ZEUS A MAGNIFIED MAN

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Poseidon, Hades, Dione, and Letona, and after them the whole multitude of inferior gods who preside over the forces of nature or are identified with particular rivers, winds, and groves.

And yet, even of Zeus, the head of this imposing hierarchy, as well as of all the other gods, it is true that he is but a magnified man. The only absolute distinction between gods and men is that of immortality. But this immortality of the gods is a physical immortality. They have bodies like the bodies of men, bodies dependent upon physical nutriment. Their food is ambrosia indeed, and their drink is nectar; but they must perpetually partake of these if they would not die. So they are not self-subsistent, like the God of the Bible; the ground of their being is in something outside of themselves. As this endless continuity of physical being is the only characteristic difference between gods and men, it is a bar that may be broken over. Odysseus would have become a god if he had accepted Calypso's invitation and had eaten of her promised ambrosia instead of confining himself to the food of mortals. Etymologically and symbolically, ambrosia is itself immortality, so that the gods feed on immortality, even as they wash themselves in beauty. Hence the oath by the Styx, the river of the world of the dead, is the only oath that irrevocably binds them; for physical death would be the end of their godhood.

The bodies of the gods are of great size. When Athene smites Ares with a stone on the plain of Troy, it is said that "seven roods he covered in his fall." They are of great voice; the battle-cry of Ares and Poseidon is loud as the united shout of a myriad of the Greeks. They

have their fixed abodes-Poseidon in the depths of the sea at Aegae, and Ares in the land of Thrace; the temples consecrated to them are only occasional haunts; Hephaestus has built for the family of Zeus permanent habitations upon Mount Olympus. Though they are subject to these limitations of space, their movements are very rapid; Hermes, it is true, tires of his long journey to Ogygia, yet one spring of the horses of Here takes them through the haze into the distance upon the open sea. Theoretically, the gods know all things and can do all things; practically, they are ignorant of some of the matters that most concern them; can be most egregiously deceived; are obliged to take counsel before they know their own minds; have their wishes thwarted by other gods and even by mortal men, as when Poseidon's son Polyphemus is blinded by Odysseus.

This antithesis between the theoretical and the actual is one of the most significant things in Homer. Either as the remains of a primitive revelation handed down by tradition, or as the result of man's own religious nature which ever prompts him to "seck God, if haply he may feel after him and find him," the poet is continually declaring the omniscience and omnipotence of the gods, and yet, almost in the same breath, is most inconsistently attributing to them all the weaknesses and limitations of men. Again and again they are called "the blessed gods," and yet we read of their stains and pains, of their wounds and weeping and fear. Thetis sheds bitter tears over the fate of her son Achilles, and Zeus is sorely troubled about Here's anger, even when the nodding of his dark brow makes Olympus quake and assures victory to the Greeks.

RELATION OF ZEUS TO FATE

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There is a similar duality in Homer's representation of Fate and of Jove's relation to it. At times Zeus and Fate are one; the same things are ascribed to Zeus and to Fate; Zeus is the dispenser of the Fates. But at other times Fate appears as a Will side by side with that of Zeus, and even over Zeus and all the other gods; they must passively submit to Fate, when they are unwilling actively to employ themselves in its accomplishment. Zeus is the head of an Oriental council, the master of an Oriental harem: that is Homer's method of representing the manifoldness of the divine manifestations. Fate is one, inevitable, binding both gods and men that is Homer's effort to supplement polytheism with the inalienable consciousness of the unity and absoluteness of God. But this Fate, though it stood for the highest Homeric conception of the Godhead, never was worshiped, never could be worshiped, for it was devoid of mind and heart, and could hardly be distinguished from blind and inexorable necessity.

The idea of something done beyond that which is ordained, something surpassing Fate, is certainly, though only rarely, found in Homer; it seems once more to open the door that had been closed against divine and human freedom, and to relieve the sternness and arbitrariness of Fate. But both Fate and that which is beyond it are equally abstractions; they have no eye to pity and no arm to save. Homer's doctrine of the Godhead shows us two things: first, that human nature demands a deity free from limitations and lifted above the finite; secondly, that human imagination is utterly unable to construct for itself such a deity, and when it attempts the task succeeds only in making a huger finite

being like itself. God created man at the first in his own image; the heathenism of which Homer is the noblest representative can only create a god in the image of

man.

This becomes still plainer when we examine the poet's conceptions of God's moral attributes. There can be no exacter measure of the chasm that separates the Homeric from the biblical theology than the way in which they respectively treat God's attribute of holiness. The Scriptures bring this characteristic of God's nature before us more frequently than any other; this is the fundamental attribute that conditions all others; this it is that chiefly makes God to be God. But in Homer the gods never even once have this quality expressly ascribed to them—they are constantly called blessed and immortal, but they are never once called holy.

The gods have a sort of moral perception, indeed, but this is exercised only in estimating the character and acts of men. They are like some men we know of, who have a very keen conscience for other people, but very dull for themselves. The noble swineherd, Eumæus, tells Odysseus that "it is not froward deeds that the gods love, but they reverence justice and the righteous acts of men." One of the wooers declares that "the gods, in the likeness of strangers from far countries, put on all manner of shapes and wander through the cities, to watch the violence and the righteousness of men." When the suitors have suffered their deserts, the aged Laertes can say: "Father Zeus, verily ye gods yet bear sway on high Olympus!" Zeus sends floods upon the people whose judges deliver unjust judgments.

THE GODS INSTIGATE INIQUITY

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The gods are displeased because Achilles pitilessly retains the body of Hector at the ships and will not take ransom for the dead.

But now observe how in this last instance Homer takes back again all that he has given to the gods in the way of praise. How came this pitiless spirit into Achilles' heart? Ajax tells us when he addresses the hero: "The gods have put within thy breast a spirit implacable and evil." And so the gods appear again and again as tempters to perjury and adultery, as in the violation of the truce which Zeus himself suggests, and in the unfaithfulness of Helen which Aphrodite inspires. It is not enough to say that the gods permit these things-they actually bring them about by their direct and efficient causation. How devilish, it has been well remarked, is the deception which Athene in the form of Deiphobos practises upon Hector in the hour of his extremest need, when she flatters him with a brother's voice and lures him to destruction!

The truth is, that God and devil are confounded in Homer. The suitors look to the gods for help in their iniquities. The gods regard only their own honor and pleasure in the government they exercise. They are envious-Poseidon envies the Greeks their rampart, because it rivals the wall he had built for Troy, and he envies the Phæacians their prosperous voyages, because these voyages seem to make the Phæacians instead of himself the lords of the sea. Not only crime, but happiness also, is punished by the Furies.

The gods are revengeful. Here and Athene never cease to hate and to afflict the Trojans on account of the judgment of Paris, and Poseidon never ceases to