Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 2 of 3 / Olympus; or, the Religion of the Homeric Age

by W. E. Gladstone

And, again, the opinion, that the origin of the religion lay in Nature-worship, has had the support both of high and also of recent authorities. The eminent and learned Dr. Döllinger, in his ‘Heidenthum und Judenthum,’ says, that the deification of Nature, its forces, or the particular objects it offered to the senses, constituted the groundwork of the Greek, as well as of the other heathen religions. The idea of God continued to be powerful even when it had been darkened, and the godhead was felt as present, and active everywhere in the physical order. In working out his general rule for each mythological deity in particular, this author conceives the original form of their existence to have been that of a Nature-power, even where the vestiges of such a conception have, under subsequent handling, become faint or imperceptible. Thus Juno, Minerva, Latona, Diana, and others in succession, are referred to such an origin[8].

Now in dealing with this hypothesis, I would ask, what then has become of the old Theistic and Messianic traditions? and how has it happened they have been amputated by a process so violent as to make them to leave, even while the state of society continued still primitive, no trace behind them? But further. I would urge with confidence that the ample picture of the religion of the heroic ages, as we have it in Homer, which is strictly for this purpose in the nature of a fact, cannot be made to harmonize with the hypothesis which refers it to such a source. The proof of this statement must depend mainly on the examination which we have to institute in detail: but I am anxious at once to bring it into view, and to refer briefly to some of the grounds on which it rests, because it is susceptible of demonstration by evidence as contradistinguished from theory. On the other hand, when I proceed farther, evidence and theory must of necessity be mixed up together; and dissent from a particular mode of tracing out the association between the traditional and inventive elements of the system might unawares betray the reader into the conclusion, that no such distinct traditional elements were to be found, but that all, or nearly all, was pure fable. I say, then, there is much in the theo-mythology of Homer, which, if it had been a system founded in fable, could not have appeared there. It stands before us like one of our old churches, having different parts of its fabric in the different styles of architecture, each of which speaks for itself, and which we know to belong to the several epochs in the history of the art, when their characteristic combinations were respectively in vogue.

Nor is the system from invention only.

While on the one hand it has deities, such as Latona, without any attributes at all, on the other hand, we find in it both gods and goddesses, with an assemblage of such attributes and functions as have no common link by which invention could have fastened them together. They are such, likewise, as to bring about cross divisions and cross purposes, that the Greek force of imagination, and the Greek love of symmetry, would have alike eschewed. How could invention have set up Pallas as the goddess at once of peace and its industries, of wisdom, and of war? Its object would clearly have been to impersonate attributes; and to associate even distinct, much less conflicting attributes, in the same deity, would have been simply to confuse them. How again could it have combined in Apollo, who likewise turns the courses of rivers by his might, the offices of destruction, music, poetry, prophecy, archery, and medicine? Again, if he is the god of medicine, why have we Paieon? if of poetry, why have we the Muses? If Minerva be (as she is) goddess of war, why have we Mars? if of the work of the Artificer, why have we also Vulcan? if of prudence and sagacity, and even craft[9], why Mercury?

And again, the theory is, that the chief personages of the mythology are representatives of the great powers of the physical universe. I ask, therefore, how it happens that in the Homeric, or, as we may call it, primitive form of the system, these great powers of the universe are for the most part very indistinctly and partially personified, whereas we see in vivid life and constant movement another set of figures, having either an obscure or partial relation, or no relation at all, to those powers? Such a state of the evidence surely strikes at the very root of the hypothesis we are considering: but it is the state of the evidence which we actually find before us. Take for instance Time, Ocean, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Air; all these prime natural objects and agents are either not personified at all in Homer, or so indistinctly and mutely personified that they are the mere zoophytes of his supernatural world, of which the gorgeous life and brilliant movement are sustained by a separate set of characters. Of these more effective agents, some are such as it is impossible rationally to set down for mere impersonations of ideas; while others are plainly constituted as lords over, and not beings derivative from, those powers or provinces of nature, with which they are placed in special relations. It cannot for instance rationally be said that the Homeric Jupiter is a mere impersonation of the air which he rules, or the Homeric Neptune of the sea, or the Homeric Aidoneus (or Aides) of the nether world. For to the first of these three, many functions are assigned having no connection with the air. As for example, when he gives swiftness of foot to Æneas on Mount Ida, that he might escape the pursuit of Achilles[10]. In the case of the second, there is a rival figure, namely, Nereus, who never that we know of leaves the sea, who is the father of the Sea-nymphs, and who evidently fulfils the conditions of Sea impersonated far better than does Neptune; Neptune, who marched upon the battle-field in Troas, and who, with Apollo, had himself built the walls of Ilium. Besides all this, the sea, to which Neptune belongs, is itself not one of the great elemental powers of the universe, but is derived, like rivers, springs, and wells, from Father Ocean, who fears indeed the thunderbolt of Jupiter, but is not bound to attendance even in the great chapter of Olympus[11]. As to Aidoneus, he can hardly impersonate the nether world, because in Homer he does not represent or govern it, but only has to do with that portion of it, which is inhabited by the souls of departed men. For, as far beneath his realm as Earth is beneath Heaven, lies the dark Tartarus of Homer, peopled with Κρόνος and his Titans. Nor, on the other hand, do we know that the Elysian fields of the West were subject to his sway. The elemental powers are in Homer, though not altogether, yet almost altogether, extrinsic to his grand Olympian system.

Without, then, anticipating this or that particular result from the inquiry into the mode and proportions in which traditional and inventive elements are combined in the poems of Homer, it may safely be denied that his picture of the supernatural world could have been drawn by means of materials exclusively supplied by invention from the sources of nature and experience.

Traditive origin of Sacrifice.

And indeed there is one particular with respect to which the admission will be generally made, that the Greek mythological system stood indebted at least to a primitive tradition, if not to a direct command; I mean the institution of sacrifice. This can hardly be supposed to have been an original conception in every country; and it distinctly points us to one common source. Sacrifice was, according to Dr. Döllinger[12], an inheritance which descended to the Greeks from the pristine time before the division of the nations. Without doubt the transmission of ritual, depending upon outward action, is more easy than that of ideas. But the fact that there was a transmission of something proves that there was a channel for it, open and continuous: and the circumstances might be such as to allow of the passage of ideas, together with institutions, along it.

It cannot be necessary to argue on the other side in any detail in order to show, that for much of his supernatural machinery, Homer was indebted to invention, whether his own or that of generations, or nations, which had preceded him. Had his system been one purely traditional in its basis, had it only broken into many rays the integral light of one God, it would have presented to us no such deity as Juno, who is wholly without prototype, either abstract or personal, in the primitive system, and no such mere reflections of human passions as are Mars and Venus: not to speak of those large additions, which we are to consider as belonging not so much to the basis and general outline of the system, as to the later stages of its development.