It is not clear whether this passage implies that all perjurors are punished in Tartarus; or whether Aidoneus, Persephone, and the Erinues are the subterraneous deities here intended: but as the Titans are elsewhere only mentioned in express connection with Tartarus, and from the description of the Erinues in Il. xix. 259, I incline to the latter opinion.
On the whole, then, there is some confusion between these compartments, so to speak, of the invisible world. The realm of Aidoneus seems to partake, in part, of the character both of Tartarus and of the Elysian plain. In common with the former, it includes persons who were objects of especial divine favour. In common with Tartarus, it is for some few, at least, a scene of positive punishment.
Still, if we take the three according to their leading idea, they are in substantial correspondence with divine revelation. There is the place of bliss, the final destination of the good. There is the place of torment, occupied by the Evil One and his rebellious companions: and there is an intermediate state, the receptacle of the dead. Here, as might be expected, the resemblance terminates; for as there is no selection for entrance into the kingdom of Aides, so there is no passage onwards from it. We need the less wonder at the too comprehensive place it occupies, relatively to the places of reward and punishment proper, in the Homeric scheme, when we remember what a tendency to develop itself beyond all bounds, the simple primitive doctrine of the intermediate state has been made to exhibit, in a portion of the Christian Church.
A further element of indistinctness attaches to the invisible world of Homer, if we take into view the admission of favoured mortals to Olympus; a process of which he gives us instances, as in Ganymedes and Hercules. In a work of pure invention it is unlikely that Heaven, Elysium, and the under-world would all have been represented as receptacles of souls in favour with the Deity. But some primitive tradition of the translation of Enoch may account for what would otherwise stand as an additional anomaly.
Upon the whole, the Homeric pictures of the prolongation of our individual existence beyond the grave; the continuance in the nether world of the habits and propensities acquired or confirmed in this; and the administration in the infernal regions of penalties for sin; all these things, though vaguely conceived, stand in marked contrast with the far more shadowy, impersonal, and, above all, morally neutral pictures of the invisible and future world, which alone were admitted into the practical belief of the best among the Greek philosophers. We are left to presume that the superior picture owed its superiority to the fact that it was not of man’s devising, as it thus so far exceeded what his best efforts could produce.
Sacrificial tradition in Homer.
The nature, prevalence, and uniformity of sacrifice, should be regarded as another portion of the primeval inheritance, which, from various causes, was perhaps the best preserved of all its parts among nations that had broken the link of connection with the source.
Of the sabbatical institution, which the Holy Scripture appears to fix at the creation of man, we find no trace in Homer. But it is easy to perceive that this highly spiritual ordinance was one little likely to survive the rude shocks and necessities of earthly life, while it could not, like sacrifice, derive a sustaining force from appearing to confer upon the gods an absolute gift, profitable to them, and likely to draw down their favour in return.
Those who feel inclined to wonder at this disappearance of the sabbath from the record may do well to remember, that on the shield of Achilles, which represents the standing occasions of life in all its departments, there is no one scene which represents any observances simply religious. The religious element, though corrupted, was far from being expelled out of common life; on the contrary, the whole tissue of it was pervaded by that element; but it was in a combined, not in a separate, and therefore not in a sabbatical form.