His sun is a god—Helios—as yet unidentified with Apollo, who wears his solar attributes unconsciously. Helios is also known as Hyperion, ‘he who walks on high,’ and Elector, ‘the shining one.’ Voluntarily he pursues his daily course in the sky, and voluntarily he sinks to rest in the ocean-stream—subject, however, at times to a higher compulsion; for, just after the rescue of the body of Patroclus, Heré favours her Achæan clients by precipitating at a critical juncture the descent of a still unwearied and unwilling luminary.[21] On another occasion, however, Helios memorably asserts his independence, when, incensed at the slaughter of his sacred cattle by the self-doomed companions of Ulysses, he threatens to ‘descend into Hades, and shine among the dead.’[22] And Zeus, in promising the required satisfaction, virtually admits his power to abdicate his office as illuminator of gods and men. Footnote 21: _Iliad_, xviii, 239. Footnote 22: _Odyssey_, xii. 383. Once only, the solstice is alluded to in Homeric verse. The swineherd Eumæus, in describing the situation of his native place, the Island of Syriê, states that it is over against Ortygia (Delos), ‘where are the turning-places of the sun.’[23] The phrase was probably meant to indicate that Delos lay just so much south of east from Ithaca as the sun lies at rising on the shortest day of winter. But it must be confessed that the direction was not thus very accurately laid down, the comprised angle being 15⅓°, instead of 23½°.[24] To those early students of nature, the travelling to and fro of the points of sunrise and sunset furnished the most obvious clue to the yearly solar revolution; so that an expression, to us somewhat recondite, conveyed a direct and unmistakable meaning to hearers whose narrow acquaintance with the phenomena of the heavens was vivified by immediate personal experience of them. And in point of fact, the idea in question is precisely that conveyed by the word ‘tropic.’ Footnote 23: _Ib._ xv. 404. Footnote 24: Sir W. Geddes believes that the solstitial place of the setting sun, as viewed from the Ionic coast, is that used to define the position of Ortygia.—_Problem of the Homeric Poems_, p. 294. Selene first takes rank as a divine personage in the pseudo-Homeric Hymns. No moon-goddess is recognised in the Iliad or Odyssey. Nor does the orbed ruler of ‘ambrosial night,’ regarded as a mere light-giver or time-measurer, receive all the attention that might have been expected. A full moon is, however, represented with the other ‘heavenly signs’ on the shield of Achilles, and figures somewhat superfluously in the magnificent passage where the Trojan watch-fires are compared to the stars in a cloudless sky: