Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 | Page 2

deities were all
visible from the far streets and dwellings of their earthly worshippers,
in that clear, shining, Grecian atmosphere. Uranography was then far
better understood than geography, and the personages composing the
heavenly synod were almost as definitely known to the Homeric men
as their mortal acquaintances. The architect of the Olympian palaces
was surnamed Amphiguëeis, or the Halt. The Homeric gods were men
divinized with imperishable frames, glorious and immortal sensualists,
never visited by qualms of conscience, by headache, or remorse, or
debility, or wrinkles, or dyspepsia, however deep their potations,
however fiercely they indulged their appetites. Zeus, the Grand
Seignior or Sultan of Olympus and father of gods and men, surpassed
Turk and Mormon Elder in his uxoriousness and indiscriminate
concubinage. With Olympian goddess and lone terrestrial nymph and
deep-bosomed mortal lass of Hellas, the land of lovely women, as
Homer calls it, did he pursue his countless intrigues, which he
sometimes had the unblushing coolness and impudence to rehearse to
his wedded wife, Herè. His list would have thrown Don Giovanni's
entirely into the shade. Herè, the queen of Olympus, called the
Golden-Throned, the Venerable, the Ox-Eyed, was a sort of celestial
Queen Bess, the undaunted she-Tudor, whose father, bluff Harry, was

not a bad human copy of Zeus himself, the Rejoicer in Thunder.
In that old Homeric heaven,--in those quiet seats of the gods of the
heroic world, which were never shaken by storm-wind, nor lashed by
the tempest that raved far below round the dwellings of wretched
mortals,--in those quiet abodes above the thunder, there was for the
most part nought but festal joy, music, choral dances, and emptying of
nectar-cups, interrupted now and then by descents into the low-lying
region of human life in quest of adventure, or on errands of divine
intervention in the affairs of men, for whom, on the whole, Zeus and
his court entertained sentiments of profound contempt. Once in a while
Zeus and all his courtiers went on a festal excursion to the land of the
blameless Ethiops, which lay somewhere over the ocean, where they
banqueted twelve days. Why such a special honor as this was shown to
these Ethiops is not explained. Within their borders were evidently the
summer resorts, Newport and Baden-Baden, frequented by the
Olympians. Only in great crises was the whole mythic host of the
Grecian religion summoned to meet in full forum on the heights of the
immemorial mountain. At such times, all the fountains, rivers, and
groves of Hellas were emptied of their guardian daemons, male and
female, who hastened to pay their homage to and receive their orders
from the Cloud-Gatherer, sitting on his throne, in his great skyey
Capitolium, and invested with all the pomp of mythic majesty, his
ambrosial locks smoothly combed and brushed by some Olympian
_friseur_, his eagle perched with ruffled plumes upon his fist, and
everything else so arranged as most forcibly to impress the country
visitors and rural incumbents with salutary awe for the occupant of
their sky-Vatican. Whether these last were compelled to salute the
Jovine great toe with a kiss is not recorded, there being no account
extant of the ceremonial and etiquette of Olympus. Whatever it was,
doubtless it was rigidly enforced; for the Thunderer, it would seem, had
a Bastile, or lock-up, with iron doors and a brazen threshold specially
provided for contumacious and disobedient gods.
Zeus, although he could claim supreme dominion under the law of
primogeniture, was originally only a coequal ruler with his two
brothers, Hades, king of the underworld, and Ennosigaeus, monarch of
the salt sea-foam. They were alike the sons and coequal heirs of Kronos,
or Time, and the Moerae, or Destinies, had parcelled out the universe in

three equal parts between them. But the position of Zeus in his serene
air-realm gave him the advantage over his two brothers,--as the
metropolitan situation of the Roman see in the capital of the world gave
its diocesan, who was originally nothing more than the peer of the
Bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and Constantinople, an
opportunity finally to assert and maintain a spiritual lordship. This is a
case exactly in point. It is certainly proper to illustrate a theocratic
usurpation by an hierarchic one. Zeus, with his eagle and thunder and
that earthquaking nod, was too strong for him of the trident and him of
the three-headed hound. The whole mythic host regarded Jove's court
as a place of final resort, of ultimate appeal. He was recognized as the
Supreme Father, Papa, or Pope, of the Greek mythic realm. The nod of
his immortal head was decisive. His azure eyebrows and ambrosial hair
were full of fate.
The wars of mortals in Hellas and Dardanland were matters of more
interest to the Olympian celestials than any other mere