We have thus a very copious supply of information from Homer, in no less than twelve passages, every one of which represents the action of these singular beings in a fresh and varied light: and the question is, what is the one common idea, which is sufficiently comprehensive to include them all, and is also in harmony with the purport of each?
Vindicators of the moral order.
I answer, that the Erinuës are, in the Homeric system, the never-failing champions, because they are the practical avengers, of the natural and moral order, at all times, under all circumstances, and against all persons whatsoever. They have nothing to do with the prevention of crime: but they appear to be the principal instruments for its punishment, especially here, but likewise hereafter. This, however, is only a part of their function. They are the sworn servants of a fixed order of the universe, apart from, anterior to, and independent of, all volition, divine or human: and they avenge the infraction of that order, not merely as a law of right opposed to wrong, but as a law of order opposed to disorder; they are goddesses themselves, but they are wholly apart from the Olympian dispensation, sometimes put in conjunction with deities of the mythology, sometimes apart from, sometimes in opposition to them. They are, in short, an early and poetical expression of that philosophy, which even in Christian times has seemed to seek a foundation for the supreme laws more or less dissociated from, and wholly exterior to, the Divine Will: the philosophy, not of Destiny, but of the ‘Immutable Morality’ of Cudworth and his school: the philosophy harmonizing with the Ideas of the Platonists: the philosophy of which we have a distant glimpse in the words of St. Bernard, incommutabile est, quod ne ipsi quidem Deo mutare liberum est[571]: and which Butler has presented to us in the mild forms of his admirably balanced wisdom.
I will take first, as the criteria of this proposition, the remarkable cases in which we find the Erinuës of Homer in qualified conflict with Deity. It is commonly held, that in the Nineteenth Iliad the Erinuës interfere to prevent Xanthus from telling too much to Achilles. No doubt Homer effects this purpose by their means: but they never interfere with the aim of prevention. It is the natural order which had been broken by the act of Juno in conferring the gift of speech upon a horse, and which they by their interposition mean to vindicate and reestablish.
They play the same part in the case of the daughters of Pandareus. It is plain that the goddesses of Olympus had vied with one another, after an unprecedented and abnormal manner, in loading these damsels with an extraordinary accumulation of gifts. Everything, even food, came to them by the direct and immediate agency of their Immortal handmaids: and at last Jupiter was actually besought to find them husbands. All this lay far beyond, and was therefore in derogation of the ordinary laws for the government of the world: it left no space for human volition, effort, or discipline: it thus struck at the root of the moral order; and on this ground the Erinuës interfere, apparently employing the Hurricanes as their agents, to remove these maidens from the earth, and to deposit them upon the Ocean stream, by the place of the dead.
Their operation upon the Immortals.
I do not know whether, over and above the infraction of natural order which I have mentioned, there may not have been another cause for their intervention in the special manner in which the endowments had been conveyed: for where we find Juno granting to them ‘beauty and sense beyond all other women[572],’ it appears as if she had travelled into the province not only of Venus, but of the great Minerva, with whose prerogatives I doubt whether we ever find any similar interference allowed by Homer. It is therefore just possible that the Erinuës may here interpose on behalf of the laws and arrangements of Olympus, as well as of those belonging to Earth.
The explanation which I have proposed will entirely fit the warning of Iris to Neptune. The natural order, which assigns the prerogatives of government to the elder, in other words, the right of primogeniture, is a rule for the Immortals, as well as for mankind, since it is taken to be founded upon a basis more profound than will, which was not, and could hardly be for Homer, even when divine, either the source or the master of creation. But while the Erinuës are thus on the side of Jupiter, and while the recollection of them at once induces Neptune to succumb, they are not on that account in any sense or degree his ministers.
On the same side with him we find them, where they are invoked by Ulysses, as the Erinuës, together with the gods, of the poor: or as when Agamemnon lays upon Erinūs, along with Jupiter and Destiny, the blame of errors, for which notwithstanding the Greeks rightly held him[573], and even he could not deny himself to be, responsible. Yet we are never told that the Erinuës move at the bidding of Jupiter, or of any other Olympian deity. Here we seem to have a glimpse into the deeper truths of the heroic age. Theology had already wandered from its orbit: it was fast losing all the severity and majesty of truth; but the deep roots which God had given to the sense of responsibility, and the expectation of retribution, in the human mind, had not yet been wholly plucked up; and Homer’s fine sense of truth forbade him to connect the most practical, and at the same time, the sternest parts of his religious system, with the gorgeous glare of his Olympus, and with the moral delinquencies of many among its inhabitants.
As the seniority of Jupiter is upheld by the Erinuës, so in like manner are the parental rights of Juno, which had been infringed by Mars, when he changed sides in the war. Here again, however, it appears as if more than the mere wish or influence of Juno had been set aside: for Mars had given a positive promise to fight for the Greeks, and it is probable that the breach of this engagement constituted the chief part of the offence that they were to punish[574].