BURIAL AND THE FUTURE LIFE

[1]Iliad, vi. 48, ix. 365, 366, x. 379, xi. 133;Odyssey, xiv. 324, xxi. 10.

[2]Iliad, vii. 472seqq.

[3]Ibid. viii. 232.

[4]Ridgeway,Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 413-416.

[5]J. H. S., 1907, p. 320.

[6]Cf. "Burial and the Future Life."

[7]Evans,Prehistoric Tombs of Cnossos, p. 134.

[8]Iliad, iv. 123.

[9]vii. 141seqq.

[10]Helbig,Homerische Epos, 1887, pp. 330, 331. Bérard,Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, 1902, vol. i. 435. Cauer,Grundfragen des Homer-kritik, pp. 183-189. Naber, Quaestiones Homericae, 1897, p. 60.

[11]Iliad, xxiii. 826-835.

[12]Napier,Life of Dundee, vol. iii. p. 724. Notices in the Stuart MSS., Windsor Castle.

[13]Iliad, xviii. 34, xxiii. 30 (butchers' tools);Odyssey, ix. 391 ("great axes" and adzes);Iliad, xxiii. 850 (axes). The axes through which Odysseus shot the arrow (nine times in theOdyssey). Battle-axe; this is of bronze (Iliad, xiii. 611, ἀξίνη), axes as tools are πελέκεις. "Iron" as a synonym for wheelwrights' tools (Iliad, iv. 485). Iron butchers' axes (Iliad, xvii. 520;Odyssey, iii. 442-449).

[14]Scripta Minoa, vol. i. p. 61, note 1.

[15]Evans, Prehistoric Tombs of Cnossos, p. 107.

[16]Odyssey, xvi. 294, xix. 13.

[17]Homerische Epos, p. 331.

[18]Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 295, 296. Mr. Ridgeway does not notice the many objections to the whole passage.

[19]Hesiod,Works and Days, 150, 151.

[20]Leaf,Iliad, vol. i. p. 524.

[21]Odyssey, xix. 13.

[22]Mr. Murray,R. G. E. p. 154, note 1, writes that when I regard the proverb that "iron of itself draws a man on" as an interpolation, "this seems like giving up most of the case." But it is no part of my case that not a single interpolation exists in either theIliadorOdyssey. There is scarcely a critic, whatever his views, who does not suspect the passages which we have been discussing. If Mr. Murray does not see evidence of un-Homeric confusion in the passages, his view is peculiar; and if I am biassed, when I see those signs, by my ideas about iron, he may be also unconsciously biassed by his opposite ideas. If a critic desires to prove that iron was in common use for weapons during the evolution of theOdyssey, will he aver that—were no iron in question—he would see nothing suspicious in the passages?

The most perplexing questions in Homer's picture of life are connected with the disposal of the dead. It is just here, where archaeology as a rule gives the surest evidence from the examination of graves, that archaeology so far seems to fail us. Yet Homer speaks with no uncertain voice. From the fifty-second line of the first book of theIliadto the funeral of Hector in the twenty-fourth book, Homer always tells of cremation, "and ever the pyres of the dead burned in multitude." There may be slight variations in practice, as regards burning his armour with the dead warrior; and the funeral of Patroclus, in which the love and the rage of Achilles expended themselves, has features not usually recorded by Homer,—the circumstances being peculiar,—but there is always cremation, always the urn-burial of the bones, always the cairn piled above them with its pillar on the summit; yet no such Homeric cairn has yet been discovered.

Yet Homer certainly describes no invented rites: cremation, urn-burial, the linen wrapping of the urn (gold, bronze, or of pottery), and the cairn are familiar from remains of the Bronze and early Iron Age in northern and central Europe: the custom in our islands appears to have survived the dawn of Christianity, and is perfectly well remembered by the Christian author of the Anglo-Saxon epic,Beowulf. Contrasting pagan times with his own, he writes: "Woe is his who is destined,through savage hate,to thrust his soul into the fire's embrace, to hope for no comfort, in no wise to change."

"Weal is his who may after his death-day stand before the Lord, and claim a refuge in the Father's arms."[1]

This burial by fire, this want of hope, this changeless, helpless future, are what Achilles endured and deplored.[2]"Rather would I on earth be the hind of a landless man than king over all the dead." Thus the dying Beowulf asks to be buried: "Bid ye the warriors raise a far-seen cairn for me after the funeral fire on a head-land by the sea ... so that seafarers who drive their tall ships over the spray of ocean shall thereafter call itBeowulf's barrow."[3]

So, too, spoke the ghost of Elpenor on the limit of Oceanus to Odysseus: "Burn me with my armour, all that is mine, and pile for me a cairn by the shore of the grey sea, memorial of a luckless man, that men unborn may inquire of me."[4]The customs and ideas are identical, but no such cairns have we found in Homeric lands, whereas they are common in our islands.

Meanwhile the burial customs of the Aegean folk in Crete and in Greece were not those known to Homer. They used "shaft-graves," deeply sunk in earth, luckily for us, since in these were found the unsunned treasures of Mycenae. They also used "chamber-tombs," and "pit-graves," and stone-builttholoschambers, beehive shaped, not cairns of earth covering a small chamber of stone. They did not, in the Bronze Age, burn the dead, but buried him, often in a largelarnaxor coffer of pottery; and they deposited rich grave-goods, which Homer never mentions. In a chamber-tomb at Muliana in Crete were found unburned bones with weapons of bronze, and an Aegean "false-necked vase"; whilehard by in the same chamber were "cremated bones, in a cinerary geometric urn," and an iron sword and dagger.[5]

"Here," says Mr. Evans, "we have the interesting spectacle of the succession of corpse-burial by cremation, and of iron weapons by bronze, apparently without any break in the indigenous stock." The Aegean Bronze Age of burial passes into the Iron Age of cremation. About the change of custom without change of stock or race we cannot be quite certain, but cremation makes its appearance in association with iron weapons, which Homer's men do not use, while they do practise cremation and cairn-burial, which has left no known traces in the Bronze Age of Greece.

It is suggested by Mr. Murray, as by Helbig, that cremation was adopted, during the dark age of the Migrations, by men who wished to burn their dead "into their ultimate dust," that the dust might not be violated by hostile hands. The custom, Mr. Murray suggests, was a revival of what the Northerners had used "in the forest country from which they came." Possibly if wood were very scarce in Crete and Greece, the Northerners there might adopt the local method of burial, and revert to their own custom at Troy, where Ida furnished forests. But Homer supposes cremation and caim-burial to be universal in Greece; and his whole theory of the future life rests on cremation. The rite admits the dead to the House of Hades, ineffectual shadows, unfed, unfeared, unworshipped; and from the House of Hades they never return. By the eighth century, and so on continuously, ghostscanappear to men, and are fed, feared, and worshipped, as they had been in Aegean times. The belief of Homer is the belief of Israel, Hades is the Sheol of Samuel. The manners of ancient Israel are of interest as regards cremation.The Philistines treated the corpse of Saul as Hector meant to treat that of Patroclus, whose head he would have set on a spike above the wall of Troy. "They fastened Saul's body to the wall of Beth-shan." His sons' corpses were used in the same way, but were rescued by valiant Israelites, who burned the bones and buried them under a tree. This appears to have been done for the purpose of concealing the bones from further outrage. No cairn is mentioned.[6]But cremation, in the case of kings at least, appears to have persisted in Israel and Judah. Asa, king of Judah, when he died, was "laid in the bed which was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices; and they made a very great burning for him." His tomb he had caused to be digged for him; there his bones were laid.[7]Of Jehoram we read that "his people made no burning for him, like the burning of his forefathers."[8]Jeremiah prophesies for Zedekiah: "Thou shalt die in peace: and with the burnings of thy forefathers, the former kings which were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee."[9]In Israel an unusual lack of interest in the future life accompanied cremation of kings, if cremated they were; but the commentators prefer to believe that they were not, and that only odorous substances and "furniture" were burned. Why burn furniture?[10]But Homer's faith is unique in Greece, Aegean or historic it represents a single age of culture—which has left no material proof of its existence.

Homer's burial rites cannot have arisen out of a practice adopted during the Migrations, for no people that wished to conceal the resting-place of their dead would raise above it a conspicuous cairn and pillar, for the very purpose of keeping the dead in perpetual memory.Such cairns would merely have invited desecration during the Migrations.[11]

I can only conclude that Homer describes what is certainly an actual and widely-diffused non-Aegean mode of burial, with the equally non-Aegean and non-historic belief about the future life. Why the practice has left no material traces, as of cairns, is an insoluble question at present.[12]The historical Hellenes, however, knew many tombs, probably barrows or cairns, which they assigned to men and women of the Heroic Age. Pausanias often mentions such tombs, which he saw, but he does not usually describe them. In a few cases he speaks of barrows or cairns of earth, as at Epidaurus the grave of Phocus, slain by Peleus. It was a "mound of earth, and on it a rough stone." At Olympia was the tomb of Oenomaus, "a piled up mound, with stones" (vi. 21. 3). At Pergamus beyond Caicus, the grave of Auge, "a mound of earth with a stone wall round it" (viii. 4-9). The grave of Aepytus (mentioned inIliad, ii. 604), "a pile of earth, not very high, surrounded by a coping of stone" (viii. 16. 3). The tomb of Homer's Areithous of the iron mace was near Mantinea in Arcadia; it is "a tomb with a stone base" (viii. 11).The attribution of the graves to known heroes may often have been fanciful; in many cases two or more have claimed one hero's grave. While the belief in heroes existed, barrows would not be robbed. Pausanias speaks, however, twice of cinerary urns containing heroic ashes of Ariadne at Argos (ii. 23. 8), and of Eurytus, son of Melaneus; but here a dream warned Pausanias to be silent about the urn of bronze (iv. 33).

Thus there were cairns enough, believed to be of heroic and pre-Homeric date.

It has been suggested that the elaborate enclosure of circles of stone, with a coping, round the shaft-graves of the acropolis of Mycenae, was originally meant to contain a barrow of earth. But several grave-stones were found in the earth; and it is unlikely that a barrow would be heaped over the grave-pillars, or that so many would be set up on the top of a barrow. The cairn seems to be Homeric, not "Mycenaean."

Historic Greece had no one orthodox belief as to the condition of departed souls. Homer has, on the other hand, an orthodoxy; the ghost of the man who does not receive due burning and burial is an outcast, perhaps a mischievous outcast from the company in the halls of Hades and in the meads of asphodel, whiletheyare but shadows of themselves, unfed, unless some bold adventurer goes to them and sheds the blood of the black ram.Thatwas another thing than pouring libations into the tomb.

Considering the fact that phantasms of the dead are probably as common in one age as in another, Homer is singularly free from superstition about them. Even Lucretius did not deny that such apparitions appear; he tried to explain their appearance as traces left, somehow, on something, we know not what or how, a theory lately revived. Homer denies ghosts; and his view, we may say, can never, in his own time, have beenpopular: it is the view of a class, not of a people.

But, as Mr. Leaf justly observes, there are vestiges in Homer of other rites than his own. The word ταρχύειν, to preserve, whether by embalment, or merely by drying or kippering, is used, in a general sense, for doing all the rites of the dead.[13]The word may survive from an age when mummification, not cremation, was the rule; honey may have been employed; and the pots of honey and of oil placed by Achilles against the bier of Patroclus may represent a faint vestige of survival.[14]The usage lasted at Athens, the pointed lekythoi were ranged round the bier. Why Achilles slew two dogs and four horses, and threw them on the pyre, he did not know himself; he thought that he slaughtered twelve Trojan prisoners merely in anger.[15]He had no conscious purpose to send horses, dogs, and thralls into Hades for the use of his friend; he did not burn the arms of his friend. InIliad, xxiv. 595, he promises to Patroclus a share of the ransom of Hector's body; but all these things are spoken of only in connection with the passion of Achilles. Customs almost forgotten revive or are reinvented in the mind of the hero, extravagances of grief and anger.

There is a variation in the last book of theOdyssey; the souls of the unburied Wooers arrive among the dead in Hades, though their bodies are unburned. The passage is usually reckoned late, and these spirits are under the special guidance of Hermes.

Even in these shadowy matters, Homer presents a view' unusually consistent; and the view was not held either in Aegean times, or in "Dipylon" days, or in the eighth century by the Cyclic poets, or in historic Greece. In this, as in all things, the world of Homer stands apart. There is possibly one note of change in Homeric burial. The phrase κτέρεα κτερεΐξαι, as inIliad, xxiv. 38, means the burning of some of a man'spossessions on his funeral pyre. It occurs but once in theIliad, in the case of the funeral of Hector; but frequently in theOdyssey, about the funeral rites of Odysseus, if he proves to have died abroad. The only possessions of Patroclus which are burned are dogs and horses; not his arms, as in the cases of Eetion and Elpenor. In these cases, perhaps, a slight variation in burial rites may be detected. It looks as though, in the cases where the arms of the dead are burned with them, they were expected to be of use to them in the future life, as to Melissa, wife of Periander, who was cold in Hades, because her wardrobe had not been burned.

[1]Beowulf, 184-188, Mr. Clark Hall's translation.

[2]Odyssey, xi. 489-491.

[3]Beowulf, 2803-2808.

[4]Odyssey, xi. 74-76.

[5]Burrows,Discoveries in Crete, p. 101. Evans,Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos, p. 134.

[6]1 Sam. xxxi. 10-13.

[7]2 Chron. xvi. 14.

[8]2 Chron. xxi. 19.

[9]Jer. xxxiv. 5.

[10]Hastings'Dict. of Bible, art. "Cremation."

[11]R. G. E. pp. 72, 73. Mr. Murray supposes cremation, withsecretburial. If so, the cairn was a later addition made in settled times, after the Migrations.

[12]Mr. Burrows remarks: "Neither Professor Ridgeway nor Mr. Lang is able to make the slightest use of the combinations suggested by the East Cretan graves," in which, for example, bronze weapons and inhumated bones are found side by side with burned bones, in urns, and iron weapons (Discoveries in Crete, p. 215). The facts are certainly of no use to any theory of mine: they are quite un-Homeric facts. I can only state the question thus: Homer uniformly describes a very well known mode of burial. Did he invent it? Did he receive it from tradition; and if so, from a tradition of what place and period? Is it possible that a poet of the age of overlapping of bronze and iron, of inhumation and cremation, in Greece, persists in reproducing, in great detail, a method of burial removed from his own experience by all the time that had passed since the Achaeans left their northern forests? If they retained the mode in Greece, where are the cairns?

[13]Iliad, vii. 85. The word is also found, Iliad, xvi. 456 = 674.

[14]xxiii. 170, 171.

[15]xxiii. 23.

In religion, as in all things, the Homeric world at certain points stands apart from the worlds that preceded and followed it. The Aegeans probably did not givedivinehonours to the dead. Over Royal tombs in the acropolis of Mycenae was "a small round altar with a well-like opening in the middle, which had doubtless been used for sacrificing to the dead."[1]This is ghost-feeding, not ghost-divinising. We have also a Cretan picture of a ghost standing outside his tomb, while an ox is sacrificed to him, the blood falling into the vessel. But such traces of hero-worship are rare in Aegean art, and Cretanartshows no representations of sacrifice of animals to gods. There was, indeed, an ancient tradition that Minos abolished blood-sacrifices.[2]Certain sites, however, show bones of animals sacrificed in Minoan times.

On the other hand, worship of high gods is frequently represented on Aegean engraved rings and in pictures. While there is no representation of blood-sacrifice to gods, fruit of a sacred tree is often plucked, by attendants, for goddesses, standing or seated.[3]

In the acropolis of Mycenae (in 1886) was found an apparent representation of a god, on a table of lime-stone. "In the centre stands, on a blue ground, a man or an idol, covered with a large shield in the shape of two circles joined together." This is the usual Aegean figure-of-eight shield, which is found by itself in little objects of glass and other materials, called "palladia." "On either side of the idol stands a woman, apparently in an attitude of prayer. Between the idol and the woman on the right is an altar-like object, resembling the bases under the feet of the lions at the Lions' gate."[4]

On a scene of cult, on a large gold ring found at Mycenae, is, in mid-air "a small apparently descending image of a god," armed and shielded.[5]He also appears on a ring of Cnossos, and is, in Mr. Evans's opinion, a sky- or sun-god. If so, the Greeks would identify him with their own Zeus, a sky-god in his earliest aspect as indicated by his name (also a god ofeverything, in cult).

This male deity is much less prominent in Mycenaean art than a great goddess. In the Mycenaean ring already cited she sits under a tree, probably sacred: a little female figure in a flounce skirt gathers fruit. The goddess, like Demeter in Theocritus (Idyll vii.), holds poppy heads in her hand; women bring her flowers. Above her is a ceremonial double axe, symbol of power, and overhead are sun and crescent moon.

Mr. Evans thinks that the ceremonial double axe, or rather pair of double axes, "may be an image of the conjunction of the divine pair, a solar and lunar deity."[6]The art indicates tree- and pillar-worship as prevalent, whether the deities were supposed to embody themselves in trees and pillars or not. A slab of offering, inscribed in Aegean characters, with three small basins for libations, was found in the Dictaean cave, and was appropriateto the offerings of honey, wine, and water to the infant Zeus of the Cretan birth-myth of Zeus, or to the Homeric three libations to the dead in Hades. There was also a sacrificial stratum, with bones of oxen, deer, and goats. It must be borne in mind that though the myth of the birth of Zeus in the Cretan cave is most famous, Pausanias says that it was hard to count the Greek cities which claimed to be the places of his nativity.[7]He gives four or five instances in Messenia and Arcadia.

A goddess between two lions,[8]or on a mountain top guarded by lions, an armed god standing by (in a gold ring), reminds us of Cybele, or of Rhea, mother of the Gods of Homer. A goddess holding in each hand a water fowl or other animal is common in Aegean art; and a god in the same attitude, is a gold figure of the Aegina treasure (circ. 850 B.C.), in the British Museum. In the contemporary and later finds in the temple of Artemis Orthia, at Sparta, such female figures are very common, and in the earliest Ionian temple at Ephesus. They persist into the sixth century B.C., and are representations of Artemis as a goddess of the wild things, Homer's Artemis Agrotera.[9]

Thus, undeniably, archaic and heroic Greece carried on Aegean representations of deities; even the Cretan goddess holding serpents has, in Greek art, an Artemis with snakes to represent her. But, so much earlier and nearer to Aegean times, in Homer, the goddess, as Artemis, shows her later and more truly Hellenic aspects, and is the chaste sister of Apollo. Indeed, the Homeric Olympians are already the beautiful beings which the best art of the Hellenic prime, in the fifth century, delighted to represent; while in art much earlier than Pheidias, but much later than Homer, the gods still appear in their old Aegean forms. This is theparadox of Homer. The poet lived while the Hellenes were but a small nation, occupying a narrow region in Thessaly; but his poems forestall the beauty which blossomed again, when art and religion were truly Hellenic. And in Homer the beauty bears none of the barbaric strains that deface the rites of Athens in her glory. "Homer's portrait of Artemis," says Mr. Farnell, "gives us not the first but the last point in the development of her character, and the conception of her in later Greek literature is not more advanced or more spiritual than his." But "Arcadian and Athenian rites and legends" (we may compare Boeotian and Spartan art of 800-700 B.C.) "provide us with testimony much earlier than Homer's."[10]

How are we to explain the facts? Homer is the poet of Achaeans, regarded as a stronger but less civilised race, invaders of a more civilised people. Yet this Achaean people, or their poet, is already on the highest Hellenic level in his conception of the Olympians, while the practical ritual and legends of Athens in her glorious prime retain many traces of barbarous and even savage conceptions at which Homer seldom glances, though even in his mythology there are hints of a truly barbarous cosmogony, the revolution by which Zeus overthrew more ancient divinities. Homer knew Hesiod's myth of Cronos,[11]which is precisely that of the Maoris. How then did his taste, and that of his audience, arrive at his beautiful portraits of the Olympians?

This is the great problem. The gods of Aegean art are strange if impressive beings, mixed up with tree- and pillar-worship. Their altars, in art, are not adapted for sacrifices for animals, but libations, fruits, and flowers are offered. The gods and goddesses of archaic Greek art are barbaric and unimpressive, and trees and stones, as sacred, endured through all Greek history.The Olympians of Homer are, on the other hand, the Olympians of Pheidias.

Turning from Aegean religion before Homer, which shows infinitely more of the worship of high gods than of ghosts, we find, in early historic Greece, that the great Olympians are highly honoured, but that ghost-worship, ignored by Homer, is prevalent. From the seventh century onwards the possession of tombs of heroes, and of miracle-working relics of heroes, their bones, is essential to the well-being of cities. Finally, living men are freely divinised. Thus chthonic as distinct from Olympian worship, while it is ignored by Homer (whose theory of the state of the dead renders it impossible) gets practically the upper hand in historic Greece, though in the Aegean religion it is inconspicuous, and in Homer it is absent.

Thus Homer stands apart in religion from the world that preceded and the world that followed him.

The solitary passage in which theIliadrecognises sacrifice to a dead man, a hero, is in the description of the case of Erechtheusin Athens. In the temple of Athene "the Athenians worship him with bulls and rams as the years return in their courses."[12]

Owing, perhaps, to Homer's consistent avoidance of everything Ionian, he never speaks of the Mysteries of Eleusis, in Attica, celebrated in the Ionian Hymn to Demeter, or of the Attic Thesmophoria or the Brauronia, or, indeed, of any mysteries. These are now understood to have begun in savage and barbarous magical rites for the benefit of the objects of the food supply; or in initiatory ceremonies: both practices are still common among all the lower races; and agricultural magic still survives in European folklore, and we have the initiations of Freemasonry.

The rites of Eleusis, Athens, and of Artemis Orthia among the Dorians of Sparta are of immense antiquityin their origins. The magic may have been practised in Attica, in Homer's time, and, as folklore, may have existed in the rural classes among the Achaean states. If so, Homer has no interest in the matter, none in initiations. But both magic and initiations were sanctioned by the State in Attica and Dorian Sparta, in historic Hellas.

The two deities who chiefly presided over mysteries were Demeter and Dionysus. Demeter "has no real personality in Homer," says Mr. Leaf, "except inOdyssey,v. 125," where we merely hear that she lay with Iasion in a thrice ploughed fallow field, and that Zeus slew Iasion with a thunderbolt. Dionysus, again, to quote Mr. Leaf, is only mentioned inIliad, xiv. 325, in the "Leporello Catalogue" of the amours of Zeus, and in doubtful passages of theOdyssey(xi. 325). He is the son of Semele, and a golden cup is a gift of his. Finally, and most to the purpose, inIliad, vi. 130-140, Diomede tells the story of Lycurgus, a Thracian king, who beat the nymphs, the nurses of Dionysus, with an ox-goad, and frightened Dionysus into the deeps of the sea. Zeus blinded Lycurgus, and he did not last long. This tale is regarded as a late and pious interpolation, because the whole scene is looked on as in crying contradiction with the events ofIliad, Book v. For proof that there is no inconsistency at all, see "The Great Discrepancies."

We must be very anxious to find "late" things in Homer, if we say that the passage about Dionysus inIliad, vi., "dates from the very last part of the Epic period," namely, perhaps, from the seventh century B.C. It may be true that "the great religious movement" connected with Dionysus "spread over Greece apparently in the seventh century."[13]But it is more probable that the "movement" was especially taken up by literature, Orphic poetry, at that period, for I am unaware that we have any historical evidence, as inHerodotus, for the religious furies and homicidal ferocities of the women in the seventh century. These, all the stories of the sanguinary frenzy of the sex, their endeavours to "interview" kings, and tear them to tatters, are thrown back into legendary times. Nobody can tell how ancient the legends are, but it seems to be generally admitted that Dionysus and his rites are of "Indo-European" but not of Greek origin. His mother was Semele, and Kretschmer would connect Semele "with a Phrygian root,zemel," which occurs on Phrygian tombstones in curses directed against any one who should violate the tombs. The word Kretschmer interprets as meaning "earth." So Semele would be the earth goddess.[14]

Be it so, PhrygianZemel, the earth, is Greek Semele, the earth-mother of the son of the sky, Zeus. But "Dionysus in Greek mythology is closely connected with Thrace," and Lycurgus, the enemy of Dionysus inIliad, vi., is a Thracian king. Now "the result of recent philological inquiries is to show a close connection between the Thracian and Phrygian tongues, which are found to be both Aryan."[15]Again, Attica, if ever her legends deviate into truth, was closely connected with Thrace; and Homer himself treats the Thracian Chersonese as an ally of Troy,[16]and Rhesus brings in his levies.[17]

There is no reason in the world why so great a sennachie as Homer, who knew as many tales from all quarters as Widsith in the Anglo-Saxon poem, should not know a Thracian tale about Lycurgus and Dionysus and his mother, Earth.[18]Nothing prevented Homer from knowing a myth of a people whom he knew—the Thracians—very long before the seventh century.

Homer has not a good word for the cowardly Dionysus. Still, Zeus patronises him; he is a god, though he never appears among Homer's Olympians. To his mysteries, as to those of Eleusis (is it not in Attica?) Homer does not allude. He mentions no mysteries, no initiations, no hocus-pocus; these things were for Attica, and for historic Greece.

The ethicalreligionof Homer apart from his mythology is excellent, a good faith to live and die in. His gods, when religiously regarded, sanction all that is best in Achaean morals, and disapprove of all that is evil in human conduct, as a general rule. But Homericmythologyis manifestly another thing: in the stories told of the gods, they practise most of the sins which they punish in mankind. Mythology would cease to bemythologyif it became consistent, but religion can never fail to be consistent while it expresses the highest and purest ethical ideas associated with a sense of their approval by a being or beings more than mortal. This note is again and again struck by Homer; and it can never fail to awaken a responsive thrill in all who feel, or have ever felt, the ethico-religious emotion.

Let me here give but one example. It is impossible for men to understand the mystery of an omnipotent and loving Being in a world of pain and ruin. Homer is as conscious of the insoluble problem as we are—and Zeus is conscious of it. In the great assembly of all gods, from Apollo and Athene to the nymphs of rivers, well-heads, and grassy water-meadows, at the moment when the final strife is set between Hector and Achilles, Zeus says, "Even in their perishing have I regard unto them."[19]The Father pities but he cannot save—there is some insuperable obstacle between his omnipotence and the end which he desires.

Such is thereligiousthought of Homer, while in hismythicalthought Zeus is a humorous hot-tempered fatherof a family, who delights to tease, and finds as much diversion as Mr. Bennett did in the absurdities of his wife and children.

The Achaean mind, like the mind of any savage who recognises an All Father, has brooded over the sacred beings of religion in every mood, the most serious and the most frivolous; every conceivable reflection of every age, early or later, has entered into a conglomerate of yearning desire for the gods, of fear of the gods' wrath, of absurd legends concerning the gods, of broadly humorous glances at them as members of a great whimsical family; and there are guesses at the enjoyments of divine people, so powerful, so irresponsible, and so far from spiritual; for the gods are not spirits, but beings compact of a subtler matter than our perishable flesh and blood and bone.

Thus the gods, in moments of human seriousness, are the guardians of Homer's highest ethical ideals; while for purposes of romance and diverting narrative they are examples of all the vices which he most detests and despises, and of a score of human foibles which he never illustrates in the persons of his heroic men and women. His mortal ladies never cuff and scold, like the village women whom he once glances at, shrieking forth their quarrel in the centre of the village street. But it is in public that Hera and Athene scold or cuff. The nearest approach to this treatment of sacred beings may perhaps be found in the broad waggeries of our late English mystery plays, like those of Cain and of the Shepherds of Bethlehem. An even better example is the ancient carol,The Bitter Withy, with the cruel cunning and crime attributed to Jesus Christ, and the story of His whipping by "Mary mild." Achaean humour is never so free as in its treatment of things which are also handled, in another mood, with the highest religious regard. Nobody, perhaps, has seriously credited Homer with "a purpose," the purpose of enforcing the seriousthings of ethics touched with religion, and, at the same time, of laughing popular mythology away. The notion seems far too modern and too subtle; yet if Homer had entertained that inconceivable purpose, he could hardly have written otherwise than he did write,—to the extreme perplexity of Greek and later "educationists."[20]

It is not necessary to discuss the chronique scandaleuse of Olympus; the stories of the amours of Zeus, the intrigues of Aphrodite, the jealousy of Hera, the domestic misfortunes of Hephaestus. Nor is this the place to show how this mythological element inevitably crystalised round a great figure like that of Zeus the father of men. But it seems well to point out that while, in playful moods, the Achaean genius wove a cycle of gross fabliaux around the Olympians, in serious moments men regarded them not sceptically but with perfect seriousness and devoutness. Though men or women conscious of a fault will say that Atê infatuated them, or that Aphrodite thrust them into temptation, nevertheless the gods work for righteousness. Men in the Epics have the strongest sense of dependence on them. They are the givers of good and evil. "Though thou be very strong, yet that, I ween, is a gift to thee of God," says Agamemnon to Achilles. The oath of truce, in Iliad, iii., which, when broken, seals the fate of Troy, is sanctioned by Zeus, the Sun, Rivers, Earth, and they that "in the underworld punish men dead, whosoever sweareth falsely."[21]In a later oath[22]"they" are theErinnyes, who also punish sins within the family. We hear of no such posthumous punishments in Hades, when Odysseus goes thither inOdyssey, Book xi. The men whom he sees being punished, Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus, have all offended the godsin person;[23]and manifestly to call gods as witnesses to an oath, and then to be forsworn, is to insult the gods, whether this be the explanation of the threatened posthumous punishment or not.[24]The promise of Zeus is an example to men, it can never be broken (Iliad, i. 526-527). "Father Zeus will be no helper of liars," and Achilles "hates a lie like the gates of Hades."

Penitence for wrongs done is recognised, "prayers of penitence are daughters of great Zeus, halting and wrinkled and of eyes askance, that have their task to go in the steps of Sin" (Atê). When the injured man will not listen to the penitence of him who did the wrong, the prayers of the penitent return to Zeus, and beseech him that the hard man "may fall, and pay the price."[25]It was because Achilles refused to accept the penitence of Agamemnon thathe"paid the price," the death of Patroclus.

In theOdysseythe ethical aspect of the gods is perhaps more conspicuous, because their passions are no longer stirred by the great war. In the opening lines they discountenance adultery (Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra). They are equally offended by the use of poisoned arrow-heads.[26]"All men yearn after the gods.". It is they who give happiness in married life.[27]It is Zeus who protects suppliants.[28]The just man is god-fearing.[29]The gods love righteousness andcompassion.[30]Throughout the whole poem, notably in the case of the pious Eumaeus, a deep sense of dependence on the gods, and resignation to their will, is depicted. Yet Zeus permits Poseidon to wreak his grudge on Odysseus, and even on the Phaeacians who brought him home; while in the song of Demodocus, a divine adultery is matter of mirth to all Olympus.

Thus the religion of Homer is, ethically, a very good religion. Homeric religion is already national, that is, all Achaeans believe in the same Olympian consistory, with Zeus as the Over Lord. None the less many of the cities have each their favourite divine being, a special patron, just as cities had in the Middle Ages. All believed in the Deity, but Orleans had a special patron in St. Aignan; and "the guarded mount" in St. Michael. Athene was no less the patroness of Troy than of Athens. The Gods are all national, though they have their preferences. We may go further and say that, to Homer's mind, the Gods are universal.

To Homer, Zeus is anything but a "tribal" god: he is not even merely a national god; all peoples known to Homer acknowledge his supremacy. This was the tolerant view of historic Hellas: all nations had the same gods named by different names in different languages. There were not many Zeuses, but one Zeus, though various local names were given to the god, Dodonaean Zeus, Idaean Zeus, Pelasgian Zeus, or, again, Delian Apollo, Pythian Apollo, Smirithian Apollo, and so forth. The god is in no way restricted to a given place, Dodona, Ida, Delos, Delphi; these titles are his because he possesses a temple or Oracle in each district. Men may call to the gods or to a god wherever they find themselves, abroad or at home, on the sea or "in fairy lands forlorn," and everywhere they may sacrifice.To the devout mind, despite the local associations of the gods in mythology, the divine is omnipresent; can hear and help everywhere.[31]As for the local titles of gods, we know the same mediaeval usage in respect to the Saints. The Scot who, when at home, had a devotion to St. Catherine of Bothwell, in France sought the aid of St. Catherine of Fierbois.[32]The gods, or at least Zeus and Apollo, are omniscient, yet they need, in myth, to be told about events remote or future, or need to make special observations from selected places, such as the crest of Ida. These are the inevitable and universal contradictions which beset all early and much late theological speculation.

When Ionia became speculative as to all things physical or divine, the mythological aspects of the gods in Homer were, what to the philosophers they remained, a stumbling-block. But philosophy could not cure Greece, or do away with her heritage of barbarism and savagery. Yet, in some incomprehensible way, the Achaeans, as represented by Homer, had an infinitely cleaner religion and ritual than the mother cities of the philosophers.

In the religion of historic Greece, from the Ionian age to the establishment of Christianity, the most active, and, so to say, practical element is, we repeat, that of hero-worship, worship of dead men. The great temples of the gods of Greece in general, especially of the oracular Apollo, and of Athene in Athens, Artemis in Ephesus, Artemis Orthia at Sparta, and so on, were maintained in splendour and enriched with treasures of gold-work, silver, and bronze. The god or goddess and the shrines were centres of pilgrimages, and pilgrimages were good for trade. By them were the cities nourished, as the maker of silver shrines at Ephesusdeclared. Miracles were wrought, the blind saw, the lame walked. The local deity was of as great economic service to a city of Greece as the bones of the Apostle were to St. Andrews, and the relics of St. Thomas to Canterbury.

But for practical purposes of securing supernormal aid in war or famine, the dead heroes were to each town or village what St. Aignan was to Orleans, a very present help in trouble. For near a thousand years St. Aignan routed the foes of the good city, and his image was adored and carried in processions in 1429. Thus "to Lycurgus, after he was dead, the Spartans erected a temple, and paid him great worship."[33]"So that, as might be supposed ... they straightway shot up and became prosperous." The Spartans, therefore, determined to annex Arcadia, but were defeated by the forces of Tegea. Later, in the sixth century, during the time of Croesus, the Spartans asked the Delphic Oracle to direct their choice of a patron god. They were bidden to bring home the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, which were in hostile Tegea. In Tegea, Lichas found the coffin which contained the bones, seven cubits long (half a cubit longer than Goliath), of Orestes, and carried them to Sparta. Thenceforth the Spartans were victorious. The bones were not in a cairn, for a blacksmith of Tegea first found the coffin when he was digging a well.[34]He would not dig for water in a tumulus or cairn.

We need not multiply examples of hero-worship and relic-snatching, and of such tricks of ghost-scaring as Cleisthenes played when, unable to cast the hero Adrastus bodily out of Sicyon, he drove him away by introducing the worship of the deadly foe of Adrastus, Melanippus.[35]Colonists carried the worship of Achilles into the coasts and isles of the Euxine, and even to Tarentum; while, according to Clemens Alexandrinus,the Spartans worshipped Zeus Agamemnon.[36]All this saint-worship and care for relics is, of course, absolutely un-Homeric.

TheOdyssey[37]gives the perhaps Phoenician case of Ino, daughter of Cadmus, once a mortal, now a sea-goddess. But to Homer a dead man, be he Achilles or Aias, is merely a dead man. The cairn covers his bones; he has no chapel, no sacrifice; no men covet the possession of his relics; he can neither help nor harm; his spirit is in Hades, with the powerless peoples of the Dead. Trojans would leap and boast on the cairn of Menelaus if he fell at Troy(Iliad, iv. 174-182). Historic Greeks would have made offerings at the tomb. No such rites were in the belief of the society for which Homer sang. Had they been worshippers of the dead, the epic poet could not play the heresiarch, and tell them that their faith and hope were void and vain. No poet, no set of poets, who lived by pleasing could afford to horrify their hearers by such impiety. No poets could ignore the existence of normal rites that were familiar in practice to all. The most advanced modern novelist cannot ignore the Christian rites of marriage and burial, however much he may despise and detest them. It is, then, an historical fact that the society for which Homer sang did not adore and do sacrifice to dead men, did not make gods of them and do them sacrifice, did not scramble for their relics, as was the practice of proto-historic and historic Greece down to the time of Pausanias at least.

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