So considering the passage, let us next examine the objection taken to it, that it involves hero-worship[189], which was not known in the Homeric age.
Now we have in the Odyssey, as well as here in the Iliad, cases of mortals translated to heaven and to the company of immortals.
In the Odyssey we have, for example, the case of Castor and Pollux, who enjoyed a peculiar privilege of life after death, and revisited earth in some mysterious manner on alternate days[190]. And this, too, although they were buried[191].
Their τίμη πρὸς Ζηνὸς was such that, as the passage in Od. xi. proceeds to state, they vied with deities;
This τίμη must have included honour paid on earth: to be in heaven, unless in connection with earth and its inhabitants, was not of itself a τίμη, much less was it the τίμη of the gods. The subject of hero-worship will be further examined in a later portion of this work: but for the present it appears sufficiently, that this comes near to hero-worship. The passage about Erechtheus is no more than a development of the expression relating to the Tyndarid brothers; and, though by some steps in advance of it, can hardly be rejected on this ground alone as spurious. All passages cannot be expected to express with precisely the same degree of fulness the essential ideas on which they are founded; and we are not entitled to cut off, on that ground alone, the one which happens to be most in advance.
But although the application to Erechtheus might not convict the passage, I very much question whether we ought so to apply it. It is quite against the general bearing of the passage, which would much more naturally refer it to Minerva. The reason for it is that cows or heifers were offered to her, and not rams or bulls. No doubt, in the particular cases mentioned to us, (Il. vi. 94, x. 292, xi. 729, and Od. iii. 382,) cows or heifers only are spoken of. But in Od. iii. 145 we are told that ἑκατομβαὶ were to be offered to her, which we can hardly limit so rigidly: and considering that the cases of cows mentioned by Homer are all special, while this passage speaks of what was ordinary and periodical, I think we should pause before admitting that the application of the lines to Minerva is on this ground indefensible.