Μοῖρα τὰν ἐκ θεῶν
εἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν[554].
And again in Herodotus[555]: τὴν πεπρωμένην μοίρην ἀδύνατά ἐστιν ἀποφυγέειν καὶ θεῷ.
While this, on the one side, was the course of speculation, the course of poetic thought was towards a complete impersonation of Destiny in the three Fates, representing an image so congenial, as a poetic image only, to the human mind, that it found its way into the romance poetry of Christian Italy.
Upon the whole, it appears at any rate most probable, that Homer had not formed the conception of a law extrinsic to all volition human and divine, and so powerful as to override it.
It is hardly to be conceived that Homer would have treated a successful resistance to the laws of Destiny as lying within the possible reach of mankind, had he deemed it to be a power independent of, and superior to, the Divine Will; because he always represents the latter as decisive and supreme over human fortunes.
I think that the primary ideas conveyed in the terms μοῖρα and Fatum will not be found, when examined, to agree. Fatum is the decree without reason; the sic volo sic jubeo; and the idea of it is the result of the long, wearisome, despairing experience of bewildered man, after the world has lost the freshness and the joy of its childhood. The μοῖρα, or share, is a distribution made according to a law or moral purpose: it cannot, without parting from its nature, be blind: its tendency in Homer rather is, as we see in Il. xxiv. 49, to grow into a sort of rival Providence.
The arguments to an opposite effect are surely inconclusive[556]. The question raised by the Scales of Jupiter is, not what the springs may be which determine the movement of the world, but simply what is his foreknowledge of the direction it will take. These representations would be perfectly consistent with belief in the supremacy (so to speak) of Chance: and while we may admit that, inasmuch as they are not produced for the information of men, they must indicate a limitation in Jupiter, we should not mistake the nature of that limitation.
Again, we must not suppose that because some particular deity deplores the course of destiny, therefore that course is in opposition to the general deliberation and decision of Olympus.