The protection, too, which the deities usually accord to man, is not only given on selfish principles, but is liable to be withdrawn for causes wholly independent of his deserts. Quarrels about men are settled, not by each foregoing his animosities, but by each surrendering and abandoning his clients. ‘I will give up Troy to you,’ says Jupiter; ‘but mind that I shall be at liberty to destroy the cities which you love, when I may be so minded[729].’ ‘You are quite welcome,’ answers Juno, ‘and indeed I could not prevent you: but let me have Troy destroyed.’ Why, says even Apollo to Neptune, should we quarrel about miserable mortals? It is not worth our while: let us leave them to themselves[730]. No Homeric deity ever will be found to make a personal sacrifice on behalf of a human client.
In the next Section, I shall endeavour to show that the practice of sacrifice was not so entirely disconnected from morality, as we are perhaps too apt to suppose. I think we may, on the contrary, find in it at least a witness to the essential harmony between morality and divine worship, and to the difficulty of tearing them asunder.
We are here met, indeed, by the case of Autolycus, which proves to us that the better elements of this practice were already on their way to corruption, inasmuch as in that instance they had reached it. It was a case, let it be remembered, of sacrifices, not to the gods in general, nor to the higher or the better deities, but to Mercury, a purely mythical divinity; and therefore what we see in it is, a false religion in a state of ripeness at one particular point. Now the worship of Mercury, the god of gain, was perhaps the first point at which the morality of the system might be expected to give way: and it is therefore quite in the natural course that a case like that of Autolycus should be presented to us without any corresponding case for any other deity[731]. As it stands in Homer, it represents what was then the exception, though it was gradually to become the rule.
A moral tone occasionally perceptible.
There are, however, in particular connection with one of the great traditive deities, glimpses of better things, even in Olympus. When urged by Minerva on behalf of Ulysses in the Odyssey, Jupiter half rebukes her for having insinuated a doubt, by replying, ‘How could I forget Ulysses, who excels others both in his intellect, and in the sacrifices which he offers to the gods?’[732]
It may indeed be said that in this passage, if it be construed strictly, it is mental power or intelligence, and not any moral quality, which, as second to liberality in sacrifice, is recognised as fit to be taken into account by the gods.
Still it is, I think, manifest that Homer, like the Holy Scripture, includes a moral element in the idea of wisdom, which is represented by the word νόος, commonly or always used of men in a good sense.
And in the second divine Council of the Odyssey, the moral tone rises higher. Minerva, grown more daring, pleads plainly the discouraging effect which the indifference of the gods, if continued, will have upon the moral conduct of sovereigns. ‘Let them,’ she says, ‘cast away all moral restraint: for the virtuous Ulysses is forgotten by his people, and is detained in great affliction by Calypso[733].’
For us, in the present inquiry, the main question evidently is, not what are the sentiments which the Poet has represented as proceeding from his divinities on Olympus, but what are those which the people at large believed them to entertain. There is a considerable difference between these two standards: and it is the latter one by which we have now to abide.