As regards size and stature, these gifts are so freely bestowed as to be almost without measure: nor does the Poet even care in such cases to be at strict unity with himself. Mars, who in the Fifth Book, draws no very peculiar notice on the battle field from his size, in the Theomachy, when laid prostrate, covers seven acres. Eris, treading on the earth, strikes heaven with her head. The helmet of Minerva would suffice for the soldiery of a hundred cities; the golden tassels of her ægis, a hundred in number, and each worth a hundred oxen, after every allowance for mere laxity in the use of numbers, would imply vast weight and bulk. Accordingly, the axle of Juno’s chariot may well groan beneath the weight of Pallas[686]. Apollo, without the smallest seeming effort, stops Diomed and Patroclus in mid-career; and overthrows the Greek wall as easily as a child overthrows his plaything heap of sand[687]. Other signs might be quoted, such as the tread that shakes the earth, and the voices of Mars and Neptune, equal to those of nine or ten thousand[688] mortals.
With the one marked exception of Vulcan, beauty is generally indicated as the characteristic of the Olympian deities. Among the gods, it extends even to Mars[689]. It is sufficiently indicated for the goddesses by their habitual epithets. Even Minerva, in whom personal charms are as it were eclipsed by the sublime gifts of the mind, is sometimes called ἠΰκομος and ἐϋπλόκαμος (Il. vi. 92. Od. vii. 40): and Calypso declares the superiority of goddesses to women in beauty, as a general proposition[690],
ἐπεὶ οὔπως οὐδὲ ἔοικεν
θνητὰς ἀθανάτῃσι δέμας καὶ εἶδος ἐρίζειν.
The mythological or invented deities generally, but none of the strictly traditive deities, appear to be tainted with libertinism. Among the former we may, however, observe degrees. Jupiter and Venus stand at the head. Neptune, Mars, Mercury, Ceres, Aurora, follow. Juno evidently treats the passion simply as an instrument for political ends. Of this Homer has given us a very remarkable indication. For when she sees Jupiter on Ida, though she is just then conceiving her design, she views him with disgust: στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ[691]. So careful is the Poet that we shall not imagine her to have been under the gross influence of a merely sensual passion. Thetis suggests a remedy of that nature to her son for his grief[692]. In mere impersonations, not yet endowed with the strong human individuality of the Greek Olympus, such as Themis and Helios, we do not expect to find this trait. But of all the fully personified deities of invention, Vulcan alone, privileged by Labour and Ugliness, appears in Homer to be exempt. The Hellenic goddesses generally do not, however, like the more Pelasgian Venus, Ceres, and probably Aurora, debase themselves by intrigues with mortal men.
The chastity of the traditive deities, Minerva, Diana, Latona, and probably Apollo, I take for one of the noblest and most significant proofs of the high origin of the materials which they respectively embody.
There is also in the deities of Homer not merely a dependance upon physical nourishment, but even a passion of gluttony connected with it. The basis of this idea is laid in the conception which made feasting the normal occupation of Olympus. It followed that they were not only bound by something in the nature of necessity to food, but also enslaved to it by greediness as a rooted habit.
Nature of their regard for sacrifice.
Of this we find traces all through the poems, in the course which divine favour usually takes. When Homer speaks of the gods in the sense of Providential governors, it is the just man that they regard, and the unjust that they visit with wrath. But when he carries us into Olympus, and we behold them in the living energy of their individualities, it is sacrifice which they want, and which forms their share in the fruits of earth and of human labour, as we learn from the emphatic words of Jupiter himself;
τὸ γὰρ λάχομεν γέρας ἡμεῖς[693].