Hades as heaven is high above earth." Here the supremacy of Zeus is attested, and he proposes to prove it by the sport called "the tug of war." He says, "Fasten ye a chain of gold from heaven, and all ye gods lay hold thereof, and all goddesses, yet could ye not drag from heaven to earth Zeus, the supreme counsellor, not though ye strove sore. But if once I were minded to drag with all my heart, then I could hang gods, and earth, and sea, to a pinnacle of Olympus."[1] The supremacy claimed here on the score of strength, "by so much I am beyond gods and men," is elsewhere based on primogeniture,[2] though in Hesiod Zeus is the youngest of the sons of Cronos. But there is, as usual in myth, no consistent view, and Zeus cannot be called omnipotent. Not only is he subject to fate, but his son Heracles would have perished when he went to seek the hound of hell but for the aid of Athene.[3] Gratitude for his relief does not prevent Zeus from threatening Athene as well as Hera with Tartarus, when they would thwart him in the interest of the Achæans. Hera is therefore obliged to subdue him by the aid of love and sleep, in that famous and beautiful passage,[4] which is so frankly anthropomorphic, and was such a scandal to religious minds.[5]
Not to analyse the whole divine plot of the Iliad,
- ↑ M. Decharme regards this challenge to the tug of war as a very noble and sublime assertion of supreme sovereignty. Mythl de la Greece, p. 19.
- ↑ Iliad, xv. 166.
- ↑ Iliad, viii. 369.
- ↑ Iliad, xiv. 150–350.
- ↑ Schol. Iliad, xiv, 346; Dindorf, vol. iv. In the Scholiast's explanation the scene is an allegorical description of spring; the wrath of Hera is the remains of winter weather; her bath represents the April showers; when she busks her hair, the new leaves on the boughs, "the high leafy tresses of the trees," are intended, and so forth.
