Nor is the expression casual; it is one of the regular Homeric formulæ. Sometimes she discharges this office in actual concurrence with Apollo. The happy island, where Eumæus passed his childhood, knew neither famine nor disease: but when its people reached the term of their old age, then[183]
ἐλθὼν ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων Ἀρτέμιδι ξὺν
οἷς ἀγανοῖς βελέεσσιν ἐποιχόμενος κατέπεφνεν.
Again, when the corpse of Hector is by preternatural agency restored, after the lacerations it had undergone, to integrity and freshness, it is said to have become like to the body of him upon whom Apollo has come, and put him to death with his tender darts[184]. The god has a sword, indeed, which must appertain to his destroying office. But his sword, and his only, among all we hear of, is formed of gold, χρυσάορος. The epithet has probably been chosen from its affinity to Light.
Among the instances in which Diana ministers to death, there are many where she clearly exercises a mitigating and favouring agency; and this may probably be signified in nearly all. Even of the children of Niobe[185] it may be meant, that they were thus gently removed, the innocent causes of their mother’s pride; while she was reserved for heavier punishment, and doomed to weep eternally in stone.
In considering what may have been the early traditional source of these remarkable attributes of the children of Latona, we should tread softly and carefully, for we are on very sacred ground. But we seem to see in them the traces of the form of One, who, as an all-conquering King, was to be terrible and destructive to His enemies, but who was also, on behalf of mankind, to take away the sting from Death, and to change its iron band for a thread of silken slumber.
The share of Messianic tradition accorded in this particular province to Minerva appears, as has already been observed, to consist in her peculiar power within the realm of Aidoneus himself.
Independence of second causes.
10. Lastly, we appear to find, that in the conduct of those operations in which their power over Nature is exhibited, Minerva and Apollo are not tied down, or at least are not tied down in the same degree with the other deities generally, to the use of instruments or symbols.
We find that Neptune, when he has to inspire courage into the two Ajaxes, strikes them, (Il. xiii. 59.) As an accompanying significant act, of a nature tending by itself to produce the result, this greatly weakens the force of the passage in proof of divine or extraordinary power. In like manner, when the same divinity converts the ship of the Phæacians into a rock, he drives it downward with his hand[186].