And, as it affects the kindred of the Immortals in common with themselves, so also does it extend from the sphere of morals into that of manners. While Hephæstus was ministering to them the festal cup, they laughed ungovernably at his personal deformity[639]. Now, the Greeks laugh at Thersites[640] when he has been beaten, but it is in immediate connection with his misconduct, and it has nothing whatever to do with his ugliness. Laughter at mere deformity is nowhere found in Homer: and would entirely jar with the tone of feeling that pervades Homeric manners. The action that offers the nearest approach to it confirms the spirit of this observation. It is the hurling of the stool by the Suitor Antinous[641] at the apparently decrepit Ulysses; which is sternly registered, along with the other outrages of that depraved company, for the coming day of retribution.
Olympian as compared with heroic life.
In a word, still setting aside in some considerable degree the deities of traditive origin, who enter little into the general picture, but have their own portraiture apart, there are to be found in Olympus, as well as in the lower earth, the relations of degree in power and intelligence; and the gods with whom it is peopled, on the whole, possess it in large measure; but the law and purpose of their life is summed up in self-will and self-indulgence. They do not debate their own duties, or even those of men, to one another: rarely, if ever, those of men even towards themselves, except with reference to the quantity of libation poured out, of flesh offered, and of steam reeking from the altars. There is a mixture in their enjoyments: some are refined, others sensual, but both are alike selfish, and the latter are wholly unrestrained. It is said by Heyne, and with much of literal truth, that the description of the day’s employment in Olympus, which the first Iliad supplies, is a transcript of hero-life[642]; but it is of one part of hero-life only; it is of hero-life in its moments of indulgence and relaxation, which exhibit to us its lower and less noble side, without any view of its great sentiments and great duties, its sense of honour, its fine feeling, its reciprocal affections as developed in the relations of consanguinity and affinity, of friendship, of guestship, of sovereign and subject, and even of master and serf. What a wretched spectacle would Hector, Achilles, Diomed, Nestor, Ulysses, and the rest present to us, were their existence devoted simply to quaffing goblets and scenting or devouring the flesh of slain animals, even though with this there were present the mitigating refinement of perpetual harp and song. And yet such is the picture offered by the Homeric mythology.
Upon the whole, while it remains true that the deification of heroes, or their promotion to a happy immortality, in Homer’s time, depended upon virtue and merit; those who thus obtained admission to Olympus really found themselves introduced to a new and far lower law of life, upon taking their places there, than that to which they had been accustomed upon earth. Thus, for example, it is with Hercules; he has indeed a reward beyond the grave; but it consists simply in a life divested of the virtues of patience, obedience, valour, and struggle by which it had itself been earned.
The superiority, however, of the intellectual over the material element, except in the matter of self-indulgence, is, as we might have expected, decisively maintained in the Grecian mythology. It is exhibited most clearly, perhaps, in the triumph of Jupiter and Olympus over the brute might of the Titans. It is also palpable, when we find that the strength of Mars, who represents nothing except fighting force, does not always insure his victory, even in contests of mere strength, but that he is overthrown by Minerva in the battle of the gods, corrected at will by her on all other occasions[643], and wounded, with her aid, by the hero Diomed beneath the walls of Troy. But when we speak of intellect as opposed to matter, the case stands so differently with respect to different deities, that it is necessary to attempt a stricter appreciation than we have yet aimed at obtaining, of their common character.
Their exemption from Death uniform.
The great and perhaps only essential property by which the Homeric gods are distinguished, is that expressed in their very common appellation of ἀθάνατος: they are immortal.
There is something curious in the question, why it is that they are endowed uniformly and absolutely with this gift, but not with others; why the limitation of Death is removed from them, and yet other limitations are allowed in so many respects to remain.
It seems as if we had here an independent and impartial testimony to the truth of the representation conveyed in Holy Writ, that death has been the specific punishment ordained for sin: and that therefore in passing beyond the human order we, as a matter of course, pass beyond its range.
Had the preternatural system of the Poet exhibited to us only such divinities as are the representatives of primeval tradition, it would have been easy to account for the attribute of immortality. But here are a multitude of deities, the creatures of human invention; why was this gift bestowed on them, when others were withheld? It may be, again, because that which came last into man’s condition should, in the logical and moral order, go first out of it: that in framing the conception of an existence higher than that of man, the first step properly was, before dealing with the more positive faults or imperfections inherent in his nature, to set aside that which did not belong to it, but had been set upon it as a note of shame for a special cause, like letters branded on a deserter or a slave.