at the sun keeps watch
and is mentioned twice in this part, the latest school of mythologists,
the comparative so-called, have taken much comfort, and have at once
found in the whole a sun-myth. Some ancient expositors, according to
Athenaeus, interpreted it as a story written for the purpose of
deterring the listeners from doing similar bad deeds, pointing to the
punishment even of Gods herein designated; thus they sought to save the
credit of Homer, treating him quite as some commentators have treated
certain morally questionable stories in the Bible. Thus along down the
ages to the present the loves of Venus and Mars have created trouble.

Undoubtedly the song has meaning and deserves a rational exposition.
Has it any connection with the other songs of this Book, or with Homer
in general? It is certainly a product of early Greek poesy; can it be
organically jointed into anything before it and after it? The burlesque
tone which it assumes towards certain Olympians has caused it to be
connected with the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and with the war of
the Gods in the Iliad (Book Twenty-First). Let us extend our horizon,
and take a new look in various directions.

In the first place this song connects with Troy and the Iliad like the
other two songs of Demodocus. The cause of the Trojan War and of its
poem was the deed of Paris. The seducer, the wife, the husband--Paris,
Helen, Manelaus--are the three central figures of the legend. Here this
legend is thrown up among the Gods themselves, who furnish three
corresponding characters--Mars, Venus, Vulcan. Then there is the wrong
and the punishment of the wrong in both cases. Such is the theme of the
Trojan War as it appears in the Iliad. Thus the three songs of
Demodocus indicate a Pre-Iliad, an Iliad, and a Post-Iliad in due
order.

In the second place one asks very emphatically: Why this present
treatment of the Gods on Homer's part? But here we must make an
important distinction. The Supreme God, Zeus, does not appear, nor does
Juno nor does Pallas, indeed none of the Goddesses except the guilty
one. The disgrace falls upon two mainly: Mars and Venus. In the Iliad
they are Trojan deities hostile to the Greeks, and here the Greek poet
serves them up together in an intermezzo, which makes them comic.
Indeed the Greek Hero Diomed fights and puts down just these two Trojan
deities in the Fifth Book of the Iliad. So must every Greek Hero at
Troy conquer Mars and Venus (Vi