He here refers to a time when Jupiter hung his wife up in mid-heaven with anvils tied to her heels; and when Vulcan untied them he was pitched from Olympus down into the island of Lemnos, whence came his lameness.  A rude and brutal head of a household was the poetic Zeus.

No doubt other and much more sublime views of the gods are to be found in Homer.  Thus (Il.  XV. 80) he compares the motion of Juno to the rapid thought of a traveller, who, having visited many countries, says, “I was here,” “I was there.”  Such also is the description (Il.  XIII. 17) of Neptune descending from the top of Samothrace, with the hills and forests trembling beneath his immortal feet.  Infinite power, infinite faculty, the gods of Homer possessed; but these were only human faculty and power pushed to the utmost.  Nothing is more beautiful than the description of the sleep of Jupiter and Juno, “imparadised in each other’s arms” (Il.  XIV. 350), while the divine earth produced beneath them a bed of flowers, softly lifting them from the ground.  But the picture is eminently human; quite as much so as that which Milton has imitated from it.

After Homer and Hesiod, among the Greek poets, come the lyrists.  Callinus, the Ephesian, made a religion of patriotism.  Tyrtaeus (B.C. 660), somewhat later, of Sparta, was devoted to the same theme.  Pindar, the Theban, began his career (B.C. 494) in the time of the conquests of Darius, and composed one of his Pythian odes in the year of the battle of Marathon.  He taught a divine retribution on good and evil; taught that “the bitterest end awaits the pleasure that is contrary to right,"[231] taught moderation, and that “a man should always keep in view the bounds and limits of things."[232] He declared that “Law was the ruler of gods and men.”  Moreover, he proclaimed that gods and men were of one family, and though the gods were far higher, yet that something divine was in all men.[233] And in a famous fragment (quoted by Bunsen[234]) he calls mankind the majestic offspring of earth; mankind, “a gentle race, beloved of heaven.”

The tragic poet, Aeschylus, is a figure like that of Michael Angelo in Italian art, grand, sombre, and possessed by his ideas.  The one which rules him and runs darkly through all his tragedies is the supreme power of Nemesis, the terrible destiny which is behind and above gods and men.  The favorite theme of Greek tragedy is the conflict of fate and freedom, of the inflexible laws of nature with the passionate longings of man, of “the emergency of the case with the despotism of the rule.”  This conflict appears most vividly in the story of Prometheus, or Forethought; he, “whose godlike crime was to be kind”; he who resisted the torments and terrors of Zeus, relying on his own fierce mind.[235] In this respect, Prometheus in his suffering is like Job in his sufferings.  Each refuses to say he is wrong, merely to pacify God, when he does not see that he is wrong.  As Prometheus maintains his inflexible purpose, so Job holds fast his integrity.