The idea of the ξεῖνος and the ἱκέτης run very much together. I can hardly persuade myself that the reading ἱκέτευσε (Odyss. xi. 520) is truly Homeric: implying as it does the idea of a pitiable sufferer, it is altogether out of place when predicated of the proud and impetuous Neoptolemus: we should rather have expected ἐκέλευσε. (See Odyss. x. 15.) The constraining efficacy of special formalities of supplication, among the Scythians, is powerfully set forth in the Toxaris of Lucian: the suppliant sits upon an ox-hide, with his hands confined behind him (Lucian, Toxaris c. 48, vol. iii. p. 69, Tauchn.)—the μεγίστη ἱκετηρία among that people. The sense of obligation towards the gods manifests itself separately in habitual acts of worship, sacrifice, and libations, or by votive presents, such as that of the hair of Achilles, which he has pledged to the river-god Spercheius,[130] and such as the constant dedicated offerings which men who stand in urgent need of the divine aid first promise and afterwards fulfil. But the feeling towards the gods also appears, and that not less frequently, as mingling itself with and enforcing obligations towards some particular human person. The tie which binds a man to his father, his kinsman, his guest, or any special promisee towards whom he has taken the engagement of an oath, is conceived in conjunction with the idea of Zeus, as witness and guarantee; and the intimacy of the association is attested by some surname or special appellation of the god.[131] Such personal feelings composed all the moral influences of which a Greek of that day was susceptible,—a state of mind which we can best appreciate by contrasting it with that of the subsequent citizen of historical Athens. In the view of the latter, the great impersonal authority, called “The Laws,” stood out separately, both as guide and sanction, distinct from religious duty or private sympathies: but of this discriminated conception of positive law and positive morality,[132] the germ only can be detected in the Homeric poems. The appropriate Greek word for human laws never occurs. Amidst a very wavering phraseology,[133] we can detect a gradual transition from the primitive idea of a personal goddess Themis, attached to Zeus, first to his sentences or orders called Themistes, and next by a still farther remove to various established customs, which those sentences were believed to sanctify,—the authority of religion and that of custom coalescing into one indivisible obligation. [130] Iliad, xxiii. 142. [131] Odyss. xiv. 389.— Οὐ γὰρ τοὔνεκ᾽ ἐγώ σ᾽ αἰδέσσομαι, οὐδὲ φιλήσω, Ἀλλὰ Δία ξένιον δείσας, αὐτὸν δ᾽ ἐλεαίρων.