juno, has given to Achilles a dark indication of his coming fate, the Erinues interfere to prevent any further disclosures:ὣς ἄρα φωνήσαντος Ἐρινύες ἔσχεθον αὐδήν.7. When, in the Theomachy, Minerva has laid Marsprostrate by a blow, she taunts him by telling him he may in his overthrow recognise theἘρινύεςof his mother Juno, invoked upon him for having changed sides in the contest (Il. xxi. 410–14).8. In the Odyssey (ii. 135), Telemachus apprehends that, if he dismisses his mother, he will have to encounter, among other evils, the Erinuës whom she will invoke upon him.9. Epicaste, the mother of Œdipus, is speedily removed from the face of earth for her hapless incest. Œdipus himself lives and reigns: but suffers many sorrows, which the Erinuës of Epicaste (μητρὸς Ἐρινύες, as in Il. xx. 412) bring upon him.10. Melampus, a rich subject of Neleus in Pylos, is imprisoned for a whole year in the house of Phylacus, and has his property seized or confiscated, on account of the daughter of Neleus, and of his grievousἄτη, which the goddess, the hard-striking[570]Erinūs, brought into his mind (Od. xv. 233):εἵνεκα Νηλῆος κούρης, ἄτης τε βαρείης,τήν οἱ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ δασπλῆτις Ἐρινύς.But he escaped from death, and paid, i.e. accomplished, the strange act that Neleus had imposed as the condition of obtaining the command over his daughter’s hand. He thus procured it for his brother, termed in the post-Homeric tradition Bias. This condition was, that he should bring off to Pylos the cows which were the property of Iphicles (and apparently of Phylacus). He was caught at Phylace in the attempt: but after a year Iphicles released him, apparently in considerationof benefit derived from his prophetic knowledge, Od. xv. 228–38, and xi. 287–97.11. In Od. xvii. 475, 6, Ulysses, when Antinous had hurled the stool at him, invokes upon that Suitor in return the anger of the gods and Erinuës (εἴ πού γε εἰσὶν, if such there be) of the poor.12. Lastly, in Od. xx. 78, as we have seen, the Harpies deliver the daughter of Pandareus into the hands of the Erinuës.We have thus a very copious supply of information from Homer, in no less than twelve passages, every one of which represents the action of these singular beings in a fresh and varied light: and the question is, what is the one common idea, which is sufficiently comprehensive to include them all, and is also in harmony with the purport of each?Vindicators of the moral order.I answer, that the Erinuës are, in the Homeric system, the never-failing champions, because they are the practical avengers, of the natural and moral order, at all times, under all circumstances, and against all persons whatsoever. They have nothing to do with the prevention of crime: but they appear to be the principal instruments for its punishment, especially here, but likewise hereafter. This, however, is only a part of their function. They are the sworn servants of a fixed order of the universe, apart from, anterior to, and independent of, all volition, divine or human: and they avenge the infraction of that order, not merely as a law of right opposed to wrong, but as a law of order opposed to disorder; they are goddesses themselves, but they are wholly apart from the Olympian dispensation, sometimes put in conjunction with deities of the mythology, sometimes apart from, sometimes in opposition to them. They are, in short, an early and poetical expression of that philosophy, which even in Christian times has seemed to seek a foundation for the supreme laws more or less dissociated from, and wholly exterior to, the Divine Will: the philosophy, not of Destiny, but of the ‘Immutable Morality’ of Cudworth and his school: the philosophy harmonizing with the Ideas of the Platonists: the philosophy of which we have a distant glimpse in the words of St. Bernard,incommutabile est, quod ne ipsi quidem Deo mutare liberum est[571]: and which Butler has presented to us in the mild forms of his admirably balanced wisdom.I will take first, as the criteria of this proposition, the remarkable cases in which we find the Erinuës of Homer in qualified conflict with Deity. It is commonly held, that in the Nineteenth Iliad the Erinuës interfere to prevent Xanthus from telling too much to Achilles. No doubt Homer effects this purpose by their means: but they never interfere with the aim of prevention. It is the natural order which had been broken by the act of Juno in conferring the gift of speech upon a horse, and which they by their interposition mean to vindicate and reestablish.They play the same part in the case of the daughters of Pandareus. It is plain that the goddesses of Olympus had vied with one another, after an unprecedented and abnormal manner, in loading these damsels with an extraordinary accumulation of gifts. Everything, even food, came to them by the direct and immediate agency of their Immortal handmaids: and at last Jupiter was actually besought to find them husbands. All this lay far beyond, and was therefore in derogation of the ordinary laws for the government of the world: it left no space for human volition, effort, or discipline: it thusstruck at the root of the moral order; and on this ground the Erinuës interfere, apparently employing the Hurricanes as their agents, to remove these maidens from the earth, and to deposit them upon the Ocean stream, by the place of the dead.Their operation upon the Immortals.I do not know whether, over and above the infraction of natural order which I have mentioned, there may not have been another cause for their intervention in the special manner in which the endowments had been conveyed: for where we find Juno granting to them ‘beauty and sense beyond all other women[572],’ it appears as if she had travelled into the province not only of Venus, but of the great Minerva, with whose prerogatives I doubt whether we ever find any similar interference allowed by Homer. It is therefore just possible that the Erinuës may here interpose on behalf of the laws and arrangements of Olympus, as well as of those belonging to Earth.The explanation which I have proposed will entirely fit the warning of Iris to Neptune. The natural order, which assigns the prerogatives of government to the elder, in other words, the right of primogeniture, is a rule for the Immortals, as well as for mankind, since it is taken to be founded upon a basis more profound than will, which was not, and could hardly be for Homer, even when divine, either the source or the master of creation. But while the Erinuës are thus on the side of Jupiter, and while the recollection of them at once induces Neptune to succumb, they are not on that account in any sense or degree his ministers.On the same side with him we find them, where they are invoked by Ulysses, as the Erinuës, together withthe gods, of the poor: or as when Agamemnon lays upon Erinūs, along with Jupiter and Destiny, the blame of errors, for which notwithstanding the Greeks rightly held him[573], and even he could not deny himself to be, responsible. Yet we are never told that the Erinuës move at the bidding of Jupiter, or of any other Olympian deity. Here we seem to have a glimpse into the deeper truths of the heroic age. Theology had already wandered from its orbit: it was fast losing all the severity and majesty of truth; but the deep roots which God had given to the sense of responsibility, and the expectation of retribution, in the human mind, had not yet been wholly plucked up; and Homer’s fine sense of truth forbade him to connect the most practical, and at the same time, the sternest parts of his religious system, with the gorgeous glare of his Olympus, and with the moral delinquencies of many among its inhabitants.As the seniority of Jupiter is upheld by the Erinuës, so in like manner are the parental rights of Juno, which had been infringed by Mars, when he changed sides in the war. Here again, however, it appears as if more than the mere wish or influence of Juno had been set aside: for Mars had given a positive promise to fight for the Greeks, and it is probable that the breach of this engagement constituted the chief part of the offence that they were to punish[574].Their connection with Aides and Persephone.Where the Erinuës touch upon the province of other deities at all, it is upon that of Persephone and of Aïdes. If Homer associated Persephone, as I believe he did, with the Eastern nursery of his race, it was natural enough that, as has been the case, this part of his theo-mythology should remain comparatively untainted. And certainly the Homeric relation between the Erinuës and the sovereigns of the nether world is a close one. When, in the Ninth Iliad, Althea, grasping the earth in her vehemence, as if to lay the strong hand upon the object of her prayer, invoked Aidoneus and Persephone to put her son to death, the Poet proceeds to say that the Erinūs heard her: the Erinūs who stalks in the darkness heard her, and heard her out of Erebus[575]. In the case of Phœnix and Amyntor we have exactly the converse. Here the Erinūs was invoked, and it was Aides with Persephone that answered the prayer. In both these instances it must moreover be remembered, that the question is about present and even immediate, not about posthumous retribution. We cannot, then, refuse to admit, that in this manner Persephone with Aidoneus is placed in an intimate relation with the administration of retributive justice on earth, and during the course of human life there: and if the Erinuës are to be considered as abstractions, having their basis only in some ulterior impersonation, Persephone and Aidoneus offer the only objects on whom we can suppose them to depend. It seems to me, however, that they are not reciprocally identified, although they are profoundly connected, and although we read in the connection a very ancient testimony to a primitive conviction in mankind, that they must look to the powers of the other world to redress the deranged balances of this.Conformably to these ideas, we find that, in the Nineteenth Iliad, the abode of the Erinuës is fixedὑπὸ γαῖαν: and it is made clear from the passage (259, 60,) that their avenging office, which is so commonly exercised in this world, reaches also to the other.From the character of the Erinuës, as vindicators of an order having deeper foundations than those which any volition could either lay or shake, there arises that natural association of them with Destiny, which we see expressed in the speech of Agamemnon[576]. Both have in common this idea, that they are not dependent on mere volition. They differ in these points; that Destiny prescribes and effectuates action, while the Erinuës only punish transgression; and that Destiny is but feebly moral, whereas the Erinuës are profoundly charged with ethical colouring. They represent that side of the idea of Destiny which alone can, after being resolutely scrutinized, retain a hold upon our interest.Their operation upon man.All the residue of the threads will, I think, run out easily. It follows from what has been said, that in their aspect towards man, the Erinuës are not indeed administrators of the moral laws themselves, but administrators of their sanctions. So they punish the infraction of the rights inhering in all natural relations: the rights of the poor, as Ulysses protests to Antinous; of a father, as in the case of Amyntor; of a mother, as in the case of Penelope. But they do much more than punish the infraction of the rights of persons; it is the infraction of right as right, which they resent as a substantive offence. Let us accordingly notice the function of the Erinūs in those cases where there has been fault on both sides. An offender is not therefore secure, because the person who invokes the Erinūs upon him is an offender too. The father of Phœnix gave the original occasion to his offence, by an offence of his own: but Phœnix is punished at his instance notwithstanding, because the thing which he implores is not a personal favour, but is a vindication of theὑψίποδες νόμοι[577], violated by the incest of his son; a thing right to be done, whether asked or not. The case of Althea and Meleager illustrates this truth in a manner still more lively. When she obtained the intervention of the Erinūs, she at once suffered by it. The city of Œneus was all but subjected to the horrors of capture: she was brought, in bitter humiliation, to supplicate the aid of the son, on whose head she had just invoked the stroke of doom. From this we must conclude, which indeed is not difficult, that the Poet regarded her prayer as in itself unnatural and cruel; so that the fulfilment of it involved immediate suffering to herself. But, on the other hand, Meleager had offended too, in the slaughter of a near relative. Therefore, although his pride might well be gratified when he saw king, priest, and people, with his humbled mother, at his feet, and proffering their choicest gift in order to appease him, yet for that original offence, and for his obstinately refusing to arm until fire was in the city, he must receive his punishment likewise, in vindication of the moral laws; accordingly, after he had repulsed the enemy, he never received the demesne[578].The case of Meleager assists to illustrate that of Œdipus and Epicaste. Both of these unhappy persons had offended against the moral laws, though it was unwittingly (ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο); one, the mother-bride, was immediately put out of the way: the survivor was still pursued by theμητρὸς Ἐρινύες. We see here how insufficient the idea of a curse, invoked at will, is to explain the action of these remarkable Powers; for it does not appear that there was any mother’s curse inthe case: but, because the natural laws were broken in a matter where the mother was the occasion, therefore, while both suffer, the sufferings of the son are attributed to the Erinuës of the mother; the defenders, because the avengers, of the sanctity of a mother’s place in relation to her son.In the case of Melampus, it appears that his undertaking to obtain the cows of Iphicles or Phylacus was anἄτη βαρεῖα, a grave error, beginning in a temptation suggested to him by the Erinūs, and ending in calamity. The seizure of these animals would probably be regarded as no moral offence: and if so, any error that could lie in the engagement to seize them would be, according to Homeric estimate, in the nature of folly rather than of crime. We seem to see, then, in this place, that the range of Erinūs, like that of Atè, embraced at a certain point the prudential as well as the strictly moral laws: nor is there involved in this idea any violent departure from the true standard, for great imprudences are most commonly, and almost invariably, in near connection with some form of moral defect.It is however also to be observed, that in this place the Erinūs suggests theἄτη. The idea lying at the root of this representation appears to be the profound one, that the exercise of an evil will is in itself penal: and that when the mind is already disposed to offend, retributive justice may take the form of a permission, encouragement, or incitement, to commit the offence. We have already seen a very remarkable development of this idea in the hardening agency of Minerva upon the Suitors[579].According to the view of them which has here been given, though I could not class the Erinuës with thetraditive deities, it is clear that they must represent, under metamorphosis, an important association of ideas belonging to primitive tradition.Let us now turn to the Sixth Class.

μοῖράν τ’ ἀμμοριήν τε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων.

3. Or, with an epithet, it may mean ill fortune; as inμοῖρα δυσώνυμος, Il. xii. 116.

4. It seems very strongly to signify death, when used simply, and without addition, asτεῒν δ’ ἐπὶ μοῖραν ἔθηκε, in Od. xi. 560.

5. Or when in apposition, asμοῖρα θανάτοιο, Od. ii. 100, or again as in Il. iii. 101,θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα.

6. Or any thing ordained for mankind at large, as Od. xix. 592, theμοῖρα ὕπνου. You must sleep, saysPenelope; for the gods have so ordained it, (ἐπὶ γάρ τοι ἑκάστῳ μοῖραν ἔθηκαν ἀθάνατοι θνητοῖσιν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν).

7.Μοῖρα, likeαἶσα, may be the embodied will, decree, or dispensation of the gods. Thus we haveμοῖρα θεοῦ, Od. xi. 292, whereθεὸςis either Jupiter or possibly Apollo: andμοῖρα θεῶν, Od. iii. 269, and xxii. 413. Now the namesθεὸςandθεοὶseem to be higher with Homer than any mythological name. They are his most solemn forms for the expression of the idea of deity. Thus it is remarkable that he never attachesμοῖραdirectly to any Olympian person. This testifies to its signifying something larger than is conveyed byαἶσα. But it also seems to indicate that, even if it were capable of being placed in antagonism to the will of one of the mythological persons, into whose forms theistic ideas had passed by degeneracy, yet it was not conceived as opposite to or separate from the divine principle, but rather as a power associated with it.

8. Though in generalμοῖραmeans the thing ordained without reference to moral ideas, yet it is not always so.Μόρσιμοςordinarily means destined, whileαἴσιμοςmeans right. But the ideas of right and might were not yet wholly parted. In Od. xxii. 413 it is plain thatμοῖρα θεῶν, pronounced by Ulysses over the Suitors, contains a moral element: for he goes on to say,οὔτινα γὰρ τίεσκον κ.τ.λ.: and so Eurymachus, when he means to acknowledge that the death of Antinous was morally just, says,

νῦν δ’ ὁ μὲν ἐν μοίρῃ πέφαται[551].

The presence of the moral element in this word is entirely adverse to the theory, that it was used in the sense of fatalism. Power apart from a personal deityhas been conceived by the human mind: but moral power, I think, in such a state of severalty, has never been made the subject of serious speculation.

9.Μοῖραhas yet another sense, that ofκοσμὸς, order. The force of the termκατὰ μοῖρανis generally ‘with propriety,’ whileκατ’ αἶσανis ‘with right.’

Thus in Il. xix. 256 the Greeks sit still,κατὰ μοῖραν, in order to hear Agamemnon: and we have an instance ofκατὰ μοῖρανmeaning ‘with propriety’ in Il. x. 169. Here Nestor has been chidden by Diomed, not for a moral offence, but for over-activity: and he replies,

ναὶ δὴ ταῦτά γε πάντα, φίλος, κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπες.

He could not here have saidκατ’ αἶσαν.

Under the form ofμόρος.

Lastly, we come to the wordμόρος. There are several shades of distinction between it andμοῖρα.

1. It is never personified in Homer, nor even approaches to impersonation.

2. It draws peculiarly to the dispensation of death, in conformity with the law by which in Latin it becamemors. See Il. xviii. 465. xxi. 133: and, except in this connection, it does not seem to be used to express individual destiny.

3. Accordingly it is never associated with deity; in conformity with the fixed character of the dispensation of death. We have noμόρος θεῶν, μόρος Διός.

4. Yet this is not becauseμόροςis stronger thanμοῖρα. On the contrary, we have no case in Homer of a thing doneὑπὲρ μοῖραν, though it is sometimes apprehended. Thus in Il. xx. 335 Neptune warns Æneas to retire from before Achilles,

μὴ καὶ ὑπὲρ μοῖραν δόμον Ἄϊδος εἰσαφικήαι.

Butμόροςreceives the sense ofαἶσαas the law of right: a relationship curiously maintained inmos,moris, compared withmors,mortis. Men bring woe uponthemselvesὑπέρμορον, by obstinate wickedness: and the crimes of Ægisthus (Od. i. 35.) have been committedὑπέρμορον.

General view of the Homeric Destiny.

We thus see that, on the whole, the force of destiny, as it appears in Homer, although it commonly prevails, is not uniformly irresistible. We never find the deities actually fighting against it, or it against them. So full and large were Homer’s conceptions of the freedom of the human will, that fate is sometimes on the point of giving way before the energy of his heroes, and this even when the strength of some god is brought in aid of it. Thus Jupiter fears, lestὑπὲρ μόρονAchilles should dash the Trojan walls[552]to the ground. Apollo enters the city[553], lest the Greeks should take itὑπὲρ μόρονon the day of the battle with Hector. In the Second Book, after the rush from the assembly, the Greeks wouldὑπέρμοραhave returned home, unless Juno had urged Minerva to bestir herself by influence among them. Many things are done contrary toαἶσα, or the ordained law of right; whereas, althoughμοῖραis not in the abstract insurmountable, yet in fact it rarely is surmounted. But then the Fate of Homer, the thing spoken, is not in conflict with him that speaks it.

We do not find in Homer the curious distinction which the speculative mind of the Greeks afterwards worked out, between a fate representing the mere will of the gods, and a fixed fate higher and stronger than they:

εἰ δὲ μὴ τεταγμέναΜοῖρα τὰν ἐκ θεῶνεἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν[554].

εἰ δὲ μὴ τεταγμένα

Μοῖρα τὰν ἐκ θεῶν

εἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν[554].

And again in Herodotus[555]:τὴν πεπρωμένην μοίρην ἀδύνατά ἐστιν ἀποφυγέειν καὶ θεῷ.

While this, on the one side, was the course of speculation, the course of poetic thought was towards a complete impersonation of Destiny in the three Fates, representing an image so congenial, as a poetic image only, to the human mind, that it found its way into the romance poetry of Christian Italy.

Upon the whole, it appears at any rate most probable, that Homer had not formed the conception of a law extrinsic to all volition human and divine, and so powerful as to override it.

It is hardly to be conceived that Homer would have treated a successful resistance to the laws of Destiny as lying within the possible reach of mankind, had he deemed it to be a power independent of, and superior to, the Divine Will; because he always represents the latter as decisive and supreme over human fortunes.

I think that the primary ideas conveyed in the termsμοῖραandFatumwill not be found, when examined, to agree.Fatumis the decree without reason; thesic volo sic jubeo; and the idea of it is the result of the long, wearisome, despairing experience of bewildered man, after the world has lost the freshness and the joy of its childhood. Theμοῖρα, or share, is a distribution made according to a law or moral purpose: it cannot, without parting from its nature, be blind: its tendency in Homer rather is, as we see in Il. xxiv. 49, to grow into a sort of rival Providence.

The arguments to an opposite effect are surely inconclusive[556]. The question raised by the Scales of Jupiter is, not what the springs may be which determine the movement of the world, but simply what is his foreknowledge of the direction it will take. Theserepresentations would be perfectly consistent with belief in the supremacy (so to speak) of Chance: and while we may admit that, inasmuch as they are not produced for the information of men, they must indicate a limitation in Jupiter, we should not mistake the nature of that limitation.

Again, we must not suppose that because some particular deity deplores the course of destiny, therefore that course is in opposition to the general deliberation and decision of Olympus.

And when, as is commonly the case, we find the deities cooperating withμοῖρα, the assumption that they are its servants, seems to be wholly unwarranted. It seems much more natural to suppose that theμοῖρα, to which they are giving effect, is simply the divine will: especially as, though we find single gods, Neptune or Apollo, for example, cooperating withμοῖρα, I doubt whether this is ever represented of the gods at large and their supreme decrees.

In order to solve the general question, what after all can be more reasonable than to look to the main action of the poems, and inquire what power or what counsel it is which takes effect through the medium of their machinery as a whole? If this be the test, there is no room for doubt upon the issue. In the Iliad it is theΔιὸς βουλὴ(Il. i. 5): the determination of Olympus, into which Jupiter had wisely allowed his own opposite inclinations to merge. In the Odyssey[557], it is the decision of the same tribunal, at the instance of Minerva, and with Neptune alone dissentient. Upon the whole, for the poems and the day of Homer, I cannot but think that both the supremacy of godhead as a whole,and the freedom of man remain, if somewhat darkened, yet certainly unsubverted. Theμοῖραof Homer may, it is probable, be no more and no less in the main than thatθέσφατον, or divinely uttered decree, which he sometimes uses in such a manner as to admit of the supposition that they were really synonymous.

At the same time we do not find, nor could we expect to find, in Homer any clear assertion of the majesty of the true Divine Will, as the mainspring that moves the universe. That is emphatically a Christian sentiment, which is conveyed in the lofty formula of Dante:

Così si vuol colà, dove si puoteCiò che si vuole.So is it willed above, where He, that wills,Can what he wills.

Così si vuol colà, dove si puoteCiò che si vuole.

Così si vuol colà, dove si puote

Ciò che si vuole.

So is it willed above, where He, that wills,Can what he wills.

So is it willed above, where He, that wills,

Can what he wills.

The Fate of Homer may indeed logically embrace a germ, which will afterwards expand into the idea of a power extrinsic to Deity, and able to overrule it. We may argue to show that the representation, perseveringly developed, means as much as this. But then such representations in Homer are not perseveringly, much less are they unilaterally, developed. They have not been thought through even to their legitimate consequences, and far less to those which appear to arise from the following out, not of a full truth, but of some particular and severed aspect of it. Taken at the worst, Destiny in Homer broods like a cloud in a distant quarter of the sky, silently gathering the might which, when ripe, is to engage in obstinate and unending conflict with deity. But for this work the material is not yet prepared; and practically neitherμοῖραnorαἶσαmuch crosses the work of Divine government, such as it is conceived and exhibited in Homer. I pass on to the second Class.

Minor impersonations from Nature.

Among the Greeks, and even in Homer, every tree, every fountain, all things inanimate, that either vegetated or moved, had their indwelling deity. Homer, however, represents the infancy of that system, and though he impersonates many other local agencies, he gives to none so active a personality as to Rivers. Ulysses in his distress addresses the god of the Scherian river[558]; and is answered by the staying of the current. Simois is addressed personally by Xanthus[559]; and Xanthus himself, by virtue of his local power, is promoted to the honour of contending with Vulcan, the god of fire, a member of the Olympian Court, and a son of Jupiter and Juno. So the Spercheus[560]is invoked, and, what is more, invoked so far off as in Troas, by Achilles.

The perpetual movement which inheres in the essence of a river, combined with the visibility which separates it from mere atmospherical currents, seems to connect it more closely than any other natural object with the idea of life. It is most interesting to observe how the sentiment here expressed seems to have worked in ages widely distant, upon great poets of differing nations, temperaments, and circumstances, after their differing manners. Homer does not impute feelings to a River; but he impersonates it with a treatment different to that which he applies to groves, fountain, or meadow. Now these personifications though not yet disused (especially in the English poetry of the last century), have become far less real and effective for the human mind, since the Gospel opened to us the unseen world with its crowd of ethereal inhabitants. Observe, accordingly, how a feeling identical with that of Homer, a tendency to invest outwardnature with vitality and action, in these more recent times takes a different form. The great Dante, more than two thousand years later in the line of human descent, without personifying, yet ascribes feeling to a river; he imagines the Po, after its tumultuous headlong descent with all its feeders from the mountains, longing for peace, and seeking it by repairing to the sea. Francesca da Rimini thus describes her birth-place;

Siede la Terra, dove nata fui,Sulla marina, dove ’l Po discendePer aver pace co’ seguaci sui.

Siede la Terra, dove nata fui,

Sulla marina, dove ’l Po discende

Per aver pace co’ seguaci sui.

And one of lesser indeed, (for who is not less than such as these?) but yet of both high and honoured poetic name, our own Wordsworth, in his Sonnet[561]on the River Thames, seen from London Bridge at sunrise, has the well known line,

The river wanders at his own sweet will.

He may also be claimed as a witness to what has been said of the truth and power of these personifications to the ancients. For in another noble Sonnet, where he complains of the deadening power and weight of worldly life, and intends to show that a system of shadows, when men really appropriate and digest the truth it has, is better for them than to have a system of substances around them, and yet to remain unpenetrated by it, he describes that system of shadows by recalling two of its vivid personifications[562].

But while Homer brings into action no personifications of this class, except those of Rivers, he peopleseach with its appropriate Genius, the fountains, the grassy meadows, and the groves. In the Great Parliament of the supernal world at the beginning of the Twentieth Iliad, all are represented. Even here, however, the distinction is preserved: the Rivers attend as it were in person; but the rest by deputy, that is, by their proper indwelling and presiding Spirits;

οὔτε τις οὖν Ποταμῶν ἀπέην νόσφ’ Ὠκεανοῖο,οὔτ’ ἄρα Νυμφάων, αἵτ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται,καὶ πηγὰς Ποταμῶν, καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα[563].

οὔτε τις οὖν Ποταμῶν ἀπέην νόσφ’ Ὠκεανοῖο,

οὔτ’ ἄρα Νυμφάων, αἵτ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται,

καὶ πηγὰς Ποταμῶν, καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα[563].

Thus the first are impersonations: the second only residences for persons to dwell in.

The Harpies of Homer.

The Harpies,Ἁρπυῖαι, of Homer have been, I think, truly described as ‘nothing but personified storm-winds[564].’ They have no connection, when jointly viewed, with the moral order, except that they may, as mere carriers, take a subordinate part in the fulfilment of a moral purpose, which is quite as true of the Winds, personified or unpersonified. The HarpyΠοδάργηis personified individually, as the mother who bears to Zephyr the two deathless horses of Achilles, Xanthus and Balius[565]; but apparently for no other purpose than one purely relative. The classical passage respecting the Harpies is that in Od. xx. 61–79, which forms a part of the prayer of Penelope to Diana. The object of the matron’s petition is that, wearied out with her sorrows, she may die, and this in one of two modes: either by the arrows of the goddess; or else, that a hurricane may seize her, and, driving her along the pathsof air, deposit her in the channels of Ocean, that is to say, the place of the dead. Then she proceeds to illustrate this last mode of death, of which she has namedθύελλαas the instrument, by the tale of the daughters of Pandareus, who, having lost their parents, were in an extraordinary manner petted by the goddesses. Aphrodite fed them, Here gave them sense and beauty, Artemis stature, Pallas endowed them with skill. And, lastly, Aphrodite went to Olympus to induce Jupiter to provide for their marriage. But while she was away on this errand, the Harpies carried off these maidens, and gave them to theἘρινύες, ἀμφιπολεύειν, to be their servants, as it is sometimes rendered, but, as I should venture to construe it, ‘for them, i. e. theἘρινύες, to deal with.’ It is evident that, in this curious legend, the Harpies are introduced to exemplify nothing more than the part which Penelope had previously referred to theθύελλα; and these powers, who represent Hurricane or Squall, and in whose agency lies the gist of the story, appear to have been in this matter the ministers of theἘρινύες, beings of a very different order. These beings are evidently introduced, though entirely beyond the parallel of theθύελλα, in order to complete the moral. The only other case in which Homer introduces the Harpies is in a line, twice repeated, where Penelope supposes that they may have carried Ulysses off (ἀκλειῶς) ingloriously[566], i. e. so as to rob him in death of his due meed of fame. And this Friedreich well compares with part of a passage in the Book of Job, which is as follows, chap. xxvii. 20, 21. ‘A tempest stealeth him away in the night: the east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.’

The Erinues of Homer.

TheἘρινύεςare of much greater importance; and their position deserves the more careful inquiry, because it has, I think, been often misunderstood, perhaps from being appreciated only through the delusive medium of the later tradition, which appears to me to have let drop all the finer elements of the conception, by a process similar to that which it effected upon the great Homeric characters of Achilles, Helen, and Ulysses.

It is quite insufficient to say of these personages, by way of description, that they are the avengers of crime[567], or that they grudge the bliss of mortals, or that they defend the authority of parents[568]: and it is wholly erroneous, in my opinion, to treat them as ‘originally nothing but a personification of curses pronounced upon a guilty criminal[569].’

Let us first collect the facts respecting their position in Homer.

1. In the narrative of Phœnix we find that when, at the instigation of his mother, he had sought the embraces of aπαλλακὶς, for whom his father had a passion, the father, incensed, invoked theἘρινύεςto make him childless. ‘This curse,’ he says, ‘the gods (θεοὶ) accomplished, and the subterranean Jupiter, and awful Persephone,’ Il. ix. 449–57.

2. The mother of Meleager, on account of his having slaughtered her brother, invoked Aïdes and Persephone, beseeching them to slay that hero: whereupon the Erinūs, here calledἠεροφοῖτις, ‘that walketh in darkness,’ heard her from Erebus, and the city was besieged. But here the Erinūs appears to act, if not wholly in favour of Meleager, yet against his mother.The city is assaulted, forced, and set on fire. The family, including the mother who had cursed him, entreat Meleager to deliver them, and attempt to attract his favour by splendid promises of a demesne, to be conferred on him by the public. Only when the palace itself is assailed does he consent. He repels the enemy; the demesne is not given him: and, on account of his thus relenting only at the last moment, Phœnix quotes him as a warning example, for Achilles to avoid. (Il. ix. 565–603.)

3. In Il. xv. 204, when Neptune seems inclined to be refractory, Iris reminds him that the Erinūs will act with Jupiter, because he is the elder brother:

οἶσθ’, ὡς πρεσβυτέροισιν Ἐρινύες αἰὲν ἕπονται.

And upon this hint Neptune at once alters his tone, allows that she has spokenκατὰ μοῖραν, and complies with the command that she has brought.

4. In Il. xix. Agamemnon, while he admits hisἄτη, (v. 87), throws, we might say shuffles off, the blame of it upon Jupiter, Destiny, and Erinūs:

ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ αἴτιός εἰμι,ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ Μοῖρα καὶ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐρινύς.

ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ αἴτιός εἰμι,

ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ Μοῖρα καὶ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐρινύς.

5. In vv. 258–60 of the same Book, the same personage invokes as witnesses to his asseveration concerning Briseis, 1. Jupiter, 2. the Earth, 3. the Sun, 4. theἘρινύες, ‘who dwell beneath the earth, and punish the perjured.’

6. In v. 418 of the same Book, after the horse Xanthus, receiving a voice by the gift of Juno, has given to Achilles a dark indication of his coming fate, the Erinues interfere to prevent any further disclosures:

ὣς ἄρα φωνήσαντος Ἐρινύες ἔσχεθον αὐδήν.

7. When, in the Theomachy, Minerva has laid Marsprostrate by a blow, she taunts him by telling him he may in his overthrow recognise theἘρινύεςof his mother Juno, invoked upon him for having changed sides in the contest (Il. xxi. 410–14).

8. In the Odyssey (ii. 135), Telemachus apprehends that, if he dismisses his mother, he will have to encounter, among other evils, the Erinuës whom she will invoke upon him.

9. Epicaste, the mother of Œdipus, is speedily removed from the face of earth for her hapless incest. Œdipus himself lives and reigns: but suffers many sorrows, which the Erinuës of Epicaste (μητρὸς Ἐρινύες, as in Il. xx. 412) bring upon him.

10. Melampus, a rich subject of Neleus in Pylos, is imprisoned for a whole year in the house of Phylacus, and has his property seized or confiscated, on account of the daughter of Neleus, and of his grievousἄτη, which the goddess, the hard-striking[570]Erinūs, brought into his mind (Od. xv. 233):

εἵνεκα Νηλῆος κούρης, ἄτης τε βαρείης,τήν οἱ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ δασπλῆτις Ἐρινύς.

εἵνεκα Νηλῆος κούρης, ἄτης τε βαρείης,

τήν οἱ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ δασπλῆτις Ἐρινύς.

But he escaped from death, and paid, i.e. accomplished, the strange act that Neleus had imposed as the condition of obtaining the command over his daughter’s hand. He thus procured it for his brother, termed in the post-Homeric tradition Bias. This condition was, that he should bring off to Pylos the cows which were the property of Iphicles (and apparently of Phylacus). He was caught at Phylace in the attempt: but after a year Iphicles released him, apparently in considerationof benefit derived from his prophetic knowledge, Od. xv. 228–38, and xi. 287–97.

11. In Od. xvii. 475, 6, Ulysses, when Antinous had hurled the stool at him, invokes upon that Suitor in return the anger of the gods and Erinuës (εἴ πού γε εἰσὶν, if such there be) of the poor.

12. Lastly, in Od. xx. 78, as we have seen, the Harpies deliver the daughter of Pandareus into the hands of the Erinuës.

We have thus a very copious supply of information from Homer, in no less than twelve passages, every one of which represents the action of these singular beings in a fresh and varied light: and the question is, what is the one common idea, which is sufficiently comprehensive to include them all, and is also in harmony with the purport of each?

Vindicators of the moral order.

I answer, that the Erinuës are, in the Homeric system, the never-failing champions, because they are the practical avengers, of the natural and moral order, at all times, under all circumstances, and against all persons whatsoever. They have nothing to do with the prevention of crime: but they appear to be the principal instruments for its punishment, especially here, but likewise hereafter. This, however, is only a part of their function. They are the sworn servants of a fixed order of the universe, apart from, anterior to, and independent of, all volition, divine or human: and they avenge the infraction of that order, not merely as a law of right opposed to wrong, but as a law of order opposed to disorder; they are goddesses themselves, but they are wholly apart from the Olympian dispensation, sometimes put in conjunction with deities of the mythology, sometimes apart from, sometimes in opposition to them. They are, in short, an early and poetical expression of that philosophy, which even in Christian times has seemed to seek a foundation for the supreme laws more or less dissociated from, and wholly exterior to, the Divine Will: the philosophy, not of Destiny, but of the ‘Immutable Morality’ of Cudworth and his school: the philosophy harmonizing with the Ideas of the Platonists: the philosophy of which we have a distant glimpse in the words of St. Bernard,incommutabile est, quod ne ipsi quidem Deo mutare liberum est[571]: and which Butler has presented to us in the mild forms of his admirably balanced wisdom.

I will take first, as the criteria of this proposition, the remarkable cases in which we find the Erinuës of Homer in qualified conflict with Deity. It is commonly held, that in the Nineteenth Iliad the Erinuës interfere to prevent Xanthus from telling too much to Achilles. No doubt Homer effects this purpose by their means: but they never interfere with the aim of prevention. It is the natural order which had been broken by the act of Juno in conferring the gift of speech upon a horse, and which they by their interposition mean to vindicate and reestablish.

They play the same part in the case of the daughters of Pandareus. It is plain that the goddesses of Olympus had vied with one another, after an unprecedented and abnormal manner, in loading these damsels with an extraordinary accumulation of gifts. Everything, even food, came to them by the direct and immediate agency of their Immortal handmaids: and at last Jupiter was actually besought to find them husbands. All this lay far beyond, and was therefore in derogation of the ordinary laws for the government of the world: it left no space for human volition, effort, or discipline: it thusstruck at the root of the moral order; and on this ground the Erinuës interfere, apparently employing the Hurricanes as their agents, to remove these maidens from the earth, and to deposit them upon the Ocean stream, by the place of the dead.

Their operation upon the Immortals.

I do not know whether, over and above the infraction of natural order which I have mentioned, there may not have been another cause for their intervention in the special manner in which the endowments had been conveyed: for where we find Juno granting to them ‘beauty and sense beyond all other women[572],’ it appears as if she had travelled into the province not only of Venus, but of the great Minerva, with whose prerogatives I doubt whether we ever find any similar interference allowed by Homer. It is therefore just possible that the Erinuës may here interpose on behalf of the laws and arrangements of Olympus, as well as of those belonging to Earth.

The explanation which I have proposed will entirely fit the warning of Iris to Neptune. The natural order, which assigns the prerogatives of government to the elder, in other words, the right of primogeniture, is a rule for the Immortals, as well as for mankind, since it is taken to be founded upon a basis more profound than will, which was not, and could hardly be for Homer, even when divine, either the source or the master of creation. But while the Erinuës are thus on the side of Jupiter, and while the recollection of them at once induces Neptune to succumb, they are not on that account in any sense or degree his ministers.

On the same side with him we find them, where they are invoked by Ulysses, as the Erinuës, together withthe gods, of the poor: or as when Agamemnon lays upon Erinūs, along with Jupiter and Destiny, the blame of errors, for which notwithstanding the Greeks rightly held him[573], and even he could not deny himself to be, responsible. Yet we are never told that the Erinuës move at the bidding of Jupiter, or of any other Olympian deity. Here we seem to have a glimpse into the deeper truths of the heroic age. Theology had already wandered from its orbit: it was fast losing all the severity and majesty of truth; but the deep roots which God had given to the sense of responsibility, and the expectation of retribution, in the human mind, had not yet been wholly plucked up; and Homer’s fine sense of truth forbade him to connect the most practical, and at the same time, the sternest parts of his religious system, with the gorgeous glare of his Olympus, and with the moral delinquencies of many among its inhabitants.

As the seniority of Jupiter is upheld by the Erinuës, so in like manner are the parental rights of Juno, which had been infringed by Mars, when he changed sides in the war. Here again, however, it appears as if more than the mere wish or influence of Juno had been set aside: for Mars had given a positive promise to fight for the Greeks, and it is probable that the breach of this engagement constituted the chief part of the offence that they were to punish[574].

Their connection with Aides and Persephone.

Where the Erinuës touch upon the province of other deities at all, it is upon that of Persephone and of Aïdes. If Homer associated Persephone, as I believe he did, with the Eastern nursery of his race, it was natural enough that, as has been the case, this part of his theo-mythology should remain comparatively untainted. And certainly the Homeric relation between the Erinuës and the sovereigns of the nether world is a close one. When, in the Ninth Iliad, Althea, grasping the earth in her vehemence, as if to lay the strong hand upon the object of her prayer, invoked Aidoneus and Persephone to put her son to death, the Poet proceeds to say that the Erinūs heard her: the Erinūs who stalks in the darkness heard her, and heard her out of Erebus[575]. In the case of Phœnix and Amyntor we have exactly the converse. Here the Erinūs was invoked, and it was Aides with Persephone that answered the prayer. In both these instances it must moreover be remembered, that the question is about present and even immediate, not about posthumous retribution. We cannot, then, refuse to admit, that in this manner Persephone with Aidoneus is placed in an intimate relation with the administration of retributive justice on earth, and during the course of human life there: and if the Erinuës are to be considered as abstractions, having their basis only in some ulterior impersonation, Persephone and Aidoneus offer the only objects on whom we can suppose them to depend. It seems to me, however, that they are not reciprocally identified, although they are profoundly connected, and although we read in the connection a very ancient testimony to a primitive conviction in mankind, that they must look to the powers of the other world to redress the deranged balances of this.

Conformably to these ideas, we find that, in the Nineteenth Iliad, the abode of the Erinuës is fixedὑπὸ γαῖαν: and it is made clear from the passage (259, 60,) that their avenging office, which is so commonly exercised in this world, reaches also to the other.

From the character of the Erinuës, as vindicators of an order having deeper foundations than those which any volition could either lay or shake, there arises that natural association of them with Destiny, which we see expressed in the speech of Agamemnon[576]. Both have in common this idea, that they are not dependent on mere volition. They differ in these points; that Destiny prescribes and effectuates action, while the Erinuës only punish transgression; and that Destiny is but feebly moral, whereas the Erinuës are profoundly charged with ethical colouring. They represent that side of the idea of Destiny which alone can, after being resolutely scrutinized, retain a hold upon our interest.

Their operation upon man.

All the residue of the threads will, I think, run out easily. It follows from what has been said, that in their aspect towards man, the Erinuës are not indeed administrators of the moral laws themselves, but administrators of their sanctions. So they punish the infraction of the rights inhering in all natural relations: the rights of the poor, as Ulysses protests to Antinous; of a father, as in the case of Amyntor; of a mother, as in the case of Penelope. But they do much more than punish the infraction of the rights of persons; it is the infraction of right as right, which they resent as a substantive offence. Let us accordingly notice the function of the Erinūs in those cases where there has been fault on both sides. An offender is not therefore secure, because the person who invokes the Erinūs upon him is an offender too. The father of Phœnix gave the original occasion to his offence, by an offence of his own: but Phœnix is punished at his instance notwithstanding, because the thing which he implores is not a personal favour, but is a vindication of theὑψίποδες νόμοι[577], violated by the incest of his son; a thing right to be done, whether asked or not. The case of Althea and Meleager illustrates this truth in a manner still more lively. When she obtained the intervention of the Erinūs, she at once suffered by it. The city of Œneus was all but subjected to the horrors of capture: she was brought, in bitter humiliation, to supplicate the aid of the son, on whose head she had just invoked the stroke of doom. From this we must conclude, which indeed is not difficult, that the Poet regarded her prayer as in itself unnatural and cruel; so that the fulfilment of it involved immediate suffering to herself. But, on the other hand, Meleager had offended too, in the slaughter of a near relative. Therefore, although his pride might well be gratified when he saw king, priest, and people, with his humbled mother, at his feet, and proffering their choicest gift in order to appease him, yet for that original offence, and for his obstinately refusing to arm until fire was in the city, he must receive his punishment likewise, in vindication of the moral laws; accordingly, after he had repulsed the enemy, he never received the demesne[578].

The case of Meleager assists to illustrate that of Œdipus and Epicaste. Both of these unhappy persons had offended against the moral laws, though it was unwittingly (ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο); one, the mother-bride, was immediately put out of the way: the survivor was still pursued by theμητρὸς Ἐρινύες. We see here how insufficient the idea of a curse, invoked at will, is to explain the action of these remarkable Powers; for it does not appear that there was any mother’s curse inthe case: but, because the natural laws were broken in a matter where the mother was the occasion, therefore, while both suffer, the sufferings of the son are attributed to the Erinuës of the mother; the defenders, because the avengers, of the sanctity of a mother’s place in relation to her son.

In the case of Melampus, it appears that his undertaking to obtain the cows of Iphicles or Phylacus was anἄτη βαρεῖα, a grave error, beginning in a temptation suggested to him by the Erinūs, and ending in calamity. The seizure of these animals would probably be regarded as no moral offence: and if so, any error that could lie in the engagement to seize them would be, according to Homeric estimate, in the nature of folly rather than of crime. We seem to see, then, in this place, that the range of Erinūs, like that of Atè, embraced at a certain point the prudential as well as the strictly moral laws: nor is there involved in this idea any violent departure from the true standard, for great imprudences are most commonly, and almost invariably, in near connection with some form of moral defect.

It is however also to be observed, that in this place the Erinūs suggests theἄτη. The idea lying at the root of this representation appears to be the profound one, that the exercise of an evil will is in itself penal: and that when the mind is already disposed to offend, retributive justice may take the form of a permission, encouragement, or incitement, to commit the offence. We have already seen a very remarkable development of this idea in the hardening agency of Minerva upon the Suitors[579].

According to the view of them which has here been given, though I could not class the Erinuës with thetraditive deities, it is clear that they must represent, under metamorphosis, an important association of ideas belonging to primitive tradition.

Let us now turn to the Sixth Class.

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