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Rh Sanscrit, which means the sky; and that originally Dyu was the bright heavenly deity in India, as well as in Greece."

It is remarked by Welcker, that "the greatest fact, when we go back to the highest Grecian antiquity, is the idea of God, as the Supreme Being, associated with a nature-worship, never entirely suppressed, together with the conception of a divine family derived from Zeus."

Accordingly, we recognize in the Homeric Zeus three distinct elements, the divine, the physical, and the human, welded together into an artificial unity, and exhibiting a character of marvellous incongruity, endowed with attributes the most inconsistent and contradictory. Thus, in not a few passages, he is represented as the supreme deity—

"Who reigneth mighty over all, both mortals and immortals." (Il. xii. 242.) "Whose decree, once sanctioned by the nod, is neither deceptive, nor revokable." (Il. i. 527.) "The Counsellor, greatest and best; Father of gods and men; the Guardian of the oath." (iv. 235.) "The Vindicator of righteous law." (xxi. 387.) "The High Arbiter of war." (xix. 224.) His superiority over the other gods is forcibly brought out in the beginning of the 8th book (18–27,) where the other dwellers in Olympus are invited to grasp the golden chain dropped from Heaven's heights, and held immovably in the hand of Zeus:

Lay hold, and throw your force on it, all gods both male and female,