Although we have found it difficult in one or two cases to pronounce with respect to certain divine personages, whether they are Olympian or not, yet in principle the line is clearly drawn, which marks off the superiority of the members of the Olympian Court. We find it in the express declaration of Calypso[615]. We find it perhaps yet more clearly noted in the comparison between Venus and Thetis: for we have seen, as to the former of these deities, her extreme feebleness and incapacity in everything, except as regards the particular impulse that she represents. Thetis, on the other hand, is full of activity and intelligence; and is gifted with bodily powers sufficient to fly like a hawk from Olympus, when carrying the celestial arms (whose inherent buoyancy, however, must not be forgotten[616]). Yet, doubtless because not Olympian, she yields the palm to Venus: for Apollo says to Æneas of Achilles[617];
καὶ δέ σέ φασι Διὸς κούρης Ἀφροδίτης
ἐκγεγάμεν· κεῖνος δὲ χερείονος ἐκ θεοῦ ἐστίν.
Their unity imperfect.
Though the body of θεοὶ serve as an unity to point a moral in the abstract, there is practically a wonderful want of unity and of common or corporate feeling among them. This is figured in the Judgment of Paris: in the love of Neptune for the Cyclops, who renounce the authority of Jupiter: again in his aversion to the Phæacians, who are so beloved by the gods in general, that they appear in their proper shape at the religious festivals of those favoured islanders[618].
But notwithstanding this want of the genuine corporate spirit, and notwithstanding the prevalence of essentially selfish appetite as the rule of life with the greater part, at any rate, of the Immortals, it would not be just to say that the principle of unity in the Divine Government is wholly destroyed by the Homeric polytheism. The superiority of Jupiter, though it does not amount to supremacy in the stricter sense[619], is yet sufficiently decided to place him far above any other single deity in sheer power. Therefore, when considered as the executive of the Olympian system, he is upon the whole equal to his work. He may be deceived, and so baffled for a moment, as by Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad; but it is for a moment only. Or the insubordination of some particular divinity may approach to resistance, like that of Neptune in the Fifteenth: but, upon admonition, conscious inferiority soon brings the matter to a close. So much for the execution of divine behests. As to the legislative process, however, heaven strictly follows earth, with only such exceptions as are accounted for by the difference in the constituent elements.
The influence or even the menaces of a powerful leader, the moral force of persuasion, the comparison of the means of coercive action on this side and on that, and again the composition of wills and opinions to obtain a joint result, all these, the leading processes by which free institutions work on earth, with substantial identity, though with more awkwardness of form and less of genial freedom, as might be expected in transplanted ideas, are also the processes by which supreme and providential decrees are arrived at. Of the degree to which this principle of free polity prevails, we can have no better criterion than in the fate of Troy. It fell, not merely from the personal prudence of Jupiter, but because acting as a βασιλεὺς in heaven, like Agamemnon upon earth, he yielded to the preponderating influence of that section in Olympus, which was indeed apparently less numerous, but of commanding strength, influence, and activity.
Nor would it be just to Homer and his Olympus to forget, that in yielding to the powerful party led by Juno, Neptune, and Minerva, Jupiter was also yielding up the vicious, and sealing the triumph of the virtuous cause.
Thus, then, while we see the spirit of anthropophuism breaking down the principle of the Unity of God, from its being too feeble and too blind to maintain the pure traditions in which it was conveyed, it is still curious to the last degree to observe the order and symmetry of the Greek mind, even in its destructive processes. For, as we have found, it arranges its groups of deities around a centre, by the principle that creates a Family: and then gives them community of counsel, and unity of action, by the principle that maintains a State. What is this, but to bring in the resources and expedients, which our human state supplied, to repair, after a sort, the havock which it had made in the Divine Idea?
The system not uniform.