By miracle I understand, speaking generally, not the mere use of the common natural powers, accumulated or enlarged, but an operation involving what, I suppose, would be called medically an organic departure from her customary laws: an operation too, which must absolutely be performed, upon man himself or some other object, after some manner which shall be appreciable in its results by his faculties, and calculated to satisfy them, when in their greatest vigilance, that it is a real experience, and not a mere delusion of the senses.
Thus understood, the miracles of Homer are, I think, scarcely more numerous than the following: for, under this definition, the ambrosia of Simois and the flowers of Ida are not miracles[704].
1. The crawling and lowing of the oxen of the Sun after their death, Od. xii. 395, 6.
2. The acceleration of the Sunset, Il. xviii. 239.
3. The retardation of the dawn, Od. xxiii. 241.
4. The speaking horse, Il. xix. 407.
3. The εἴδωλον of Æneas, Il. v. 449.
6. The portents of the banquet night in Od. xx. 347–62. I feel some doubt, however, whether this is objective, or whether it is only an impression on the senses.
7. The transformation and re-transformation of Ulysses[705], Od. xiii. 398, 429, and xxiii. 156–63.
8. Perhaps, also, the εἴδωλον of Iphthime, Od. ix. 797.