The Persephone of Homer.Although the Persephone of Homer is rarely brought before us, and our information respecting her is therefore slight, there seems to be sufficient ground for asserting that she is not the mere female reflection of Hades or Aidoneus.It is only for those deities from whom other deities are drawn by descent, that we find in Homer a regular conjugal connection provided. Thus Neptune, as we have seen, cannot be said to have a wife in Homer. Amphitrite appears in the poems with a faint and indeed altogether doubtful personality, though she afterwards grew into his spouse. Now Neptune was a deity much more in view than Aides: and it is not likely that we should have found Persephone more fully developed than Amphitrite, had she not represented some older and more independent tradition.Again, in cases where the female deity is the mere reflection of the male, we do not find her invested with a share in his dominion, although, as in the caseof Juno, she may occasionally and derivatively exercise some of the prerogatives, which in him have a higher and more unquestionable activity. Thus Tartarus is the region ofΚρόνος, not ofῬέα; air is the realm of Jupiter, not of Jupiter and Juno. But Persephone appears by the side of Hades as a substantive person; she is invoked with him by Althea to slay Meleager, in the Legend of the Ninth Iliad[405]: and the region in which she dwells is not less hers than his[406],εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.Indeed her personality is the better developed of the two: for no personal act is ascribed in the poems to Aides, except the indeterminate one of trembling, at the battle of the gods, lest the crust of earth should be broken through: and the name given him in the Iliad ofΖεὺς καταχθόνιος, subterranean Jupiter, may possibly suggest that he was sometimes viewed as hardly more than a form or function of the highest god: whereas, in the under-world of the Eleventh Odyssey, all the active functions of sovereignty are placed in her hands. It is she who gathers the women-shades for Ulysses: and it is she who disperses them when they have been passed in review. It is by her that Ulysses apprehends the head of Gorgo may be sent forth to drive him off, should he linger too long; it is by her that he apprehends he may have been deluded with anεἴδωλονor shade, instead of a substance; most of all, it is she who endows Tiresias, alone among the dead, with the character of the Seer[407]. In fine, the whole of the active duties of the nether kingdom appear to be in her hands.That she was generally worshipped by the Hellenic tribes we must infer from the cases mentioned in theNinth Iliad, the one in Ætolia, the other farther North[408]; as well as from her office in regard to the thoroughly national region of the Shades.Her marked and substantive character.She has her own strongly marked set of epithets. Of these, one isἁγνὴ, the severely pure; for with Homerἁγνὸςis exclusively applicable to divine womanhood, and is given only to Diana and Persephone: then she isἀγαυὴ, the dread: and lastly, she isἐπαινὴ, an epithet appropriated to her exclusively, which appears to be Homer’s favourite method for sharply marking out individuality of character. Buttmann has also well observed, that she has this epithet only when mentioned along with Hades, that is, when shown very strictly in her official character; and thatἀγαυὴis used when she appears alone. Upon this he observes; ‘this way of joining the name of Proserpine with that of Pluto was an old epic formula, handed down even to Homer and our oldest Greek poets from still earlier times, and which they used unchanged[409].’ He would readἐπ’ αἰνὴ, instead ofἐπαινὴ, but this neither affects the sense (awful, terrible) nor the force of the exclusive appropriation.There is another sign confirmatory of the belief that the origin of this mythical person must be sought, not in the necessity of finding a queen for Aidoneus, but in an anterior and distinct tradition. Namely, this; that, though she is a daughter of Jupiter[410], she is not provided with a mother. Thus she seems as if she were older than the Olympian œconomy. Venus, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are all equipped with a full parentage. The later tradition, which made Persephone the daughter of Ceres, has no other support from Homer thanthis, that we are left to suppose that Ceres had some offspring by Jupiter, while none is named[411].The chain of presumptions appears to me to become complete, when we take into view two other pieces of evidence supplied by the poems. In the far East[412], beyond the couch of the morning Sun, some distance up the stream of the great river Ocean, but to the south of the point where it is entered, and at a spot where the shore narrows very much—immediately, in short, before the point of descent—are the groves of Persephone. According to the general rules of interpretation applicable to Homer, this appears to convey to us that the seat of her worship was in the far Southern East, and that her office, as there understood, was that of the goddess or queen of Death. And if she is indeed the reflection, in the mirror of the lower world, of any other known deity, then, both from this great office, and from the peculiar epithetἁγνὴ, it is most likely to be of Diana, with whom, in the later mythology, she was identified; and, again, through Diana, of Apollo, from whom the light of Diana herself was derived. Or, in other words, she may be for the lower world that reflection of Apollo, which the Homeric Diana was for this earth: and it is worth observation, that the gift of second sight, which she allows to Tiresias, and which therefore is at her disposal beneath ground[413], is the peculiar and exclusive property of Apollo.Let us now lastly consider, what light the etymology of her remarkable name may afford us. Its meaning appears to be, either destruction by slaughter; from two roots, one that represented inἔπερσα, from the verbπέρθω, and the otherφόνη; or else, that of the destruction or slaughter of Persians. In the former view, the evidence leaves us where we were, or brings us a point nearer to Diana, whose function was not that of all death whatever, but of such death as might be called slaughter, because not due to disease, but brought about at the moment by a sudden process, though often the mildest of all ways of dying[414]. But the other etymology may be worth some further attention.Her connection with the East.Besides that cluster of traditions, relating to remote places, which the Greeks derived from the Phœnician navigators, and which cannot but have included some eastward wanderings in the Black Sea, as well as westward experience in the Mediterranean, they must in all likelihood have had oriental traditions properly their own, brought by their Hellic forefathers with them from their cradle. We have already seen that that cradle was probably Persia; and we have found traces of the connection in the name of the great pre-Achæan hero, Perseus, and in the continuing use of that name in the high Achæan family of Nestor, as well as at much later historic dates. Another link, connecting the Homeric traditions with this name, and both with the East, is found in the name of Perse, who was the mother of Circe, an Eastern goddess; and who was the daughter of Ocean, and the wife of the Sun[415].We must take these circumstances into view along with the force of the name Persephone, and with the evidence we have already had of the antiquity of the traditions relating to her. To this we have to add the absence of any Homeric evidence connecting her with any other local source. There is no sign of any institution, that belonged to her worship, except in those groves planted in the far East; and no sign of any otherparticular locality marked as her peculiar abode, which we have found to be a mark of such invented deities generally as had a well developed personality. There is no note of her whatever in Troas; and nothing to connect her with Egypt, or with the Pelasgians in any quarter. It is not likely that she came in with the Phœnicians, as she would then have had signs of a recent origin, and would not have attained to so august and mysterious a position as she actually holds. The two distinct notices of her worship are both in the Homeric Hellas; not in Southern Greece, nor in the islands.It seems, therefore, on every ground reasonable to suppose, that the tradition of Proserpine was an original Hellic tradition brought into the country from the East, probably by the Hellic tribes, and from among their Persian forefathers; and that the name of the deity, as we find it in Homer, affords a new indication of the extraction of the race.Accordingly, the unusually substantive aspect of her position in the nether world, which makes her relation to Aidoneus so different from that of the other mythological wives, or feminines, to their respective husbands, is such, that it seems most reasonable, instead of deriving her from him, as Juno was derived from Jupiter, or Tethys from Ocean, to consider them as representing the union of two independent impersonations, associated together primarily by their common subject matter. For there does not seem to be any thing improbable in the hypothesis, that Persephone may, in the belief of some country and age, have served alone for the ruler of the region of the dead. Just as so many subordinate ministers of Doom, the Fates, the Erinues, and the Harpies, assumed the female form in the process of impersonation, so it may have been with their sovereign. And if we are to look farther for the metaphysical groundwork of such a tradition, we may perhaps find it as follows. There is a relation of analogy between each function and its converse: and as in the pure mythology, all that gave life was feminine, so conversely, all that represented the destroying agency might assume a similar form.Her relation to Olympus.In her case, as in that of one or two others, it is difficult to discover whether Homer meant a particular deity to be included, or not, among the Olympian gods of the ordinary or smaller assembly. There is no indication in the poems, which directly connects Persephone with Olympus; and that celestial palace may seem to belong to the government of the living world, and to be almost incapable of relations with that of the departed. Nor is she connected specially with the Olympian system, like Aidoneus, by the position which birth confers. Theἄλσος, and the worship paid her there, can hardly belong to the departed spirits on their way to their abode, and more probably indicate an ancient tradition deriving her worship from the far East. On the other hand, her dignity and majesty in the poems are unquestionable, and indeed superior to those of any Olympian deity, after some five or six. I do not find materials for a confident judgment on the Homeric view of her place in his theo-mythology, with reference to this particular point of connection with Olympus.Founding conjecture upon the facts before us, I venture, however, on a further extension of these hypotheses with respect to Persephone. We perceive in Persephone and Diana that kind of likeness which may be due to their common origin; if, as we suppose, both were images of Apollo. But it is not likely that two such images should have been formed by the samerace for itself. Can we then, probably refer Diana and Persephone to different sources ethnically?It is plain that Diana was worshipped in Troy and Greece. Persephone, so far as we know, in Greece only. This would agree with the supposition that Diana was originally Pelasgian, Persephone only Hellic.Again, Diana was an earthly, Persephone a subterraneous reflection of Apollo. Now the Hellic tribes were lively believers in a future state: as we see from the communion of Achilles with the soul of Patroclus, and from many places in the Odyssey. But we have nowhere in Homer the slightest allusion among the Trojans to the belief in a future state, beyond the mere formula of entering the region of Aïdes. Neither the succinct account of the funeral rites of Hector, nor any one of the three addresses over his remains, contain the slightest allusion to his separate existence as a spirit. There is, indeed, mention of wine used to extinguish the flame of the funeral pile, but none of invocation along with it, as there is in the case of Patroclus[416]. And as we have no less than an hundred lines spoken over or otherwise bestowed upon the dead Hector, the omission is singular. It becomes still more significant, when we recollect that the Greeks, and their goddess Juno, invoke the deities of the under-world, and the powers connected with a future state, in their solemn oaths and imprecations[417]; but when Hector swears to Dolon, (our only example of a Trojan oath,) he adjures Jupiter alone[418]. Now it may be that the religion of Troy did not include so distinct a reference to a future state, as that of Greece, and that the Trojans knew nothing of Persephone, or of any deity holding her place. This hypothesis would at onceaccord with the features of the Homeric portrait, and with the striking absence among the Trojans of all pointed reference to a future life, or to the disembodied spirit. Nor need we consider it to be at all shaken by slight and formal allusions, or by the words in which Homer on his own part dismisses to Hades the spirit of the slain Hector[419]. The hypothesis which the circumstances appear to suggest is, not that the Trojans disbelieved a future existence, but that they neither felt keenly respecting it, nor gave a mythological development to the doctrine.Mars.The Mars of Homer.Even in Homer, Mars is externally the most imposing figure among the masculine deities of pure invention. The greatest of war-bards could not but find him a fine subject for poetical amplification. But in the Roman period he had far outgrown the limits of his Homeric position. With the lapse of time, the forces and passions, which gave to this impersonation its hold upon human nature, were sure to prevail in a considerable degree over the finer elements from which Apollo was moulded. It requires an effort of mind to liberate ourselves from the associations of the later mythology, and contract our vision for the purpose of estimating the Mars of Homer as he really is.Notwithstanding his stature, beauty, hand and voice, which constitute, taken together, a proud appearance, it seems as if Mars had stood lower in the mind of Homer than any Olympian deity who takes part in the Trojan war, except Venus only.The Odyssey never once brings Mars before us, even by way of allusion, except in the licentious lay of Demodocus; and the spirit of that lay certainly seems to aim at making him ridiculous, especially in the manner of his release and withdrawal. In the Iliad his part is, of course, more considerable; but on no occasion whatever does Homer apparently seek to set him off, or give him a commanding attitude in comparison with other deities.We have nowhere any account of any act of reverence or worship done to him, either in or out of Greece. For instance, he is never, even in the contingencies of war, the object of prayer. He never shows command over the powers of nature, or the mind of man; which he nowhere attempts to influence by suggestion. It is said, indeed, that he entered into Hector, as that warrior was putting on the armour of Achilles;δῦ δέ μιν Ἄρηςδεινὸς Ἐνυάλιος[420].But no words could more conclusively fix his place in the Homeric system as the mere impersonation of a Passion. For with Homer no greater deity, indeed, no other of the Olympian gods, is ever said to enter into the mind of a mortal man. In the Fifth Book he stirs up the warlike passion of Menelaus; having, like Venus, a limited hold upon a particular propensity. His climax of honour in this department is his givingθάρσοςto the Pseudo-Ulysses; but this he does only in conjunction with Minerva[421].His limited worship and attributes.His possession of the attributes of deity appears to have been most limited. The use of the wordἌρηςnot only for the passion of war, but even for its weapons, shows us that the impersonation was in this case as yet very partially disengaged from the metaphysicalideas, or the material objects, in which it took its rise.His function as god of war was confined to the merely material side of war, and had nothing to do with that aspect, in which war enlists and exhausts all the higher faculties of the human mind; so much so, indeed, that to be a great general is almost necessary in order to enter the first rank of greatness at all. Even of war in the lower sense he had not, as a god, exclusive possession, but he administered his office in partnership with a superior, Minerva. Besides being every thing else that she was, she presided, along with him, over war. On the shield of Achilles, he and Minerva lead the opposing hosts[422]. Over the body of Patroclus the struggle was one of which, says the Poet, neither Mars nor Minerva could think lightly[423]. Achilles, when pursuing the Trojans, calls for assistance; for, says he, neither Mars nor Minerva could undertake to dispose of such a multitude[424]. Mars and Minerva, says Jupiter, will take charge of the concerns of war[425].But that in this partnership he was an inferior, and not an equal, is clear from the manner in which he is habitually handled by Minerva. She wounds him through the spear of Diomed, when, unless saved by flight, he himself apprehends he might have perished[426]. In the Theomachy, she twice over strikes him powerless to the ground. In the Olympian meeting of the Fifteenth Book, when his intended visit to the battlefield menaces the gods with trouble from the displeasure of Jupiter, Minerva strips his armour off his back, scolds him sharply, and replaces him in his seat[427]. Andshe is pointed out by Jupiter as the person, whose habitual duty it was to keep him in order by the severest means[428];ἥ ἑ μάλιστ’ εἴωθε κακῇς ὀδύνῃσι πελάζειν.In the Fifth Iliad, he stirs up the Trojans, and envelopes the fight in darkness: but here he is acting underἐφετμαὶ, or injunctions from Apollo[429], who thus appears, like Minerva, in the light of a superior to him, even in his own department.We learn, again, that he was overcome and imprisoned by the youths Otus and Ephialtes, whom Apollo subdued: he was in bondage for thirteen months, and would have perished, had not Mercury released him[430].He is able to assume the human figure, and, as we have seen, to bring darkness over contending hosts: but, when in Olympus, he remains ignorant[431]of the death of his son Ascalaphus, until he receives the information from Juno; as it was only from his Nymphs that the Sun learned the slaughter of his oxen. Nay, Minerva even puts on a particular helmet, in order that it may secure her from being recognised by Mars when within his view[432].Mars in the Olympian court bears some resemblance to Ajax among the Grecian heroes. But the intellectual element, which appears to be simply blunt in Ajax, in Mars seems to be wholly wanting: so that he represents an animal principle in its crudest form: and is not so much an Ajax, as a Caliban.We are not told that he is greedy of sacrifices, for nocultusis assigned to him: but he is representedas greedy of blood, and as capable of being satiated with it[433].Except with Venus for his mere person, he has no favour with any other Olympian deities[434]. Juno describes him as lawless and as a fool: and Jupiter tells him that, were he the son of any other deity but himself, he would long ago have been ejected from his place in heaven[435].On one occasion, his name is associated with those of Agamemnon and Neptune: but the due relation between them is still preserved. Agamemnon is compared with Jupiter as to his face and head; with Neptune as to his chest; and with Mars as to his waist. The eyes of Hector on the field of battle were like the Gorgon, and like Mars[436].From the repeated allusions to contingencies in which he would have perished, there seems to be something more or less equivocal even about his title to immortality. If more, he is also much less, than man. He is perhaps the least human of the Olympian family; and is a compound between deity and brute.The exhibitions of Mars, as wounded by Diomed for the Iliad, and in the lay of Demodocus for the Odyssey, seem to imply that this deity could not, in the time of Homer, have become an object of general or established religious worship in Greece.Mars as yet scarcely Greek.He is a local deity, and his abode is in Thrace. From thence he issues forth with his mythical son Terror to make war upon the Ephyri: a race whose name has a strong Greek savour, and whose hostile relation to Mars thus exhibited, tends, with other evidence, to place him in the category of foreign deities, not yetnaturalized in the country, though made available by Homer for his Olympian Court. After the detection in the palace of Vulcan, it is to Thrace that he again repairs.We are not to consider this paramount Thracian relation as absolutely separating him from Greece: Thracians, like Pelasgi, had links with both parties in the war, though the stronger ones are apparently those which connect them with Troy.He has among the deities the nickname ofἀλλοπρόσαλλος, or turncoat, because of his vacillation between the two parties. This singular epithet, applied to the Thracian god, conveys the idea that Homer, knowing of the sympathies of the name with both sides, was puzzled as to placing him decisively on either. Now the Thracians of Homer wereἀκρόκομοι[437], while the Achæans wereκαρηκομόωντες. And it is worth notice that the Germans of Tacitus, among whom we find marked signs of resemblance to the Hellenic tribes, wore in general flowing hair, but the Suevi, one particular tribe of them, on the contrary, gathered it into a knot[438].Mars, however, incurs the particular wrath of Juno by abandoning the party of the Greeks, and siding with the Trojans. But in the Fifteenth Book, where Juno acquaints him of the death of his son, who had fought in the Greek ranks, she evidently does it in the expectation that grief and resentment will once more make him a foe to the Trojans. And her calculation is well founded: for he is setting out with that intention, when Minerva follows, and roughly brings him back.He only appears once in a pre-Troic legend. This appearance, too, is beyond the borders of Greece. InLycia he, or, it may be, simply warlike passion which he represents, slays Isander, the son of Bellerophon and uncle of Glaucus, in battle with the Solymi. Still he is the father by Astyoche, of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Minyeian Orchomenus, or else farther towards the north of Greece.The Homeric indications, on the whole, as well as the general conceptions of the character, represent Mars as neither a deity indigenous to the country, nor one belonging to the Hellenic traditions: while the Poet perhaps intends us to understand that he had points of contact or affinity with Greece, which are represented in his wavering attitude between the two parties to the war. It is probable that the Poet himself may have been a principal agent in the introduction of Mars to Hellenic worship. The machinery of the Iliad required him to find an array of gods, who should be champions on each side respectively. It also required that these gods should be united round a centre, which he provided for them in Olympus and in its Court, under the presidency of Jupiter. Both Mars and Venus may thus have made good a title, which before was doubtful and imperfect, through the place to which they were promoted in the Iliad, combined with the place which the Iliad itself won for itself in the national understanding and affections.Mercury.The Mercury of Homer.The Homeric signs respecting Mercury are sufficient to fix his character and origin. The small part, which this deity plays in the poems, is indeed in remarkable contrast with the extended popularity to which at a later period he attained: but his character in Homer isone which accounts in a natural manner for the subsequent increase in his importance.He is the son of Maias, Od. xiv. 435; and of Jupiter, Od. viii. 335.He is the man of business for the Olympian deities,διάκτορος. Od. viii. 335. v. 28[439].He is the giver of increase,δῶτορ ἐάων. Od. viii. 335. Il. xiv. 490.He is the most sociable of deities, Il. xxiv. 334.σοὶ γάρ τε μάλιστά γε φίλτατόν ἐστιν ἀνδρὶ ἑταίρισσαι.The extraction of Mercury stands somewhat obscurely in Homer: his mother Maias is but once mentioned, and then without any clue. But, in the ancient hymn to Mercury, she is declared to be the daughter of Atlas: and if this be so, we shall be justified in considering him as the child of a Phœnician tradition[440]. This is also clear on Homeric grounds. Although Homer does not expressly connect him with Atlas, he makes Calypso, the daughter of that personage, address him asαἰδοῖός τε φίλος τε. These expressions are usually applied by him where there is some special relation of consanguinity, affinity, or guestship: as between Jupiter and his adopted child[441]and particular friend Thetis. It is therefore probable that Homer took Mercury’s mother Maias to be, as the after-tradition made her, the sister of Calypso, and the daughter of Atlas. All the other Homeric signs of him are in complete harmony with this hypothesis of a Phœnician origin for Mercury.We thus understand how he becomes the general agent for the gods: because the Phœnicians supplied the first and principal means of communication betweenthe several nations in the heroic age: they were the men-of-business for the world[442].It thus becomes plain, again, how he can with propriety be called the giver of comforts or blessings; because the basis of commerce is this, that each person engaged in it parts with something which he does not want, and receives what he does want in return.The apparent anomaly, which makes the god of increase also the god of thievery, is thus explained: because, from its nature, commerce is ever apt to degenerate partially into fraud; and because, in days of the strong hand, force as well as intelligence would often make it easy for the maritime merchants to change their vocation, for the occasion, into that of plunder[443].His proper office in regard to theἔργαof men seems not to be industry, nor skill in production or manufacture; but handiness and tidiness in the performance of services. He, says Ulysses, gives to theἔργα, which may mean both the deeds and the industrial productions of men, theirχάριςandκῦδος, their grace and credit or popularity[444].Mercury the god of increase.This idea of increase forms the common or central element of the various attributes assigned to Mercury. It takes two principal forms, one that of increase in material goods, the other that of the propagation of the race. This latter, which was elsewhere grossly exhibited, is veiled by Homer with his almost unfailing sense of delicacy, and may not, indeed, have been fully developed in his time. It is perhaps however traceable in two passages of the poems: first, that of the Sixteenth Iliad, where we are told that he corrupted the virgin Polymele[445], though she belonged to thetrain of Diana. The other is in the episode of Venus and Mars, where Apollo selects him as the deity to whom to put the question, whether he would like to take the place of the adulterer, and he replies in the affirmative[446]. Each of these incidents seems to appertain to something distinctive in his character.That character, again, imports the extended intercourse with mankind, and the knowledge of the world, which causes him to be chosen, in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad, for the difficult office of conducting Priam to the abode of Ulysses. Moreover, the great balance of material benefit which commerce brings gives him, its patron, as a general rule, a genial and philanthropic aspect. In Homer we have nowhere any sign of his vengeance, anger, or severity. He neither punishes, hates, nor is incensed with any one. A passionless and prudent deity, he not only declines actual fighting with Latona, as she is a wife of Jupiter, but spontaneously gives her leave to boast among the gods that she has engaged and worsted him.Mercury Hellenic and Phœnician.The Phœnician origin of Mercury will also account for his position in the poems, in relation to the Trojans and Greeks respectively. Not simply is he one of the five Hellenizing deities: for his talents would naturally with Homer tend to place him on that side. But he appears almost wholly unknown to the Trojans. The abundance of the flocks of Phorbas is indeed referred to his love (Il. xiv. 490): and he reveals himself to Priam by his name (Il. xxiv. 460): but it is remarkable, and contrary to the general rule of the poems, that Priam, notwithstanding his great obligations, takes no notice whatever of his deity, either upon hisfirst revelation and departure, or when a second time he appears, and afterwards quits him anew (682–94).On the other hand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the Greeks. He conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: he carries the warning of the gods to Ægisthus: sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca: and he is liberally treated with sacrifices by Autolycus in Parnesus, where he repays his worshipper by bestowing on him the arts of perjury and purloining[447].Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had much intercourse with the Phœnicians. On the other hand, the Trojans, wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little or nothing of maritime commerce. Their intercourse with Thrace, the fertile Thrace that furnished a contingent of allies, required no more than that they should have the means of crossing the Straits of Gallipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or harbour. A Phœnician deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achæan side during the war.Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of agent, have been with perfect propriety sent to Calypso: but his mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection with Phœnician traditions, give a peculiar propriety to his employment on this errand.Another passage of the Odyssey seems, however, to place this relationship beyond doubt. Ulysses, in the Twelfth Book, recounts to Alcinous the transaction that occurred in the Olympian Assembly after his crew had slain the oxen of the Sun. On that occasion, the offended deity declared that, unless he got compensation, he would go down and shine in the realm of Aides; uponwhich Jupiter at once promised to destroy the ship of Ulysses. ‘This,’ adds Ulysses, ‘I heard from Calypso, and she told me that she had herself heard it from Mercury[448].’Now this was no affair of Calypso’s; none, that is, on which the gods could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses: but it was one in which, from her passion for the hero, she would take a natural interest, and on which she might well obtain information from a deity who was her relative. Nor does it appear on what other ground Mercury should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official report.Again, it is probably on account of his Phœnician connection, that the intervention of Mercury is employed in the Tenth Odyssey[449], to supply Ulysses with the instructions that were necessary, in order to enable him to cope with Circe.For we are here in the midst of a cluster of traditions, which we have every reason to presume to be wholly Phœnician[450]. It is the cluster, which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey: and it is severed from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a geographical line, but by an entire change in mythological relations. From the time when Ulysses enters that circle in the beginning of the Ninth Book, until his appearance near Scheria, on the outskirt of the known familiar sphere, his ancient friend Minerva nowhere attends him: and there are four whole books without even a mention of the goddess, who, except for this interval, stands prominently forth in almost every page of the Odyssey. The divine aid is given to him, during this period, through Circe and Calypso; whileMercury is appointed to command the latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both the company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phœnician importation into Greece.Mercury recent in Greece.There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark that he had somewhat recently become known to the Greeks, agrees with other indications of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures, indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops[451]; and we do not receive any account of his infancy, as we do of the infancy of Dionysus and of Vulcan. But we may observe that, whenever he assumes human form, it is the form of one scarcely emerging from boyhood. In the last Iliad, he is aπρῶτον ὑπηνήτης, in the fairest flower of youth[452]. And in the Tenth Odyssey, where he makes his second and only other appearance to a mortal, the same line is repeated in order to describe his appearance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and not merely adapted to a particular occasion. Indeed it may reasonably be questioned, whether such adaptation exists at all. A very young person was not the most appropriate conductor for Priam, on such an errand as that which he had undertaken: nor the best instructor in the mode of coping with the formidable Circe. Therefore, without laying too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful appearance seems to be, that he was young in the Greek Olympus.There is yet another sign by which I think we may identify Mercury as, in the estimation of Homer, a deity known to be of foreign introduction. The list given by Jupiter in the Fourteenth Iliad of his intrigues, includes no reference to Maias, the mother of Mercury, or to Diana the mother of Venus. Yet it is a largeand elaborately constructed list, ending with Juno herself: and the question arises, on what principle was it constructed? I think the answer must be that, as it was addressed to Juno, the most Hellenic of all the Olympian deities, with whom he wished to be on good terms at the moment, so also it was intended, if not to give a full account of his Greek intrigues, yet at any rate that no tradition should appear in it, except such as Homer considered to be either native, or fully naturalized. It contains no reference, for example, to the mother of Sarpedon, the mother of Dardanus, the mother of Amphion and Zethus, the mother of Tantalus, (whom we have however only presumptions for reckoning as by Homeric tradition a son of Jupiter,) or even the mother of Æolus; whom it is possible that Homer may have regarded as Hellic, rather than properly Greek, though the father of illustrious Greek houses. If this be the rule, under which the Poet has framed the list, then the exclusion of Maias and her son remarkably coincides with the other evidence that tends to define his position as a deity of known and remembered foreign origin.His Olympian office and that of Iris.It may be convenient to notice in this place the statement which is commonly made, that Iris is the messenger of the gods in the Iliad, but that Mercury, except only in the Twenty-fourth Book of that Poem, is confined in this capacity to the Odyssey: a statement, on which has been founded a standing popular argument against the unity of authorship in the two poems, and also against the genuineness of the Twenty-fourth Iliad itself.The statement, however, appears to rest upon a pure misapprehension; for it assumes the identity of the character of Iris and Mercury respectively as messengers. Whereas there is really a difference, corresponding with the difference in dignity between the two deities: andHomer is in regard to them perfectly consistent with himself.Mercury is sometimes a messenger in the proper sense, and sometimes an agent, or an agent and messenger combined. It is not true that, so far as the Iliad is concerned, he only appears in the last Book in one of these capacities. For in the Second Book[453]we find, that he carried the Pelopid sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: which may mean either simply, that he was the bearer of it, or that by a commission he assisted Pelops in acquiring, or rather in founding, the Achæan throne in the Peloponnesus. In the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Mercury is not really a messenger at all[454]; but he is an agent, intrusted by Jupiter on the ground of special fitness with the despatch of a delicate and important business, the bringing Priam in safety to the presence of Achilles, and afterwards the withdrawing him securely from a position of the utmost danger. This is an office like that undertaken by Minerva in the Fourth Book, when, as she was commissioned to bring about a breach of the Pact by the Trojans, she repaired to Pandarus for the purpose. But the function of Iris is simply to carry messages, and chiefly from one deity to another; she is not onlyἄγγελος, butμετάγγελος[455]; she is not intrusted in any case with the conduct of transactions among men, or responsible for their issue, although in the Fifteenth Book she spontaneously advises the god Neptune in the sense of the message she has brought. It is not for Jupiter only that she acts: she also conveys a message, and a clandestine one, for Juno[456]. Nay, on one occasion, without any divine charge, hearing the prayer of Achilles totwo of the Winds, she spontaneously carries it to the palace, where they were all feasting together[457].Only in the Odyssey do we find Mercury unquestionably and simply discharging the duty of a messenger; and this on two occasions: the first, when he brought to Ægisthus the warning that his crimes, if committed, would be followed by retribution from the hand of Orestes; the second, when he communicated to Calypso the command to release Ulysses.But there is in reality no discrepancy whatever between the two poems: inasmuch as Mercury and Iris, though both messengers, act in different characters. Iris is in one case the spontaneous messenger, who carries a hero’s wish to subordinate deities; but she uniformly has this mark, that she never rises higher than to be the personal messenger of Jupiter. On the other hand, Mercury in the Odyssey is the official messenger, not of Jupiter individually, but in both cases of the Assembly of the gods: and the care, with which the distinction seems to be drawn, is very remarkable. It is true, the message to Calypso is calledΖηνὸς ἀγγελίη: but it became the message of Jupiter, because it was a proposal made by Minerva in the Olympian Assembly, and made on the part of all in the plural number, which was then duly adopted by Jupiter as the executive head of the body[458]:
The Persephone of Homer.
Although the Persephone of Homer is rarely brought before us, and our information respecting her is therefore slight, there seems to be sufficient ground for asserting that she is not the mere female reflection of Hades or Aidoneus.
It is only for those deities from whom other deities are drawn by descent, that we find in Homer a regular conjugal connection provided. Thus Neptune, as we have seen, cannot be said to have a wife in Homer. Amphitrite appears in the poems with a faint and indeed altogether doubtful personality, though she afterwards grew into his spouse. Now Neptune was a deity much more in view than Aides: and it is not likely that we should have found Persephone more fully developed than Amphitrite, had she not represented some older and more independent tradition.
Again, in cases where the female deity is the mere reflection of the male, we do not find her invested with a share in his dominion, although, as in the caseof Juno, she may occasionally and derivatively exercise some of the prerogatives, which in him have a higher and more unquestionable activity. Thus Tartarus is the region ofΚρόνος, not ofῬέα; air is the realm of Jupiter, not of Jupiter and Juno. But Persephone appears by the side of Hades as a substantive person; she is invoked with him by Althea to slay Meleager, in the Legend of the Ninth Iliad[405]: and the region in which she dwells is not less hers than his[406],
εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.
εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.
εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.
εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.
Indeed her personality is the better developed of the two: for no personal act is ascribed in the poems to Aides, except the indeterminate one of trembling, at the battle of the gods, lest the crust of earth should be broken through: and the name given him in the Iliad ofΖεὺς καταχθόνιος, subterranean Jupiter, may possibly suggest that he was sometimes viewed as hardly more than a form or function of the highest god: whereas, in the under-world of the Eleventh Odyssey, all the active functions of sovereignty are placed in her hands. It is she who gathers the women-shades for Ulysses: and it is she who disperses them when they have been passed in review. It is by her that Ulysses apprehends the head of Gorgo may be sent forth to drive him off, should he linger too long; it is by her that he apprehends he may have been deluded with anεἴδωλονor shade, instead of a substance; most of all, it is she who endows Tiresias, alone among the dead, with the character of the Seer[407]. In fine, the whole of the active duties of the nether kingdom appear to be in her hands.
That she was generally worshipped by the Hellenic tribes we must infer from the cases mentioned in theNinth Iliad, the one in Ætolia, the other farther North[408]; as well as from her office in regard to the thoroughly national region of the Shades.
Her marked and substantive character.
She has her own strongly marked set of epithets. Of these, one isἁγνὴ, the severely pure; for with Homerἁγνὸςis exclusively applicable to divine womanhood, and is given only to Diana and Persephone: then she isἀγαυὴ, the dread: and lastly, she isἐπαινὴ, an epithet appropriated to her exclusively, which appears to be Homer’s favourite method for sharply marking out individuality of character. Buttmann has also well observed, that she has this epithet only when mentioned along with Hades, that is, when shown very strictly in her official character; and thatἀγαυὴis used when she appears alone. Upon this he observes; ‘this way of joining the name of Proserpine with that of Pluto was an old epic formula, handed down even to Homer and our oldest Greek poets from still earlier times, and which they used unchanged[409].’ He would readἐπ’ αἰνὴ, instead ofἐπαινὴ, but this neither affects the sense (awful, terrible) nor the force of the exclusive appropriation.
There is another sign confirmatory of the belief that the origin of this mythical person must be sought, not in the necessity of finding a queen for Aidoneus, but in an anterior and distinct tradition. Namely, this; that, though she is a daughter of Jupiter[410], she is not provided with a mother. Thus she seems as if she were older than the Olympian œconomy. Venus, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are all equipped with a full parentage. The later tradition, which made Persephone the daughter of Ceres, has no other support from Homer thanthis, that we are left to suppose that Ceres had some offspring by Jupiter, while none is named[411].
The chain of presumptions appears to me to become complete, when we take into view two other pieces of evidence supplied by the poems. In the far East[412], beyond the couch of the morning Sun, some distance up the stream of the great river Ocean, but to the south of the point where it is entered, and at a spot where the shore narrows very much—immediately, in short, before the point of descent—are the groves of Persephone. According to the general rules of interpretation applicable to Homer, this appears to convey to us that the seat of her worship was in the far Southern East, and that her office, as there understood, was that of the goddess or queen of Death. And if she is indeed the reflection, in the mirror of the lower world, of any other known deity, then, both from this great office, and from the peculiar epithetἁγνὴ, it is most likely to be of Diana, with whom, in the later mythology, she was identified; and, again, through Diana, of Apollo, from whom the light of Diana herself was derived. Or, in other words, she may be for the lower world that reflection of Apollo, which the Homeric Diana was for this earth: and it is worth observation, that the gift of second sight, which she allows to Tiresias, and which therefore is at her disposal beneath ground[413], is the peculiar and exclusive property of Apollo.
Let us now lastly consider, what light the etymology of her remarkable name may afford us. Its meaning appears to be, either destruction by slaughter; from two roots, one that represented inἔπερσα, from the verbπέρθω, and the otherφόνη; or else, that of the destruction or slaughter of Persians. In the former view, the evidence leaves us where we were, or brings us a point nearer to Diana, whose function was not that of all death whatever, but of such death as might be called slaughter, because not due to disease, but brought about at the moment by a sudden process, though often the mildest of all ways of dying[414]. But the other etymology may be worth some further attention.
Her connection with the East.
Besides that cluster of traditions, relating to remote places, which the Greeks derived from the Phœnician navigators, and which cannot but have included some eastward wanderings in the Black Sea, as well as westward experience in the Mediterranean, they must in all likelihood have had oriental traditions properly their own, brought by their Hellic forefathers with them from their cradle. We have already seen that that cradle was probably Persia; and we have found traces of the connection in the name of the great pre-Achæan hero, Perseus, and in the continuing use of that name in the high Achæan family of Nestor, as well as at much later historic dates. Another link, connecting the Homeric traditions with this name, and both with the East, is found in the name of Perse, who was the mother of Circe, an Eastern goddess; and who was the daughter of Ocean, and the wife of the Sun[415].
We must take these circumstances into view along with the force of the name Persephone, and with the evidence we have already had of the antiquity of the traditions relating to her. To this we have to add the absence of any Homeric evidence connecting her with any other local source. There is no sign of any institution, that belonged to her worship, except in those groves planted in the far East; and no sign of any otherparticular locality marked as her peculiar abode, which we have found to be a mark of such invented deities generally as had a well developed personality. There is no note of her whatever in Troas; and nothing to connect her with Egypt, or with the Pelasgians in any quarter. It is not likely that she came in with the Phœnicians, as she would then have had signs of a recent origin, and would not have attained to so august and mysterious a position as she actually holds. The two distinct notices of her worship are both in the Homeric Hellas; not in Southern Greece, nor in the islands.
It seems, therefore, on every ground reasonable to suppose, that the tradition of Proserpine was an original Hellic tradition brought into the country from the East, probably by the Hellic tribes, and from among their Persian forefathers; and that the name of the deity, as we find it in Homer, affords a new indication of the extraction of the race.
Accordingly, the unusually substantive aspect of her position in the nether world, which makes her relation to Aidoneus so different from that of the other mythological wives, or feminines, to their respective husbands, is such, that it seems most reasonable, instead of deriving her from him, as Juno was derived from Jupiter, or Tethys from Ocean, to consider them as representing the union of two independent impersonations, associated together primarily by their common subject matter. For there does not seem to be any thing improbable in the hypothesis, that Persephone may, in the belief of some country and age, have served alone for the ruler of the region of the dead. Just as so many subordinate ministers of Doom, the Fates, the Erinues, and the Harpies, assumed the female form in the process of impersonation, so it may have been with their sovereign. And if we are to look farther for the metaphysical groundwork of such a tradition, we may perhaps find it as follows. There is a relation of analogy between each function and its converse: and as in the pure mythology, all that gave life was feminine, so conversely, all that represented the destroying agency might assume a similar form.
Her relation to Olympus.
In her case, as in that of one or two others, it is difficult to discover whether Homer meant a particular deity to be included, or not, among the Olympian gods of the ordinary or smaller assembly. There is no indication in the poems, which directly connects Persephone with Olympus; and that celestial palace may seem to belong to the government of the living world, and to be almost incapable of relations with that of the departed. Nor is she connected specially with the Olympian system, like Aidoneus, by the position which birth confers. Theἄλσος, and the worship paid her there, can hardly belong to the departed spirits on their way to their abode, and more probably indicate an ancient tradition deriving her worship from the far East. On the other hand, her dignity and majesty in the poems are unquestionable, and indeed superior to those of any Olympian deity, after some five or six. I do not find materials for a confident judgment on the Homeric view of her place in his theo-mythology, with reference to this particular point of connection with Olympus.
Founding conjecture upon the facts before us, I venture, however, on a further extension of these hypotheses with respect to Persephone. We perceive in Persephone and Diana that kind of likeness which may be due to their common origin; if, as we suppose, both were images of Apollo. But it is not likely that two such images should have been formed by the samerace for itself. Can we then, probably refer Diana and Persephone to different sources ethnically?
It is plain that Diana was worshipped in Troy and Greece. Persephone, so far as we know, in Greece only. This would agree with the supposition that Diana was originally Pelasgian, Persephone only Hellic.
Again, Diana was an earthly, Persephone a subterraneous reflection of Apollo. Now the Hellic tribes were lively believers in a future state: as we see from the communion of Achilles with the soul of Patroclus, and from many places in the Odyssey. But we have nowhere in Homer the slightest allusion among the Trojans to the belief in a future state, beyond the mere formula of entering the region of Aïdes. Neither the succinct account of the funeral rites of Hector, nor any one of the three addresses over his remains, contain the slightest allusion to his separate existence as a spirit. There is, indeed, mention of wine used to extinguish the flame of the funeral pile, but none of invocation along with it, as there is in the case of Patroclus[416]. And as we have no less than an hundred lines spoken over or otherwise bestowed upon the dead Hector, the omission is singular. It becomes still more significant, when we recollect that the Greeks, and their goddess Juno, invoke the deities of the under-world, and the powers connected with a future state, in their solemn oaths and imprecations[417]; but when Hector swears to Dolon, (our only example of a Trojan oath,) he adjures Jupiter alone[418]. Now it may be that the religion of Troy did not include so distinct a reference to a future state, as that of Greece, and that the Trojans knew nothing of Persephone, or of any deity holding her place. This hypothesis would at onceaccord with the features of the Homeric portrait, and with the striking absence among the Trojans of all pointed reference to a future life, or to the disembodied spirit. Nor need we consider it to be at all shaken by slight and formal allusions, or by the words in which Homer on his own part dismisses to Hades the spirit of the slain Hector[419]. The hypothesis which the circumstances appear to suggest is, not that the Trojans disbelieved a future existence, but that they neither felt keenly respecting it, nor gave a mythological development to the doctrine.
The Mars of Homer.
Even in Homer, Mars is externally the most imposing figure among the masculine deities of pure invention. The greatest of war-bards could not but find him a fine subject for poetical amplification. But in the Roman period he had far outgrown the limits of his Homeric position. With the lapse of time, the forces and passions, which gave to this impersonation its hold upon human nature, were sure to prevail in a considerable degree over the finer elements from which Apollo was moulded. It requires an effort of mind to liberate ourselves from the associations of the later mythology, and contract our vision for the purpose of estimating the Mars of Homer as he really is.
Notwithstanding his stature, beauty, hand and voice, which constitute, taken together, a proud appearance, it seems as if Mars had stood lower in the mind of Homer than any Olympian deity who takes part in the Trojan war, except Venus only.
The Odyssey never once brings Mars before us, even by way of allusion, except in the licentious lay of Demodocus; and the spirit of that lay certainly seems to aim at making him ridiculous, especially in the manner of his release and withdrawal. In the Iliad his part is, of course, more considerable; but on no occasion whatever does Homer apparently seek to set him off, or give him a commanding attitude in comparison with other deities.
We have nowhere any account of any act of reverence or worship done to him, either in or out of Greece. For instance, he is never, even in the contingencies of war, the object of prayer. He never shows command over the powers of nature, or the mind of man; which he nowhere attempts to influence by suggestion. It is said, indeed, that he entered into Hector, as that warrior was putting on the armour of Achilles;
δῦ δέ μιν Ἄρηςδεινὸς Ἐνυάλιος[420].
δῦ δέ μιν Ἄρηςδεινὸς Ἐνυάλιος[420].
δῦ δέ μιν Ἄρηςδεινὸς Ἐνυάλιος[420].
δῦ δέ μιν Ἄρης
δεινὸς Ἐνυάλιος[420].
But no words could more conclusively fix his place in the Homeric system as the mere impersonation of a Passion. For with Homer no greater deity, indeed, no other of the Olympian gods, is ever said to enter into the mind of a mortal man. In the Fifth Book he stirs up the warlike passion of Menelaus; having, like Venus, a limited hold upon a particular propensity. His climax of honour in this department is his givingθάρσοςto the Pseudo-Ulysses; but this he does only in conjunction with Minerva[421].
His limited worship and attributes.
His possession of the attributes of deity appears to have been most limited. The use of the wordἌρηςnot only for the passion of war, but even for its weapons, shows us that the impersonation was in this case as yet very partially disengaged from the metaphysicalideas, or the material objects, in which it took its rise.
His function as god of war was confined to the merely material side of war, and had nothing to do with that aspect, in which war enlists and exhausts all the higher faculties of the human mind; so much so, indeed, that to be a great general is almost necessary in order to enter the first rank of greatness at all. Even of war in the lower sense he had not, as a god, exclusive possession, but he administered his office in partnership with a superior, Minerva. Besides being every thing else that she was, she presided, along with him, over war. On the shield of Achilles, he and Minerva lead the opposing hosts[422]. Over the body of Patroclus the struggle was one of which, says the Poet, neither Mars nor Minerva could think lightly[423]. Achilles, when pursuing the Trojans, calls for assistance; for, says he, neither Mars nor Minerva could undertake to dispose of such a multitude[424]. Mars and Minerva, says Jupiter, will take charge of the concerns of war[425].
But that in this partnership he was an inferior, and not an equal, is clear from the manner in which he is habitually handled by Minerva. She wounds him through the spear of Diomed, when, unless saved by flight, he himself apprehends he might have perished[426]. In the Theomachy, she twice over strikes him powerless to the ground. In the Olympian meeting of the Fifteenth Book, when his intended visit to the battlefield menaces the gods with trouble from the displeasure of Jupiter, Minerva strips his armour off his back, scolds him sharply, and replaces him in his seat[427]. Andshe is pointed out by Jupiter as the person, whose habitual duty it was to keep him in order by the severest means[428];
ἥ ἑ μάλιστ’ εἴωθε κακῇς ὀδύνῃσι πελάζειν.
ἥ ἑ μάλιστ’ εἴωθε κακῇς ὀδύνῃσι πελάζειν.
ἥ ἑ μάλιστ’ εἴωθε κακῇς ὀδύνῃσι πελάζειν.
ἥ ἑ μάλιστ’ εἴωθε κακῇς ὀδύνῃσι πελάζειν.
In the Fifth Iliad, he stirs up the Trojans, and envelopes the fight in darkness: but here he is acting underἐφετμαὶ, or injunctions from Apollo[429], who thus appears, like Minerva, in the light of a superior to him, even in his own department.
We learn, again, that he was overcome and imprisoned by the youths Otus and Ephialtes, whom Apollo subdued: he was in bondage for thirteen months, and would have perished, had not Mercury released him[430].
He is able to assume the human figure, and, as we have seen, to bring darkness over contending hosts: but, when in Olympus, he remains ignorant[431]of the death of his son Ascalaphus, until he receives the information from Juno; as it was only from his Nymphs that the Sun learned the slaughter of his oxen. Nay, Minerva even puts on a particular helmet, in order that it may secure her from being recognised by Mars when within his view[432].
Mars in the Olympian court bears some resemblance to Ajax among the Grecian heroes. But the intellectual element, which appears to be simply blunt in Ajax, in Mars seems to be wholly wanting: so that he represents an animal principle in its crudest form: and is not so much an Ajax, as a Caliban.
We are not told that he is greedy of sacrifices, for nocultusis assigned to him: but he is representedas greedy of blood, and as capable of being satiated with it[433].
Except with Venus for his mere person, he has no favour with any other Olympian deities[434]. Juno describes him as lawless and as a fool: and Jupiter tells him that, were he the son of any other deity but himself, he would long ago have been ejected from his place in heaven[435].
On one occasion, his name is associated with those of Agamemnon and Neptune: but the due relation between them is still preserved. Agamemnon is compared with Jupiter as to his face and head; with Neptune as to his chest; and with Mars as to his waist. The eyes of Hector on the field of battle were like the Gorgon, and like Mars[436].
From the repeated allusions to contingencies in which he would have perished, there seems to be something more or less equivocal even about his title to immortality. If more, he is also much less, than man. He is perhaps the least human of the Olympian family; and is a compound between deity and brute.
The exhibitions of Mars, as wounded by Diomed for the Iliad, and in the lay of Demodocus for the Odyssey, seem to imply that this deity could not, in the time of Homer, have become an object of general or established religious worship in Greece.
Mars as yet scarcely Greek.
He is a local deity, and his abode is in Thrace. From thence he issues forth with his mythical son Terror to make war upon the Ephyri: a race whose name has a strong Greek savour, and whose hostile relation to Mars thus exhibited, tends, with other evidence, to place him in the category of foreign deities, not yetnaturalized in the country, though made available by Homer for his Olympian Court. After the detection in the palace of Vulcan, it is to Thrace that he again repairs.
We are not to consider this paramount Thracian relation as absolutely separating him from Greece: Thracians, like Pelasgi, had links with both parties in the war, though the stronger ones are apparently those which connect them with Troy.
He has among the deities the nickname ofἀλλοπρόσαλλος, or turncoat, because of his vacillation between the two parties. This singular epithet, applied to the Thracian god, conveys the idea that Homer, knowing of the sympathies of the name with both sides, was puzzled as to placing him decisively on either. Now the Thracians of Homer wereἀκρόκομοι[437], while the Achæans wereκαρηκομόωντες. And it is worth notice that the Germans of Tacitus, among whom we find marked signs of resemblance to the Hellenic tribes, wore in general flowing hair, but the Suevi, one particular tribe of them, on the contrary, gathered it into a knot[438].
Mars, however, incurs the particular wrath of Juno by abandoning the party of the Greeks, and siding with the Trojans. But in the Fifteenth Book, where Juno acquaints him of the death of his son, who had fought in the Greek ranks, she evidently does it in the expectation that grief and resentment will once more make him a foe to the Trojans. And her calculation is well founded: for he is setting out with that intention, when Minerva follows, and roughly brings him back.
He only appears once in a pre-Troic legend. This appearance, too, is beyond the borders of Greece. InLycia he, or, it may be, simply warlike passion which he represents, slays Isander, the son of Bellerophon and uncle of Glaucus, in battle with the Solymi. Still he is the father by Astyoche, of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Minyeian Orchomenus, or else farther towards the north of Greece.
The Homeric indications, on the whole, as well as the general conceptions of the character, represent Mars as neither a deity indigenous to the country, nor one belonging to the Hellenic traditions: while the Poet perhaps intends us to understand that he had points of contact or affinity with Greece, which are represented in his wavering attitude between the two parties to the war. It is probable that the Poet himself may have been a principal agent in the introduction of Mars to Hellenic worship. The machinery of the Iliad required him to find an array of gods, who should be champions on each side respectively. It also required that these gods should be united round a centre, which he provided for them in Olympus and in its Court, under the presidency of Jupiter. Both Mars and Venus may thus have made good a title, which before was doubtful and imperfect, through the place to which they were promoted in the Iliad, combined with the place which the Iliad itself won for itself in the national understanding and affections.
The Mercury of Homer.
The Homeric signs respecting Mercury are sufficient to fix his character and origin. The small part, which this deity plays in the poems, is indeed in remarkable contrast with the extended popularity to which at a later period he attained: but his character in Homer isone which accounts in a natural manner for the subsequent increase in his importance.
He is the son of Maias, Od. xiv. 435; and of Jupiter, Od. viii. 335.
He is the man of business for the Olympian deities,διάκτορος. Od. viii. 335. v. 28[439].
He is the giver of increase,δῶτορ ἐάων. Od. viii. 335. Il. xiv. 490.
He is the most sociable of deities, Il. xxiv. 334.σοὶ γάρ τε μάλιστά γε φίλτατόν ἐστιν ἀνδρὶ ἑταίρισσαι.
The extraction of Mercury stands somewhat obscurely in Homer: his mother Maias is but once mentioned, and then without any clue. But, in the ancient hymn to Mercury, she is declared to be the daughter of Atlas: and if this be so, we shall be justified in considering him as the child of a Phœnician tradition[440]. This is also clear on Homeric grounds. Although Homer does not expressly connect him with Atlas, he makes Calypso, the daughter of that personage, address him asαἰδοῖός τε φίλος τε. These expressions are usually applied by him where there is some special relation of consanguinity, affinity, or guestship: as between Jupiter and his adopted child[441]and particular friend Thetis. It is therefore probable that Homer took Mercury’s mother Maias to be, as the after-tradition made her, the sister of Calypso, and the daughter of Atlas. All the other Homeric signs of him are in complete harmony with this hypothesis of a Phœnician origin for Mercury.
We thus understand how he becomes the general agent for the gods: because the Phœnicians supplied the first and principal means of communication betweenthe several nations in the heroic age: they were the men-of-business for the world[442].
It thus becomes plain, again, how he can with propriety be called the giver of comforts or blessings; because the basis of commerce is this, that each person engaged in it parts with something which he does not want, and receives what he does want in return.
The apparent anomaly, which makes the god of increase also the god of thievery, is thus explained: because, from its nature, commerce is ever apt to degenerate partially into fraud; and because, in days of the strong hand, force as well as intelligence would often make it easy for the maritime merchants to change their vocation, for the occasion, into that of plunder[443].
His proper office in regard to theἔργαof men seems not to be industry, nor skill in production or manufacture; but handiness and tidiness in the performance of services. He, says Ulysses, gives to theἔργα, which may mean both the deeds and the industrial productions of men, theirχάριςandκῦδος, their grace and credit or popularity[444].
Mercury the god of increase.
This idea of increase forms the common or central element of the various attributes assigned to Mercury. It takes two principal forms, one that of increase in material goods, the other that of the propagation of the race. This latter, which was elsewhere grossly exhibited, is veiled by Homer with his almost unfailing sense of delicacy, and may not, indeed, have been fully developed in his time. It is perhaps however traceable in two passages of the poems: first, that of the Sixteenth Iliad, where we are told that he corrupted the virgin Polymele[445], though she belonged to thetrain of Diana. The other is in the episode of Venus and Mars, where Apollo selects him as the deity to whom to put the question, whether he would like to take the place of the adulterer, and he replies in the affirmative[446]. Each of these incidents seems to appertain to something distinctive in his character.
That character, again, imports the extended intercourse with mankind, and the knowledge of the world, which causes him to be chosen, in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad, for the difficult office of conducting Priam to the abode of Ulysses. Moreover, the great balance of material benefit which commerce brings gives him, its patron, as a general rule, a genial and philanthropic aspect. In Homer we have nowhere any sign of his vengeance, anger, or severity. He neither punishes, hates, nor is incensed with any one. A passionless and prudent deity, he not only declines actual fighting with Latona, as she is a wife of Jupiter, but spontaneously gives her leave to boast among the gods that she has engaged and worsted him.
Mercury Hellenic and Phœnician.
The Phœnician origin of Mercury will also account for his position in the poems, in relation to the Trojans and Greeks respectively. Not simply is he one of the five Hellenizing deities: for his talents would naturally with Homer tend to place him on that side. But he appears almost wholly unknown to the Trojans. The abundance of the flocks of Phorbas is indeed referred to his love (Il. xiv. 490): and he reveals himself to Priam by his name (Il. xxiv. 460): but it is remarkable, and contrary to the general rule of the poems, that Priam, notwithstanding his great obligations, takes no notice whatever of his deity, either upon hisfirst revelation and departure, or when a second time he appears, and afterwards quits him anew (682–94).
On the other hand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the Greeks. He conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: he carries the warning of the gods to Ægisthus: sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca: and he is liberally treated with sacrifices by Autolycus in Parnesus, where he repays his worshipper by bestowing on him the arts of perjury and purloining[447].
Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had much intercourse with the Phœnicians. On the other hand, the Trojans, wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little or nothing of maritime commerce. Their intercourse with Thrace, the fertile Thrace that furnished a contingent of allies, required no more than that they should have the means of crossing the Straits of Gallipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or harbour. A Phœnician deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achæan side during the war.
Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of agent, have been with perfect propriety sent to Calypso: but his mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection with Phœnician traditions, give a peculiar propriety to his employment on this errand.
Another passage of the Odyssey seems, however, to place this relationship beyond doubt. Ulysses, in the Twelfth Book, recounts to Alcinous the transaction that occurred in the Olympian Assembly after his crew had slain the oxen of the Sun. On that occasion, the offended deity declared that, unless he got compensation, he would go down and shine in the realm of Aides; uponwhich Jupiter at once promised to destroy the ship of Ulysses. ‘This,’ adds Ulysses, ‘I heard from Calypso, and she told me that she had herself heard it from Mercury[448].’
Now this was no affair of Calypso’s; none, that is, on which the gods could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses: but it was one in which, from her passion for the hero, she would take a natural interest, and on which she might well obtain information from a deity who was her relative. Nor does it appear on what other ground Mercury should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official report.
Again, it is probably on account of his Phœnician connection, that the intervention of Mercury is employed in the Tenth Odyssey[449], to supply Ulysses with the instructions that were necessary, in order to enable him to cope with Circe.
For we are here in the midst of a cluster of traditions, which we have every reason to presume to be wholly Phœnician[450]. It is the cluster, which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey: and it is severed from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a geographical line, but by an entire change in mythological relations. From the time when Ulysses enters that circle in the beginning of the Ninth Book, until his appearance near Scheria, on the outskirt of the known familiar sphere, his ancient friend Minerva nowhere attends him: and there are four whole books without even a mention of the goddess, who, except for this interval, stands prominently forth in almost every page of the Odyssey. The divine aid is given to him, during this period, through Circe and Calypso; whileMercury is appointed to command the latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both the company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phœnician importation into Greece.
Mercury recent in Greece.
There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark that he had somewhat recently become known to the Greeks, agrees with other indications of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures, indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops[451]; and we do not receive any account of his infancy, as we do of the infancy of Dionysus and of Vulcan. But we may observe that, whenever he assumes human form, it is the form of one scarcely emerging from boyhood. In the last Iliad, he is aπρῶτον ὑπηνήτης, in the fairest flower of youth[452]. And in the Tenth Odyssey, where he makes his second and only other appearance to a mortal, the same line is repeated in order to describe his appearance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and not merely adapted to a particular occasion. Indeed it may reasonably be questioned, whether such adaptation exists at all. A very young person was not the most appropriate conductor for Priam, on such an errand as that which he had undertaken: nor the best instructor in the mode of coping with the formidable Circe. Therefore, without laying too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful appearance seems to be, that he was young in the Greek Olympus.
There is yet another sign by which I think we may identify Mercury as, in the estimation of Homer, a deity known to be of foreign introduction. The list given by Jupiter in the Fourteenth Iliad of his intrigues, includes no reference to Maias, the mother of Mercury, or to Diana the mother of Venus. Yet it is a largeand elaborately constructed list, ending with Juno herself: and the question arises, on what principle was it constructed? I think the answer must be that, as it was addressed to Juno, the most Hellenic of all the Olympian deities, with whom he wished to be on good terms at the moment, so also it was intended, if not to give a full account of his Greek intrigues, yet at any rate that no tradition should appear in it, except such as Homer considered to be either native, or fully naturalized. It contains no reference, for example, to the mother of Sarpedon, the mother of Dardanus, the mother of Amphion and Zethus, the mother of Tantalus, (whom we have however only presumptions for reckoning as by Homeric tradition a son of Jupiter,) or even the mother of Æolus; whom it is possible that Homer may have regarded as Hellic, rather than properly Greek, though the father of illustrious Greek houses. If this be the rule, under which the Poet has framed the list, then the exclusion of Maias and her son remarkably coincides with the other evidence that tends to define his position as a deity of known and remembered foreign origin.
His Olympian office and that of Iris.
It may be convenient to notice in this place the statement which is commonly made, that Iris is the messenger of the gods in the Iliad, but that Mercury, except only in the Twenty-fourth Book of that Poem, is confined in this capacity to the Odyssey: a statement, on which has been founded a standing popular argument against the unity of authorship in the two poems, and also against the genuineness of the Twenty-fourth Iliad itself.
The statement, however, appears to rest upon a pure misapprehension; for it assumes the identity of the character of Iris and Mercury respectively as messengers. Whereas there is really a difference, corresponding with the difference in dignity between the two deities: andHomer is in regard to them perfectly consistent with himself.
Mercury is sometimes a messenger in the proper sense, and sometimes an agent, or an agent and messenger combined. It is not true that, so far as the Iliad is concerned, he only appears in the last Book in one of these capacities. For in the Second Book[453]we find, that he carried the Pelopid sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: which may mean either simply, that he was the bearer of it, or that by a commission he assisted Pelops in acquiring, or rather in founding, the Achæan throne in the Peloponnesus. In the Twenty-fourth Iliad, Mercury is not really a messenger at all[454]; but he is an agent, intrusted by Jupiter on the ground of special fitness with the despatch of a delicate and important business, the bringing Priam in safety to the presence of Achilles, and afterwards the withdrawing him securely from a position of the utmost danger. This is an office like that undertaken by Minerva in the Fourth Book, when, as she was commissioned to bring about a breach of the Pact by the Trojans, she repaired to Pandarus for the purpose. But the function of Iris is simply to carry messages, and chiefly from one deity to another; she is not onlyἄγγελος, butμετάγγελος[455]; she is not intrusted in any case with the conduct of transactions among men, or responsible for their issue, although in the Fifteenth Book she spontaneously advises the god Neptune in the sense of the message she has brought. It is not for Jupiter only that she acts: she also conveys a message, and a clandestine one, for Juno[456]. Nay, on one occasion, without any divine charge, hearing the prayer of Achilles totwo of the Winds, she spontaneously carries it to the palace, where they were all feasting together[457].
Only in the Odyssey do we find Mercury unquestionably and simply discharging the duty of a messenger; and this on two occasions: the first, when he brought to Ægisthus the warning that his crimes, if committed, would be followed by retribution from the hand of Orestes; the second, when he communicated to Calypso the command to release Ulysses.
But there is in reality no discrepancy whatever between the two poems: inasmuch as Mercury and Iris, though both messengers, act in different characters. Iris is in one case the spontaneous messenger, who carries a hero’s wish to subordinate deities; but she uniformly has this mark, that she never rises higher than to be the personal messenger of Jupiter. On the other hand, Mercury in the Odyssey is the official messenger, not of Jupiter individually, but in both cases of the Assembly of the gods: and the care, with which the distinction seems to be drawn, is very remarkable. It is true, the message to Calypso is calledΖηνὸς ἀγγελίη: but it became the message of Jupiter, because it was a proposal made by Minerva in the Olympian Assembly, and made on the part of all in the plural number, which was then duly adopted by Jupiter as the executive head of the body[458]: