hen, is the religion of Homer? The gods are
a set of beings not very unlike men; they present a curious
combination of human frailty with superhuman powers and virtues. To
speak first of the physical side of their nature, the gods are far
stronger than men, their frame is huger, their eye keener, their
voice louder; like the sorcerer of savage times, they can assume
other shapes to gain their ends, they can become invisible, or they
can travel very swiftly through the air. Yet, on the other hand, they
can be wounded when they strive even with men; accidents happen to
them, they require to eat and drink. They eat, it is true, ambrosia,
and drink nectar, which give immortality; and they have in their
veins not human blood but divine ichor. It is the fact of their
immortality that makes them different from men; it has happened that
a man obtained immortality and became thereby a god. The line between
gods and men may be crossed; in former times it was crossed more
frequently. The gods entered into relations with mortals; many of the
heroes are of divine extraction, and the gods are still interested in
the royal houses they thus founded. But such unions do not take place
in the poet's time. The world is growing less divine.

Homer, however, looks further back than this, and we find in him the
belief, found also in India and in Iceland, that an older and more
savage race of gods once ruled, whom the present dynasty conquered
and dethroned. Of that older set was Kronos, the father of Zeus, and
the Titans, who are now cast down to Tartarus, the nethermost region
of all. The world known to men was apportioned at the beginning of
the present age to the three sons of Kronos, Zeus obtaining the upper
world, including heaven, which is at the top of Mount Olympus in
Thessaly; Poseidon the sea, and Hades the under-world, above
Tartarus, to which men go after death.

Zeus rules in Olympus. He presides there over those gods who are at
present in power. He summons them to council, he sits at meals with
them. They are a very human set of beings. They are moved by ordinary
human motives; love and revenge, jealousy and anger, rule in their
breasts. They do not act from eternal principles, but as men do, from
sudden impulses or from the desire of temporary advantages for
themselves or for their favourites. They even indulge in loose
amours, and are brought into ridiculous situations. They laugh at
each other; the stronger god hurls the we