On Olympus it falls to him in this capacity, not only to conduct and superintend the proceedings of the whole body of Immortals, as a body, but to exercise a very large influence over their relations individually with men, and with one another. The Sun carries to Jupiter in full court, as head of the body, his complaint against the crew of Ulysses, and Jupiter at once undertakes to avenge it[322]. Juno, again, appeals to him on the conduct of Mars[323], and he permits her to let loose Minerva on him. Mars, when wounded, goes to Jupiter with his complaint[324], and Diana also, when requested, makes him privy to hers, after she has taken her seat upon his knee[325]. When any two deities are in any manner at issue or in collision, or when any of the more dependent gods have a quarrel with men, then Jupiter finds his place as the natural arbiter, and from this source he obtains great support for his power. The surest of all its guarantees is indeed found in the skill with which, by making the will of Olympus his own, he makes his own will irresistible.
Thus then the Jupiter of Homer has varied elements of grandeur, traditional, physical, and political. Something also accrues to him by the sheer necessity of the metaphysical order. Wherever the mind demands a personal origin or cause, he alone can offer to supply its want. He still continues to represent, in a certain degree, the principle of unity; and he derives strength from that principle. Nor does the solid might of Destiny interfere with his claims to the same extent in Homer, as it does in the later Greek poetry.
Thus equipped with august prerogatives, the Jupiter of Homer is evidently, to the popular view, the most sublime object in the Olympian mythology. His breadth and grandeur of dimension commended him to the admiring favour of the Greek artist, who made it his supreme effort to embody the conception of the Sovereign of Olympus: and we may judge of his elevation in the public apprehension over all other deities, by the greater sublimity of the material forms, in which the idea of his divinity has been enshrined.
But the figure of Jupiter, as it is the principal, so it is also the most anomalous, in the whole Homeric assemblage. Although he is, and even because he is, the depository of so many among the most primitive and venerable ideas, he becomes also the butt alike of the infirmity, and the wantonness, and insolence of human thought, in the alterative operations which it continually prosecutes upon the ancient and pure idea of Godhead. Hence not only in his character, as in other cases, does the inventive power everywhere sap, corrode, invade, and curtail the ancient traditionary conception of divine truths, but it is in him that we find both systems culminating at once, both exhibiting in him, raised to the highest power, their separate and discordant characteristics.
From one point of view Jupiter is the most sublime of all the deities of Homer, because he is the first personal source and origin of life, the father of gods and men, the supreme manifestation of Power and knowledge, the principal, though imperfect living representation of a Providence and Governor of the world.
Regarded from another point of view, as we see disclosed the large intrusion of the human and carnal element into the ethereal sphere, the character of Jupiter becomes the most repulsive in the whole circle of Olympian life[326]. The emancipation from truth, the self-abandonment to gross passion, the constant breach of the laws he administers, are more conspicuous in the chief god than in any of the subordinate gods, and are more offensive in proportion to the majesty with which they are unnaturally associated.
Jupiter as the type of animalism.
The ungovernable self-indulgence, which even so early as in the time of Homer has begun to taint through and through the whole human conception of the Immortals, rises to its climax, as was to be expected, in Jupiter. The idea of the Supreme, or at least by far the First being of the universe, had not yet, indeed, descended so low as it did in after-times, when it was even associated with lusts contrary to nature. Of these there is no trace in Homer. But the law which governs the relation of sex, as it exists among men, was utterly relaxed and disorganized for him. In the first place, monogamy, established for all Greeks, for the chief god of Greece became polygamy; and in the second, marriage was no bar against incessant adultery.
A certain distinction between the wives, and the mere paramours, of Jupiter is clearly traceable in Homer. Latona, for instance, is a wife, an ἄλοχος of Jupiter. Mercury says of her[327]—
ἀργαλέον δὲ