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I believe it will help you better to understand the broad humour of the Iliad, which we shall presently reach, if you will allow me to say a little more about the general characteristics of the poem. Over and above the love and war that are his main themes, there is another which the author never loses sight of–I mean distrust and dislike of the ideas of his time as regards the gods and omens. No poet ever made gods in his own image more defiantly than the author of the Iliad. In the likeness of man created he them, and the only excuse for him is that he obviously desired his readers not to take them seriously. This at least is the impression he leaves upon his reader, and when so great a man as Homer leaves an impression it must be presumed that he does so intentionally. It may be almost said that he has made the gods take the worse, not the better, side of man’s nature upon them, and to be in all respects as we ourselves–yet without virtue. It should be noted, however, that the gods on the Trojan side are treated far more leniently than those who help the Greeks.

The chief gods on the Grecian side are Juno, Minerva, and Neptune. Juno, as you will shortly see, is a scolding wife, who in spite of all Jove’s bluster wears the breeches, or tries exceedingly hard to do so. Minerva is an angry termagant–mean, mischief-making, and vindictive. She begins by pulling Achilles’ hair, and later on she knocks the helmet from off the head of Mars. She hates Venus, and tells the Grecian hero Diomede that he had better not wound any of the other gods, but that he is to hit Venus if he can, which he presently does ‘because he sees that she is feeble and not like Minerva or Bellona.’ Neptune is a bitter hater.

Apollo, Mars, Venus, Diana, and Jove, so far as his wife will let him, are on the Trojan side. These, as I have said, meet with better, though still somewhat contemptuous, treatment at the poet’s hand. Jove, however, is being mocked and laughed at from first to last, and if one moral can be drawn from the Iliad more clearly than another, it is that he is only to be trusted to a very limited extent. Homer’s position, in fact, as regards divine interference is the very opposite of David’s. David writes, “Put not your trust in princes nor in any child of man; there is no sure help but from the Lord.” With Homer it is, “Put not your trust in Jove neither in any omen from heaven; there is but one good omen–to fight for one’s country. Fortune favours the brave; heaven helps those who help themselves.”

The god who comes off best is Vulcan, the lame, hobbling, old blacksmith, who is the laughing-stock of all the others, and whose exquisitely graceful skilful workmanship forms such an effective contrast to the uncouth exterior of the workman. Him, as a man of genius and an artist, and furthermore as a somewhat despised artist, Homer treats, if with playfulness, still with respect, in spite of the fact that circumstances have thrown him more on the side of the Greeks than of the Trojans, with whom I understand Homer’s sympathies mainly to lie.

The poet either dislikes music or is at best insensible to it. Great poets very commonly are so. Achilles, indeed, does on one occasion sing to his own accompaniment on the lyre, but we are not told that it was any pleasure to hear him, and Patroclus, who was in the tent at the time, was not enjoying it; he was only waiting for Achilles to leave off. But though not fond of music, Homer has a very keen sense of the beauties of nature, and is constantly referring both in and out of season to all manner of homely incidents that are as familiar to us as to himself. Sparks in the train of a shooting-star; a cloud of dust upon a high road; foresters going out to cut wood in a forest; the shrill cry of the cicale; children making walls of sand on the sea-shore, or teasing wasps when they have found a wasps’ nest; a poor but very honest woman who gains a pittance for her children by selling wool, and weighs it very carefully; a child clinging to its mother’s dress and crying to be taken up and carried–none of these things escape him. Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey do we ever receive so much as a hint as to the time of year at which any of the events described are happening; but on one occasion the author of the Iliad really has told us that it was a very fine day, and this not from a business point of view, but out of pure regard to the weather for its own sake.