Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/199

Rh visit the earth and take part in the quarrels of mortal men, Zeus chap. alone may not descend for this purpose from the clear heaven whence he looks down on all that is being done beneath him. It is true that there are on the earth some whom he loves, and others whom he hates ; and when his son Sarpedon is smitten by the spear of Patro- klos, the tears of Zeus fall in large rain-drops from the sky. But that which he wills must be done by others, and in their toils he can have no share. So when the hour for the battle between Achilleus and Hektor is come, Zeus tells the gods, the streams, and the nymphs, who sit around his throne, that they may go down and choose each his side, while for himself, though he cares for the mortals whose death-struggle is at hand, the sight of all that is done on the plains of Ilion will none the less gladden his eyes as he looks down from Olympos. When, after the conflict of Achilleus with the burning river, the gods turn their weapons on each other, the mind of Zeus remains unruffled, and he listens in silence to the charge brought against Here by Leto, as she lays before his feet the arrows of her child Artemis.^

Thus for the poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Zeus, though The un- he might be called the gatherer of the dark clouds,^ was pre-eminently fjghtf'"^ the lord of the bright heaven, and the thought most closely asso- ciated with the name was that of a serene and unchangeable splen- dour. As the heavy masses of vapour were cloven by the rays of the sun, the blue heaven was seen smiling on the havoc wrought by storms and tempest, itself undimmed by the years which devoured the generations of men. From the face of this heaven the morning sprang to scatter the shades of night. Beneath it the lightning flashed, the rain fell, the winds blew ; but above them all shone still the light which can know no change.

Without referring, therefore, to the legends of other nations, we The idea are brought at once by the language even of our Homeric poets to su^^esL^i that earliest form of thought in which words now used to denote by phy- spiritual conceptions conveyed only the impression left on the human nomena!" mind by the phenomena of the outward world. As man awoke

' //. xxi. 388. 0/710x05 ^tait le dieu qui envoie la tem- afo-o-oi, qui signifie s'elancer, a fait d'une primitif w/^^) : plus tard, on traduisit le part le substantif aT|, chevre (a cause de dicu qui porte Vegide. Homere semble la nature bondissante de I'animal), at de se souvenir de la premiere signification, I'autre les mots /carai'l, KaraLyis, tern- quand il nous montre, au seul mouve- peta. De la une nouvelle serie d'images ment du bouclier, le tonnerre qui delate, et de fables ou la chevre joue le role I'lda qui se couvre de nuagts, et les principal. L'egide, avant d'etre un hommcs frappes de terreur." — Br^al, bouclier fait en peau de chevre, elait Ilercide et Cacus, 116. le ciel au moment de I'orage ; Jupiter
 * Zet/s Alyioxos. ^ " Le verba grec pete (il faut entendre ex*^ dans son sens