olence and Lust, to give a suggestion of
their purport) before Helen can be restored to home and country; he
must put down the hostile city and its Gods. Note too, whither the
Greek poet sends each of these deities after their release: Mars flies
off to Thrace, a distant, barbarous country, beyond the borders of
Hellas, where he can find his own; Venus on the contrary slips away
southeastward to Cyprus inhabited by peoples Oriental or Orientalizing,
and therein like Troy and herself. Both rush out of Greece with all
speed; they belong somewhere in the outskirts of the Greek world.

We may now see why the Phaeacians, without being so very wicked, could
find an element in the song which they enjoyed. To them, with the
Trojan War always in mind, this was the theme: the adulterous Trojan
deities caught and laughed out of Olympus--those being the two deities
who first misled by desire and then tried to keep by war the beautiful
Helen, the Greek woman. Throwing ourselves back into his spirit, we may
also see why Ulysses, the old war-horse from Troy, "was rejoiced in his
heart, hearing the song" which degraded and burlesqued the Gods whom he
had fought ten years, and who were, in part at least, the occasion of
his wandering ten more. Venus and Mars did not find much sympathy in
the Phaeacian company, we may be sure. Why then regard them as Gods? The
Greek deified everything; even the tendencies which he felt himself
obliged to suppress had something of the divine in them. Calypso, whom
Ulysses subordinated at last to the higher principle, was a Goddess;
Troy, the hostile city, had its deities, whom the Greek recognised. Now
its two chief deities are involved in a common shame, and flee from
Olympus, flee almost outside of the Greek world. Certainly the audience
could take some ethical satisfaction in that.

Then there is a third consideration different from the two preceding,
both of which seek to look at the song from the ancient Greek
standpoint. But from our modern standpoint it is also to be regarded.
There is no doubt that we see here the beginning of the end of
polytheism; the many Gods collide with one another, some are now put
out and all will be finally put out; they are showing their finitude
and transitoriness. Still further, we catch a glimpse of the sensuous
side of Greek life, the excess of which at last brought death. Homer is
the prophet of his people, when read with insight; he tells not only
what they are, b