The central idea of these old traditions, as we conceive it, and as it stands apart from simple theism, was that of redemption by means of a person clothed in the attributions of humanity, but also invested with the nature and powers of Godhead. Of these two sides of the tradition, one was exhibited in the Word or Wisdom of God, and the other in the Seed of the woman. The first is appropriated to Minerva, and the second in the main to Apollo. But as the divine and human could not in the tradition long continue completely harmonized and united, so neither are they wholly severed. The Wisdom assumes a human configuration: the Seed of the woman does not cease to be divine. Now Pallas and Apollo preserve, relatively to one another, the place of their prototypes in these two cardinal respects. As the tradition of the Λόγος was more immediately divine, so Pallas is more copiously invested with the higher powers, prerogatives, and offices of deity. On the other hand, as the deliverance was to be wrought out by the immediate agency of the Seed of the woman, so Apollo is more human, and is invested with the larger and more varied assemblage of active endowments, appertaining to the health, welfare, safety, purification, and chastisement of mankind. And one main reason of the anthropomorphous character of the Greek mythology as a whole may very probably be found in the fact, that it was an old and a pure tradition which first gave to men the idea of God in human form; the idea which, when once more purified, became that of Emmanuel, God with us[60].
The personages of the Homeric Theo-mythology who might most reasonably be distinguished as having their basis in tradition are:
- 1. Jupiter.
- 2. Minerva.
- 3. Apollo.
- 4. Diana.
- 5. Latona.
- 6. Iris.
- 7. The Titans and kindred traditions.
- 8. Ἄτη, the Temptress.
Of these, Jupiter is so mixed a conception, and has such important relations to the whole genesis of the Greek mythology, that I place him in another class, and postpone the attempt to give a view of his person and offices until we have gone through the deities, in whom the traditional element is less disguised and also less contaminated.
Minerva and Apollo the key.
And of these I commence with Minerva and Apollo, not only because they are the most dignified, but also as they are the most characteristic representatives of the class, and because it is in their persons that we may best test the amount and quality of the evidence in support of the assertion, that a traditional basis for the religion of the heroic age of Greece is still traceable in the poems of Homer.
Again: it is the effect of this evidence in general both to separate Minerva and Apollo by many important differences from the general mass of the Olympian deities, and likewise to associate them together in a great number of common signs and properties.
For these reasons I shall begin by considering them jointly: and I believe that in a just comprehension of their position lies the key to the whole Homeric system.