In Jupiter, as in the almost brutal Mars, we find remaining that relic of personal virtue which depends least upon reflection, and flows most from instinct, namely, parental affection. Mars is wrought up to fury by learning the death of his son Ascalaphus; and Jupiter, after much painful rumination on consenting to the fall of Sarpedon, sheds gouts of blood over the dearest of his children[334]. This is singularly grand as poetry, and far superior to the sheer mania of Mars. Indeed it is evident that Homer exerted himself to the utmost in adorning this majestic figure, as a mere figure, with the richest treasures of his imagination.
When, in the Twenty-First Iliad, the great battle of the gods begins, Jupiter has no part to take. He sits aloft in his independent security, while they contend together, even as he was afterwards supposed to keep aloof from trouble and responsibility for human affairs. The same sentiment appears in the determination of Neptune and Apollo not to quarrel on account of mortals. But in the case of Jupiter, the selfish principle comes out with greater force: he is not merely indifferent, but he absolutely rejoices in the strife of the Immortals:
ἐγέλασσε δέ οἱ φίλον ἦτορ γηθοσύνῃ, ὅθ’ ὁρᾶτο θεοὺς ἔριδι ξυνιόντας.
Upon the whole it is certainly the Jupiter of Homer in whom, of all his greater gods, notwithstanding his abstract attributes, we see, first, the most complete surrender of personal morality and self-government to mere appetite; secondly, the most thoroughly selfish groundwork of character: the germ, and in no small degree the development, of what was afterwards to afford to speculation the materials for the Epicurean theory respecting the divine nature, as it is set forth in the verse of Lucretius, or in the arguments of the Ciceronian Cotta.
The Juno of the Iliad is by far the most conspicuous and splendid, as she is also the most evidently national, product of the inventive power to be found in the entire circle of the theo-mythology.
Not that Greek invention created her out of nothing. On the contrary, she represented abundant prototypes in the mythologies of the East. Her Greek name, Ἥρη, is, I apprehend, a form of ἔρα, the earth[335]; and in her first form she probably represented one of its oriental impersonations. But they all had to pass through the crucible, and they came out in a form as purely Hellenic as if it had been absolutely original.