Agamemnon feels that he is certain to take Troy, if only Jupiter and Minerva will it[215]. Ulysses expects to slay the Suitors ‘by the favour of Jupiter and Minerva[216].’ But in fact, the whole scheme of divine retribution, of which that hero is the organ, was planned by Minerva and not by Jupiter, as is twice declared to us from his own lips[217]. I must not, however, omit to notice one passage of peculiar grandeur, in which Jupiter and Minerva are combined, as joint arbiters of great events. In the Sixteenth Odyssey, Telemachus exhorts his father, amid their gloomy and doubtful prospects, to bethink him of obtaining some ally. He nobly replies as follows: ‘I will tell you, and do you answer me and say, whether Athene with Zeus her father will not suffice for us, or whether I shall study to find some other defender.’ The rejoinder of Telemachus is in the same exalted strain. ‘Yes, these are good, though they be afar off, sitting on high; for they prevail over all others, whether they be men, or whether they be immortal gods[218].’
Especially in the highest sense to Minerva.
It should be observed, that they are not the lower and more external forms of providential action which devolve on Minerva, with a reservation of the higher parts to Jupiter. On the contrary, in what we may call external and wholesale Providence, Jupiter is supreme; and in the conflict between Ulysses and the Ithacan rebels, as well as in various passages of the Iliad relating to external action, Jupiter interposes to check her eager spirit. In the last Odyssey she asks his designs. He recommends a pacification. She thereupon exhorts and assists old Laertes to begin the battle. At length a thunderbolt descends from Jupiter, and it falls at Minerva’s feet. She then interposes to make peace[219].
Thus it is in battle and matters of the strong hand: but the higher and deeper forms of providential action appear to be unheeded by Jupiter, and to fall to the lot of these two deities, more particularly of Minerva.
In the Odyssey, one of the Suitors, Amphinomus, better minded than the rest, anticipates evil at an early juncture, and is disposed to take the advice given him by Ulysses, that he should quit the palace, and return home. But he did not even now, says the Poet, escape doom: for Minerva fettered him, that he should fall beneath the hand of Telemachus[220]. And further, she works inwardly on the minds of the Suitors, ‘not suffering them,’ such is the remarkable phrase, ‘to abstain from their biting insolence:’ so that pain might yet more deeply pierce the soul of Ulysses[221]:
μνηστῆρας δ’ οὐ πάμπαν ἀγήνορας εἴα Ἀθήνη
λώβης ἴσχεσθαι θυμαλγέος, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον
δύη ἄχος κραδίην Λαερτιάδην Ὀδυσῆα.
This passage is subsequently repeated; and it stands as one of those remarkable Homeric formulæ, which are used with such extraordinary grandeur of effect in the later books of the Odyssey; returning upon the ear like the solemn tolling of a funeral bell.
But the sentiments which the passage contains are in themselves most remarkable, and perhaps only find a parallel in the awful language of Holy Writ; ‘and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he should not let the people go[222].’ They describe at once the doctrine of Providence, and the essential laws of human nature, in their loftiest and severest form. They show us the hardening power of a long continued course of offences against the moral law, which at length converts the most unbounded license into the most absolute slavery, under the iron yoke of habitual depravity; and they likewise exhibit the figure of Deity superintending this terrible, but natural as well as judicial retribution, which is the ultimate and effective sanction of the whole moral code, alike in the earlier and in the later stages of the Divine dispensations. Besides all this, the passage exhibits to us pain administered to the just man, in order to prove his resolution, and steel him, that he may be the fitting minister of divine vengeance. Nor does this process of probation cease here: for the conflict with the Suitors is a prolonged one; and it is prolonged, because Minerva was still making trial of the constancy of Ulysses and his son[223], as of metal in the fire.