e
set over against Poseidon Phoebus, the cold and wet against the hot and
dry: Athene to Ares, the rational to the irrational, that is, the good
to the bad. Hera to Artemis, that is, the air to the moon, because the
one is stable and the other unstable. Hermes to Latona, because
speech investigates and remembers, but oblivion is contrary to these.
Hephaestus to the River God, for the same reason that the sun is opposed
to the sea. The spectator of the fight was the primary god, and he is
made taking joy in it.

From the afore-mentioned matter Homer seems to show this: that the world
is one and finite. For if it had been infinite, it would never have been
divided in a number having a limit. By the name "all" he signifies the
collective whole. For in many other cases he uses the plural for the
singular. He signifies the same thing more clearly in saying (I. xiv.
200):--

The ends of the earth,--and again where he says (I. vii. 478):--

Nor should I care
Though thou wert thrust beneath the lowest deep
Of earth and ocean,--and in

On the very top of many-peaked Olympus where there is a top,
there, too, is a limit.

His opinions about the sun are plain. That it has an orbicular energy
sometimes appearing over the earth, sometimes going under it, this he
makes evident by saying (O. x. 190):--

My friends, lo we know not where is the place of darkness or
of dawning, nor where the sun that gives light to men goes
beneath the earth, nor where he rises.

And that he is always preceding over us and on this account is called
Hyperion by our poet; that he makes the sun rising from the water which
surrounds the earth the ocean, that the sun descends into it, is clearly
expressed. First, as to the rising (O. iii. l):--

Now the sun arose and left the lovely mere speeding to the
brazen heaven, to give light to the immortals and to mortal
men on the earth.

Its setting (I. vii. 486):--

The sun, now sunk beneath the ocean wave,
Drew o'er the teeming earth the veil of night.

And he declares its form (O. xix. 234):--

He was brilliant as the sun,

and its size (I. xi. 735):--

We as sunlight overspread the earth.

and more in the following (O. iv. 400):--

So often as the sun in his course has reached the
mid-heaven,--and its power (O. ii. log):--

Of Helios, who overseeth all and ordereth all things.

Fin