Myths of Greece and Rome. Jane Harrison
that the gods are a blend of indigenous and immigrant elements. Homer is singing of divinities, who are, in part at least, "other men's gods."
So far, then, we have found in Homer's Olympus two elements; first and earliest, the primitive Pelasgian element; next, in marked contrast, the immigrant Northern element. A third element, which we shall call Minoan, must later be added, but the consideration of this is best carried over till we come to Poseidon. In the figures of Zeus and Hera, his wife, we shall see clearly mirrored the fusion of North and South, of Hellene and Pelasgian. We begin, as is fitting, with Zeus.
ZEUS (JOVE, JUPITER)
As to the primary origin and significance of Zeus there is happily no doubt. He is the Indo-European sky-god in its two aspects; he is the god of the Bright Sky and the shining ether, and also of the Dark Sky, the god of thunder and rain. When the gods drew lots for shares in the universe Poseidon, Homer tells us, drew the sea, Hades the murky darkness, and Zeus "the wide heaven." The most primitive figures in Greek theology, long before Homer, were Ouranos and Gaia, Heaven and Earth; and of Ouranos Zeus had preserved many characteristics. Accordingly, in Homer's pantheon, Zeus, before all things, is the Loud-Thunderer, the Cloud-Gatherer; "he lighteneth, fashioning either a rain unspeakable or hail or snow, when the flakes sprinkle the ploughed lands." He has for his messenger Iris the Rainbow.
These traits, appropriate to the elemental sky-god, are a little difficult to fit in with the moral characteristics of the model father, husband, and ruler, and assuredly the human Zeus of Homer cannot command our admiration. He is apt, as we have seen, to behave like the uncontrolled thunderstorm he once was. He explodes automatically at the smallest opposition. Moreover, he is shamelessly licentious, he bullies and maltreats his wife. Yet there are beginnings of better things. He has his kindly aspect as god of strangers, beggars, and suppliants generally.
For his complete moralization the figure of Zeus had to await the genius of Æschylus. To Æschylus Zeus was at once the mysterious power that moves the universe and the moral solution of all-world problems. He cries: "Zeus, our Unknown, whom, since so to be called is his pleasure, I so address. When I ponder upon all things I can conjecture naught but Zeus to fit the need, if the burden of vanity is in very truth to be cast from the soul." And again: "Never, never shall mortal counsels overpass the harmony of Zeus." This is, indeed, a far cry from the elemental thunderstorm.
It is not, however, only the genius of Æschylus that has enlarged, softened, and beautified the conception of Zeus, till his elemental form is almost wholly lost. Pheidias, in the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia, embodied the ideas of the time of Æschylus, and Quintilian, in discussing this image, makes this notable statement: "Its beauty seems to have added something to revealed religion." Dio Chrysostom wrote as follows:
"Our Zeus is peaceful and altogether mild, as the guardian of Hellas when she is of one mind and not distraught with faction, an image gentle and august in perfect form, one who is the giver of life and breath and every good gift, the common father and saviour and guardian of mankind. The image brought to the troubled heart of the beholder something of its own large repose. 'If there be any of mortals whatsoever that is heavy laden in spirit, having suffered sorely many sorrows and calamities in his life, nor yet winning for himself sweet sleep, even such an one, methinks, standing before the image of the god, would forget all things whatsoever in his mortal life hard to be endured, so wondrously hast thou Pheidias, conceived and wrought it, and such grace and light shine upon it from thy art.'"
Such is the life history of Zeus from thunderstorm to Paraclete.
HERA
We pass to Hera, wife of Zeus. At first Hera seems all wife, the great typical bride, and the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera seems the prototype of human wedlock. So Homer, no doubt, intended us to think, but, if this is really the case what means the ceaseless, turbulent, hostility between Zeus and Hera, the unending, unseemly strife between the Father of gods and men and the woman whom he cannot even beat into submission? Is this tyrannous mistress really made by the Greek housewife even of the Homeric days in her own image? Moreover, at Olympia, where, in historic days, Zeus ruled supreme, Hera had her ancient separate sanctuary, the Heraion, the building of which long predated that of Zeus. At Argos, too, there was an ancient Heraion sacred to the ox-eyed goddess. In Thessaly, in the ancient Argonautic legend, Hera is queen and patron of the hero Jason. Of Zeus we hear nothing. What does it all mean? The answer is clear enough: Hera has been forcibly married, she is an ancient Pelasgian divinity, and when Zeus, the god of the immigrant Achaians, conquers her land, he marries the native princess. But she is never really subject to him. She leaves a wife's submission to the shadowy double of Zeus, Dione. In a word, the unseemly squabblings between Zeus and Hera are the outcome, not of conjugal jealousy, but of racial rivalry. Hera remains always the turbulent, native princess, coerced, but never really subdued by the alien conqueror.
Hera, then, was Queen in Greece long before the coming of the Achaian Zeus. In those early Pelasgian days, who and what was she? Her name tells us. Hera is Yār-a, the year. Hera is the spirit of the year, the daimon who brings the fruits of the year in their season. As such she has a threefold seasonal aspect. As Stymphalos, in remote Arcadia, Pausanias tells us, Hera had three sanctuaries and three surnames. While yet a girl she was called Child or Maiden, when married she was called Fullgrown, and, separated from her husband, she was called Chera, the desolate one, the Widow. She reflects, then, the three stages of a woman's life, but she reflects also the three seasons, for in antiquity the seasons were three, not four: spring, summer, winter; summer and autumn being regarded together as one season of fruit bearing. In the spring she is Child or Maiden, in summer and autumn she is Fullgrown, and in winter she is a Widow. Her winter desolation reminds us of the mourning of Demeter. This three-seasoned year is dependent on the earlier moon calendar, with its waxing, full, and waning moon.
Of all this nature-aspect of Hera as goddess of the seasons there is in Homer little trace, she has become wholly a human queen. Once only, and that in very beautiful fashion, does the old nature-aspect break through. Zeus the Cloud-gatherer is seated on the topmost peak of Mount Ida, and Hera, clad in all her splendour and girt with the cestus of Aphrodite, approaches him. "And as he saw her, love come over his deep heart." He cast about her a great golden cloud and clasped her as his bride within his arms. "And beneath them the divine earth sent forth fresh, new grass, and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth, thick and soft that raised them aloft from the ground. Therein they lay, and were clad on with a fair golden cloud, whence fell drops of glittering dew." Here manifestly we have the sacred marriage which wakens anew the blossoming earth in a magical spring. Hebe, it may here be noted, the cup-bearer of Olympus, and the daughter of Hera, is but her younger aspect as maiden.
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