What must he have been when
it would not have been safe for him to leave his wife alone with the
best and highest of his gods? The ancient Hellenes were morally most
vicious and depraved, even when compared with contemporary heathen
nations. The old Greek was large in brain, but not in heart. He had
created his gods in his own image, and they were--what they were. There
was no goodness in his religion, and we can tolerate it only as it is
developed in the Homeric rhapsodies, in the far-off fable-time of the
old world, and amongst men who were but partially self-conscious. In
that remote Homeric epoch it is tolerable, when cattle-stealing and war
were the chief employments of the ruling caste,--and we may add,
woman-stealing, into the bargain. "I did not come to fight against the
Trojans," says Achilles, "because I had suffered any grievance at their
hands. They never drove off my oxen and horses or stole my harvests in
rich-soiled Phthia, the nurse of heroes; for vale-darkening mountains
and a tumultuous sea separate us."
Into that old Homeric world we enter through the portals of the "Ilias"
and "Odusseia," and see the peaks of Olympus shining afar off in white
splendor like silvery clouds, not looking for or expecting either a
loftier or a purer heaven.
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