Furthermore every reader of the Homeric epics is struck by the freshness of the treatment; indeed, scholars of an earlier day thought that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the first fruits of European poetic inspiration. Today we know that Homer represents the culmination of a long fine of bards, that his artistry was won by effort and was not simply the incredible inspiration of one untaught; but this knowledge does not diminish in the slightest degree our appreciation of the freshness and directness of treatment which that art realized. These qualities are obtained in part by a freedom from reflection, by a lack of self-consciousness in the poems. They do not deal with the origin of the gods, they present no theogonies, any more than they concern themselves with the descent of man. It is true that Zeus is the son of Cronos, as Hera is the daughter of Cronos and Rhea, and that it is said that Zeus drove Cronos beneath the earth and sea, but we have no account of the rule of the elder gods or of the struggle by which Zeus won his place. For the epic poet the world of gods, men, and nature simply is; he does not indulge in speculation himself nor does he make his heroes debate questions of whence or whither; the living present with its actions, its struggles, victories, and defeats filled the compass of the poet’s thought and of his audience’s desire.
The Iliad and the Odyssey then must not be considered as treatises or as reflective and philosophical works. This elementary point must be emphasized here, for there is always danger of losing the true perspective when we are considering a single theme. The poems derive their great significance for the history of Greek religion from the fact that through recitations they became the chief popular literature of Greece, and that from the sixth century they were the basis of education, as I have already said. Thus they were universally known and universally influential; they created a common Olympic religion beside the local religions; and through the individualities which they gave the gods they fixed the types which poets were to recall and which artists were to embody in marble or in wood, ivory, and gold at the centers of the Greek world.
With these facts in mind we may ask what are the nature and characteristics of the gods in Homer. Excavations have shown us that the Mycenaean Age had already passed beyond the ruder stages and had conceived some at least of its divinities in anthropomorphic fashion. In Homer the gods are frankly made in man’s image. They are beings larger, wiser, and stronger than mortals; they have a superhuman but not complete control over nature and mankind. Their chief preëminence over man lies in this superior power and in the possession of immortality as well as of that eternal youth and beauty which is appropriate to immortals. In their veins flows a divine ichor instead of blood; their food and drink are not the bread and wine which mortals need. Yet for all this they are hardly more independent of physical needs than men: they must sleep and eat, and they need the light of the sun. The passions hold sway over them to such an extent that the morality of the gods, of Zeus in particular, is distinctly inferior to that of mortal princes. The divinities can suffer pain and indignities. Diomedes was able to wound both Aphrodite and Ares, whereat the valiant god of war bawled out as loud, the poet says, “as nine or ten thousand men shout in battle,” and fled into the broad heaven to appeal to Zeus.[2] In the twenty-first book of the Iliad Athena hits Ares in the neck with a large boundary stone and overthrows him, adding insult to injury by laughing merrily at the god’s discomfiture; then when Aphrodite would lead him off groaning, Athena hurries after and with a blow of her stout hand lays goddess and god prostrate on the ground.[3] Nor are the gods more just and honorable than men; they are moved by caprice; and their godhead does not prevent their quarreling or making up their differences in very human fashion, as the domestic jar between Zeus and Hera in the first book of the Iliad shows.[4]
Furthermore the Homeric gods are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. “The gods know all things” is a pious tribute of the poet, but the narrative shows it to be untrue. In the thirteenth book of the Iliad, when Zeus is gazing off into Thrace he fails to notice that Poseidon enters the battle on the plain immediately below him.[5] In the fifth book of the Odyssey the tables are turned in a sense, for Poseidon finds that during his absence among the Ethiopians the Olympians have taken action favorable to Odysseus, whose return the god of the sea would fain prevent.[6] For nine years Thetis and Eurynome alone among the gods knew where Hephaestus was concealed: when he had been thrown from heaven by his mother in shame for his lameness, they hid him in a grotto where the sound of the stream of Oceanus drowned the noise of his smithy.[7] Apollo arrives too late to save Rhesus from his fate;[8] and we are told that in the previous generation Ares was imprisoned by the giants Otus and Ephialtes in a bronze jar, like an Oriental jinn, for thirteen months. There he had perished if it had not been for the friendly aid of Hermes who stole him from his prison.[9] The gods at times thwart one another’s purposes, and, as we have seen, they may even be wounded or frightened like human beings.[10] In such ways as these do the Homeric divinities show their limitations.
Not only can the gods thwart one another, but they are all at times subject to Fate or Destiny, which, although vaguely conceived by the poet, is none the less inexorable. It seems usually to be an impersonal power, although sometimes it is identified with the will of an indefinite god (δαἰμονος αἶσα) or with that of Zeus himself (Διὸς αἶσα). It was fated that Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, should die, and Zeus, in spite of his grief, yielded him up to his doom, not because he could not have opposed Fate successfully, but because he feared that other divinities would wish to save their children if he saved his.[11] Yet in the Odyssey Athena disguised as Mentor declares to Telemachus that not even the gods can save a man they love whenever the fatal doom of death lays hold on him.[12] So naturally inconsistent is the poet, for in his day men had not reached the stage where they could form any adequate notion of unity in the world. Fate therefore is not conceived to be an inexorable power which is constantly operative, as we find it represented at a later time among the Greeks and among the Romans, notably in Virgil.
At times we find a more or less fatalistic view of life, Fate being conceived as a destiny fixed at birth, for the notion that the thread of life was spun already existed. So Hecuba, wailing for her son, cries that mighty Fate spun Hector’s doom at the hour she gave him birth;[13] and Alcinous declares that under Phaeacian escort Odysseus shall reach his home, but that there he will suffer all that Fate and the cruel spinsters spun for him when his mother bore him.[14] This fatalism is most clearly expressed in passages such as that where Odysseus on Circe’s isle cheers his companions by reminding them that they shall not enter the house of Hades until their fated day shall come,[15] and especially in those lines in which Hector comforts his wife Andromache who would have restrained his impetuous desire for battle:[16] “My good wife, grieve not overmuch for me in thy heart, for no man shall send me to Hades contrary to my fate; and I say that none, be he a coward or brave, has ever escaped his doom, when once it comes.” Still the Homeric bard had not arrived at any consistent view of destiny; he gave utterance to that feeling which men had vaguely then as now, that beyond all lies something fixed and invariable to which all things and beings are ultimately subject.
As we have seen, the divinities may work at cross purposes; there is nothing in the Homeric poems like monotheism or pantheism in any true sense. When the Homeric man said that a thing happened “with god’s help,” he was simply recognizing the agency of the gods in everything. Not knowing the special divinity concerned, he left him nameless; least of all had he any concept of a complete divine polity. There is, therefore, no such thing in the epics as a divine providence in the way of a definite purpose or plan such as we shall later find in the fifth century. Like mortals the Homeric gods discuss their plans, without being able to see the end from the beginning; they are moved by caprice, so that Zeus changes sides twice on the second day of the great battle between the Achaeans and Trojans.[17] The vacillating and capricious character of the gods is not offset by the protection that a divinity may give a favorite, such as Athena gave to Odysseus in his long wanderings and on his return to Ithaca. Throughout both poems we find the assumption constantly held that every blessing comes from the gods, that they give every distinction. In like fashion men believed that all misfortunes were due to divine anger or hostility. So Odysseus was kept from home for nearly ten years by Poseidon’s hate; the favor of Athena toward the Achaeans turned to wrath because of the violence done her shrine in the sack of Troy so that she caused an evil return for her former favorites. Indeed in misfortune the Homeric hero’s first question was as to what god he had offended. The problem of evil therefore was a simple one—all depended on the will or whim of some divinity.
But there are other things which we should note with regard to these divinities. As has been said, they are universalized, not attached to definite localities; in fact the epics contain few traces of that localization which was the rule in the common religion of Greece. Although Hera declares:[18] “Verily three cities there are most dear to me, Argos and Sparta and broad-streeted Mycenae,” she is in no sense regarded as bound to these localities. In Demodocus’ song of the love of Ares and Aphrodite it is said that when released from the bonds in which Hephaestus had ensnared them, the god of war fled to Thrace and laughter-loving Aphrodite to Paphos in Cyprus,[19] but these places are not their homes in any strict sense. And so with the other gods. The Olympians are rather free, universal divinities, unhampered by local attachments. Olympus itself is in the upper heaven more than in Thessaly. It is of course true that lesser divinities, like river-gods and mountain-nymphs, are localized, but these beings have little influence on the affairs of men.
Let us now consider briefly the most important Homeric gods. At the head of the divine order stands Zeus, “father of gods and of men” (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε), “most exalted of rulers” (ὔπατε κρειόντων), “most glorious and most mighty” (κύδιστε μέγιστε), as he is called.[20] To him the elements are subject and at his nod great Olympus trembles. He is the guardian of oaths, the protector of the stranger and the suppliant. Famed for his prowess and might he never in person enters battle, but indirectly he takes a hand in the strife between the Greeks and the Trojans. Although he surpasses all in wisdom and power, at times he is outwitted by other divinities. Like a mortal chieftain he presides at council on Olympus in his great hall, whither he may on occasion summon the divinities of every class to attend a general assembly.[21] Olympus indeed is conceived as loosely organized after the fashion of an aristocratic state with Zeus as chief (βασιλεύς), the Olympians as members of the council (βουλή), and the whole body of minor divinities as making up the assembly (ἀγορή).
Hera, the queen of Olympus, is at once both sister and wife of Zeus; they are the only wedded pair on Olympus. She belongs, however, distinctly to the second class of Olympians. She takes no part in the Odyssey; and in the Iliad, although she favors the Achaeans most vehemently, she is less active than Athena. In character she is a good deal of a scold, so that Zeus fears her jealous anger.[22] He knows that she is accustomed to block his plans, although on one occasion he had punished her by stringing her up by the wrists and tying anvils to her feet! Of this he indignantly reminds her: “Dost thou not remember when I strung thee up aloft and from thy feet I hung two anvils, and round thy wrists I bound a golden bond unbreakable? And thou wast hung in the upper air and the clouds. Wroth were the gods throughout high Olympus, but still they could not approach and free thee.”[23] Again he had beaten her, and when Hephaestus tried to intervene, Zeus seized the meddler by the foot and threw him out of Olympus. Hephaestus himself recalls the experience: “All the day long I fell and at setting of the sun I dropped in Lemnos, and there was little life left in me.”[24]