Argument from the Secondaries.
Such then are the Olympian Secondaries. None of them, it will be observed, are properly derivative beings. All of them represent, in some sense, traditions, or imaginations, distinct from those respecting their principal deity: nor are they in the same kind of subservience to them as the Eilithuiæ to Juno, who have no worship paid them, and are of doubtful personality; or as the metal handmaids to Vulcan himself. But they are deities, each of whom singly in a particular province administers a function, which also belongs to a deity of higher dignity. And though a difference is clearly discernible in the form of the possession and administration, yet there still remains a clear and manifest duplication, a lapping over of divinities, which is entirely at variance with the symmetry that we might reckon upon finding in an homogeneous conception of the Greeks.
This irregular duplication is kept in some degree out of view, if we set out with the determination to refer the Homeric deities to a single origin, to make a regular division of duties among them, and to pare down this, or enlarge that, till we have brought them and their supposed gifts into the requisite order. But as it stands in Homer, free from later admixtures, and from prepossessions of ours, it is a most curious andsignificant fact, and raises at once a serious inquiry as to its cause.
I submit that it may be referred to the joint operation of two circumstances. First, to the particular form of the early traditions that were incorporated into the invented or Olympian system. Secondly, to the principle of economy, or family and social order, reflected back from the human community upon the divine.
If the primitive tradition, even when disfigured by the lapse of time, yet on its arrival in Greece still visibly appropriated to one sublime person, distinguishable from the supreme God, and femininely conceived, the attributes of sovereign wisdom, strength, and skill; and to another, in the form of man, the gifts of knowledge, reaching before and after, and identified in early times with that of Song, as well as that of healing or deliverance from pain and death; then we can understand why it is that, when these great personages take their places as of right in the popular mythology, they continue to keep hold on certain great functions, in which their attributes are primarily developed.
Picture of human society in Olympus.
But on the other hand, the divine society must be cast into the form of the human; and this especially must take effect in three great organic particulars. First, by means of the family, which brings the members of the body into being: secondly, by political association, involving the necessity of a head, and of a deliberative organ: thirdly, by the existence of certain professions, which by the use of intellectual gifts provide for the exigencies of the community. The merely labouring classes, in whose place and idea there is nothing of the governing function, are naturally without representation, in the configuration of the divine community, as tothe forms of their particular employments: though the people at large bear a rude analogy to the mass of inferior deities not included in the ordinary meeting of the gods, yet summoned to the great Chapter or Parliament. Olympus must, in short, have itsδημιόεργοι.
Who these were for an ordinary Greek community like that of Ithaca, we learn from the speech of Eumæus[73].
τῶν οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασιν,μάντιν, ἢ ἰητῆρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδόν.
τῶν οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασιν,μάντιν, ἢ ἰητῆρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδόν.
τῶν οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασιν,μάντιν, ἢ ἰητῆρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδόν.
τῶν οἳ δημιοεργοὶ ἔασιν,
μάντιν, ἢ ἰητῆρα κακῶν, ἢ τέκτονα δούρων,
ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδόν.
Here, indeed, there is no representation of the principle of gain or commerce, which does not appear as yet to have formed a class in Greece, though the Ithacans habitually sacrificed to Mercury[74]. But that formation was on the way; for the class was already known, doubtless as a Phœnician one, under the name ofπρηκτῆρες, men of business, apt to degenerate intoτρωκταὶ, or sharpers. Nor was there a class of soldiers; but every citizen became a soldier upon occasion. With these additions, it is curious to observe how faithfully the Olympian copy is modelled upon the human original. The five professions, or demioergic functions, are,
Now all these were actually represented in Apollo and Minerva; the first, second, and fourth by Apollo, the third and fifth by Minerva, who was also the highest type of war. But this union of several human professions in one divine person would have been fatalto the fidelity and effectiveness of the Olympian picture, to which a division of labour, analogous to the division existing in actual society, was essential. Therefore the accumulation was to be reduced. And in order to make this practicable, there were distinct traditions ready, on which could be laid the superfluous or most easily separable attributes of Apollo and Minerva. So Apollo keeps unimpaired his gift of foreknowledge, and Minerva hers of sublime wisdom. With these no one is permitted to interfere. But theἰήτηρis represented in Paieon: theτέκτων(into Olympus however no inferior material enters, and all work is evidently in metal, of which the celestial Smith[75]constructs the buildings themselves, that on earth would be made of wood) is exhibited in Vulcan: theἀοιδὸςin the Muses, theπρήκτηρin Mercury, and the man of war in Mars.
Dignity and precedence of Minerva.
3. Though Minerva cannot contest with Juno the honour of mere precedence in the Olympian court, yet, as regards substantial dignity, she by no means yields even to the queen of heaven. Sometimes, undoubtedly, when she moves in the interest of the Greeks, it is upon the suggestion of Juno made to herself, as in Il. i. 195; or through Jupiter, as in Il. iv. 64. But it is probable that this should be referred, not to greater eminence or authority, but simply to the more intensely and more narrowly Hellenized character of Juno. There are, at any rate, beyond all doubt, some arrangements adopted by the poet, with the special intent, to all appearance, of indicating a full equality, if not an actual pre-eminence, for Minerva. Twice the two goddesses descend together from Olympus to the field of battle. Both times it is in the chariot of Juno.Now Iris, as on one occasion, at least, she acts at Juno’s bidding, and as on another we find her unyoking the chariot of Mars, might with propriety have been employed to discharge this function at a moment when the two greatest goddesses are about to set out together. It is not so, however. Juno herself yokes the horses, and also plays the part of driver, while Minerva mounts as the warrior beside her[76]. To be the charioteer is generally, though not quite invariably, the note of the inferior. But irrespectively of this official distinction, Minerva with her Ægis is the conspicuous, and Juno evidently the subordinate figure in the group.
In the Odyssey, again, we have a most striking indication of the essential superiority of Minerva to the great and powerful Neptune. Attending, in the disguise of a human form, the sacrifice of Nestor at Pylos to his divine ancestor, she does not scruple, on the invitation of the young prince Pisistratus, to offer prayer to that deity, in the capacity of a courteous guest and a religious Greek. Her petitions are for Nestor, for his family, for his subjects, and for the errand on which she, with Telemachus, was engaged. All are included in the general words with which she concludes[77]:
μηδὲ μεγήρῃςἡμῖν εὐχομένοισι τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.
μηδὲ μεγήρῃςἡμῖν εὐχομένοισι τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.
μηδὲ μεγήρῃςἡμῖν εὐχομένοισι τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.
μηδὲ μεγήρῃς
ἡμῖν εὐχομένοισι τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.
But at the close the poet goes on to declare that what she thus sought in prayer from her uncle Neptune, she forthwith accomplished herself:
ὣς ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἠρᾶτο, καὶ αὐτὴ πάντα τελεύτα.
ὣς ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἠρᾶτο, καὶ αὐτὴ πάντα τελεύτα.
ὣς ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἠρᾶτο, καὶ αὐτὴ πάντα τελεύτα.
ὣς ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἠρᾶτο, καὶ αὐτὴ πάντα τελεύτα.
Yet once more. The same train of ideas, which explains how Olympus is fitted with a set of Secondaries, also shows to us why these Secondaries have only the lower or subsidiary form of their several gifts. It is because these gifts were already in the possession of higher personages, before the introduction of the more recent traditions represented by the Secondaries: traditions, of which the whole, (except that of Paieon, who is not worshipped at all, and exists only in and for Olympus,) bear upon them, as received in Greece, the marks of modernism[78]. They naturally submit to the conditions, anterior to themselves, of the hierarchy into which they are introduced. But, on the one hand, their existence, together with the peculiar relation of their work and attributes, rather than themselves, to the great deities of tradition, Apollo and Minerva, constitutes of itself a strong argument for the separate and more ancient origin of those divinities. On the other hand, they bear powerful testimony to the force of that principle, which reflected on the Achæan heaven the experience of earth. For there is not a single dignified and intellectual occupation known to and in use among the Hellenic tribes, properly so called, which has not, as far as may be, counterpart on Olympus. Not even the priesthood is a real exception; especially if I am right in believing it to be Pelasgian, and not yet to have been adopted in the time of Homer as one of the Hellenic institutions. But, even if it had been so adopted, it could not, from the nature of the case, have been carried into the Olympian system, since there were no beings above themselves to whom the gods could offer sacrifice, and since, according to the depraved idea of it which had begun to prevail, in offering it they would have parted with something that was of value to themselves.
We do not hear a great deal respecting mere ceremonial among the Olympian divinities. To Jupiter, however, and to Juno, is awarded the conspicuous honour, that, when either of them enters the assembled Court, all the other deities rise up[79]. It is plain that Homer included in the picture before his mental eye ideas relating to that external order which we term precedence: and it may be shown, that Minerva had the precedence over the other gods, or what we should term the seat of honour; that place which was occupied, in the human family, by the eldest son. Juno we must presume, as the reflection of Jupiter, would occupy the place of the mother.
When Thetis is summoned to Olympus in the Twenty-fourth Iliad, she receives on her arrival the honours of a guest, in which is included this distinguished place beside the chief person, and it is Minerva who yields it up to her;