Setting aside the case of Jupiter, who stands on a different level, there is nothing attaching to the other deities of the War, which at all resembles the position of command enjoyed in common by these two, both among their friends, and with those against whom they are contending. There is not even a difference of degree to be traced between the reverence paid them on the one side, and on the other.
When we turn to particulars, we find that Minerva has a temple in Troy, a temple in Athens, a sacred grove in Scheria. She is worshipped by Nestor on the sea-shore at Pylos, and, near the Minyeius; by Telemachus in Ithaca; by Ulysses and Diomed in the Greek camp. She accompanies Ulysses every where, while he is within the circle of the Greek traditions; only refrains of her own free will from going beyond it; and rejoins him when, near Scheria, he has at length again touched upon the outermost border of the Greek world.
There is no deity, without excepting even Jupiter, with respect to whom we have such ample evidence in the poems of the development of his worship in positive and permanent institutions, as is given in the case of Apollo. He has a priest at Chryse, a temple in Troy, a priest and grove at Ismarus in Thrace, a grove and festivals in Ithaca, oracles at Delos and at Delphi.
Besides these positive institutions, there are in Homer innumerable marks of his influence. He worked for Laomedon, he is worshipped at Cille; the name of Lycia seems to have been probably derived from him and his attributes; the Seers, whom he endows with vision, are found in Peloponnesus, and even among the Cyclops; he feeds the horses of Admetus either in Pieria or in Pheræ, claims the services of Alcyone, the daughter of Marpessa, in Ætolia, and slays the children of Niobe near mount Sipylus. So far as the Homeric signs go, they would lead us to suppose that he was regarded by the Poet as a deity no less universal than that Scourge of Death, to which he stands in such a close and solemn relation.
With the exception of Jupiter, there is no other deity of whom we can so confidently assert that he receives an universal worship: and Neptune is the only other, with Minerva, in regard to whom the indications of the poems render it probable. Of him we may infer it, from his appearing to be known or to act at places so widely separated by distance; on the Solyman mountains, in Troas under Laomedon, in Greece near the Enipeus, in the land of the Cyclops, in the sea far north of Phæacia. But this is entirely owing to the wide extent of the θάλασσα, his portion of the great kingdom of external Nature, which, being as broad as the Phœnician traditions of the Odyssey, at once gives him a place in them. It is clearly not due to any thing more divine in the conception of him, for he carries many chief notes of limitation in common with the divinities of pure invention.
The wide extension of the class of Seers may of itself be taken as a proof of the equally wide recognition of the influence of Apollo: for he it was who made Polypheides[115] to be first of that order, on the death of Amphiaraus. Now these Seers appear to have been found every where, under the form either of the μάντις, or of the οἰωνίστης. Not in Greece only and in Troas proper; but in Percote, among the Mysians, and even among the Cyclops in the Outer Zone[116].
Not localized as to abode.
3. The next distinction I shall note in the traditive deities is, that they are confined to no one spot or region for their abode; a limitation, which is imposed, either more or less, upon every other prominent deity except Jupiter only.
With respect to some of them, this is made quite clear by positive signs. Except when in Olympus, or else when abroad on a special occasion, Mars does not quit Thrace, nor Vulcan Lemnos, nor Venus Paphos. But even upon higher and older deities there are signs of some kind of local limitation. The rigidly Argeian character of Juno, though it does not express, yet implies it. Demeter would appear to have a local abode, probably in Crete. Aidoneus and Persephone are ordinarily confined to the Shades, where their proper business lies. Neptune himself, when dismissed from the battle-field, is desired to repair either to the sea or to Olympus. His regular worship among the Greeks was, as appears from a speech of Juno, at Helice and Ægæ in Ægialos; which it is not easy to account for, except upon the supposition that he resided peculiarly at these places[117]. Now it is expressly declared that his palace was in Ægæ: from thence he sets out for the plain of Troy, and thither he repairs when he desists from the persecution of Ulysses. The name Ægæ is not mentioned in the Catalogue, and Helice, as it is called εὐρεῖα, was evidently a district; thus it may have been the district in which Ægæ stood, perhaps as its seaport[118]. Before the time of Strabo Ægæ[119] had disappeared.