Juno, keenly alive with anxiety, perceives from Olympus the slaughter that Hector and Mars are making on the plain of Troy; and likewise from the same spot watches Jupiter sitting upon Ida[669]. These four deities, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Apollo, appear to be endowed with by far the largest range of vision. Even to Neptune no such powers are assigned, as to them; for we are never given to understand that any amount of mere distance is too great for their ken. But Neptune only sees the state of the battle before Troy by coming to Samothrace, apparently to bring it within view, and by looking from thence: nor is the Poet content without adding the reason;
ἔνθεν γὰρ ἐφαίνετο πᾶσα μὲν Ἴδη
φαίνετο δὲ Πριάμοιο πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν[670]·
a passage which seems to imply, that his vision was much the same as that of mankind even in degree.
General prevalence of limitation.
In the Odyssey, Ulysses pursues his voyage on the raft without the knowledge of Neptune, although on the proper domain of the god, until the eighteenth day. Then he discovers him, but it is only because, coming up from the Ethiopian country, on reaching the Solyman mountains, he is supposed to have got within view of the hero. Being here, without special directions, in the zone of the Outer Geography, we have no means of measuring the terrestrial distance with precision, and the Poet has not informed us what interval of space he intended us to suppose.
The inventive deities of the second order in Olympus are very slightly gifted in this matter. So much we perceive from the ignorance of Mars about the death of his son Ascalaphus. When Venus observes, that Æneas has been wounded, Homer does not name the spot from which she looked; but the general range of the powers of this divinity is so narrow, that we must suppose he means to place her immediately over the field of battle before Troy.
Of the powers of Apollo or Minerva, as hearers of prayer irrespectively of distance, I have already spoken; but the local idea enters more freely into the anomalous character of the head of Olympus. In the First Iliad, Thetis explains to her son that she cannot introduce to Jupiter the matter of his wrongs, until he returns from the country of the Ethiopians, whither he has repaired with the other Immortals to a banquet[671]. This may mean either that he is too far off to attend to the business, or that he must not be disturbed while inhaling the odours of a hecatomb.
Very great diversity in individual cases, but at the same time a general and pervading law of restraint, are evident in the descriptions of the deities with respect to their powers of locomotion. Facility of movement accrues to them variously according to 1. their peculiar work and office; 2. their general dignity and freedom from merely mythological traits; 3. the exigencies of the particular situation. As to the first, I have noticed that Mercury and Iris have a rapidity as messenger-gods, which in their simple capacity as gods they could scarcely possess. Yet even Mercury follows a route: from Olympus he strikes across Pieria, and next descending skims the surface of the sea; then at length passes to the beach of the island, and so onwards to the cave of the Nymph[672]. Minerva, on the other hand, in virtue not of any special function, but of her general power and grandeur, is conceived as swifter still. The journeys of Apollo, in like manner, are conceived of as instantaneous: the rule in both cases being subject to poetical exceptions only. The chariots of Juno and of Neptune[673], again, proceed with measured pace. Each step of Juno’s horses covers the distance over which a man can see[674]. Neptune himself passes in four steps from Samothrace to Ægæ[675]. The driving of Jupiter from Olympus to Ida is described in terms before used for Juno’s journey[676]. Juno travels at another time from Olympus to Lemnos by Pieria, Emathia, and the tops of the Thracian mountains. Here Homer seems to supply her with a sort of made road on which to tread: for the route is a little circuitous[677]. Mars, when wounded, takes wing to Olympus: but Venus, though only hurt in the wrist, cannot get thither until she obtains the aid of his chariot, which happily for her was then waiting on the field[678].