THE LIFE AND WORK OF HOMER. 



47 



who stands in danger of becoming ideal. When we are bold 

 that Prayers are the daughters of Zeus, the former do QOt 

 thereby become persons, it. is rather the personality of /ens 

 which becomes precarious. When therefore Theagenes of 

 Rhenium introduced the allegorical interpretation of Homeric 

 mythology he was fully within his rights. 



The clues which determined the functions were ordinarily if 

 not always etymological. The works of the Greeks which deal 

 with etymology are therefore of value, not for the discovery of 

 the real origin of the names, but because they show us what 

 ideas those names suggested to a Hellene. Plato is doubtless 

 right, e.g., when he interprets the name Athene as "the Divine 

 reason," in the sense that he has hit on the etymology to which 

 the goddess owes her (unction. The Greek commentators on 

 Homer usually point out that where she suggests a course 

 to a hero, she merely stands for that hero's intelligence; she is 

 no more a person than Strife the sister of War, or his sons 

 Fright and Flight. If the question be asked " How comes such 

 an abstraction to have temples and sacrifices, priests and 

 worshippers ? " we are confronted with a psychological puzzle 

 which we are unable to solve. We know that the Athenians 

 offered yearly sacrifice to 'persuasion, a goddess who scarcely 

 deserves a capital letter. They cannot well have imagined that 

 so ideal a process as persuasion can have been propitiated by 

 sacrifice ; still less have enjoyed either the taste or the odour of 

 the offerings. 



So far then as the Greek deities were survivals of older cults, 

 their assumption of functions had a tendency to spiritualize 

 them, as we have seen to happen in the case of Zeus ; it does 

 not, however, seem possible in any case to identify one of them 

 certainly with a member of an older pantheon belonging to the 

 same territory, though a plausible case may be made out for one 

 or two names. The extent to which in the worshipper's mind 

 the fetish or tribal deity was sublimated would depend on the 

 mental capacity of the individual. The quality of the poet's 

 work which may be called depth of focus, i.e., the power of 

 appealing to young, middle-aged and old, to the weak-minded 

 and the strong-minded, and of charming all alike, is to be found 

 in his theology no less than is his narratives. 



In the fourth place Homer is credited by the Hellenic critics 

 with founding their philosophy, not only in the sense that his 

 works provided texts and illustrations for all their preachers 

 from Plato to Epictetus, but also that he initiated speculation 

 on the origins of things. As the lord of the world he regards 



