4. We have also found a greater tendency on the part of Minerva to act independently of Jupiter. This is no unnatural diversion from the tradition of the Λόγος, but it would be hard to connect ideally with the Holy Spirit, who has not, in the ancient tradition, the same amount or kind of separate development as the Messiah.
Müller’s treatment of Apollo.
The functions of Apollo, and the nature, extent, and history of his worship have been investigated at great length by Müller, in the Second Book of his learned and able History and Antiquities of the Doric race. He has shown the immense importance of this deity in Greek history and religion, reaching every where, and embracing every object and purpose. He recognises the apparent antagonism subsisting among his infinitely varied functions; which he makes elaborate and ingenious, but I think necessarily insufficient, efforts to trace ideally to an union of origin within the mythological system. His hypothesis, that the worship of Apollo was wholly due to Dorian influence, requires the support of the most violently strained assumptions; as for example, that its prevalence, apparently at all points, in Troas is to be accounted for by Cretan influences there, which, at the most, tradition would only warrant us in believing to have existed in a very contracted form, and with influence altogether secondary. Altogether, this sheer Dorianism of Apollo is at variance with the whole spirit and effect of the Homeric testimony; for in Homer the Dorians are insignificant and undeveloped, while the power and worship of Apollo had attained, as we have seen, to an extraordinary height, and to the very broadest range. Again, Müller[247] acknowledges the great difficulty of the dualism presented to us by the figures, concurring as they do in such remarkable functions, of Apollo and Diana: a difficulty, which he seems to think incapable of full explanation. While attaching great value to his treatise, I have the less hesitation in adopting conclusions that he does not authorize, because his work is based in some degree upon that (as I presume to think) defective mode of appreciation of the Homeric as compared with the later traditions, against which I have ventured to protest, and from the consequences of which it is one of my main objects to effect at least a partial escape.
It will have appeared from this general account of the traditive characters of Apollo and Minerva, that the former represented the tradition of a person, and the latter of an idea. Accordingly, the original character of Apollo, which he bore during the infancy of the mythical system, is in many points the more significantly marked; as for example, by his share in the War with the Giants, and by his mysterious relation to Death.
But it was natural that, in the course of time, as tradition in general grew weaker with the increasing distance from its source, and as the inventive system enlarged its development, those particular traditions, which were self-explained by having their root in an intelligible idea, should hold their ground much better than such as had become mythical and arbitrary by having lost their key. The traditional Minerva had an anchorage in the great function of Wisdom; the traditional Apollo had no support equal to this in breadth and depth; and his attributes, the band of revelation being removed, lost their harmony and could ill be held together.
Accordingly we find that in the later ages of the mythology Apollo had lost much of what was transcendant in his importance, but that Minerva retained her full rank. One and the same Ode of Horace supplies the proof of both. He places Apollo on a level not only with Diana, but with Bacchus[248]:
Prœliis audax, neque te silebo,
Liber: et sævis inimica virgo
Belluis; nec te mutuende certâ,
Phœbe, sagittâ.