Now Minerva has a peculiar relation to Athens, and is once mentioned as betaking herself thither[120]. Again, the epithet Λυκηγένης, rarely given to Apollo, has suggested a connection with Lycia. If, however we form our judgment from Homer, Lycia may derive its name from Apollo, but not Apollo from Lycia.
But it is plain from the poems that the influence, the activity, and the virtual, if not positive presence of Apollo and Minerva pervade the whole Homeric world. This is shown partly by their universal action; in Troas, in Lycia[121], in Thrace, in Scheria, and all over Greece. It is also demonstrated by the manner in which prayer is addressed to them: and neither the one nor the other is ever represented either as having a palace or residence in any particular spot, or as showing, like Juno, an exclusive partiality to any particular race or city.
4. Although invocation of divinities is frequent in the poems of Homer, it does not seem to have been sufficiently observed, that the Olympian personages, to whom it is ordinarily addressed, are very few in number.
In the Twentieth Odyssey, Penelope beseeches Diana to put a period to her mournful existence. I presume that she is here invoked, not on account of her superiority as a traditive deity, but because the subject is connected with her especial office in regard to Death.
Neptune again is occasionally addressed by mortals; as by his descendant Nestor on the sea-shore at Pylus, and in like manner by his son Polyphemus, on the beach of the country of the Cyclops. So also he is invoked by the Envoys on their way to the encampment of Achilles: here again their course lies along the sea-shore. I will assume accordingly, though with a good deal of doubt, that any Olympian deity might be made the object of supplication under given circumstances of time, place, or person. But it is manifest from the poems that the general rule is the other way. They are ordinarily not made the subjects of invocation, even in connection with their own peculiar gifts. There is no invocation addressed in Homer to Venus, Mars, Mercury, or Vulcan; nor even, which is more remarkable, to Juno.
Prayer however is very usual in the poems: but it is confined to three divinities only.
Objects of habitual prayer.
Jupiter, Apollo, and Pallas are addressed by persons in difficulty, not with reference to any peculiar gift or office that they fill, but quite independently of peculiar rites, and local or personal relations. Thus Ulysses and Diomed in the Doloneia invoke Minerva[122]. Menelaus, when about to attack Euphorbus, prays first to Jupiter[123]. Nestor, too, addresses Jupiter, and not his own ancestor Neptune[124], in the great straits of the Greek army. Glaucus beseeches Apollo to heal his wound[125]; and if this address be thought to belong to his medical function, it is still very remarkable from its containing a direct assertion, that he is able both to hear and to act at whatever distance. The same may be said of the prayer of Pandarus[126]. His priest Chryses offers prayer to him from the plain of Troas (Il. i. 37): but this may be incidental to the office. The cases of prayer to Jupiter and Minerva are purely private petitions, without notice, suggested by the circumstances of the moment: and they show that though Homer had perhaps no abstract idea of omnipresence, he assigned to these deities its essential characteristic, that is to say, the possession of powers not limited by space.
The evidence that Apollo was invoked independently of bodily presence at a particular spot, and for the general purpose of help and protection, not simply in the exercise of particular mythological functions, if it be less diversified is still, I think, not less conclusive. It is, in the first place, supplied by the trine invocation repeatedly addressed to him together with Jupiter and Minerva[127]: