Complete Works of Plutarch Part 55

that is, when the month ends and begins, the sun being conjoined with the moon at the time of his coming. The seer says to the suitors (O. xiv. 353):--

Ah, wretched men, what woe is this ye suffer, shrouded in night are your heads and your faces and knees, and kindled is the voice of wailing and the path is full of phantoms and full is the court, the shadows of men hasting h.e.l.lwards beneath the gloom, and the sun is perished out of heaven, and an evil mist has overspread the world.

He closely observed the nature of the winds, how they arise from the moist element. For the water transformed goes into air. The wind is air in motion. This he shows in very many places, and where he says (O. v.

478):--

The force of the wet winds blew,--

he arranged the order of their series (O. v. 295):--

The East wind and the South wind clashed and the stormy West and the North that is born in the bright air, welling onwards a great wave.

Of these one comes from the rising, one from the midday quarter, one from the setting, one from the north.

And Subsola.n.u.s, being humid, changes into the South, which is warm. And the South, rarefying, is changed into the East; but the East, becoming further rarefied, is purified into the North wind, therefore (O. v.

385):--

She roused the swift North and brake the waves before him.

Their contention he explains naturally (O. v. 331):--

Now the South would toss it to the North to carry, and now again the East would yield it to the West.

He knew besides that the North Pole is suspended over the earth, and how it weighs on the men who dwell in that climate. But the South Pole, on the contrary, is profound; as when he says of the North Pole (O. v.

296):--

And the North that is born in the bright air rolling on a great wave on the Southwest wind.

(O. iii. 295):--

Where the Southwest wind drives a great wave against the left headland."

For by saying "rolling" he notes the force of the wave rus.h.i.+ng on from above, but the wind "driving" signifies a force applied to what is higher, coming from what is lower.

That the generation of rains comes from the evaporation of the humid, he demonstrates, saying (I. xi. 54):--

Who sent from Heav'n a show'r of blood-stained rain,--

and (I. xvi. 459):--

But to the ground some drops of blood let fall,--

for he had previously said (I. vii. 329):--

Whose blood, beside Scamander's flowing stream, Fierce Mars has shed, while to the viewless shade Their spirits are gone,--

where it is evident that humors of this sort exhaled from the waters about the earth, mixed with blood, are borne upward. The same argument is found in the following (I. xvi. 385):--

As in the autumnal season when the earth with weight of rain is saturate,--for then the sun on account of the dryness of the ground draws out humors from below and brings from above terrestrial disturbances. The humid exhalations produce rains, the dry ones, winds.

When the wind is in impact with a cloud and by its force rends the cloud, it generates thunder and lightning. If the lightning falls, it sends a thunderbolt. Knowing this our poet speaks as follows (I. xvii.

595):--

His lightnings flash, his rolling thunders roar.

And in another place (O. xii. 415):--

In that same hour Zeus thundered and cast his bolt upon the s.h.i.+p.

Justly thinking men consider that G.o.ds exist, and first of all Homer.

For he is always recalling the G.o.ds (I. i. 406):--

The blessed G.o.ds living a happy life.

For being immortal they have an easy existence and an inexhaustible abundance of life. And they do not need food of which the bodies of mortal men have need (I. v. 341):--

They eat no bread, they drink no ruddy wine, And bloodless and deathless they become.

But poetry requires G.o.ds who are active; that he may bring the notion of them to the intelligence of his readers he gives bodies to the G.o.ds. But there is no other form of bodies than man's capable of understanding and reason. Therefore he gives the likeness of each one of the G.o.ds the greatest beauty and adornment. He has shown also that images and statues of the G.o.ds must be fas.h.i.+oned accurately after the pattern of a man to furnish the suggestion to those less intelligent, that the G.o.ds exist.

But the leader and head of all these, the chief G.o.d the best philosophers think, is without a body, and is rather comprehensible by the intelligence. Homer seems to a.s.sume this; by him Zeus is called (I.

iv. 68):--

The Sire of G.o.ds and men. O father ours, son of Kronos, chief of the greater beings.

And Zeus himself says (I. viii. 27):--

As much as I am better than G.o.ds and men.

And Athene says of him (I. viii. 32):--

Well do we know thy power invincible.

If it is necessary to ask how he knew that G.o.d was an object of the intelligence, it was not directly shown, as he was using poetic form combined with myth. Yet we can gather it from the things he says (I. i.

498):--

The all-seeing son of Saturn there she found sitting apart.

And where he himself says (I. xx. 22):--

Yet he will upon Olympus' lofty ridge remain and view serene the combat."

That solitude and the not mingling with the other G.o.ds, but being gladly by himself and using leisure for one directing and ordering all things, these const.i.tute the character of an "intelligible" G.o.d. He knew besides that G.o.d is mind and understands all things, and governs all. For censuring Poseidon, he says (I. xiii. 354):--

Equal the rank of both, their birth the same, But Jupiter in wisdom as in years the first.

And this expression frequently is used "when he again thought over other things." This shows that he was ever in thought.

But to the mind of G.o.d pertain Providence and Fate, concerning which the philosophers have spoken much. The stimulus to this came from Homer,--why should any one insist on the providence of the G.o.ds? Since in all his poetry not only do they speak to one another on behalf of men, but descending on the earth they a.s.sociate with men. A few things we shall look at for the sake of ill.u.s.trations; among these is Zeus speaking to his brother (I. xx. 20):--