In some of the varying statements of the poems, where others have seen the proof of varying authorship, either for the whole or for particular parts, I cannot but rather see the formative mind exercising its discretion over a subject-matter where it was as yet supreme: namely, over that large class of objects which afforded fitting clay for the hand of the artist, but which had not yet become a stamped and recognised image for popular veneration. In the Charis, who is the wife of Hellenizing Vulcan, so long as Venus is at war with the Greeks; in the Winds, who, according to the Odyssey, inhabit a bag under the custody of a living person, possibly a mortal, but who in the Iliad beget children, enjoy banquets, and receive a _cultus_; we find Homer, as I conceive, following the genial flow of his thought, according as his subject prompted him, and awarding honour and preferment, or withholding it, as occasion served. Perhaps Mercury or Vulcan, perhaps even Juno or Neptune, may owe him some advancement: but, at any rate, he seems almost as distinctly to show us Ἠέλιος in two different stages of manufacture, as a sculptor shows a bust in his studio this month in the clay, and next month in the marble.
In the Iliad we find the Sun personified, though in the faintest manner, and by inference only. His office of vision, which he enjoys habitually in the Odyssey, and once in the Iliad[497], is inseparably wedded to a living intelligence by its combination with the function of hearing. He is addressed as the
Ἠέλιός θ’, ὃς πάντ’ ἐφορᾷς καὶ πάντ’ ἐπακούεις.
Now poetry may, under the shield of custom, make the Sun see, by a figure which shall not carry the full consequence of impersonation; but the representation, that he also hears, seems necessarily to involve it.
Again, Jupiter has decreed, that Hector and the Trojans shall prevail until the setting sun. After that, there was to be no more of light or hope for them. Juno desires on this account to close the day, and dismisses the Sun prematurely to his rest. But this, as the Poet adds, was done against his own will[498]:
Ἠέλιον δ’ ἀκάμαντα βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη πέμψεν ἐπ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοὰς ἀέκοντα νέεσθαι.
Upon the two words, ἀέκοντα and ἐπακούεις, rests, I think, the whole case in the Iliad for the Sun’s personality.