1. Wisdom xiv. 6. ‘In the old time also, when the proud giants perished, the hope of the world, governed by thy hand, escaped in a weak vessel.’ Auth. Version.
2. Ecclus. xvi. 7. ‘He was not pacified toward the old giants, who fell away in the strength of their foolishness.’ Auth. Version.
3. Baruch iii. 26, 8. ‘There were giants famous from the beginning.... But they were destroyed, because they had no wisdom, and perished through their own foolishness.’ Auth. Version.
We thus appear to find in Homer many displaced fragments of the old traditions of the Bible with respect to the Evil One. In the later Greek and the Roman literature, the traditions on the same subject had almost entirely lost their likeness to their original. The figure of Ἄτη, and the idea of spiritual danger to man through guile tempting him extrinsically but inwardly, entirely disappears. There remains only the recollection of a contest waged by brute force, and a solitary remnant of forgotten truth in the fame still adhering to Apollo, that he had been the deliverer and conqueror, who in the critical hour vindicated the supremacy of heaven. In the time of Horace even this recollection had become darkened and confused.
From the Homeric traditions of the Evil One and the fallen angels, we may properly pass to those of a future state, which involves, partially at least, the idea of retribution.
The Future State in Homer.
The representations of the future state in Homer are perhaps the more interesting, because it may be doubted whether they are, logically, quite consistent with one another. For this want of consistency becomes of itself a negative argument in support of the belief that, as they are not capable of being referred to any one generative idea or system, they may be distorted copies or misunderstood portions of primitive truth.
Another reason for referring them to this origin appears to be found in their gradual deterioration after the time of Homer. In his theology, future retribution appears as a real sanction of the moral law. In the later history, and generally in the philosophy of Paganism, it has lost this place: practically, a phantasmagoria was substituted for what had been at least a subjective reality: and the most sincere and penetrating minds thought it absurd to associate anything of substance with the condition of the dead[292]. The moral ideas connected with it appear before us in descending series; and thus they point backwards to the remotest period for their origin and their integrity.
Lastly, it would appear that the traditions themselves present to us features of the unseen world, such, in a certain degree, as Divine Revelation describes.
That world appears to us, in Homer, in three divisions.