1. These divinities belong to the circle of outer or Phœnician traditions, and the Poet is not therefore, in treating them, subject to the same laws as those by which he regulates the Olympian order. They are brought upon the stage with reference to Ulysses or Menelaus, and in the Wanderings only; thus they are adopted by Homer for this special purpose, and endowed with whatever gifts they require for it, just as strangers, while they remain, are treated more liberally in a house than the children of the family, for the very reason that they are strangers, and have no concern with the regular organization and continuing life of the household.
2. Another principle of the mythology conducts us by another road to the same end. Every deity is liberally endowed within his own province. Now the province of Proteus, Calypso, and Circe, is the Outer sphere of Geography. Within the range of that sphere, the ordinary agency of the Olympian deities individually is suspended. Homer prefers to leave it to be governed by the divinities, whom he can frame out of his Phœnician materials for the purpose. In this way he is enabled to enlarge the circle of variety, and to draw new and salient lines of distinction between the two worlds. Neptune indeed is there perforce; for navigation is the staple of its theme, and the θάλασσα pervades it, from no portion of which can he possibly be excluded. The Olympian Court, too, oversee it, and their orders are conveyed thither by Mercury their agent. But, except Neptune for the reason given, the ordinary action of the deities individually is suspended[656], not on account of any limitation of power, for instance in Minerva, but for a poetical purpose, and with the excuse, that the whole sphere is removed beyond common life and experience. Hence, just as Vulcan works professionally the most extraordinary miracles, though he is but a secondary deity, because they are in the domain of metallic art, so Circe and the rest are empowered to do the like within a domain of which they are the rooted zoophytes and exclusive occupants.
It may be well, before passing to the general limitations upon divine capacity in Homer, to illustrate a little farther this law of special endowment.
Venus is among gods what Nireus was among men: ἄναλκις ἔην θεός[657]. Yet she overcomes the resistance of Helen[658]: and we have also the express record of her girdle as invincible in its operation[659]. The case of Mars is peculiar: for he is brought upon the stage to be beaten in his own province, as the exigencies of the poem require it: but inferior, nay pitiful, as he is in every point of mind and character, yet as to imposing personal appearance, he is made to take rank in a comparison with Jupiter and Neptune, between whose names his is placed[660]. Neptune exhibits vast power, and on his own domain, the sea, appears even to have an inkling of providential foreknowledge[661]: he is conscious that Ulysses will reach Scheria. Except upon the sea, he exhibits no such attributes of intelligence, though he always remains possessed of huge force. Mercury, again, shows in locomotion a greater independence of the laws of place, than some deities who are of a rank higher than his own: and doubtless it is because he is professionally an agent or messenger. Even so the journeys of Iris are no sooner begun than they are accomplished.
Divine faculties an extension of human.
But the general rule is, that the divine faculties represent, in regard to all the conditions of existence, no more than an improvement and extension of the human[662]. Man is the point of origin: and from this pattern invention strives to work upward and outward. The great traditive deities indeed are on a different footing, and appear rather to be the reductions and depravations of an ideal modelled upon the infinite. But the general rule holds good, in regard both to bodily and mental laws, for the mass of the Olympian Court.
Thus deities are subject to sleep, both ordinarily, and under the special influences of Ὕπνος, the god of sleep. We are furnished with a reason for Jupiter’s not being asleep at a given moment[663]; it is the special anxiety which presses on him. He had been asleep just before. Their bodies are not ethereal, but are capable of constraint by manacles. They are capable also of wounds; and they suffer pain even so as to scream under it: but their blood is ichor, and their hurts heal with great rapidity[664]. They eat ambrosia, and drink nectar. They also receive a sensible pleasure from the savour of sacrifices and libations[665]. Nor is this pleasure alone, it is also nourishment and strength, for Mercury speaks of it as highly desirable for support on any long journey. He, too, practises according to his precept, for he seems greatly to relish the meal of ambrosia and nectar, which is afforded him by the hospitality of Calypso[666].
As regards the percipient organs, the Olympian gods appear to depend practically on the eye. Minerva alone has a perfect and unfailing acquaintance with whatever it concerns her to know. For even Jupiter, as we have seen, is not exempt from limitation in this point[667]. Juno sends Iris to Achilles in the Eighteenth Iliad without his knowledge, κρυβδὰ Διὸς ἄλλων τε θεῶν. Apollo does not immediately perceive the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia. Being here opposed to Minerva, he could not but be worsted. Generally, even these great traditive deities perceive not by a gift of universal vision, but by attention[668]:
οὐδ’ ἀλαοσκοπίην εἶχ’ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων.