And when, as is commonly the case, we find the deities cooperating with μοῖρα, the assumption that they are its servants, seems to be wholly unwarranted. It seems much more natural to suppose that the μοῖρα, to which they are giving effect, is simply the divine will: especially as, though we find single gods, Neptune or Apollo, for example, cooperating with μοῖρα, I doubt whether this is ever represented of the gods at large and their supreme decrees.
In order to solve the general question, what after all can be more reasonable than to look to the main action of the poems, and inquire what power or what counsel it is which takes effect through the medium of their machinery as a whole? If this be the test, there is no room for doubt upon the issue. In the Iliad it is the Διὸς βουλὴ (Il. i. 5): the determination of Olympus, into which Jupiter had wisely allowed his own opposite inclinations to merge. In the Odyssey[557], it is the decision of the same tribunal, at the instance of Minerva, and with Neptune alone dissentient. Upon the whole, for the poems and the day of Homer, I cannot but think that both the supremacy of godhead as a whole, and the freedom of man remain, if somewhat darkened, yet certainly unsubverted. The μοῖρα of Homer may, it is probable, be no more and no less in the main than that θέσφατον, or divinely uttered decree, which he sometimes uses in such a manner as to admit of the supposition that they were really synonymous.
At the same time we do not find, nor could we expect to find, in Homer any clear assertion of the majesty of the true Divine Will, as the mainspring that moves the universe. That is emphatically a Christian sentiment, which is conveyed in the lofty formula of Dante:
Così si vuol colà, dove si puote
Ciò che si vuole.
So is it willed above, where He, that wills,
Can what he wills.
The Fate of Homer may indeed logically embrace a germ, which will afterwards expand into the idea of a power extrinsic to Deity, and able to overrule it. We may argue to show that the representation, perseveringly developed, means as much as this. But then such representations in Homer are not perseveringly, much less are they unilaterally, developed. They have not been thought through even to their legitimate consequences, and far less to those which appear to arise from the following out, not of a full truth, but of some particular and severed aspect of it. Taken at the worst, Destiny in Homer broods like a cloud in a distant quarter of the sky, silently gathering the might which, when ripe, is to engage in obstinate and unending conflict with deity. But for this work the material is not yet prepared; and practically neither μοῖρα nor αἶσα much crosses the work of Divine government, such as it is conceived and exhibited in Homer. I pass on to the second Class.
Minor impersonations from Nature.