The Jacob's Ladder in Homer

Author(s): Rufus Town Stephenson

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 30, No. 9 (Jun., 1935), pp. 515-530
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3290294
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THE
JACOB'S
LADDER IN HOMER
By
Rurus
TOWN
STEPHENSON
DePauw
University
Greencastle,
Indiana
In Genesis we read the beautiful
story
of
Jacob's dream,
and
with
Jacob
we see the
angels descending
and
ascending
the rounds
of that wonderful ladder which reached from heaven to
earth;
above it we
glimpse
God himself
assuring Jacob
of his watchful care.
There are few who realize that we have that same
Jacob's
ladder
in Homer's Iliad and
Odyssey. Certainly
one of the
things
to be
most
appreciated
in Homer is his two-world
point
of view. To him
earth was unthinkable without
heaven,
and heaven was unthink-
able without earth. Their interrelation made the world he knew.
It is most
interesting
to note that the Iliad
opens
with earth
reaching up
to heaven for
co6peration-Achilles
through
Thetis
to
Zeus;
it closes with heaven
reaching
down to earth for
coopera-
tion-Zeus
through
Thetis to Achilles.
This would indeed be a
utopian picture,
but the facts force us
to remember that the Greek
gods
were
anthropomorphic.
All
the Greek knew of God was what he saw of God in man. In other
words,
his
god
was man idealized into
something
more than
man,
just
man writ
large;
and his heaven was earth idealized into some-
thing
more than
earth, just
earth writ
large. Naturally
this con-
ception
was
fraught
with both weal and woe for the Greek
gods
and the Greek heaven and for men and earth as well. As the
Greek
gods
had evil within them as well as
good
and as the Ho-
meric
Greeks, just
like their
contemporary Hebrews,
held
deity
responsible
for the evil in the world as well as the
good,
the heav-
enly
influence was
naturally
sometimes a baneful one. Be it
said to Homer's
credit, however,
that his
gods usually co6perated,
515
516 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
not for man's
bane,
but for his
blessing,
as an unbiased
reading
of
his
poems
will
certainly prove.
Although
Homer wrote
primarily
to
give pleasure by
the artistic
portrayal
of
interesting transcripts
from human
life,
one cannot
read his two
poems through
without
finding
in them his belief in
a
providential
order-call it a diabolical
providential
order on
occasion,
if
you
will. The
gods
and
fate,
as a dark
shadowy
back-
ground,
rule the
world;
that belief
permeates
the Iliad and
Odys-
sey.
The wrath of Achilles but fulfils the will of
Zeus,
so Homer
tells us in the
opening
lines of the Iliad. In the
opening
lines of the
Odyssey
Zeus in the
presence
of a
grand
conclave in heaven charts
the course of the
Odyssey
from
beginning
to end.
Issuing
from this
conclave we have a most
important
twofold
pronouncement
from
the father of the
gods: First,
man's sorrow comes to him
through
his own sin-this is our doctrine of the free will of
man; second,
the
gods
care for man and warn
him, though frequently
in
spite
of this
he
goes heedlessly
to his doom-this is our doctrine of Providence.
It was the
glory
of Achilles that in the exercise of free will he
could choose between two courses and that he chose the noble life.
And this leads to a consideration of one more
thing-and
that
very
important-before
we can have a
perfect appreciation
of our
Ja-
cob's ladder in Homer. The
poet
also believed
something else,
which
naturally grew
out of his
anthropomorphic conception
of
deity, namely,
that man has God within him-a
god-force pulling
toward the evil sometimes but far more often toward the
good.
We often read in Homer of the man "breathed on
by
the
gods"
(7ervvP4vos)
and of the
"godlike"
man
(Kbos).
In other
words,
Homer held that man has free will but that he also has the divine
within him that enables him
willingly
to will the will of God.
In Homer the
presence
of the
gods among
men
usually
does not
detract from natural
action,
from human
initiative,
from human
free
will,
for the reason that these Homeric
gods
often seem but an
innate
quality
of the man
personified,
the divine in man exter-
nalized and made concrete
by
visible manifestation.
Therefore,
the man is
acting
in
character;
he is not
deprived
of that
liberty
of
action which
belongs
to real life
everywhere. Although
the
gods
are
continually helping men,
we feel that human
personality
is not
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 517
dwarfed
by
the
great poet;
rather in Homer human
personality
is
emphasized
and
glorified by
these
heavenly
interventions.
This
Jacob's ladder, up
and down which the
gods
are
continually
making
their
way,
and these concrete
pictures
of
co6peration
be-
tween God and
man,
so concrete and real that
they preclude
a
doubt,
are one of the
great spiritual heritages
of our race. This
very
closeness of heaven and
earth,
this
very
nearness of God to
man that Homer
depicts,
will be a
crying
and
beckoning
call to
the
generations
of men until some one
generation
shall make it
reality
in human
experience.
Such is the
spiritual tug
of
Homer,
like the
tug
of the moon on the tides.
Let us now take
up interesting
and characteristic
examples
of
this
Jacob's
ladder in the Iliad and
Odyssey.
Let us look at the
first
appearance
of
divinity
in the Iliad. Achilles was
drawing
his
sword and was
just
on the
point
of
slaying Agamemnon,
when
Athena came down from
heaven,
as sudden and dramatic an
apparition
as the
angel
to Abraham. She seized him
by
his fair
hair-her two
eyes flashing terribly-her message,
"Thou shalt
not kill." With almost
superhuman
self-control he
obeyed her;
he
put
his sword back into its sheath and then turned around-but
Athena had returned to
Olympus.
What is the
meaning
of this
Jacob's
ladder in action here? Achilles was
being
carried
away by
passion
when the
goddess
of wisdom
appeared. Surely
in a
very
real sense Athena was his own sober second
thought personified.
Why
did he
recognize
her at once? This was
by
no means her first
appearance
to
him;
she had often before
nipped
his
anger
in the
bud.
Why
did her two
eyes
flash
terribly
at him? Because she knew
he was a
very
Titan
among men,
with volcanic
passions straining
at the leash. To
Homer,
and even to
us,
what more
striking way
could there be for
driving
home the fact that calm
judgment
con-
trolled his
passion
and reason held him firm than
by picturing
Athena
coming
to him in
person
with
discipline
from the
gods?
How
vividly
dramatic the
poet,
who could make concrete for us
the abstract forces that
play
in human hearts!
In a
very
real
sense,
as we have
said,
Athena stands for his own
sober second
thought;
so she does not make of Achilles here a
puppet,
a mere
pawn
on
a chessboard. In fact we almost feel that
518 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
Achilles would have done as he did without divine
help or,
at
least,
that all he needed for the
doing
of his
duty
was
just
this
touch of
heavenly inspiration.
But if this
be,
in
part surely,
his own
act, why
introduce the
goddess
at all? Because Homer believed in the
providence
of God.
Athena, then,
is to be
thought
of as inside
Achilles;
but she is also
to be
thought
of as outside the man-divine-and it is not hard to
enter into
sympathy
with Homer's
point
of view.
Where, pray,
do
good thoughts-conscience-come from,
if not
ultimately
from
God? To
us, brought up
on modern
psychology,
Athena
appears
subjective,
little more than an abstract
thought personified;
but
to
Homer,
who had a
vivid, mythologic mind,
she was
objective,
a
goddess.
In terms of her
godhead
he
thought
and lived his
life,
and so did his Homeric world.
Thus endeth one of the most dramatic
passages
in
literature,
a
vivid and clear-cut
picture
of a human
soul,
victorious in a battle
with
temptation.
As one of
my
students
put it,
"Here we have all
of the naturalness of man and all of the
power
of God"-a
perfect
example
of the
Jacob's
ladder.
At
every
crisis in Achilles' life the
goddess
Thetis arose from the
sea like a
lovely
mist and tried to
help
her son as
only
a mother
can. In Book
I
she took his
problem
to Zeus in
prayer;
in Book
xvIII
she went to
Olympus
to ask
Hephaestus
to make for him a
suit of divine armor. Picture her
descending
from heaven with that
golden armor,
and
again you
have our
Jacob's
ladder in radiant
action. Let us now consider the last
appearance
of Thetis to
Achilles in Book
xxIv.
Her mission from heaven made
possible
the
spiritual
climax of the whole
poem.
The
physical
climax is to
be
found,
of
course,
in Book
xxII
where Achilles
conquers
Hector;
but in Book xxiv he does a far harder
thing-he conquers
himself.
For
revenge
Achilles has been
dragging
Hector's dead
body
thrice
daily
around the tomb of Patroclus. The
gods
look down with
pity;
some of them in the
heavenly
conclave
propose
that Hermes
be sent to steal
away
the
corpse,
but Zeus
pronounces judgment:
"No,
we will send Thetis to
persuade
him to
give
Hector
back."
Notice how Zeus
safeguards
the free will of
man, evidently
be-
lieving
that Achilles in his own heart will decide to do the
magnan-
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 519
imous
thing.
At once we see two
goddesses descending
to earth
to
carry
out the will of Zeus: Thetis to Achilles and Iris to brave
old Priam to influence him
(already
half minded to do
so)
to
carry
out a most
daring plan, namely,
to
go
to
Achilles,
bitter
enemy
though
he
was,
and
beg
back the
body
of his son. Achilles also
had
evidently
been
fighting
out this battle in his own
soul;
he
knew that an
early
death was
awaiting him, too,
and he himself
was
beginning
to be moved with
compassion
as he looked on the
dead Hector. When his
goddess
mother
came,
in whose
presence
he was
always inspired
to be his
best,
he
instantly responded
to
the will of Zeus: "So be
it,
if the
Olympian
himself so biddeth."
No outer
authority here;
thus even in old Homer's view the divine
within answered to the call of the divine without.
To Achilles' hut Priam
went,
conducted
by
Hermes. The scene
that follows between Priam and Achilles is as
affecting
as
any
in
the literature of our race.
Slowly,
with terrific
struggle,
but
surely
Achilles
conquers
himself. The fine dramatic
quality
of the
passage
and its fine
psychology, revealing step by step
the
changes through
which our hero
passes
until he comes out a man
transformed,
leave
an indelible
impression upon
one. We have reached the culmina-
tion of our
poem;
what
greater thing
can
any
man do than master
himself-and love his
enemy?
"The
poet's design
becomes
plain;
he will have us
regard
Achil-
les not
merely
as a
physical
hero but also as a
spiritual one;
the
man is endowed with colossal
passions, yet
with the more colossal
power
of
transcending them;
human he is to the last
degree, yet
also
divine, goddess-born."'
He was not deaf to the still small
voice of God. As we
know,
Achilles was not destined to a
long life;
he had chosen between a
long
life of
mediocrity
and a short life of
service to his fellowmen. And
yet despite
this shadow of
early
death
hovering
like a cloud over the brilliant
morning
of his
life,
he climbed "the ladder of the soul" to the
topmost height
of him-
self,
and then-the
poet
has the
good
sense to
bring
his
poem
to
its
close, leaving
Achilles in the full
vigor
of his
young knighthood,
resplendent
like the sun.
1
Denton
J. Snider,
Homer's Iliad: St.
Louis,
William
Harvey
Miner Co.
(1922),
480.
To this book the writer is
deeply
indebted and also to the same author's Homer's
Odyssey, published
the same
year by
the same
company.
520 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
There are two
very significant
divine interventions in Book
Iir
of the Iliad. As he
richly deserved,
Alexander was
badly
beaten
in his duel with Menelaus. But
Aphrodite
saved him from
death,
shrouding
him in thick
mist,
and set him down in his own chamber
in
Troy.
Then she went to summon Helen from the wall where she
had been
watching
the duel with excited interest-for was not
she herself the stake? What is the
meaning
of this intervention of
the
goddess?
We must consider it a sort of
allegory,
a broad
general
image
of that which
actually
occurred. Homer
says Aphrodite
came to
Paris; may
we not
say Aphrodite
was his own
passion
personified, just
as
Athena,
in
part,
was Achilles' own sober second
thought personified?
Let us conceive of Alexander
sneaking
from
the
ring
in some
disguise,
under a cloud of
dust,
or hidden
by
the
dense crowd. It is
Aphrodite, Passion,
who leads
him;
she is the
dominating
force in his life. "His sensuous is far
stronger
than his
warlike nature. She
spirits
him out of the
combat;
when there is
danger
to his dear
body,
the
grand
instrument of
pleasure,
she
makes him a
coward."2'
This is
just
Homer's
naive,
concrete
way
of
telling
the
story, externalizing everything. Alexander,
as we
have
seen,
was
acting
from
within;
he
certainly
was
acting
in
character;
but to Homer
Aphrodite
was outside
him, too,
a
god-
dess,
the embodiment of a
great, surging
world-force.
As Mr. Snider
writes,
we have an artistic
interplay
in this book
between the outer
conflict,
the
duel,
and the inner
conflict,
the
battle
going
on in Helen's own heart
(love
for Menelaus versus
love for
Alexander);
so the outer conflict is but a reflection of the
inner,
which indeed
gives meaning
to the outer and makes it of
absorbing
interest. Both Greeks and
Trojans
have made a solemn
compact
that Helen is to
belong
to the winner of the duel.
By
every right, therefore,
she now
belongs
to
Menelaus;
and that both
Alexander and Helen know
right
well. At this
point
Homer shifts
from the outer duel to the inner duel in Helen's
heart,
which she
fights
with
Aphrodite,
who has
just ignominiously
delivered Alex-
ander and now comes to the tower to
tempt
her as well as him. She
assumes the
shape
of an
aged woman,
a wool
comber,
an old-time
2
Snider,
Homer's
Iliad,
194.
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 521
Spartan
friend of
Helen,
who
perhaps
once before had
encouraged
her to
yield
to
passionate
desire and
elope
with Alexander. This
is Homer's
way
of
stating
what indeed we all know from bitter
experience,
that
temptation usually
assails us in subtlest
guise.
She
plucks
the robe of
Helen, saying,
"Alexander wants
you
to
come home." She adds for Helen's
temptation:
"He is
very
hand-
some and
handsomely attired;
he doesn't look like a man returned
from war but like a man
going
to a dance." Helen
recognizes
the
messenger, though
in
disguise;
she
recognizes Passion,
for she has
often encountered her before. She sees the
beauty
of the
goddess,
which not even the
ugliness
of the old woman can
hide,
" the beau-
tiful
neck,
desireful
bosom,
and lustrous
eyes,"
and she is
visibly
affected;
for Homer tells us "her heart was stirred in her breast."
Still she
puts up
a show of resistance and assails
Aphrodite:
"Leave heaven
thyself
and become his wife or his slave! I shall
not return to that man's
couch;
it would be a shameful
thing,
and
all the
Trojan
women would blame me." Then that
wail, "Oh,
I
have sorrows
already past counting!"-the
last touch of the old
contrition before she
yields.
With
impatience
the
goddess
wrath-
fully replies-
"I'll hate
you
and desert
you!"
That
is, Aphrodite
means,
"You 11 lose
your beauty.
You won't have
your beauty
always;
so
enjoy
it while
you may." Aphrodite
continues: "You'll
die
soon,
too-I'll see that
you
die. I'll make both Greeks and Tro-
jans
hate
you
so
that,
when
peace
is
declared, they'll
kill
you."
That
is,
she
means, "Eat, drink,
and be
merry,
for tomorrow we
die"--"enjoy
life while
youth
and life last."
Subdued,
Helen veils
herself,
ashamed of her
action,
and follows the
goddess, Passion,
into the
presence
of Alexander. It is the old
story
of a
fight
in the
hour of
temptation,
even if one
yields
in the end. Alexander in
self-defense tells Helen that Menelaus has won in the duel because
of Athena's aid but that
he, too,
has a
god
on his side. And most
assuredly
he has! That
Aphrodite
has
just played
a most base and
contemptible
r6le no one will
deny.
Lust
always plays
such a
r61le.
Here as a force for evil she
appeals
to the evil in both Alexander
and
Helen,
and
they
answer to her call. This is a
part
of the
Homeric
dualism; occasionally
human
beings
are
inspired
to evil.
In the
beginning
of Book ii we find another evil influence
step-
522 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
ping down,
or rather
flying down,
the
Jacob's
ladder
connecting
heaven and earth.
Here, too,
as in
Aphrodite's appearances
to
both Alexander and
Helen,
this evil influence seems to be but a
quality
or
faculty
of mind
personified
and externalized. Homer
tells us that
Zeus,
in
carrying
out his
plan
of
honoring Achilles,
sent a
lying
dream to
Agamemnon.
This dream stood above his
head in the likeness of
Nestor,
who was held in unusual honor
by
Agamemnon-there again
we have
temptation
in subtlest
guise.
The dream
whispered
in his ear: "Arm
your
Greeks with all
speed;
you
can now
capture broad-wayed Troy." Agamemnon
believed
this
(Homer adds,
"Fool that he
was!"),
for this dream was
really
his own
egotistic plan personified,
his own
egotism
externalized.
The dream was within
him,
the
thought
that he could
get along
very
well without Achilles'
help,
but it was also outside
him,
a
part
of the divine
plan.
We
exclaim,
"What! Zeus deceive his
worship-
ers! God lie to man!" But there is no shock here for the mind with
perspective.
The fact is that Homer and our Old Testament alike
find in God the source of human error. An exact
parallel
is found
in the
passage
of the Old Testament where
Jehovah
sent a
lying
spirit
to entice Ahab to his doom.
In the
Odyssey
we find this same
Jacob's
ladder
cementing
earth and heaven
together.
One of the most
interesting
interven-
tions is the descent of Athena to the
princess
Nausicaa in the first
part
of the Phaeacian
episode.
The
goddess
hovers over her in a
dream in the form of one of her
girl companions
and sends her to
the seashore to make her
wedding
clothes clean and
glistening
and
to
superintend
the
family washing-ostensibly-but really
to have
Odysseus
meet her and find welcome in the
palace.
"Yet Athena's
scheme does not conflict with the free will of the
maiden,
which
finds its fullest
scope just
in this household
duty."3
As Homer
pictures her,
Nausicaa stands for
girlhood
in the bloom of
youth,
and
thoughts
of
marriage
are ever in her mind. The
young princes
of the island are all
wooing her,
so fair is she. It is
only
natural
for her to be
thinking
about
accepting
one of
them,
about an
early marriage, and, therefore,
about the
washing
of her
wedding
3
Snider,
Homer's
Odyssey,
161.
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 523
clothes. So she
goes
out that eventful
Monday (?) morning
to
wash;
but who can
say
she is not
acting
in
character,
since she is
but
doing
what a
girl
in her situation would
naturally
do? Athena
is in the
girl
as well as outside
her;
in Homer we often have the
inner man and the outer God
co6perating
in
just
such
delightful
ways.
It is worth
noting
that Homer found Providence in the
tossing
of a ball. When Nausicaa and her maidens were
playing ball,
while
waiting
for the clothes to
dry,
the
poet
reminds us: "The
goddess,
flashing-eyed Athena,
took other
counsel,
that
Odysseus might
awake and see the fair-faced
girl,
who should lead him to the
Phaeacian
city.
So then the
princess
tossed the ball to one of her
maids;
the maid she missed but cast it into a
deep eddy,
and
thereat
they
screamed
aloud,
and noble
Odysseus
awoke."4
That
misthrown
ball of the
princess
Nausicaa was one of the links in
the chain of the
providential home-going
of
Odysseus.
He was to
meet
Nausicaa,
that
through
her he
might
have a favorable
reception
in her father's court
and, therefore,
an escort home.
In the first
part
of Book
I
of the
Odyssey
we have the
assembly
of the
gods
in
heaven;
in the second we have the
carrying
out of
their will on earth. Athena
(taking
the form of
Mentes,
an islander
friend of
Odysseus)
descended to Ithaca to
inspire
Telemachus
to
play
a man's
part
in the world. At the time of her
coming
Telemachus was
sitting among
the wooers in the
reception
hall of
his father's
palace, seeing
in his mind's
eye
his noble
father,
re-
turned, scattering
the suitors and held in honor once more as
king
over his own
people. Truly
this
young prince
had a
receptive heart,
for it was
something
like the content of this
daydream
of his that
Athena had come to tell him. Still Athena here had a
very impor-
tant work. Telemachus was
only daydreaming;
as a matter of
fact,
he had almost ceased to look for his father's
return;
and with
the suitors there
outrageously consuming
his inheritance the
poor
boy
had almost ceased to believe in a divine
providence. Surely
he
needed God's
help!
She assured him that his father would not be
long
absent from Ithaca. She fed him on constructive
thoughts,
4Od. vI,
112-117.
524 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
realizing
their value as
surely
as
any
modern
psychotherapist.
She told him that he looked like
Odysseus
and asked him if he
were not
Odysseus' son;
when assured that he
was,
she said: "Act
like him
then;
be the man
your great
father was and
is; lay
down
the law to the suitors and
go
with
ship
in search of
your
father."
Thus she
prompted
him to action and
inspired
him to do
what,
as
a
growing young man,
he had
already begun
to feel he
ought
to do.
"She is a veritable
goddess
to the
young striver, speaking
the
word of
hope
and wisdom. Still the
goddess
is in him
just
as
well,
is his
thought,
his wisdom."' Here
again,
as so often in
Homer,
we have inner man and outer God
reaching
toward each other and
finding
themselves
akin,
united in a common bond of
thought
and
action.
With this new
inspiration
in his
heart,
he called an
assembly
of
the
people
and demanded that the suitors leave his home and
give
him a
ship
so that he
might
set sail in search of his father. But
because of the influence of those
brigand-wooers
the Ithacan
assembly
broke
up
without
granting
either
request.
In
fact,
the
last
thing
the wooers desired was the return of
Odysseus.
One
thing
was clear: Telemachus could
expect
no aid from the town
meeting.
Where should he
get
his
help?
From God. Out to the
seashore he went and
prayed;
and Athena drew near in the likeness
of
Mentor, guardian
friend of the
family.
She
inspired
him
again;
she told him that she would
equip
for him a swift
ship
and that
she herself would
go
with him. There is
heavenly
co6iperation
for
you!
Not "God so loved the
world,"
but still an instance
of God's care for man that bids one
pause
and think. As she had
promised, Athena,
in the likeness of
Telemachus,
went
through
the
city
to secure for him his
ship
and crew. This done
(again
in
the
guise
of
Mentor)
she
spoke
these
cheering words:"Telemachus,
already thy
comrades sit at the oar.
Come,
let us
go."'
Homer
adds:
"Saying this,
Pallas Athena led the
way
in
haste,
and he
followed in the
footsteps
of the
goddess."
That reminds us of the
Christian
hymn,
"Where He Leads
Me,
I Will Follow." Now
6 Snider,
Homer's
Odyssey,
26.
6 Od.
i,
402-406.
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 525
why
did Athena take the form of Telemachus when she was ar-
ranging
for this
trip?
Are we
rationalizing
too much if we
put
it in
the
following way?
Was it not because Homer realized
that,
if a
man wants
something done,
after all God
usually cannot,
or will
not,
do it for
him,
but the man must do it for himself-God
working through
the man? I know Homer said the
goddess
did
it,
and with his
mythologic spirit
he more than half believed it.
Indeed,
Telemachus was
god-filled
when he did it. Homer was a
born
fabulist, mythologist.
Those
appearances
of Athena were
Homer's
natural, objective way
of
telling
us that God's
spirit
of
wisdom is at work in the world.
In Book iii Athena
(still
in Mentor's
shape)
and Telemachus
reach
Pylus,
Nestor's home. But
unfortunately
the old
king
knows
nothing
about
Odysseus,
since he and
Odysseus
had
separated
on
the homeward
road;
so he advises Telemachus to
go
to
Sparta
to
question
Menelaus about his father. Athena
agrees
with Nestor in
advising
this visit. She now
quits
Telemachus as a
personal
com-
panion
in the flesh
(Mentor);
now he must shift for himself and
make the rest of the
journey
for the most
part
on his own re-
sources. Homer's view of life is that too much reliance must not
be
placed
on external
deity;
it is the man
inspired
of God who is to
accomplish
the tasks of the world. Man must exert himself tre-
mendously,
or else the
gods
cannot
help
him. We like the Homeric
heavenly interventions,
for
they ring
true to human
experience.
Just
before the climax of our
poem Odysseus, ostensibly
a
poor
beggar,
had
gone
to bed in the forehall of his own
palace, pondering
evil for the suitors and
watching
with almost uncontrollable exas-
peration
his own
serving girls slipping
out to their embraces. He
tossed
upon
his bed
wondering
how he could endure it and
yet
how he could do
anything,
one man
against
so
many.
Then it was
that Athena came down from heaven in the likeness of a woman
and stood above his head and
said:"Why
now
again
art thou wake-
ful,
unfortunate
beyond
all men?
Lo,
this is
thy house,
and there
within are
thy
wife and
thy child,
such a
man, methinks,
as
any
one
might pray
to have for his
son."7
And
Odysseus
answered her:
7Od. xx,
33 ff.
526 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
"Yea, goddess,
but how can
I,
all alone as I
am,
handle the suitors
who are
always
in a
body?"
Then the
goddess replied:
"Obstinate
one, many
men trust weaker
friends,
friends who are mortal and
not wise as I am
wise;
but I am a
god,
and I
guard
thee to the end
in all
thy
toils. . . . Go to
sleep."
So she
spoke
and shed
sleep upon
his
eyelids,
but
herself,
the fair
goddess,
went back to
Olympus.
Another most
inspiring example
of our
Jacob's
ladder. Another
Bible verse comes to
mind, "Lo,
I am with
you alway,
even unto
the end of the world."
Such continual recurrence of the intervention of the
gods
in
human affairs-what does it all mean? Denton Snider writes:
"Let us
observe, then, first,
that the
poet's principle
is not to allow
a divine intervention to
degenerate
into a
merely
external mechan-
ical
act;
Homer
puts
the divine influence inside the individual as
well as
outside,
and thus
preserves
the latter's freedom in the
providential
order."'
God is in man! That is the
great hypothesis
of
Europe's
first
poet;
that made
possible
in both Iliad and
Odyssey
the
Jacob's ladder,
which rainbow-like
joined
earth to heaven and
heaven to earth.
This
principle
reconciles us to the
seemingly
unfair
part played
by
Athena in the duel between Achilles and Hector. The
goddess
brings
back to Achilles the
spear
that had missed
Hector,
but she
fails to restore to Hector the
spear
that had
vainly
struck Achilles'
shield-on the face of it most
perfidious
favoritism on the
part
of
the
goddess.
But "Homer is the direst
confusion,
unless we see
the ever
recurring correspondence
between the inner man and
the outer divine influence."' Hector was the author of his own
destruction.
In his
soliloquy spoken just
before he faced Achilles we have in
a nutshell the
tragedy
of the last ten
years
and
especially
the
tragedy
of the last
twenty-four
hours of Hector's life. For ten
years
he had been
fighting
for a cause in which he did not
believe;
and
yet
he had been
compelled
to
fight
for
it,
for it was the cause
of his father and
mother,
his wife and
baby boy.
8
Homer's
Odyssey,
159.
9 Snider,
Homer's
Iliad,
419.
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 527
Yet well in
my undoubting
mind I know
The
day
shall come in which our sacred
Troy,
And
Priam,
and the
people
over whom
Spear-bearing
Priam
rules,
shall
perish
all.10
These words voice the
forebodings
of his inner heart. Hector
realized that he was
fighting
for a lost and
perfidious
cause. This
realization
plus
the
tragedy
of the last
twenty-four
hours of his
life,
to which I shall now
refer,
caused even in that
gallant
warrior
a character
disintegration
that
inwardly corresponded
to the out-
ward confusion
brought upon
him
by
Athena. We must remember
that
Polydamas
had advised
him,
and that his
aged
father and
mother had
pleaded
with
him,
to come inside the walls and not
to face Achilles outside
alone,
but Hector had refused. Intoxicated
with success and the desire for
personal glory-for just
this once
in his noble life-Hector had refused to
put country
before
self,
and he now felt
resting upon
him the
crushing weight
of the death
of countless comrades slain on the
very morning
of this fatal
day
by impetuous
Achilles. Could he
go
back within the walls and
acknowledge
his mistake amid the
jeers
of hate and the I-told-
you-so's
of
Polydamas
and his
party?
At this
crisis-strangely
unlike himself-Hector seemed unable to do his
duty;
and so he
stayed
out there to meet his foe.
Under such circumstances could he
fight
his best? He
fled,
pursued by
Achilles around the walls of
Troy.
And then when he
did deceive himself
(Homer says
Athena deceived him in the
semblance of his brother
Deiphobus)
into
thinking
that he could
turn around and confront
Achilles,
could he make
good
use of
his arms?
True,
he hurled one
spear,
but without force
enough
to
perforate
Achilles' shield.
Then,
Homer
says,
"He stood confused."
He turned
around, expecting
to receive from
Deiphobus (namely
Athena,
who had
already
restored to Achilles the
spear
he had
hurled)
a second
spear;
but
lo!
he had vanished-and Hector had
no
spear
to use. Hector had thrown his
spear away
in the inner
man;
Homer
says
the outer
goddess brought
it not back to him.
"It was Athena who
played
me
false,"
he cried.
Yes,
it was his
10
Iliad
vi,
447-449
(Bryant's translation).
528 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
own
poor judgment
that had tricked him. In
desperation
he rushed
on Achilles with his
sword-only
to be struck down before Achilles'
feet!
Say
that this contest was
disappointingly unfair,
as from our
point
of view it
was; say
that Athena's
help given
Achilles here
was external and that it lessened his
glory; say
that Athena's
help
promised
to Hector
(though withheld)
would have been external
and
unfair;
but it seems to me that the
help
Hector needed on this
occasion was
primarily internal,
and no internal
help
was forth-
coming.
The
weakness
of a lost cause was manifest in Hector's
tryst
with Fate in that last hour. In a
very
sad
way,
he
personified
the cause of a
dying Troy.
Internal
weakness-guilt-how
could
they
wield effective
weapons
or win the
day?
Hector's confusion
of
spirit
was but attributed to
Athena,
whose function it was to
give
wisdom and take it
away-it
was
really
his own. Think back
over the
phenomena
of the duel. Were
they external,
caused
by
the outer
goddess? Rather,
was not all that was
significant
internal
and but the
imagery
of Hector's own
tragic thoughts,
externalized
as
phenomena
caused
by
the
goddess?
Achilles won
fairly enough,
for Hector was in a
daze;
so dazed
that,
to
strip
the
passage
of all
its
imagery,
he had somehow
forgotten
to
provide
himself with
that second
spear.
It was a case of
disintegrated personality.
And
yet
the world's verdict is that Hector was the noblest
knight
that
fought
in the war at
Troy
on either side-and so he
was-and,
therefore,
the most
pathetically tragic character,
for the
guilt
of
his
country
struck home
upon
him as
upon
no other. We shall
always
admire Hector as a
man, despite
the fact
that,
in this
crisis of the
war,
he fell
just
a little short as a soldier. His
very
tragedy,
which whelmed him into
ruin, gives
him entrance to our
hearts.
To Homer's mind the outer
god
was so
intimately
connected
with inner
experience
that he
naturally
described this duel in
terms of divine
causation,
for the Homeric man
apparently
was
always translating
internal
experience
into external
imagery.
This
external
imagery
served to
give
him the same ideas we
get
from
our abstract
thinking.
Our
difficulty
in
appreciating
the course
this duel took lies in the fact that in our
thinking
there is no con-
nection at all between the outer
god
and the inner
experience.
But
THE JACOB'S LADDER IN HOMER 529
when we have
acquired
the
poet's point
of
view,
this combat
gives
us in a measure the same satisfaction it afforded him and his Ho-
meric world." Homer used the
gods
to
explain
all sorts of
accidentsl2
and
psychological phenomena,
and such
descriptions gave
no
offense to his
contemporaries,
because to their minds these
religious
stories still left the world-as we know it
today-at
the
mercy
of accident and
subject
to the laws of human
psychology
and ex-
perience.
We
moderns,
if we find no
allegory here,
are offended
when the
gods
are made
responsible
for the accidents and evils of
life. How
badly
Homer needed our biblical devil!
For a last
generalization,
we
may say
that Homer's
explanation
for
everything
that takes
place
in outer
nature,'3 as
for
everything
that takes
place
in the
psychology
of our inner
lives,
is God
working
around us and in us. All of the
phenomena
of our outer
lives,
even
the accidents that befall
us,
are due to
God; likewise,
all of the
phenomena
of our inner
lives,
our
thoughts, dreams, deeds, talents,
and
accomplishments,
we owe to
God;
to Homer God and man
were in a
very
real sense one. His universe was a universe God-
explained
and
God-inspired.
He
naturally thought
in terms of God.
Perhaps
the blind old bard could see with his
eyes
shut more than
we can see with our
eyes open.
He found God
everywhere
in his
world both outside and inside man. There
is,
to be
sure,
a
great
difference between
"everywhere"
and
"somewhere,"
but some-
where the modern
world, too,
must find God. Homer
gives
us a
naive,
a
childlike,
an
imperfect religion
but a
religion
that cannot
be scoffed
at,
because it
springs
from the
deep
wells of the human
heart and answers to some of its
deepest
needs.
This
splendid
co6peration
and interrelation between God and
man,
which the Greeks
recognized
centuries
ago,
needs to be
rethought today
in modern terms. We have
gone
to the other ex-
11
An
interpretation along
similar lines reconciles us to
Apollo's
interference in the
duel between Hector and Patroclus. For another instance of
daze,
attributed
by
Homer
to
Poseidon,
which the modern
psychologist
would call a natural
experience
of con-
fusion,
see Iliad
xii,
434-442.
12
These accidents
may
well have been caused
by
the individual's own carelessness.
For
example,
see Iliad
xxm,
774-784.
11
Cf. Od.
v, 282-453,
where Poseidon
piled up
the waves mountain
high.
530 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL
treme and have almost bowed God out of his universe and elimi-
nated
spiritual things altogether.
Until the modern world redis-
covers this
Jacob's ladder,
finds God
again
and
regains
this two-
world
consciousness,
life will be a
cheapened thing,
and
poetry
will be a
cheapened thing,
nor can we
hope
to
produce poems
like
the Iliad and the
Odyssey.