The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

poems, all deaths from unforeseen
or invisible causes, the
ravages of pestilence, the fate
of the young child or promising
adult, cut off in the germ
of infancy or flower of youth,
of the old man dropping peacefully
into the grave, or of the
reckless sinner suddenly
checked in his career of crime,
are ascribed to the arrows of
Apollo or Diana. The oracular
functions of the god rose naturally
out of the above fundamental
attributes, for who
could more appropriately impart
to mortals what little foreknowledge
Fate permitted of
her decrees than the agent of
her most awful dispensations?
The close union of the arts of
prophecy and song explains his
additional office of god of mu-