This verse meets us, not upon occasions having reference to any peculiar rite or function, but simply when the speaker desires to give utterance with a peculiar solemnity or emphasis to some strong and paramount desire. Thus Agamemnon wishes, with this adjuration, that he had ten such counsellors as Nestor[104]: and again, that all his warriors had the same activity of spirit as the two Ajaxes[105]. Nestor with these words wishes himself young again[106]: as does old Laertes[107]. Achilles prays in this form, when exasperated, for the destruction of Greeks and Trojans alike[108]: Menelaus for the appearance of Ulysses among the Suitors[109]; Alcinous thus expresses the wish that Ulysses could be the husband of Nausicaa[110]: and lastly, Telemachus, that the Suitors were in a worse condition than the disabled Irus[111].
The Trine Invocation.
The expression never is heard from the mouth of any Trojan; for Homer, on whatever account, rarely allows them the use of the same formulæ with the Greeks. But the whole substance of it is contained, and in a shape even more restrictive, in the line twice spoken by Hector,
Τιοίμην δ’, ὡς τιέτ’ Ἀθηναίη καὶ Απόλλων.
This language is indeed so pointed, that it suggests the question, whether there must not have been some peculiar form of external honour, which in the Heroic age was rendered to these deities, and not to others.
And, singularly enough, of the temples of the Homeric poems, all that we can point out as unequivocally named, and in existence, are temples either to Apollo or to Pallas. But the phrases may also have pointed towards others of their very numerous distinctions. I do not, accordingly, venture to assert that this actually was the exclusive honour of the two deities; but there is nothing absurd in the supposition that it may have been so. It would not have been inconsistent with a belief in Jupiter as the highest god, that those, who were believed to be in a peculiar sense his ministers and organs for the government of the world, should either have received at the hands of mankind a larger share of the substantial tributes of worship than he did, or should have enjoyed it under a peculiar form and conditions.
Their worship universal.
2. It would appear to be indubitable, that Apollo and Minerva were objects not of partial but of universal worship, within the sphere of the knowledge of Homer.
Even without examination of details, the proof of this proposition might rest upon their relative positions in regard to the two parties of Greeks and Trojans. Minerva, the great Hellenizing deity, is the object of the supplicatory procession of Trojan women in the Sixth Book. She is the peculiar patroness at once of the highly Pelasgian Attica[112], and of the characteristic type of Hellenic character represented in Ulysses. On the other hand, Apollo, the one really effective champion of the Trojans, is acknowledged by every Greek chieftain, except Agamemnon, at the very outset of the poem[113]. Agamemnon himself has only been misled by his own avarice and passion, and he shortly sends a solemn mission to appease the offended divinity[114].