goddess of revenge or punishment, and in the Erin'nys (or Furies),
who avenge violations of filial duty, punish perjury, and are the
maintainers of order both in the moral and the natural world; yet
while these moral ideas restrained and checked men, the gods seem
to have been almost wholly free from such control. "The society
of Olympus, therefore," says MAHAFFY, "is only an ideal Greek
society in the lowest sense--the ideal of the school-boy who
thinks all control irksome, and its absence the greatest good--the
ideal of a voluptuous man, who has strong passions, and longs for
the power to indulge them without unpleasant consequences. It
appears, therefore, that the Homeric picture of Olympus is very
valuable, as disclosing to us the poet's notion of a society freed
from the restraints of religion; for the rhapsodists [Footnote:
Rhapsodist, a term applied to the reciters of Greek verse.] were
dealing a death-blow (perhaps unconsciously) to the received
religious belief by these very pictures of sin and crime among
the gods. Their idea is a sort of semi-monarchical aristocracy,
where a number of persons have the power to help favorites, and
thwart the general progress of affairs; where love of faction
overpowers every other consideration, and justifies violence or
deceit. [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece," by J. P. Mahaffy.]

MR. GLADSTONE has given us, in the following extract, his views
of what he calls the "intense humanity" of the Olympian system,
drawn from what its great expounder has set forth in the Iliad
and the Odyssey. "That system," he says, "exhibits a kind of royal
or palace life of man, but on the one hand more splendid and
powerful, on the other more intense and free. It is a wonderful
and a gorgeous creation. It is eminently in accordance with the
signification of the English epithet--rather a favorite, apparently,