and breathed ambrosial brightness over her face; and so she left her and went up to heaven.”  Fresh air and sound sleep at night, young ladies!  You see you may have Athena for lady’s maid whenever you choose.  Next, hark how she gives strength to Achilles when he is broken with fasting and grief.  Jupiter pities him and says to her, “’Daughter mine, are you forsaking your own soldier, and don’t you care for Achilles any more?  See how hungry and weak he is,—­go and feed him with ambrosia.’  So he urged the eager Athena; and she leaped down out of heaven like a harpy falcon, shrill-voiced; and she poured nectar and ambrosia, full of delight, into the breast of Achilles, that his limbs might not fail with famine; then she returned to the solid dome of her strong father.”  And then comes the great passage about Achilles arming—­for which we have no time.  But here is again Athena giving strength to the whole Greek army.  She came as a falcon to Achilles, straight at him, a sudden drift of breeze; but to the army she must come widely, she sweeps around them all.  “As when Jupiter spreads the purple rainbow over heaven, portending battle or cold storm, so Athena, wrapping herself round with a purple cloud, stooped to the Greek soldiers, and raised up each of them.”  Note that purple, in Homer’s use of it, nearly always means “fiery,” “full of light.”  It is the light of the rainbow, not the color of it, which Homer means you to think of.

34.  But the most curious passage of all, and fullest of meaning, is when she gives strength to Menelaus, that he may stand unwearied against Hector.  He prays to her:  “And blue-eyed Athena was glad that he prayed to her, first; and she gave him strength in his shoulders, and in his limbs, an she gave him the courage”—­of what animal, do you suppose?  Had it been Neptune or Mars, they would have given him the courage of a bull, or a lion; but Athena gives him the courage of the most fearless in attack of all creatures, small or great, and very small it is, but wholly incapable of terror,—­she gives him the courage of a fly.

35.  Now this simile of Homer’s is one of the best instances I can give you of the way in which great writers seize truths unconsciously which are for all time.  It is only recent science which has completely shown the perfectness of this minute symbol of the power of Athena; proving that the insect’s flight and breath are co-ordinated; that its wings are actually forcing-pumps, of which the stroke compels the thoracic respiration; and that it thus breathes and flies simultaneously by the action of the same muscles, so that respiration is carried on most vigorously during flight, “while the air-vessels, supplied by many pairs of lungs instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in far greater numbers than the capillary blood-vessels of our own system, and give enormous and untiring muscular power, a rapidity of action measured by thousands of strokes in the minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours of flight."*