ἠὲ φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;
Nor are they in any instance separated in deeds. We hear of no religious observances by the Suitors in Ithaca; but Nestor and Menelaus are both found engaged in them. The wicked Ægisthus, having corrupted Clytemnestra and gained the throne, then offered many sacrifices to the gods in the hope of keeping it, and suspended many decorations in their honour[805]; but he is not on this account spoken of with less horror, nor indeed did this extorted profession save him from divine vengeance, sent by the hand of Orestes. Nor does it appear that he had ever been liberal in sacrifice before. The persons who are extolled, obviously or expressly, on this ground in the Odyssey are, the illustrious Ulysses[806], and the trusty Eumæus in his humble cottage[807]. So that on the whole, as between Greek and Greek, regularity in divine worship by sacrifice was neither taken for the substance of morality, nor allowed as a substitute for it, but was a test of it, and was habitually found in union with it. The connection is clearly set out in the case of Eumæus[808]:
οὐδὲ συβώτης
λήθετ’ ἄρ’ ἀθανάτων· φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν.
Moral elements in Sacrifice.
Nor must we forget that, had it been otherwise, a constant moral profanation, abhorred by the feeling of the time, would have been involved. For sacrifice, as ought to be the case with all ritual, had a moral character and adjuncts. It was either ordinary, as at the common meal, or solemn. In the former case the surrender by man of a portion of his food was a witness to God as the giver, and an expression of thankfulness intelligible to an unsophisticated age. In the latter case, and even in the former[809], prayer or thanksgiving were commonly combined with the rite. The spirit of man, when he approached the altar, was bowed down before the powers of heaven; and though it was a heavy sin in nations who had a clear knowledge of God to lapse into the practices of those who could but feebly grope (to use the language of saint Paul[810]) for Him, yet the use of religious observances, when it is ordinarily combined, as we find it combined in Greece, with the possession in other respects of virtuous character, is in effect one of the strongest testimonies to the existence of a substantive standard of morals, which it associates at once with the unseen world, and not with any mere reckoning of results, drawn from the life and experience of man.
If then the Greeks of the heroic age recognised a real type of good and evil in human action, the next question is, what were the motive powers by which they were drawn towards the practice of virtue?
These powers proceeded from three sources.
One was a regard to the gods; to their rewarding the good, and punishing the bad. Of this we have already treated in regard to some of the most important points. The general proof rests upon almost every page of the poems, especially as regards the punishment of the unkind, unjust, and cruel. The Homeric representations of a future state obscurely, but sensibly, add strength to the same class of sanctions.