however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief in
them. Very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely the
simplicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats Diana about
the ears with her own quiver,[82] for instance, we start at first, as
if Homer could not have believed that they were both real goddesses.
But what should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look? Nay, she
neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very faith
of Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself. Frowned
Diana into submission? But Diana has come expressly to try conclusions
with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission. Wounded her
with a celestial lance? That sounds more poetical, but it is in
reality partly more savage and partly more absurd, than Homer. More
savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and more
absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the word
"celestial," which means nothing. What sort of a thing is a "celestial"
lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of moonbeams, or clouds, or
mist. Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and her
quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish into
mist. Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that two
mists met, and one drove the other back? That would have been rational
and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer had no
such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in true
bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask, what
should Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is unlady-like.
Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means un-Greek-lady-like, nor
even un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady does _not_ beat her
servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener because she is too
weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer mind than Homer's
Juno. She will not strike them; but she will overwork the one or
slander the other without pity; and Homer would not have thought that
one whit more goddess-like than striking them with her open hand.

If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two goddesses
in personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver, there was also
a broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer between the elements
they ruled; and that the goddess of the heavens, as she struck the
goddess of the moon on the flushing cheek, was at the same instant
exercising om