Otus and Ephialtes, twin grandchildren of Neptune, and the most huge in stature of all beings reared on earth, as also the most beautiful after Orion, threaten even in their boyhood war against heaven, and propose to scale it by piling the mountains. And this they would have accomplished, had they attained to their proper age and full size (ἥβη): but Apollo destroyed them first[90].
This is a tradition which cannot properly belong to Greek invention: for what has Apollo to do, when so regarded, either with the wielding of vast physical force, or with laying it prostrate? Neither as physician, harper, poet, prophet, archer, nor angel of Death, does he appear to have been the person who would have been chosen for this purpose. The thunderbolt of Jupiter is the weapon we should have expected to be employed in preference, or the mighty spear and terrifying Ægis of Minerva, or even the brute bulk of Mars. The gentle death, which it was Apollo’s mythological office to bring about, is totally unsuited to the subject.
It is only when we expand that mild conception into the character of the Avenger, partially exhibited in the First Iliad, that Apollo becomes the fitting destroyer of Otus and Ephialtes. This tradition in aftertimes was apparently combined with a larger one relating to the Giants, at which Homer darkly glances[91].
Ovid makes Jupiter his own defender[92]: a fine passage in Horace introduces many divine combatants, but retains a rather prominent place for Apollo, while it gives another to Minerva; and these two with Jupiter appear to bear the brunt of the battle[93].
It admits of but one satisfactory explanation, namely that, coming from a source higher than the mythology, it does not, so to speak, wear the livery of that system: and that this performance is assigned to Apollo, either because he represented the Person to whom all power was to belong in heaven and earth both for destruction and for deliverance, or else because tradition actually assigned to that same Person the glory of having already overcome a rebellion of powerful beings against the Most High.
There is no precise parallel supplied by Homer, in the case of Minerva, to the tradition which makes Apollo the destroyer of the rebels. But though not the defender of the divine order at large, she is the champion of Hercules, the favourite son of Jupiter, under circumstances when apparently, but for her, his divinity would have been at fault. ‘What!’ says Minerva, when thwarted by her parent in the Eighth Iliad, ‘has he forgotten how many times I saved his son in the labours imposed upon him by Eurystheus? Had I, at the time when Hercules was sent by him to fetch Cerberus out of the under-world, known how he would behave now, never should he have escaped the dread streams of Styx[94].’ We are left to infer from this curious legend that Minerva had a power, available in the world below, which tradition did not assign to Jupiter, and that he found her use of it on this occasion absolutely indispensable for the fulfilment of his wishes, even in regard to a favourite son.
Each of these functions, assigned to Apollo and Minerva respectively, recalls to memory those Jewish traditions, which set forth the direct and especial power of the Messiah over the fallen angels and over the grave.
These deities are never foiled by others.
6. The last characteristic of the two peculiarly traditive deities which will be mentioned under this head is, that they are never foiled, defeated, or outwitted by any other of the gods. In no single case has Minerva, where she is in action, to encounter any one of these forms of dishonour: nor has Apollo, in any instance except only when he is pitted against Minerva. Of this class there are two cases: one, when the Greeks are losing ground[95], and he is made to arrange with her for stopping the general conflict, by prompting the personal challenge from Hector in its stead: a matter which was certain to end to the credit of the Greeks. The other is in the Doloneia[96], when he causes an alarm just in time to find that Diomed and Ulysses, guided by Minerva, have accomplished the bloody purpose of their errand. Among men, as among gods, Minerva touches nothing except what is destined to triumph. She is not, therefore, invoked by the doomed Patroclus: and she renders him no aid.
To appreciate the importance of this consideration, we must bear in mind that there is no one of the purely invented deities, who is not at one time or another subject in some form to disparagement. Mars is worsted by Minerva, through Diomed, as well as directly subject to her control; Vulcan is laughed at by the gods in general; Mercury dares not encounter Latona; Ceres sees her lover slain by Jupiter; Venus is not only smitten to the ground by Minerva, but beaten by Diomed without his having any divine aid to strengthen him, and befooled by Juno; Juno outwits Jupiter himself; but Juno also, together with Aides, is wounded sorely by Hercules; and it is also recorded of her, that she had been subjected by her husband to the ignominious punishment of hanging in chains, with an anvil at each foot[97].