c. The true elemental gods of the θάλασσα, it is plain, according to

Homer, are Nereus and Amphitrite; of whom the first is locally confined to the depths of the sea, and the other is scarcely a person, and cannot ideally be disengaged from the curly-headed billows.

5. In the Olympian Court, which is the real centre, according to Homer, of the government of the world, there is scarcely to be found a pure example of a Nature-power; there is no one leading deity, in whom that idea is not wholly subordinate; and in many of the leading deities, such as Minerva, Apollo, and even Juno, it is hardly to be perceived at all.

6. As to Juno in particular. When we compare the Greek with the Eastern religions, it appears that, if the former had been conceived in the same spirit as the latter, Juno ought to have been the earth, continually impregnated by the heaven, and yielding those fruits which would then stand as the proper results of her maternity.

But instead of this, in the great lottery of the universe, earth is actually left out, and remains undisposed of. It never appears in Homer, except in a formula of adjuration, in which we may naturally enough look to find antique ideas; and this seems like a stray vestige of another system, really founded on Nature-worship. But there Γαῖα remains, so far as the Greeks are concerned, isolated and undeveloped.

Meantime, for the vegetative life of Earth, wedded to the Heavens, and bearing herbs and fruits, the Greek mind substitutes the intelligent life of a Queen-divinity, who with her husband becomes the nucleus of the Olympian order, and marks the transition from elemental religion to anthropophuism.

~_Secondary in the Olympian religion._~

There is then a greatly qualified sense, in which assent may be given to the proposition, that the Olympian dynasty of Homer sits enthroned upon the ruins of a more ancient Nature-worship, and the sense is this: that, before Hellenism had an historical existence, there were systems founded on Nature-worship in the east; that these systems were tributary to the religion of Olympus, and that its framers made such use of them as they found convenient.

But from Homer we are not authorized to believe that such a system of Nature-worship ever preceded in Greece the Olympian system. On the contrary, the Κρόνος and Ῥέα, the Oceanus and Tethys of Homer, appear to be younger and not older than his chief Olympian gods; that is, they appear to be metaphysical creations, called into being to supply an ideal basis, a _matrix_ or mould, walled in with time and space, for Jupiter and his wife and brothers to be cast in.

It is not before, but after the time of Homer, namely, in Hesiod, that we see such development given to this pseudo-archaic system as can alone allow it to be taken for the image of something that had really existed as a religion. For example, it would be quite out of keeping with the tone of Homer were we to find in him the sentiment which is contained in a fragment of Euripides[773];

[773] Eurip. Fr. i.

ὁρᾶς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα; τοῦτον νόμιζε Ζῆνα.

~_Brute-worship._~

We have still to consider the relation of the Olympian scheme to the last of the four στοιχεῖα. The principle of brute-worship was so marked a characteristic of the Egyptian idolatry, that it seems to lie at the very foundation of the system. Perhaps we should be justified in associating with this principle the inability of the Egyptians to attain to any high conceptions of beauty. They scarcely could soar in this respect above the standard of that which they regarded as a tabernacle meet for divinity to dwell in.

The same principle appears to have found its way into Persia probably at a late date, and from the Median, not the Eteo-persian, source of the religious traditions of the country. Malcolm[774] has given us the copies, from remains found in the country, of the Persian representations, probably however late ones, of their divinities, exhibiting strange mixtures of human form with that of the brute.

[774] Malcolm’s Hist. of Persia, vol. i.

It would therefore be wonderful if we failed to find in the Greek mythology some traces, however faint, of an element that not only existed in Asia, but displayed so much vigour there, as to have entered deeply into the religion that even now sways a considerable portion of its population, if not, indeed, to form the one really capital and operative article of that religion.

Döllinger[775] has noted the points connected with the state and being of animals, which might suggest ideas capable of being developed into this repulsive system. Such are the unity and tranquillity of animal life--it being borne in mind that domesticated animals were those which supplied the chief type of deity. Such, again, is the instinct of the future, bearing a nearer outward resemblance to foreknowledge than would any anticipations founded on forethought, reasoning, and experience. Above all, there seems to be force in the remark that man, by his marked individuality, and by the freedom of the will, is, as it were, disabled from becoming the mere organ of another existence. The gods in assuming human form, assumed in a great degree human nature also. But the passive and neutral nature of animals offered itself as a medium without taste or colour, such as needed not in any manner to alter or modify the powers of which it was to be the vehicle.

[775] Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. b. vi. 130. p. 424.

Had the idea been in its origin that of an inherent sacredness of animals as such, it is not probable that we should have seen such extraordinary anomalies in its development as those which permitted the same animal to be adored in one province of Egypt, and immolated in the next[776].

[776] Döllinger, ibid. 132.

~_Its vestiges in the Olympian religion._~

The grossness of brute-worship was completely refined away by the Greeks during the process of transfer to their own mythology. The vestiges of the system, and they are no more than vestiges, still traceable in the Homeric poems, are apparently as follows:

1. I find the chief note of it in the extraordinary sacredness of the oxen of the Sun: a sacredness inconsistent and inexplicable, if it be tried only by the circumjacent incidents of the Odyssey, and by the laws of the Greek mythology.

The offence of the crew of Ulysses consisted simply in this; that[777], after exhausting every effort to maintain themselves, when they have at length no alternative before them except that of starving, they consumed some of the best among these oxen for food. They observed, as far as they could, all the proper religious rites, but they used leaves instead of barley, and water for wine, inasmuch as neither of the usual requisites were forthcoming. They promised a temple also to the Sun, to be built on their return, and to be enriched with abundant votive offerings. Lastly, I think, any one who reads the manly and just speech of Eurylochus, in which he proposes the sacrilege, will judge that the sympathies of the Poet are with him. In this speech, he states the necessity; he next proceeds to vow the erection of a temple, and dedication of its ornaments in the event of safe return. Then he concludes by declaring, that if vengeance is, notwithstanding, to be taken on them, he for his part would far rather die once for all like a man than famish in the solitary island. There is not in the tone of the speech the slightest indication of impiety[778].

[777] Od. xii. 352-65.

[778] Od. xii. 339-51.

The terrible punishment inflicted was prefigured by extraordinary portents. The empty hides of the animals crawled about[779], and the flesh lowed on the very spits. Here we see at its climax the fine Greek imagination, working upon the foundation supplied by the Egyptian superstition, and extracting from the coarsest earthy matter the means of true poetical sublimity.

[779] 394-6.

It is impossible to conceive a case, in which the offence committed is more exclusively of the kind termed positive, or more entirely severed from moral guilt, until we include the element to which the poems do not expressly refer, of the elevated sanctity attaching to the animal itself. The Homeric fiction is[780], that they were the playthings of the Sun in his leisure hours. But to forbid the use of any of these animals for food, even under the direst necessity, would have been simply to caricature the nature of positive commands, in the very same spirit as that which would have had, not the sabbath made for man, but man made for the sabbath. Still, when once we let in the assumption that these animals had essentially sacred lives, which might not be taken away, then the offence becomes a moral one of frightful profanation, and the vengeance so rigorously exacted is intelligible.

[780] 379-81.

I do not mean that Homer recognises that dogma which the Egyptians then affirmed, and which at this present epoch, after the lapse of three thousand years, has wrought myriads of Hindoos to madness. The religion of Greece included no such idea, and the religious practice of the Greeks wholly precluded it. But in this instance we see a part of the Egyptian religion _in transitu_, in the very process of transmutation that it was to undergo when passing into the Greek mythology, which utterly repudiated its substance, but strove to retain an image of it under poetic forms, betraying by their inconsistency their exotic origin.

The consummation of the whole tale lies in this: that the vengeance is not the mere personal act of the Sun, but is inflicted by Jupiter himself on behalf of the whole Olympian Court, to which the appeal had been already made[781].

[781] Od. xii. 377, 405, 415.

2. Another instance, confirmatory of the statement of Döllinger as to the _rationale_ of brute-worship, is to be found in the curious passage of the Iliad where Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, is endowed with speech. The gift is from Juno, but the limit of the gift is carefully defined[782]:

[782] Il. xix. 407.

αὐδήεντα δ’ ἔθηκε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη.

It was utterance that Juno gave, not intelligence. The matter to be spoken was not a gift. The horse proceeds, evidently by a native insight into the future, to intimate to Achilles his coming fate; at first more darkly (v. 409); but when he comes nearer the point and glances at a man as the ordained instrument of doom (416),

ἀλλὰ σοὶ αὐτῷ μόρσιμόν ἐστι θεῷ τε καὶ ἀνέρι ἶφι δαμῆναι·

then, I suppose lest the animal should proceed to particularize, and, though prophetic yet unwise, should break the current of the hero’s thought and action at the critical moment by naming Paris--the Ἐρινύες are made to interfere; they restore the order of nature, and stay the exercise of Juno’s irregular and abnormal gift.

3. The immortality of these horses is probably conceived in the same spirit. We may the more easily understand it to be a poetical rendering of the Egyptian belief in the divinity of many animals, when we recollect that exemption from death is, with Homer, the one and perhaps only essential characteristic of deity, so that his gods are ordinarily defined by it as ἀθάνατοι.

4. We have another indication of relation to the same ideas, in the assumption by deities of the forms of various birds: namely, by Minerva, as Od. i. 320; iii. 372; Il. vii. 59; Od. xxii. 240; by Apollo, Il. vii. 59; by Sleep, Il. xiv. 290; and by Ino Leucothee, Od. v. 353. In this instance we again see the refining power of the Greek imagination. It is only the forms of birds which are assumed by Homeric deities: creatures more ethereal, though not more intellectual, than the other brute races; and whose figure, when assumed, at once bestows in visible form an attribute of high superiority to man, namely, the increased facility and speed of locomotion.

5. One or two other traces may be suggested, but they are slighter and more dubious. It is possible that Homer drew from this source the Olympian horses of Juno (Il. v. 720, 768-72) and the sea-horses of Neptune (Il. xiii. 23). A similar notion may be involved, when the Poet makes Apollo stoop to feed the horses of Admetus in Pieria, and the oxen of Laomedon on Ida (Il. ii. 766, and xxi. 448). The serpent (δρακὼν) appears in Homeric portents as a symbol, but without peculiar meaning.

The horse was not one of the sacred animals of Egypt; and when Homer placed it in such near relations with deity, as he has done in these places and elsewhere, he may not only have indulged a personal predilection, but he also may have been converting the crudity of Egyptian material to the form and uses of the Greek religion, in the normal exercise of his vocation.

One concluding word may be said in extenuation of the indignity which, according to our ideas, attaches to the worship of the inferior animals. In the worship of the elemental powers we see error, but in the worship of beasts we see shame, and even brutality. Perhaps this distinction may be due as much to pride as to pious susceptibility.

Over animals, man has thoroughly obtained the mastery; but Elemental powers are still in many cases masters over us, and we lie like babes in the lap of their strength and vastness. It does not appear clear why we should consider the worship of that which is more highly organized, and which comes half-way to intelligence, as essentially more shameful than the worship of inferior organizations without life or instinct of any kind. If it be said that, by its negations, inanimate Nature becomes a fitter shrine of deity than the brutes, the same argument applied to the brutes, compared with man, might equally avail to give claims to brute-worship as compared with anthropophuism, against which, notwithstanding, nature summarily revolts.

SECT. VIII.

_The Morals of the Homeric Age._

We have now considered at some length the state and tendencies of religion, both objective and subjective, among the Greeks of the heroic age: let us proceed to attempt a sketch of their morality; which rested in part upon acknowledged relations to the Olympian deities, but which, it is clear, had likewise other supports and sanctions.

In general outline it may be thus summed up. An high spirited, energetic, adventurous, and daring people, they show themselves prone to acts of hasty violence, and their splendid courage occasionally even degenerates, under the influence of strong passion, into ferocity, while their acuteness and sagacity sometimes, though more rarely, take a decided tinge of cunning. Yet they are neither selfish, cruel, nor implacable. At the same time, self-command is scarcely less conspicuous among them than strong, and deep, and quick emotion. They are in the main a people of warm affections and high honour, commonly tender, never morbid: they respect the weak and the helpless; they hold authority in reverence; domestic purity too is cherished and esteemed among them more than elsewhere, and they have not yet fallen into the depths of sensual excess.

The Greek thanks the gods in his prosperity; witness Laertes. In his adversity he appeals to them for aid; or, if he is discontented, he complains of them; for he harbours no concealed dissatisfaction. Ready enough to take from those who have, he is at least as ready to give to those who need. He represents to the life the sentiment which another great master of manners has given to his Duke of Argyle, in the ‘Heart of Midlothian;’ ‘It is our Highland privilege to take from all what _we_ want, and to give to all what _they_ want[783].’ Distinctions of class are recognised, but they are mild and genial: there is no arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the other. Reverence is paid to those in authority; and yet the Greek thinks in the spirit, and moves in the sphere, of habitual freedom. Over and above his warmth and tenacity in domestic affections, he prizes highly those other special relations between man and man, which mitigate and restrain the law of force in societies as yet imperfectly organized. He thoroughly admires the intelligence displayed in stratagem; whether among the resources of self-defence, or by way of jest upon a friend, or for the hurt or ruin of an enemy; but life in a mask he cannot away with, and holds it a prime article of his creed, that the tongue should habitually represent the man[784].

[783] Scott’s Novels and Tales, 8vo Ed., x. 238.

[784] Il. ix. 312.

~_The moral sense in the heroic age._~

Before proceeding, however, to examine the morality of the Greek heroic age, as to its particular sanctions, or in any of its applications to the regulation of human conduct, we are met by a preliminary question: had the Greeks any idea of a fixed and substantive rule of morals at all? were they believers in goodness as apart from strength? did they recognise a law of right as between man and man, or were their notions of relative duty entirely founded on a more or less far-sighted self-love, and on a prudential calculation of the consequences which would follow to society, and to each individual, if the rights of others were to be held in universal or in general disregard?

When we consider how hard it is to keep the moral standard high, even after religion has placed before our view a Divine pattern for man to follow, and how among the Greeks religion, first corrupted itself, had already begun to pour out its own corruption upon morals, we shall not venture to pitch our expectations very high: optimism and pessimism are here alike out of place: we want the clear, dispassionate, and direct discernment of the facts. And when we observe how, down to this day, the epithets which ought to designate virtue only, and in particular the word _good_, tend irresistibly to attach themselves to other gifts, such as genius, rank, wealth, skill, and power, we must not hastily conclude, from finding a similar use in Homer, that there was no idea or standard of goodness except that belonging to preeminence in the particular kind, according to which a clever thief is a good thief; good, that is, by doing effectually what he professes to do, or good, like the unjust steward of the parable, in respect of the intelligence he displays, though evil in respect of the direction which he gives to it[785].

[785] Luke xvi. 1-9.

Homer, in speaking of different classes of society, uses the line[786],

[786] Od. xv. 323.

οἷά τε τοῖς ἀγαθοῖσι παραδρώωσι χέρηες.

But after all we can translate this, without much verbal change, or any departure from our own idiom, ‘such services as the lower orders render to good society,’ or ‘to the better classes.’

Mr. Grote[787] says, that ‘the primitive import’ of the words ἀγαθὸς, ἐσθλὸς, and κακὸς relates ‘to power and not to worth;’ and that the ethical meaning of them is a later growth, which ‘hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted by his disciples.’ I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and wrong, which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward, and not upward. It is admitted, that what we may call the dynamical sense of the epithets has held its ground in later times along with their ethical signification: the important question to be determined is, whether the latter signification was an improvement introduced by civilization into the code of barbarism, or whether it indicates a principle of human nature on its better, which is also its weaker side, and one which we see, all along the course of history, struggling to assert itself against the tyrannous invasion of other propensities and powers.

[787] Grote’s Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 88 n.

The word ἐσθλὸς is found in combination with what is absolutely vicious, in the remarkable case of Autolycus:

μητρὸς ἑῆς πατέρ’ ἐσθλὸν, ὃς ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο κλεπτοσύνῃ θ’ ὅρκῳ τε[788].

[788] Od. xix. 395.

But the meaning of ἐσθλὸς appears to be, one who excels; the application of it to Autolycus is not at all unlike the commendation of the unjust steward; and the epithet did not in the later Greek acquire any essentially different force, or any exclusive appropriation to moral excellence. Its use in Homer may be compared with his application of δῖα to Clytemnestra. Yet it leans peculiarly to moral excellence. For the ἀμύμων is opposed to the ἀπηνὴς, who is certainly a moral delinquent; and the highest honour of the ἀμύμων is, that men proclaim him ἐσθλός (Od. xix. 329-34).

Again, with respect to χείρων and its opposite κρείσσων, with other words similar to both. In searching for the signs of a standard in its own nature absolute, we can expect little from a class of terms, which by their very structure bear witness that they are simply comparative. Especially the etymology of χείρων, directing us to the word χεὶρ as its root, exhibits force as its most commanding and essential idea. Yet, when the aristocracy of Ithaca are called (Od. xxi. 325) πολὺ χείρονες ἄνδρες, must we not admit that even in this word there inheres a strong moral element?

~_Use of the words ἀγαθὸς and κακός._~

But as to the words ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, the case is far more clear: and here I ask, can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ἀγαθὸς to that which is morally bad? or the word κακὸς to that which is morally good? If it can, _cadit quæstio_; if it cannot, then we have advanced a considerable way in proving the ethical signification. For it is on all hands admitted, that besides their proper sense, ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, like our _good_ and _bad_, have a derivative meaning, in which they are employed to denote what is agreeable, or what is preeminent in its kind, and the reverse respectively; qualities which bear an analogy to goodness on the one hand, and to badness on the other, according to the universal testimony of human speech. Now, if the use of this derivative sense stops short, in the case of ἀγαθὸς, when it comes to border on what is positively bad, and in the case of κακὸς, when it comes to touch upon what is positively good, there must be a reason for the abrupt cessation, at that point, of the function of the words; and it can be none other than that nature herself revolts from a contradiction in terms; as we never say a good villain, or a bad saint. But the contradiction would not exist, unless the ethical sense were inherent in the words.

Now, I venture to state, with as much confidence as can well exist in the case of a negative embracing such a number of instances, that we do find this limitation throughout the poems of Homer, in the secondary use both of ἀγαθὸς and of κακός. In one passage there is at first sight some obscurity in the meaning of the latter term, κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[789]. Here however the context plainly shows it to be, ‘it will not do for a mendicant to be shy.’

[789] Od. xvii. 578.

But the positive sense of both words can be clearly and indisputably made out from a number of passages, of which I will quote a portion.

Although it is true, that in Homer the word ἀγαθὸς very often refers more to the ideas of particular excellences and of power, than to that of moral worth; yet in some passages we find a latent bias, as it were, towards the last named idea, and in others we have a clear and full expression of it.

As an example of the first, I quote the description of Agamemnon[790], ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής, ‘A good king, and a brave warrior.’ Now the word ἀγαθὸς here evidently has a special regard to the moral element. Homer surely intends to describe, by the epithets he applies to each of the two substantives, a special excellence suitable to each character respectively. The goodness, so to speak, of a warrior consisted in bravery: the goodness of a king, partly indeed in prudence, but chiefly in justice, in mildness, and in liberality. If ἀγαθὸς in this place meant merely ‘good in the virtue of its kind,’ then it might as well stand with αἰχμητής as with βασιλεὺς, and therefore the antithesis would be a bad and pointless one.

[790] Il. iii. 179.

In other cases the moral colouring of the term is full and indubitable. Bellerophon[791], when he resists the seduction of the wife of Prœtus, is ἀγαθὰ φρονέων. Jupiter, when incensed, is described by Minerva thus, φρεσὶ μαίνεται οὐκ ἀγαθῇσιν[792]. To follow good advice is ὁ δὲ πείσεται εἰς ἀγαθόν περ[793]. A man who is ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐχέφρων, is also the one who must necessarily have regard and affection for his wife[794]. And Clytemnestra, before she was corrupted, had good dispositions; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν[795].

[791] Il. vi. 162.

[792] Il. viii. 360.

[793] Il. xi. 788.

[794] Il. ix. 341.

[795] Od. iii. 266.

The word κακὸς again, in a majority of cases, refers to defect or calamity in things, or to poltroonery, or other baseness of that kind, in persons: but it directly indicates moral badness in such passages as the following. Leiodes pleads that he tried to keep the Suitors from doing wrong, κακῶν ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι[796]. Telemachus warns the Suitors that the gods will turn upon them in wrath, ἀγασσάμενοι κακὰ ἔργα[797]. Jupiter views such deeds with indignation, νεμεσσᾷται κακὰ ἔργα[798]. And Juno reproaches Apollo for giving countenance to the Trojans, as κακῶν ἕταρ’ αἰὲν ἄπιστε, where our finding faithlessness in the immediate context, points to moral depravity as the signification of the word κακῶν[799].

[796] Od. xxii. 316.

[797] Od. ii. 67.

[798] Od. xiv. 284.

[799] Il. xxiv. 63.

~_Use of the word δίκαιος._~

In the word δίκαιος, however, we have an instance of an epithet never employed except in order to signify a moral or a religious idea. Like the word _righteous_ among ourselves, it is derived from a source which would make it immediately designate duty as between man and man, and also as it arises out of civil relations. But it is applied in Homer to both the great branches of duty. And surely there cannot be a stronger proof of the existence of definite moral ideas among a people, than the very fact that they employ a word founded on the observance of relative rights to describe also the religious character. It is when religion and morality are torn asunder, that the existence of moral ideas is endangered.

Minerva, in the form of Mentor, is pleased with Telemachus for handing the cup first to her at the festival in Pylos, because it is a tribute of reverence to superior age. For this he is called πεπνυμένος ἀνὴρ[800] δίκαιος, and the idea is that of relative duty. Again, when she advises him for a while to let the Suitors alone, it is ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι[801]; and they do not know the retribution that hangs over them. In this case the meaning must be either ‘just’ or ‘pious.’

[800] Od. iii. 52.

[801] Od. ii. 282.

In another case, where the very same phrase is employed, δίκαιος can only mean ‘pious.’ ‘Jupiter,’ says Nestor, ‘ordained calamities for the Greeks on their return, because they were not all either intelligent or righteous[802]:

[802] Od. iii. 132-6.

ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι πάντες ἔσαν.

‘Wherefore many of them perished’ (he continues) ‘through the wrath of Minerva, who set the two Atridæ at variance.’ Now here it appears that the original offence of the Greeks could only have consisted in the omission of the usual sacrifices, while the passage has no reference whatever to relative duties: δίκαιος therefore must refer simply to duty towards the gods. And, however imperfect may be that notion of divine duty which made it consist in sacrifice wholly or mainly, yet plainly the neglect to sacrifice was for the Greeks of the heroic age a moral offence, although it consisted only in the breach of a law of the class termed positive. A passage yet more fatally adverse to the position of Mr. Grote is, I think, that where Homer describes the Ἄβιοι[803] as δικαιότατοι ἀνθρώπων. For there he appears to be speaking of persons clearly less advanced in civilization, more rude, less wealthy and intelligent, than the Greeks; and yet he applies to them an epithet which proclaims them to have been, in his opinion, either the most just, or the most pious of mankind.

[803] Il. xiii. 6.

~_Religion and morals not dissociated._~

Moreover, it does not appear that anywhere among the Greeks were religion and morals as yet effectually dissociated. It is true that the language of mere mythology treats the religious character of man as established by bounty in sacrifice. But this is one of the points, and a very vital one, in which the theistic system of the Greeks was worse than their ethical instinct, and became, therefore, a positive source of corruption. While the Scriptures of the Old Testament rigidly controlled the propensity of man to substitute perfunctory observances for the service of the heart, by saying, ‘to obey is better than sacrifice,’ the Jupiter of the Greeks tells them, that to sacrifice is better than to obey. And it is only in the mouth of a traditive deity that we find any more elevated sentiment. To a certain extent, indeed, yet not effectually, this representation may be qualified, if we recollect that in these passages the deities of Olympus, conceived according to the laws of anthropophuism, when they have occasion to speak of human piety, speak of it in that aspect under which it was peculiarly beneficial to themselves, but do not on that account intend wholly to set aside its other parts, while they undoubtedly disturb the scale of relative importance in the moral order.

But man, the handiwork of God, was less depraved than the idols which were the handiwork of man. Among the Greeks, the pious man is nowhere separated from the just or moral man. Not in words, for the question of a stranger always is, whether men are, on the one hand, insolent, fierce, _and_ unrighteous, or, on the other, hospitable _and_ pious to the gods[804];

[804] Od. vi. 120.

ἦ ῥ’ οἵγ’ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι, ἠὲ φιλόξεινοι, καί σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;

Nor are they in any instance separated in deeds. We hear of no religious observances by the Suitors in Ithaca; but Nestor and Menelaus are both found engaged in them. The wicked Ægisthus, having corrupted Clytemnestra and gained the throne, then offered many sacrifices to the gods in the hope of keeping it, and suspended many decorations in their honour[805]; but he is not on this account spoken of with less horror, nor indeed did this extorted profession save him from divine vengeance, sent by the hand of Orestes. Nor does it appear that he had ever been liberal in sacrifice before. The persons who are extolled, obviously or expressly, on this ground in the Odyssey are, the illustrious Ulysses[806], and the trusty Eumæus in his humble cottage[807]. So that on the whole, as between Greek and Greek, regularity in divine worship by sacrifice was neither taken for the substance of morality, nor allowed as a substitute for it, but was a test of it, and was habitually found in union with it. The connection is clearly set out in the case of Eumæus[808]:

[805] Od. iii. 272-5.

[806] Od. i. 65-7.

[807] Od. xiv. 420.

[808] Ibid.

οὐδὲ συβώτης λήθετ’ ἄρ’ ἀθανάτων· φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν.

~_Moral elements in Sacrifice._~

Nor must we forget that, had it been otherwise, a constant moral profanation, abhorred by the feeling of the time, would have been involved. For sacrifice, as ought to be the case with all ritual, had a moral character and adjuncts. It was either ordinary, as at the common meal, or solemn. In the former case the surrender by man of a portion of his food was a witness to God as the giver, and an expression of thankfulness intelligible to an unsophisticated age. In the latter case, and even in the former[809], prayer or thanksgiving were commonly combined with the rite. The spirit of man, when he approached the altar, was bowed down before the powers of heaven; and though it was a heavy sin in nations who had a clear knowledge of God to lapse into the practices of those who could but feebly grope (to use the language of saint Paul[810]) for Him, yet the use of religious observances, when it is ordinarily combined, as we find it combined in Greece, with the possession in other respects of virtuous character, is in effect one of the strongest testimonies to the existence of a substantive standard of morals, which it associates at once with the unseen world, and not with any mere reckoning of results, drawn from the life and experience of man.

[809] Od. xiv. 423.

[810] Acts xvii. 27.

If then the Greeks of the heroic age recognised a real type of good and evil in human action, the next question is, what were the motive powers by which they were drawn towards the practice of virtue?

These powers proceeded from three sources.

One was a regard to the gods; to their rewarding the good, and punishing the bad. Of this we have already treated in regard to some of the most important points. The general proof rests upon almost every page of the poems, especially as regards the punishment of the unkind, unjust, and cruel. The Homeric representations of a future state obscurely, but sensibly, add strength to the same class of sanctions.

The second was the voice of conscience, speaking for each man within his own breast[811].

[811] Nägelsbach Hom. Theol. vi. 15.

The third was a sentiment ranging between reverence and fear, which led to the performance of duty, and to the avoidance of crime, in consideration of the general authority and established opinion of mankind.

We may consider those examples from bygone days, which are so often adduced either for warning or for imitation, as belonging to this third division of moral powers.

The finer forms of this third class of sentiments pass by imperceptible shades into the second.

~_The principle of conscience._~

After his conquest of Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil the body of the slain Eetion, σεβάσσατο γὰρ τόγε θυμῷ: accordingly he burnt him, with his precious armour on. Now it would have been no crime to strip him of this valuable booty, and therefore would have drawn down no vengeance: but the high standard of his own chivalrous feelings would not suffer the act. We have no reason to suppose that in this instance he had any regard to the general opinion of the Greeks. For as when they gathered round the corpse of Hector, every one of them inflicted a wound upon it, and as it was the common custom of the war to strip the dead of their arms, nothing can be more unlikely than that the army would have resented a similar proceeding on the part of Achilles towards Eetion. It was therefore to his own mind that he deferred. Here there was a conscience not only taking notice of the broader and, so to speak, coarser, outlines of duty, but likewise exhibiting a refined and tender sense of it.

Again, Telemachus says, by way of appeal to the good feeling of the Suitors themselves (Od. ii. 138.),

ὑμέτερος δ’ εἰ μὲν θυμὸς νεμεσίζεται αὐτῶν, ἔξιτέ μοι μεγάρων.

In this place he seems to refer to the sense of right within each man, and by no means to their regard for appearances as before each other; while that, from which he exhorts them to abstain, is a purely moral wrong. So Glaucus appears to aim at the individual conscience, when he impresses on Hector and the Trojans the duty of recovering the body of Sarpedon, lest the Myrmidons should deface his remains (Il. xvi. 544-6). Again, Menelaus addresses a similar exhortation to the Greeks, and here expressly exhorts each person to feel and act for himself (Il.