Let us now observe how these traditions severally find their imperfect and deranged counterparts in the heroic age of Greece.
Its unity and supremacy is represented in Jupiter, as the administrator of sovereign power.
The combination of Trinity with Unity is reproduced in the three Kronid brothers, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto or Aidoneus; all born of the same parents, and having different regions of the material creation severally assigned to them by lot.
The first form of this tradition is represented chiefly in Apollo. But neither the various attributes which were conceived as belonging to the Deliverer, nor the twofold manifestation of his character as it appears in Holy Writ, could, we must conclude, be held in combination by the heathen mind. The character, therefore, underwent a marked disintegration by severance into distinct parts: and while it continues, in the main, to form the groundwork of the Homeric Apollo, certain of its qualities are apparently transferred to his sister Diana, and others of them are, as it were, repeated in her.
The second form of the tradition is that of the Wisdom, or Λόγος, of the Gospel of Saint John; and this appears to be represented in the sublime Minerva of the Homeric system.
Lastly, Latona, the mother of the twin deities, Apollo and Diana, appears to represent the tradition of the woman, from whom the Deliverer was to descend.
As the derivative idea of sin depended upon that of goodness, and as the shadow ceases to be visible when the object shadowed has become more dim, we might well expect that the contraction and obscuration of the true idea of goodness would bring about a more than proportionate loss of knowledge concerning the true nature of evil. The impersonation of evil could only be upheld in a lively or effectual manner, as the opposite of the impersonation of good: and when the moral standard of godhead had so greatly degenerated, as we find to be the case even in the works of Homer, the negation of that standard could not but cease to be either interesting or intelligible.
Accordingly we find that the process of disintegration, followed by that of arbitrary reassortment and combination of elements, had proceeded to a more advanced stage with respect to the tradition of the Evil One, than in the other cases.