The epithet ἀλεξητηριος or ἀλεξίκακος (Pausan. Att. III.) or the averter, applied to the gods (see Odys. III. 346, is to be noted), as characteristic of the grand fact in the history of mind, that with rude nations the fear of evil is the dominant religious motive; so much so, that in the accounts which we read of some savage, or semi-savage nations, religion seems to consist altogether in a vague, dim fear of some unknown power, either without moral attributes altogether, or even positively malignant. In this historical sense, the famous maxim, primus in orbe deos fecit timor—however insufficient as a principle of general theology—is quite true. In the present passage, the phraseology is remarkable.
ὧν Ζεὺς ἀλεξητήριος
Ἐπώνυμος γένοιτο—
literally, of which evils may Jove be the averter, and in being so, answer to his name. This allusion to the names and epithets of the gods occurs in Æschylus with a frequency which marks it as a point of devotional propriety in the worship of the Greeks. I have expressed the same thing in the text by the repetition of avert. So in the Choephoræ, [p. 103], Herald Hermes, herald me in this, &c.
“In his ear and inward sense deep-pondered truths,
By no false art, though without help from fire.”
“Tiresias, the Theban seer, was blind, and could not divine by fire or other visible signs; but he had received from Pallas a remarkably acute hearing, and the faculty of understanding the voices of birds.”—Apollodor. III. 6.—Stan. Well. objects to this, but surely without good reason. Why are the ears—εν ὦσι—mentioned so expressly, if not to make some contrast to the common method of divining by the eye?
“By Mars, Enýo, and blood-loving Terror.”