μηδὲ μεγήρῃς
ἡμῖν εὐχομένοισι τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.
But at the close the poet goes on to declare that what she thus sought in prayer from her uncle Neptune, she forthwith accomplished herself:
ὣς ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἠρᾶτο, καὶ αὐτὴ πάντα τελεύτα.
Yet once more. The same train of ideas, which explains how Olympus is fitted with a set of Secondaries, also shows to us why these Secondaries have only the lower or subsidiary form of their several gifts. It is because these gifts were already in the possession of higher personages, before the introduction of the more recent traditions represented by the Secondaries: traditions, of which the whole, (except that of Paieon, who is not worshipped at all, and exists only in and for Olympus,) bear upon them, as received in Greece, the marks of modernism[78]. They naturally submit to the conditions, anterior to themselves, of the hierarchy into which they are introduced. But, on the one hand, their existence, together with the peculiar relation of their work and attributes, rather than themselves, to the great deities of tradition, Apollo and Minerva, constitutes of itself a strong argument for the separate and more ancient origin of those divinities. On the other hand, they bear powerful testimony to the force of that principle, which reflected on the Achæan heaven the experience of earth. For there is not a single dignified and intellectual occupation known to and in use among the Hellenic tribes, properly so called, which has not, as far as may be, counterpart on Olympus. Not even the priesthood is a real exception; especially if I am right in believing it to be Pelasgian, and not yet to have been adopted in the time of Homer as one of the Hellenic institutions. But, even if it had been so adopted, it could not, from the nature of the case, have been carried into the Olympian system, since there were no beings above themselves to whom the gods could offer sacrifice, and since, according to the depraved idea of it which had begun to prevail, in offering it they would have parted with something that was of value to themselves.
We do not hear a great deal respecting mere ceremonial among the Olympian divinities. To Jupiter, however, and to Juno, is awarded the conspicuous honour, that, when either of them enters the assembled Court, all the other deities rise up[79]. It is plain that Homer included in the picture before his mental eye ideas relating to that external order which we term precedence: and it may be shown, that Minerva had the precedence over the other gods, or what we should term the seat of honour; that place which was occupied, in the human family, by the eldest son. Juno we must presume, as the reflection of Jupiter, would occupy the place of the mother.
When Thetis is summoned to Olympus in the Twenty-fourth Iliad, she receives on her arrival the honours of a guest, in which is included this distinguished place beside the chief person, and it is Minerva who yields it up to her;
ἡ δ’ ἄρα πὰρ Διῒ πατρὶ καθέζετο, εἶξε δ’ Ἀθήνη[80].
An exactly similar proceeding is recorded in the Third Odyssey. When Telemachus and the pseudo-Mentor approach the banquet of Nestor, Pisistratus, the youngest son, first goes to greet them, and then places them in the seat of honour, between his father and his eldest brother[81],