with him, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed;[80] or else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks,[81] when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or, finally, retiring completely into the material universe which they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as Scamander with Achilles, through his waves.

Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of the gods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief in them.  Very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely the simplicities of a pure and truthful age.  When Juno beats Diana about the ears with her own quiver,[82] for instance, we start at first, as if Homer could not have believed that they were both real goddesses.  But what should Juno have done?  Killed Diana with a look?  Nay, she neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very faith of Diana’s goddess-ship.  Diana is as immortal as herself.  Frowned Diana into submission?  But Diana has come expressly to try conclusions with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission.  Wounded her with a celestial lance?  That sounds more poetical, but it is in reality partly more savage and partly more absurd, than Homer.  More savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the word “celestial,” which means nothing.  What sort of a thing is a “celestial” lance?  Not a wooden one.  Of what then?  Of moonbeams, or clouds, or mist.  Well, therefore, Diana’s arrows were of mist too; and her quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish into mist.  Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that two mists met, and one drove the other back?  That would have been rational and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances.  Homer had no such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask, what should Juno have done?  Not beaten Diana?  No; for it is unlady-like.  Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like.  If a modern lady does not beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener because she is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer mind than Homer’s Juno.  She will not strike them; but she will overwork the one or slander the other without pity; and Homer would not have thought that one whit more goddess-like than striking them with her open hand.