and in the Third Odyssey Minerva comes to attend the gracious sacrifice of Nestor offered in her honour[132],
ἦλθε δ’ Ἀθήνη
ἱρῶν ἀντιόωσα.
Chryses pleads the performance of the sacrificial rites, as one ground of favour with the god[133]: in which, however, he is, after all, only showing that he has not failed to discharge the positive obligations of his office. And of course these two were the objects of sacrifice like other deities. Had they not been so, the fact would have been in conflict with their traditional origin, instead of sustaining it. They stand in the same category with the rest of the Olympian company, in that sacrifice is acceptable to them all: but first, it is plain that they are never said to take a sensual pleasure in it; and secondly, it does not appear that their favour to individuals either was founded upon it, or when lost could be recovered by it. It is restitution, and not sacrifice, which is sought and demanded in the case of Chryses. The moral character of the whole of those proceedings is emphatically and authoritatively declared by Calchas[134],
οὔτ’ ἄρ’ ὅγ’ εὐχωλῆς ἐπιμέμφεται, οὔθ’ ἑκατόμβης·
So Diomed and Ulysses have the closest personal relations with Minerva; but are nowhere said to have acquired their place in her good-will by sacrifices: though both Apollo for Hector, and Minerva for Ulysses, plead in the Olympian court, before the other gods, the sacrificial bounty of those heroes respectively[135]. Nor do we here rest wholly upon negative evidence. In the First Book, the sacrifice of the Greeks to Apollo, by the hands of Chryses, is described in the fullest detail: and the Poet tells us what it was that the god did take delight in; it was the refined pleasure of the mind and ear, afforded to him by the songs they chanted before him all the day in his honour: ὁ δὲ φρένα τέρπετ’ ἀκούων[136]. Further, the contrast may be drawn not with divinities of their own generation only, but with the long journeys of Neptune[137] for a feast, and with the marked and apparently unvarying language of Jupiter himself.
They receive sacrifice with a dignity, which does not belong to the other deities. When prayer and offerings are presented to Jupiter by the Greeks, and he means to refuse the prayer, it is added, that he notwithstanding took the sacrifices[138]:
ἀλλ’ ὅγε δέκτο μὲν ἱρὰ, πόνον δ’ ἀμέγαρτον ὄφελλεν.
In the nearly parallel case of Minerva (Il. vii. 311.), it is simply stated that she refused the prayer of the Trojans, while no notice is taken of their promised offerings. Again, when Minerva had been offended by the Greeks, and Agamemnon sought to appease her with hecatombs, it is described as a proof of his folly that he could entertain such an idea[139]:
οὐ γάρ τ’ αἶψα θεῶν τρέπεται νόος αἰὲν ἐόντων.