The translation of mortals.Those for whom it was a mental necessity to animate with deity even the mute powers of nature, could not but find modes of associating man, who stood nearer to the Immortals, with them and their conditions of existence.These modes were chiefly three:The first, that of translation during life.The second, that of deification after death.The third, the conception of races intermediate between deity and humanity.And it was perhaps not the simple working of a fervid imagination, but also an offshoot from this profound and powerful tendency, which has filled the pages of Homer with continual efforts to deify what was most excellent, or most conspicuous, in the mind or in the person of living man.The mode of translation during life was early in date, and was rarely used, for not only are the Homeric examples of it few, but he records no contemporary instance.Ganymede[580], the son of Tros, was taken up to heaven by the Immortals on account of his beauty, that he might live among them. Tithonus, his grand-nephew, son of Laomedon, was, as we are left to infer, similarly translated during life, to be the husband of Aurora (in Homer Eos), or the morning: for Homer makes him known to us in that capacity, though he does not mention the translation. In like manner, she carried up, and placed among the Immortals for his beauty,Cleitus, one of the descendants of Melampus[581]. A similar operation to that which was performed upon Tithonus may have been designed in the case of Orion, who was the choice of Aurora, and whose career, in consequence of the jealousy of the Immortals, was cut short by the arrows of Diana[582]. The course of these legends seems to stop suddenly in the Greek mythology at the point where they are replaced by deification: and the connection of Aurora, as the principal agent, with three out of the four, (the other, too, is Asiatic, as being in the family of Dardanus,) seems to be an unequivocal sign of their eastern character. Homer places the dwelling ofἬωςat a distant point of the East, near the place whereθάλασσαcommunicates with Ocean.The deification of mortals.In the age of Homer the very first names have hardly been entered in the class of deified heroes. Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, may be said to stand at the head of the list, from the distinct assertion of her translation, and from her being placed, as the ally of Ulysses, in continued relations with mortal men[583]. Of her also it is said that she had obtained divine honours; and nearly the same assertion is made of Castor and Pollux. But they perform no offices towards man while yet in this life. Of this Ino is the only instance. She appears to be Phœnician rather than Greek, and thus to belong perhaps to an older, clearly to a distinct mythology. Hercules, the only one of these persons who entirely fulfils the conditions of a hero, is admitted to the banquets of the gods, and united with Hebe[584]: yet he is not all in Olympus, for hisεἴδωλον, endowed with voice and feeling, and bearing martial accoutrements, is the terror of the Dead. It is not easy to explain fully this divided state. I cannot but think, however, that we see here at work that principle of disintegration, which solved all riddles of character by making one individual into more than one: beginning, at least for earth, with that Helen in Egypt, who was made the depository of the better qualities that post-Homeric times could not recognise in Helen of Troy. Although the son of Jupiter, Hercules had on earth, through a sheer mistake, been subject to a destiny of grinding toil. His original extraction and personality stand in sharp contrast with the restless and painful destiny of his life. Death severs these one from the other, but Homer, contemplating each as a whole, endows the last also with personality, and gives it a reflection in the lower world of its earthly course and aspect: while the Jove-born Hercules, as it were by a natural spring, mounts up to heaven[585]. At the same time there is no more conspicuous example than Hercules, of that counter-principle of accumulation, by which legendary tradition heaps upon favourite heroes all acts not distinctly otherwise appropriated, which appear to harmonize with their characters; and thus often makes an historical personage into one both fabulous and impossible.It must not be forgotten that this passage respecting Hercules was sharply challenged by the Alexandrian critics. This challenge is discussed, and its justice affirmed by Nitzsch[586]. Such authorities must not be defrauded of their weight. But for my own part, I do not find a proof of spuriousness even in the real inconsistencies of Homer, where he is dealing with subjectsbeyond the range of common life and experience. Still less can it be universally admitted, that what are called his inconsistencies are really such. They will often be found to require nothing but the application of a more comprehensive rule for their adjustment.It is more difficult still to understand the case of Orion, who is at once a noted star in heaven, and a sufferer below in the Shades. There he appears not wholly unlike the shade of Hercules, a dreamy image of the sufferings of earth, and at the same time he ranks among the splendours at least of the material heaven.Minos, who is placed in the Shades to exercise royal functions there, and Rhadamanthus, who has his happy dwelling on the Elysian plain, are approximative examples of deification.It would be hazardous to build any opinion exclusively on the two verses Il. ii. 550, 551, relating to the worship of Erechtheus: but they are not altogether at variance with what we see elsewhere.Growth of material for its extension.Such is the rather slender list of personages in Homer, who approximate in any degree to what was afterwards the order of deified Heroes. There are, however, some other indications, that belong immediately to the living, and that point the same way. Such is the promise to Menelaus[587], that instead of dying he should be translated to Elysium, because he was the son-in-law of Jupiter. And this suggests other notes of preparation already found in Homer. Ulysses[588]promises Nausicaa that, when he has reached his own country, he will continue to invoke her all his life long,like a god. The invocation of the Dead was common. It was not practised only in illustriouscases like that of Patroclus. After their battle with the Cicones, Ulysses[589]and his crews thrice invoked their slaughtered comrades. A system of divine parentage was the fit, one might almost say the certain preparation for a scheme of divine honours after death; and of such parentage many of Homer’s heroes could boast. Again, Peleus was married to a goddess, and the gods in mass attended the wedding. By thus bringing the inhabitants of Olympus down to the earth, Homer laid the ground for bringing the denizens of earth into Olympus.There is yet a further sign, which, though perhaps the least palpable, is, when well considered, the most striking of all. It is this; that sacrifice is offered, in the Odyssey, to the Shades of the departed. It is not indeed animal sacrifice that is actually offered. The gift consists of honey and milk, with wine, water, and flour[590]: but Ulysses distinctly promises that, on his return to Ithaca, he will supply this defect by offering a heifer in their honour, and a sheep all black to Tiresias in particular. Moreover, he distinctly recognises the idea of worshipping them[591];πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.It does not destroy the force of this proceeding, that they were supposed to need or to enjoy the thing sacrificed; for the Immortals of Olympus did the latter at least, and there are even traces of the former. Together with the mixed offering above described, and the promise of a regular sacrifice on his return home, Ulysses permitted the Shades to drink of the blood of the sheep which he immolated on the spot to Aidoneus and Persephone, after he had fulfilled the main purpose of his visit by consulting Tiresias[592].The dead then have consciousness and activity. They are invoked by man. They can appear to him. They are capable of having sacrifices offered to them. They can confer benefit on the living. Here, gathered out of different cases, were the materials of full deification. All that was yet wanting was, that they should be put together according to rule.The kindred of the gods.We have now, lastly, to consider the kindred of the gods, or races intermediate between deity and humanity, which Homer has introduced in the Odyssey exclusively.These are certainly three, perhaps four;1. The Cyclopes.2. The Læstrygonians.3. The Phæacians.It may also be probable that we should add4. Æolus Hippotades and his family.Among them all, the Cyclopes, children of Neptune, offer, as a work of art, by far the most successful and satisfactory result. In every point they are placed at the greatest possible distance from human society and its conventions. Man is small, the Cyclops huge. Man is weak, the Cyclops powerful. Man is gregarious, the Cyclops is isolated. Man, for Homer, is refined; the Cyclops is a cannibal. Man inquires, searches, designs, constructs, advances, in a word, is progressive: the Cyclops simply uses the shelter and the food that nature finds for him, and is thoroughly stationary. Yet, while man is subject to death, the Cyclops lives on, or vegetates at least, and transmits the privileges of his race by virtue of its high original. The relaxed morality of the divine seed, as compared with man, is traceable even in their slight customs. They are polygamous:θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστοςπαίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόχων[593].From their personal characters the moral element has been entirely dismissed. Polyphemus is a huge mass of force, seasoned perhaps with cunning, certainly with falseness. This union of a superhuman life with the brutal, that dwells in solitude, and has none of its angles rubbed down by the mutual contact between members of a race, produces a mixed result of extreme ferocity, childishness, and a kind of horrible glee, which as a work of art is most striking and successful. We may justly think much of Caliban: but Caliban cannot for a moment be compared to Polyphemus. It is equitable, however, to remember that contrast with Ariel, which must have been a governing condition in the creation of Shakespeare, required a nature which should be fatuous and grovelling, as well as coarse.To feed Polyphemus, what lies nearest him, namely, the Læstrygonian adventure, has, perhaps, been starved. Again we are introduced to cruel Giants and to cannibalism, but with a great scantiness of detail. Their individuality is scarcely established. Their only marked qualities they hold in common with the Cyclopes, except as to a single point, namely, that they live gregariously. We see their city, and are introduced to their king, their queen, and their princess[594]. But a too great likeness to the Cyclops still suggests itself; and it is probable that in both the one and the other Homer set before him, among the materials of his work, that old tradition of powerful beings, allied to the deity, and yet rebellious against him, which meets us in so many forms, dispersed about the Homeric poems, and whichthe later tradition, by further multiplication and variety, resolved into a living chaos.The Phæacians appear to stand quite in another category. While the Cyclops has no trace of deity but in superhuman force, the Phæacians have no pretensions of this kind. They are not even immortal, nor are they wholly removed from man, for they are accustomed to carry passengers by sea; they seem really to be meant in a measure to represent theθεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες. We must not look too rigidly in them for notes of the divine character, but rather for the abundance, opulence, ease, and refinement of the divine condition. Hence Homer lavishes all the simple wealth of his imagination upon the palace and garden of Alcinous, which far exceeds any possessions he has assigned to ordinary men. This additional splendour of itself proves, if proof were wanted, that the picture is ideal. The same amount of ornament assigned to the palace of Menelaus would, from the contrast with fact, probably have been frigid to his hearers.From the games and athletic exercises of this people all the ruder and more violent sports are excluded. Navigation, to others so formidable, for them is conducted by a spontaneous force and intelligence residing in their ships; which annihilates distance, and at last excites even the jealousy of Neptune (Od. viii. 555–69). We find in the island and in its history no poverty, no grief, no care, no want; all is fair to see and to enjoy. But we feel thankful to Homer that he has not here, as in the case of the Cyclops, made kin with the gods entail a marked moral or intellectual inferiority upon the sons of men; no purer or more graceful piece of humanity is to be found among the creations of the human brain, than his picture of Nausicaa. She combines in herselfall that earth could suggest of bright, and pure, and fair. Still it cannot be denied that levity and vanity are rather conspicuous in the Phæacian men. They shew off, among other sports, their boxing and wrestling, before they know what Ulysses is made of. When they know it, Alcinous informs him in an off-hand way that they do not pretend to excellence in that class of sports[595]. After the dancers have performed, Ulysses with great tact at once passes a high compliment upon them. Alcinous, delighted with the praise, cries aloud, ‘Phæacian chiefs! this stranger appears to me to be an extremely sensible man[596].’It appears, however, most likely that, besides the mythical element in two of them, Homer may have had some basis of maritime report, and thus of presumed fact, for his delineations of all these three races; that, with an unlimited license of embellishment, he, nevertheless, may have intended in each case to keep unbroken the tie between his own tale, and the voyages of Ulysses, founded upon Phœnician geography, as reported in his time. I form this opinion partly from some singularities in the Phæacian character, which, as they are not in keeping with any poetic idea, may probably have had an historic aim, though I cannot be persuaded that they afford a foundation broad enough for the full theory of Mure[597], if he conceives the Phæacians of the Odyssey to be strictly a portrait of the Phœnicians. Partly I draw the inference from the want of clear severance in the ideals, on which the characters of the Cyclops and the Læstrygones are severally founded. The remarkable natural characteristic of Læstrygonia which he has given us, its perpetual day, supports the same hypothesis. What would otherwise amount topoverty in the imagery is sufficiently accounted for, if we assume that he meant to describe two savage tribes, that inhabited the latitudes with which he was dealing; and that, feeling himself bound to brutality in each case, he has, under these unfavourable circumstances, varied it as much as he could. Unless it had been to preserve an historical or mythological tradition, the Læstrygonian adventure might hardly have deserved introduction into the Odyssey. Plainly, on the other hand, he is not to be held responsible for all that he has put down while he believed himself to be conforming to narratives of fact, in the same manner and degree as if he had been presenting us with a picture in which his fancy had only to work at will.The remaining case is slight, and may speedily be dismissed. Æolus isφίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, and is intrusted with the charge of the winds; and his six sons are married to his six daughters, asαἰδοίαι ἄλοχοι[598]. The wordφίλοςmay bear the sense of relationship: immortality seems to be of necessity involved in the charge over the winds, who are themselves in the Iliad (in this point varying poetically from the Odyssey) invested with deity[599]: and the marriage of the sons to the daughters affords another absolute proof: for this, which would have been incest,μέγα ἔργον, among men, is evidently set down as in their case a legitimate connection. The great example in the Kronid family would give it full sanction for the Immortals.The character of Æolus, if he be human, is one kindly to his fellow-men; and he inquires carefully respecting the fate of the Greeks and their chieftains. But it is very difficult to understand his place in the poem,and the reasons of it. The gift of Zephyr, and the folly of the crew in letting out the whole pack of winds, end only in the return of Ulysses to Æolia, and in his being dismissed from thence as one hateful to the gods, which he was not. This Æolus neither seems to be required for, nor to contribute to, the general purpose of the poem: nor to represent any ancient tradition: nor can we in any manner connect him with Æolus, the great national personage whose descendants were so illustrious, for that Æolus was clearly taken to be the son or immediate descendant of Jupiter; so that he could not have been called the son of Hippotas. Perhaps the origin of his place in the Odyssey was to be found in some Phœnician report about storms in the northern seas, where Æolia is evidently placed in complete isolation, figured by the sheer and steep rock of the coast, and by the metal wall which runs round it. It may have a partial prototype in Stromboli misplaced, the appearance of which from a distance entirely accords with this particular of inaccessibility. The whole picture, representing as it does, first, the ferocity of the winds, and, secondly, the existence of an efficient control over them, evidently embodies two features which could not but enter variously and prominently into the tales of Phœnician mariners; first, the fierceness of the gales prevailing in those outer latitudes, to deter others from attempting them; and secondly, their successful contest with the difficulty thus created in order to glorify themselves.
The translation of mortals.
Those for whom it was a mental necessity to animate with deity even the mute powers of nature, could not but find modes of associating man, who stood nearer to the Immortals, with them and their conditions of existence.
These modes were chiefly three:
The first, that of translation during life.
The second, that of deification after death.
The third, the conception of races intermediate between deity and humanity.
And it was perhaps not the simple working of a fervid imagination, but also an offshoot from this profound and powerful tendency, which has filled the pages of Homer with continual efforts to deify what was most excellent, or most conspicuous, in the mind or in the person of living man.
The mode of translation during life was early in date, and was rarely used, for not only are the Homeric examples of it few, but he records no contemporary instance.
Ganymede[580], the son of Tros, was taken up to heaven by the Immortals on account of his beauty, that he might live among them. Tithonus, his grand-nephew, son of Laomedon, was, as we are left to infer, similarly translated during life, to be the husband of Aurora (in Homer Eos), or the morning: for Homer makes him known to us in that capacity, though he does not mention the translation. In like manner, she carried up, and placed among the Immortals for his beauty,Cleitus, one of the descendants of Melampus[581]. A similar operation to that which was performed upon Tithonus may have been designed in the case of Orion, who was the choice of Aurora, and whose career, in consequence of the jealousy of the Immortals, was cut short by the arrows of Diana[582]. The course of these legends seems to stop suddenly in the Greek mythology at the point where they are replaced by deification: and the connection of Aurora, as the principal agent, with three out of the four, (the other, too, is Asiatic, as being in the family of Dardanus,) seems to be an unequivocal sign of their eastern character. Homer places the dwelling ofἬωςat a distant point of the East, near the place whereθάλασσαcommunicates with Ocean.
The deification of mortals.
In the age of Homer the very first names have hardly been entered in the class of deified heroes. Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, may be said to stand at the head of the list, from the distinct assertion of her translation, and from her being placed, as the ally of Ulysses, in continued relations with mortal men[583]. Of her also it is said that she had obtained divine honours; and nearly the same assertion is made of Castor and Pollux. But they perform no offices towards man while yet in this life. Of this Ino is the only instance. She appears to be Phœnician rather than Greek, and thus to belong perhaps to an older, clearly to a distinct mythology. Hercules, the only one of these persons who entirely fulfils the conditions of a hero, is admitted to the banquets of the gods, and united with Hebe[584]: yet he is not all in Olympus, for hisεἴδωλον, endowed with voice and feeling, and bearing martial accoutrements, is the terror of the Dead. It is not easy to explain fully this divided state. I cannot but think, however, that we see here at work that principle of disintegration, which solved all riddles of character by making one individual into more than one: beginning, at least for earth, with that Helen in Egypt, who was made the depository of the better qualities that post-Homeric times could not recognise in Helen of Troy. Although the son of Jupiter, Hercules had on earth, through a sheer mistake, been subject to a destiny of grinding toil. His original extraction and personality stand in sharp contrast with the restless and painful destiny of his life. Death severs these one from the other, but Homer, contemplating each as a whole, endows the last also with personality, and gives it a reflection in the lower world of its earthly course and aspect: while the Jove-born Hercules, as it were by a natural spring, mounts up to heaven[585]. At the same time there is no more conspicuous example than Hercules, of that counter-principle of accumulation, by which legendary tradition heaps upon favourite heroes all acts not distinctly otherwise appropriated, which appear to harmonize with their characters; and thus often makes an historical personage into one both fabulous and impossible.
It must not be forgotten that this passage respecting Hercules was sharply challenged by the Alexandrian critics. This challenge is discussed, and its justice affirmed by Nitzsch[586]. Such authorities must not be defrauded of their weight. But for my own part, I do not find a proof of spuriousness even in the real inconsistencies of Homer, where he is dealing with subjectsbeyond the range of common life and experience. Still less can it be universally admitted, that what are called his inconsistencies are really such. They will often be found to require nothing but the application of a more comprehensive rule for their adjustment.
It is more difficult still to understand the case of Orion, who is at once a noted star in heaven, and a sufferer below in the Shades. There he appears not wholly unlike the shade of Hercules, a dreamy image of the sufferings of earth, and at the same time he ranks among the splendours at least of the material heaven.
Minos, who is placed in the Shades to exercise royal functions there, and Rhadamanthus, who has his happy dwelling on the Elysian plain, are approximative examples of deification.
It would be hazardous to build any opinion exclusively on the two verses Il. ii. 550, 551, relating to the worship of Erechtheus: but they are not altogether at variance with what we see elsewhere.
Growth of material for its extension.
Such is the rather slender list of personages in Homer, who approximate in any degree to what was afterwards the order of deified Heroes. There are, however, some other indications, that belong immediately to the living, and that point the same way. Such is the promise to Menelaus[587], that instead of dying he should be translated to Elysium, because he was the son-in-law of Jupiter. And this suggests other notes of preparation already found in Homer. Ulysses[588]promises Nausicaa that, when he has reached his own country, he will continue to invoke her all his life long,like a god. The invocation of the Dead was common. It was not practised only in illustriouscases like that of Patroclus. After their battle with the Cicones, Ulysses[589]and his crews thrice invoked their slaughtered comrades. A system of divine parentage was the fit, one might almost say the certain preparation for a scheme of divine honours after death; and of such parentage many of Homer’s heroes could boast. Again, Peleus was married to a goddess, and the gods in mass attended the wedding. By thus bringing the inhabitants of Olympus down to the earth, Homer laid the ground for bringing the denizens of earth into Olympus.
There is yet a further sign, which, though perhaps the least palpable, is, when well considered, the most striking of all. It is this; that sacrifice is offered, in the Odyssey, to the Shades of the departed. It is not indeed animal sacrifice that is actually offered. The gift consists of honey and milk, with wine, water, and flour[590]: but Ulysses distinctly promises that, on his return to Ithaca, he will supply this defect by offering a heifer in their honour, and a sheep all black to Tiresias in particular. Moreover, he distinctly recognises the idea of worshipping them[591];
πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.
πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.
πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.
πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.
It does not destroy the force of this proceeding, that they were supposed to need or to enjoy the thing sacrificed; for the Immortals of Olympus did the latter at least, and there are even traces of the former. Together with the mixed offering above described, and the promise of a regular sacrifice on his return home, Ulysses permitted the Shades to drink of the blood of the sheep which he immolated on the spot to Aidoneus and Persephone, after he had fulfilled the main purpose of his visit by consulting Tiresias[592].
The dead then have consciousness and activity. They are invoked by man. They can appear to him. They are capable of having sacrifices offered to them. They can confer benefit on the living. Here, gathered out of different cases, were the materials of full deification. All that was yet wanting was, that they should be put together according to rule.
The kindred of the gods.
We have now, lastly, to consider the kindred of the gods, or races intermediate between deity and humanity, which Homer has introduced in the Odyssey exclusively.
These are certainly three, perhaps four;
It may also be probable that we should add
4. Æolus Hippotades and his family.
Among them all, the Cyclopes, children of Neptune, offer, as a work of art, by far the most successful and satisfactory result. In every point they are placed at the greatest possible distance from human society and its conventions. Man is small, the Cyclops huge. Man is weak, the Cyclops powerful. Man is gregarious, the Cyclops is isolated. Man, for Homer, is refined; the Cyclops is a cannibal. Man inquires, searches, designs, constructs, advances, in a word, is progressive: the Cyclops simply uses the shelter and the food that nature finds for him, and is thoroughly stationary. Yet, while man is subject to death, the Cyclops lives on, or vegetates at least, and transmits the privileges of his race by virtue of its high original. The relaxed morality of the divine seed, as compared with man, is traceable even in their slight customs. They are polygamous:
θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστοςπαίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόχων[593].
θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστοςπαίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόχων[593].
θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστοςπαίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόχων[593].
θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος
παίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόχων[593].
From their personal characters the moral element has been entirely dismissed. Polyphemus is a huge mass of force, seasoned perhaps with cunning, certainly with falseness. This union of a superhuman life with the brutal, that dwells in solitude, and has none of its angles rubbed down by the mutual contact between members of a race, produces a mixed result of extreme ferocity, childishness, and a kind of horrible glee, which as a work of art is most striking and successful. We may justly think much of Caliban: but Caliban cannot for a moment be compared to Polyphemus. It is equitable, however, to remember that contrast with Ariel, which must have been a governing condition in the creation of Shakespeare, required a nature which should be fatuous and grovelling, as well as coarse.
To feed Polyphemus, what lies nearest him, namely, the Læstrygonian adventure, has, perhaps, been starved. Again we are introduced to cruel Giants and to cannibalism, but with a great scantiness of detail. Their individuality is scarcely established. Their only marked qualities they hold in common with the Cyclopes, except as to a single point, namely, that they live gregariously. We see their city, and are introduced to their king, their queen, and their princess[594]. But a too great likeness to the Cyclops still suggests itself; and it is probable that in both the one and the other Homer set before him, among the materials of his work, that old tradition of powerful beings, allied to the deity, and yet rebellious against him, which meets us in so many forms, dispersed about the Homeric poems, and whichthe later tradition, by further multiplication and variety, resolved into a living chaos.
The Phæacians appear to stand quite in another category. While the Cyclops has no trace of deity but in superhuman force, the Phæacians have no pretensions of this kind. They are not even immortal, nor are they wholly removed from man, for they are accustomed to carry passengers by sea; they seem really to be meant in a measure to represent theθεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες. We must not look too rigidly in them for notes of the divine character, but rather for the abundance, opulence, ease, and refinement of the divine condition. Hence Homer lavishes all the simple wealth of his imagination upon the palace and garden of Alcinous, which far exceeds any possessions he has assigned to ordinary men. This additional splendour of itself proves, if proof were wanted, that the picture is ideal. The same amount of ornament assigned to the palace of Menelaus would, from the contrast with fact, probably have been frigid to his hearers.
From the games and athletic exercises of this people all the ruder and more violent sports are excluded. Navigation, to others so formidable, for them is conducted by a spontaneous force and intelligence residing in their ships; which annihilates distance, and at last excites even the jealousy of Neptune (Od. viii. 555–69). We find in the island and in its history no poverty, no grief, no care, no want; all is fair to see and to enjoy. But we feel thankful to Homer that he has not here, as in the case of the Cyclops, made kin with the gods entail a marked moral or intellectual inferiority upon the sons of men; no purer or more graceful piece of humanity is to be found among the creations of the human brain, than his picture of Nausicaa. She combines in herselfall that earth could suggest of bright, and pure, and fair. Still it cannot be denied that levity and vanity are rather conspicuous in the Phæacian men. They shew off, among other sports, their boxing and wrestling, before they know what Ulysses is made of. When they know it, Alcinous informs him in an off-hand way that they do not pretend to excellence in that class of sports[595]. After the dancers have performed, Ulysses with great tact at once passes a high compliment upon them. Alcinous, delighted with the praise, cries aloud, ‘Phæacian chiefs! this stranger appears to me to be an extremely sensible man[596].’
It appears, however, most likely that, besides the mythical element in two of them, Homer may have had some basis of maritime report, and thus of presumed fact, for his delineations of all these three races; that, with an unlimited license of embellishment, he, nevertheless, may have intended in each case to keep unbroken the tie between his own tale, and the voyages of Ulysses, founded upon Phœnician geography, as reported in his time. I form this opinion partly from some singularities in the Phæacian character, which, as they are not in keeping with any poetic idea, may probably have had an historic aim, though I cannot be persuaded that they afford a foundation broad enough for the full theory of Mure[597], if he conceives the Phæacians of the Odyssey to be strictly a portrait of the Phœnicians. Partly I draw the inference from the want of clear severance in the ideals, on which the characters of the Cyclops and the Læstrygones are severally founded. The remarkable natural characteristic of Læstrygonia which he has given us, its perpetual day, supports the same hypothesis. What would otherwise amount topoverty in the imagery is sufficiently accounted for, if we assume that he meant to describe two savage tribes, that inhabited the latitudes with which he was dealing; and that, feeling himself bound to brutality in each case, he has, under these unfavourable circumstances, varied it as much as he could. Unless it had been to preserve an historical or mythological tradition, the Læstrygonian adventure might hardly have deserved introduction into the Odyssey. Plainly, on the other hand, he is not to be held responsible for all that he has put down while he believed himself to be conforming to narratives of fact, in the same manner and degree as if he had been presenting us with a picture in which his fancy had only to work at will.
The remaining case is slight, and may speedily be dismissed. Æolus isφίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, and is intrusted with the charge of the winds; and his six sons are married to his six daughters, asαἰδοίαι ἄλοχοι[598]. The wordφίλοςmay bear the sense of relationship: immortality seems to be of necessity involved in the charge over the winds, who are themselves in the Iliad (in this point varying poetically from the Odyssey) invested with deity[599]: and the marriage of the sons to the daughters affords another absolute proof: for this, which would have been incest,μέγα ἔργον, among men, is evidently set down as in their case a legitimate connection. The great example in the Kronid family would give it full sanction for the Immortals.
The character of Æolus, if he be human, is one kindly to his fellow-men; and he inquires carefully respecting the fate of the Greeks and their chieftains. But it is very difficult to understand his place in the poem,and the reasons of it. The gift of Zephyr, and the folly of the crew in letting out the whole pack of winds, end only in the return of Ulysses to Æolia, and in his being dismissed from thence as one hateful to the gods, which he was not. This Æolus neither seems to be required for, nor to contribute to, the general purpose of the poem: nor to represent any ancient tradition: nor can we in any manner connect him with Æolus, the great national personage whose descendants were so illustrious, for that Æolus was clearly taken to be the son or immediate descendant of Jupiter; so that he could not have been called the son of Hippotas. Perhaps the origin of his place in the Odyssey was to be found in some Phœnician report about storms in the northern seas, where Æolia is evidently placed in complete isolation, figured by the sheer and steep rock of the coast, and by the metal wall which runs round it. It may have a partial prototype in Stromboli misplaced, the appearance of which from a distance entirely accords with this particular of inaccessibility. The whole picture, representing as it does, first, the ferocity of the winds, and, secondly, the existence of an efficient control over them, evidently embodies two features which could not but enter variously and prominently into the tales of Phœnician mariners; first, the fierceness of the gales prevailing in those outer latitudes, to deter others from attempting them; and secondly, their successful contest with the difficulty thus created in order to glorify themselves.