" It is true that these deities, Athene and Apollo,
are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any
of the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as
Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or
frustrated. For all Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of
futurity, and in the maid Athene we have perhaps the highest
conception of deity to which the Greek mind had attained in
the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the dawn;
but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories
of daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the
impersonation of the illuminating and knowledge-giving light
of the sky. As the dawn, she is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and
in mythic language springs from his forehead; but, according
to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies that she
shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdom of
Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the
peculiar privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty position,
sees everything that takes place upon the earth. Even the
secondary divinity Helios possesses this prerogative to a
certain extent.
Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry
for the Greek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance
with the old Aryan mythology vitiates all his conclusions.
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