In the final crisis of the Odyssey, which is doubtless meant to exhibit a normal example of Providential retribution, it seems to have been the object of the Poet to divide the theurgic action between Minerva and Apollo, as joint administrators of the general government of the world. To Minerva, as the goddess of wisdom, falls what may be called the intellectual share[158], the actual instruction and guidance of Ulysses, Penelope, and Telemachus, as well as the bewildering and hardening operations on the minds of the Suitors. Special arrangements appear, however, to have been introduced, so as to make a corresponding place for Apollo. Hence it is that Theoclymenus, as the representative of a great prophetic family, is brought into the company of Telemachus, that he may become the organ of Apollo in the remaining part of the drama. This is the more remarkable, because Theoclymenus does not repay the friendly aid he had received by taking part in the final struggle on the side of Telemachus; so that his share in the proceeding stands out the more conspicuously as one altogether theurgic. In cooperation with this arrangement, it is provided that the crisis shall come to pass on the festival of the god, and that the manner of trial, by the Bow, shall place it especially under his auspices.
In the magnificent passage of the Twentieth Book[159], which describes the phantasmagoria in the palace of Ulysses, immediately before the trial of the Bow, there are two parts. First, the minds of the Suitors are befooled (παρέπλαγξεν δὲ νόημα). Secondly, the hall is filled with sensible portents: preternatural night envelopes the company, the walls and beams are blood-bespattered, phantoms glide along with downward movement, as on their way to Erebus, the very meat they eat is gory, their eyes are charged with involuntary tears, their lips with unnatural smiles. Of all this the announcement is made by Theoclymenus, a trait which I interpret as referring the array of the phenomena to his master Apollo. To him is thus given that part of the operation which lies within the domain of sense: while the purely intellectual one, that of stupefying the Suitors, is expressly assigned to Minerva.
But Minerva has likewise the power over signs, which is enjoyed by Jupiter and Apollo. As Diomed and Ulysses are setting out on their nocturnal expedition in the Tenth Iliad, Minerva sends the apparition of a heron to cheer them[160]: they do not see it, on account of the darkness; but they hear the flapping of its wings.
It has accordingly attracted the attention of Nägelsbach[161], that the power of exhibiting signs is confined to Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and Minerva: though he has not proceeded to combine this with other distinctions, at least equally remarkable, enjoyed by the two latter divinities.
I have not, it will be observed, reckoned as a τέρας, or sign of the future, the case in which Juno endows the horses of Achilles with the gift of speech: because it appears that the prediction of their master’s death is their own; and that she only removes the barrier to its expression[162]. She stands, therefore, in a different position to that of Apollo and Minerva.
Their dominion over Nature.
9. This command, however, over natural portents may be viewed as part of a general dominion over nature, of which the most varied manifestation is in Minerva.
It is true that, in common with most of the Olympian deities, she does not extend her action from the inner, or Greek, into the general range of the outer, or Phœnician world. Nor does Apollo. But we have clear proof that this was by a poetical arrangement, and not from a lack of divine power: since (1) she does act in Scheria, and assists in bringing Ulysses to the shore of that island: (2) the class of μάντεις are found among the Cyclops: (3) Calypso is amenable to the command of the Olympian court, and speaks of herself as belonging to the same wide class of deities with Aurora and Ceres. (4) Minerva assigns a special reason, namely, regard towards her uncle Neptune, for not having accompanied Ulysses all along his voyage (Od. xiii. 341).
The power of Minerva over nature seems to be universal in kind as well as in place.
1. She and Apollo assume the human form in common with other deities: but I do not find that the gods in general become visible to one person without being visible to all. Minerva in the First Iliad (198) reveals herself only to Achilles. It seems as if, in Il. xvii. 321–34, Homer meant that Apollo did the same to Æneas. The recognition of Venus by Helen, I take as most probably a sign of nothing more than that the case was one of disguise, rather than of transformation[163].