8. The first of these is Demeter, or Ceres, whose Olympian rank is considered, and I think established, in the remarks elsewhere upon her individual divinity[529].
9. The second is Ἠέλιος, the Sun. His share in the episode of Mars and Venus[530] does not indeed absolutely imply his residing on Olympus. But this is clearly involved in the account of his receiving the intelligence, that his oxen had been consumed by the companions of Ulysses. For, upon hearing it, he instantly proceeds to address the company of the Immortals assembled there[531], and is answered by Jupiter. He must therefore unquestionably stand as one of the Olympian gods of Homer.
There are but three other personages named in Homer, with respect to whom there is room for the supposition, that he may have intended them to rank as Olympian deities. They are Dionysus, Persephone, and Eris. For Histie, or Vesta, is so entirely wanting in personality, that she cannot possibly belong to that order. She is invoked indeed in company with Jupiter; but with these two is likewise combined the ξενίη τράπεζα, the table of hospitality. In the hymn to Venus[532] she has become fully personified, and is celebrated as the eldest of the daughters of Κρόνος. But this imagery probably belongs to a different stage of Greek society and Greek poetry.
1. 2. The case of Dionysus and that of Persephone, very different, but both on this point doubtful, have been stated elsewhere[533].
The Eris of Homer.
3. The case of Eris is different. She is the sister and also the mistress of Mars[534]. And in the fierce battle of the Eleventh Book, Eris alone is present to enjoy it, while all the other deities, inhibited from action by Jupiter, have betaken themselves to their several abodes on Olympus.
Again, Jupiter sends her down to the camp at the beginning of the Eleventh Iliad, where she stands on the ship of Ulysses, and raises a mighty shout to stir up the Greeks for the contest[535]. The word is, indeed, the common and established word for strife in Homer, and it is applied even to the conflict of the gods[536], θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνιόντων. But this use of it is probably to be compared with that of Ἄρης for a spear, and of Ἀφροδίτη (in later Greek) for the sensual function of that deity. She is, on the whole, less a figure than a person, though standing upon the border between the two respectively; and though, as she never actually performs what may be called a personal action, she is only by a few degrees removed from the family of Terror, Din, Panic, and the rest. The first of these, Φόβος, as he is the son of Mars[537], and attends him in fight against the Ephyri, is as distinctly personified as Eris in one passage; but the effect of it is neutralized by others, where he passes into sheer figure. She rejoices in seeing the slaughter[538] wrought in battle: and an intense eagerness is imputed to her[539], of course meaning an eagerness for blood.
But another form of this deity is probably exhibited to us under another name, that of the πτολίπορθος Ἐνύω. Enuo is mentioned together with Pallas as being a warlike deity, in contrast with the effeminate Venus[540]: and she leads the Trojans to the fight in concert with Mars: but while he has a huge spear in his hands, she holds or leads, instead, another form more shadowy than her own, that of Κύδοιμος or Tumult. Yet the mode in which she is joined with Pallas proves her impersonation. The fundamental identity of her name with Ἐνυάλιος, the second name of Mars, and her joining him in leading on the Trojans, place her in some very close relation to him: and that close relation cannot well be other than the twofold one of sister and mistress, which had been assigned to Ἔρις.
When it is said, that ‘she alone of the gods was present, as the others had retired to their respective mansions on Olympus,’ the most natural inference certainly is, that she too is meant to be described as belonging to the Olympian Court.
Upon the whole, it seems pretty clear, that if the Poet intended to limit absolutely the number of the Olympian Court or Minor Assembly to the exact figure twenty, then the choice for the twentieth place will more justly fall on his Eris, than either his Dionysus, or even his Persephone. It appears to me, however, that so strict a numerical precision is not in the manner of Homer; that he intended the twenty tripods to be a general indication of the number of the Court, and that with this indication the facts of the poems substantially, though indeterminately, agree.