4. The passage is carefully and skilfully composed; and it ends with a climax, so as to give the greatest force to the compliment of which it is susceptible.
5. All the representations in it harmonize with the manner of handling the same personages elsewhere in Homer.
6. The passage has that strong vein of nationality, which is so eminently characteristic of Homer. No intrigues are mentioned, except such as issued in the birth of children of recognised Hellenic fame. The gross animalism of Jupiter, displayed in the Speech, is in the strictest keeping with the entire context; for it is the basis of the transaction, and gives Juno the opportunity she so adroitly turns to account.
7. Those, who reject the passage as spurious, because the action ought not at this point to be loaded with a speech, do not, I think, bear in mind that a deviation of this kind from the strict poetical order is really in keeping with Homer’s practice on other occasions, particularly in the disquisitions of Nestor and of Phœnix. Such a deviation appears to be accounted for by his historic aims. To comprehend him in a case of this kind, we must set out from his point of departure, according to which, verse was not a mere exercise for pleasure, but was to be the one great vehicle of all knowledge: and a potent instrument in constructing a nationality. Thus, then, what the first aim rejected, the second might in given cases accept and even require. Now in this short passage there is a great deal of important historical information conveyed to us.
We may therefore with considerable confidence employ such evidence as the speech may be found to afford.
Let us, then, observe the forms of expression as they run in series,
οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἠρασάμην Ἰξιονίης ἀλόχοιο[655].
οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης[656].
οὐδ’ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλείτοιο[657].
Sense of Il. xiv. 321.