The long continued misconduct of the Suitors is never described as their ἄτη: probably because the word properly signifies a particular temptation followed by a particular act, rather than a continued course of action.
This, again, serves the more closely to associate Ἄτη with the primitive tradition of the Fall of Man.
The higher form of human wickedness, which is attended with deliberate and obstinate persistence in wrong, is not ἄτη but ἀτασθαλίη. Such is the wickedness of Ægisthus and of the Suitors; such also that of the Giants. The same phrase is applied to the crew of Ulysses, who devoured the oxen of the Sun[284]: and this appears to conform to the view taken of their offence in the poems, however anomalous that view itself may be.
Other traditions of the Evil One.
I will now gather into one view the dispersed fragments of tradition concerning the Evil One which seem to be discernible in Homer.
1. Ἄτη is the first, and the one which comes nearest to presenting a general outline.
2. A second is found in Κρόνος[285], who aims at the destruction of Godhead in its supreme representatives, and is thrust down to Tartarus by Jupiter. And we may here observe an important distinction.
Some persons, like Tityus, offend against a particular person who had taken a place in the Olympian Court; or else, apparently like Orion, offend the gods in general by their presumption. They are punished in the Shades. But those who have aimed at the dethronement or destruction of Godhead itself are in the far deeper darkness of Tartarus[286]. I suggest this as a possible explanation of the double place of punishment; which is otherwise apparently a gross solecism in the Homeric system.
3. To the latter class of offenders belong the Titans, who most pointedly represent the element of Force in the ancient traditions, while Ἄτη embodies that of Guile.
These are the θεοὶ ὑποταρτάρεοι, or the ἐνέρτεροι, or ἔνερθε θεοὶ, who form the infernal court of Κρόνος; Κρόνον ἄμφις ἐόντες (Il. xiv. 274, 9. xv. 225). They are evidently themselves in a state of penal suffering; but they must also have the power of inflicting the severest punishment on some other offenders; for they, and not Aides or Persephone, seem to be the persons called to be witnesses of the solemn oath for the avoidance of perjury, taken by Juno in the Fourteenth Book[287].