And the like distinction of words we ought to observe also in things
more weighty and serious. To begin with the gods, we should teach
our youth that poets, when they use the names of gods, sometimes mean
properly the Divine Beings so called, but otherwhiles understand by
those names certain powers of which the gods are the donors and authors,
they having first led us into the use of them by their own practice. As
when Archilochus prays,

King Vulcan, hear thy suppliant, and grant
That what thou'rt wont to give and I to want,

it is plain that he means the god himself whom he invokes. But when
elsewhere he bewails the drowning of his sister's husband, who had not
obtained lawful burial, and says,

Had Vulcan his fair limbs to ashes turned,
I for his loss had with less passion mourned,

he gives the name of Vulcan to the fire and not to the Deity. Again,
Euripides, when he says,

No; by the glorious stars I swear,
And bloody Mars and Jupiter,
(Euripides, "Phoenissae," 1006.)

means the gods themselves who bare those names. But when Sophocles
saith,

Blind Mars doth mortal men's affairs confound,
As the swine's snout doth quite deface the ground,

we are to understand the word Mars to denote not the god so called,
but war. And by the same word we are to understand also weapons made of
hardened brass, in those verses of Homer,

These, are the gallant men whose noble blood
Keen Mars did shed near swift Scamander's flood.
("Iliad," vii. 329.)

Wherefore, in conformity to the instances given, we must conceive and
bear in mind that by the names of Jupiter also sometimes they mean the
god himself, sometimes Fortune, and oftentimes also Fate. For when they
say,--

Great Jupiter, who from the lofty hill
Of Ida govern'st all the world at will;
("Iliad," iii. 276.)

That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy realm
The souls of mighty chiefs:--

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove;
(Ibid. i. 3 and 5.)

For who (but who himself too fondly loves)
Dares lay his wisdom in the scale with Jove's?--

they understand Jupiter himself. But when they ascribe the event of all
things done to Jupiter as the cause, saying of him,--

Many brave souls to hell Achilles sent,
And Jove's design accomplished in th' event,--

they mean by Jove no more but Fate. For the poet doth not conceive that