32.  First, and chiefly, she is air as the spirit of life, giving vitality to the blood.  Her psychic relation to the vital force in matter lies deeper, and we will examine it afterwards; but a great number of the most interesting passages in Homer regard her as flying over the earth in local and transitory strength, simply and merely the goddess of fresh air.

It is curious that the British city which has somewhat saucily styled itself the Modern Athens is indeed more under her especial tutelage and favor in this respect than perhaps any other town in the island.  Athena is first simply what in the Modern Athens you practically find her, the breeze of the mountain and the sea; and wherever she comes, there is purification, and health, and power.  The sea-beach round this isle of ours is the frieze of our Parthenon; every wave that breaks on it thunders with Athena’s voice; nay, wherever you throw your window wide open in the morning, you let in Athena, as wisdom and fresh air at the same instant; and whenever you draw a pure, long, full breath of right heaven, you take Athena into your heart, through your blood; and, with the blood, into the thoughts of your brain.

Now, this giving of strength by the air, observe, is mechanical as well as chemical.  You cannot strike a good blow but with your chest full; and, in hand to hand fighting, it is not the muscle that fails first, it is the breath; the longest-breathed will, on the average, be the victor, —­not the strongest.  Note how Shakespeare always leans on this.  Of Mortimer, in “changing hardiment with great Glendower”: 

“Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood.”

And again, Hotspur, sending challenge to Prince Harry: 

      “That none might draw short breath to-day
      But I and Harry Monmouth.”

Again, of Hamlet, before he receives his wound: 

      “He’s fat, and scant of breath.”

Again, Orlando in the wrestling: 

      “Yes; I beseech your grace
      I am not yet well breathed.”

Now, of all the people that ever lived, the Greeks knew best what breath meant, both in exercise and in battle, and therefore the queen of the air becomes to them at once the queen of bodily strength in war; not mere brutal muscular strength,—­that belongs to Ares,—­but the strength of young lives passed in pure air and swift exercise,—­Camilla’s virginal force, that “flies o’er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.”

33.  Now I will rapidly give you two or three instances of her direct agency in this function.  First, when she wants to make Penelope bright and beautiful; and to do away with the signs of her waiting and her grief.  “Then Athena thought of another thing; she laid her into a deep sleep, and loosed all her limbs, and made her taller, and made her smoother, and fatter, and whiter than sawn ivory;