I have not adverted to the tradition which places the Lycoorgus of Il. vi. in Thrace, but have simply followed what appears to be the suggestion of the Homeric text.
_The Composition of the Olympian Court: and the Classification of the whole Supernatural Order in Homer._
In the full Olympian Assembly, or Great Chapter of the Immortals, we find a collection of deities, who are respectively the representatives, in the main, of Elemental Powers, of Human Passions or Ideas, and of Historical Traditions, either single or intermixed. Among the simple examples, we may cite the Rivers and Nymphs for the first, Mars and Venus for the second, the goddess Themis for the third, Latona and Iris for the last. In Jupiter, the chief of all, these elements are blended together.
~_Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus._~
But we must also consider those who do not appear in Olympus, and why they are excluded. If, as is perhaps the case, Aidoneus and Persephone are not there, it is because of the separateness of their work, and the remoteness of their kingdom. They had servants, guards, and a judge, in short, a sort of polity of their own. Atlas, Proteus, Calypso, Circe, and the other purely local deities, so far as we know, are not there; probably because they do not enter into the national religion, but are little more than convenient symbols[515] of geographical points known or conceived through maritime, that is, without doubt, through Phœnician report. Again, we do not hear in Olympus of Destiny, Sleep, Night, Dream, Terror, Panic, Uproar, and the rest; probably because these had not attained to practical impersonation in the religion of the people, but were merely objects of the poetical faculty. So likewise with respect to the Winds, who stand as receivers of worship and sacrifice in Il. xxiii. 195. The different treatment which they receive in the Iliad and Odyssey, like their non-appearance in the Great Chapter[516] of Olympus, unless referable to the peculiarities of the Outer Geography, shows that they had not a developed and established godhead, but might be dealt with by the Poet at his will. In these imperfect impersonations, it has been well observed, sometimes the mere elemental power, sometimes the superinduced personality prevails. Again, Ἄτη the temptress, and Ἐρινύες the avengers, might stand excluded, both on the same ground of inadequate impersonation, and on other grounds. Nereus and the purely elemental deities of the sea are not summoned to the Assembly, apparently because he too had his own submarine palace. It answered to Olympus; and here he sat in state amidst his numerous Court of Nymphs. Even Thetis was fetched from thence to attend the last Assembly of the gods in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad. Κρόνος and Ῥέα are not in the divine meetings, firstly, because he, probably with her as his reflected image, is penally confined in Tartarus; but secondly, because, the first representing Time, and the second Matter, they are the primary ideas in the metaphysical order, which comprehended all others, and from which all others were derivative. And as they stood in the metaphysical _nexus_ of ideas, so stood Oceanus and his feminine, Tethys, in the terrestrial order; where Oceanus was the all-inclosing, all-containing; the Form, within which every terrestrial existence was cast, and beyond which even Thought could not pass. Hence the curious and marked exception of him from the summons of Themis to the Great Assembly of the Twentieth Book[517].