what they were and who impressed them with his goodness and piety, or his
lack of it. In Nordic mythology Odin goes about similarly, accompanied by Loki
and Hœnir.^46 A Lithuanian legend explains why horses graze continuously
while oxen chew the cud: it is because a horse was too busy eating to show the
god Perkunas the way when he was walking the earth, but an ox helped him.^47
The gods’ disguise is not always perfect. Their divine nature may betray
itself in certain visible clues. Helen recognizes Aphrodite by her beautiful
neck and breast and her sparkling eyes (Il. 3. 396 f.; cf. Hymn. Aphr. 181); the
Locrian Ajax recognizes Poseidon by the movements of his lower legs as he
departs (13. 71 f.). According to a passage in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata (3. 54. 23) the
gods are distinguished by absence of sweat and dust, unblinking eyes, and by
their feet not touching the ground. Pisani found a remarkable parallel in
Heliodorus’Aethiopica (3. 13. 2), where Calasiris tells Cnemon that while a
layman would be taken in by gods in human form, the expert can recognize
them by their steady, unblinking gaze and even more by their gait, as they
glide smoothly along off the ground without parting their legs.^48 There is no
great likelihood that coincident details attested only in such late texts repre-
sent independent transmission of Graeco-Aryan heritage rather than post-
Alexandrian diffusion. But as the Homeric passages already refer specifically
to eyes and gait, the basic idea may be ancient.
Another curious parallel concerning a sign that manifests a god’s presence
may be mentioned in passing. In the Iliad (5. 838 f.), when Athena steps into
Diomedes’ chariot beside him, the poet remarks that the wooden axle
groaned at the weight, because it was carrying a formidable goddess and a
hero. This Athena is no incorporeal phantom; she has mass. A Norse narrative
tells how the Swedish king Eric, wanting to consult an oracular deity called
Lýtir, took the god’s wagon to a certain place and waited till it became heavy.
That meant that Lýtir was in it.^49
The disguised deity may at a certain point declare his or her own identity,
as Poseidon does to Tyro, α1τwρ $γ. το ε!μι Ποσειδα ́ ων $νοσχθων (Od. 11.
252), or Dionysus to the Tyrrhenian helmsman, εjμι δ, $γd ∆ιο ́ νυσο
$ρβρομο, or Indra in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata, Indro’ham asmi, where aham asmi=
$γ. ε!μι.^50
(^46) Vo ̨luspá 17 f.; Reginsmál, introductory prose; Skáldsk.G56, 39.
(^47) Grimm (1883–8), iii. xxxviii–xliii and iv. 1702–4, collects this and further material, much
of it featuring Christ and Peter; the old story pattern survived in Christian dress.
(^48) V. Pisani, ZDMG 103 (1953), 137 f. (= Schmitt (1968), 169 f.); id. (1969), 64.
(^49) Flateyjarbók i. 467; Davidson (1964), 94. Davidson suggests that this was also the sign by
which the priest of Nerthus ascertained that the goddess was present at her sacred wagon, which
was then led in procession (Tac. Germ. 40. 3, is adesse penetrali deam intellegit).
(^50) Od. 11. 252; Hymn. Dion. 56; MBh. 13. 12. 36. Further Greek (and Biblical) examples in
West (1997), 183 f.
- Gods and Goddesses 133