The next fall is the greatest of all: according to the later tradition, Venus, to obtain a favourable judgment from Paris (of the next generation to Anchises), promised him a wife of splendid beauty and divine extraction, whom he was to obtain by treachery and robbery, as well as adultery; and filled him with what Homer pronounces an evil passion[743]. [743] Il. xxiv. 30. The Poet, indeed, tells us nothing of this promise, which appears to imply powers far greater than any that the Homeric Aphrodite possessed. But he mentions the contest, informs us that Venus was the winner, makes Paris boast of her partiality, and introduces her as mentioning her own favours to Helen[744]. [744] Il. iii. 64, 440, 415. Such was the downward course of all in the nature of man that belonged to the moral sphere, apart from the cherishing power of Divine Revelation; for the chronological order of these legends is also that of their descent, step by step, from innocence to vice. Homer, as we have already seen, represents a very early and chaste condition of human thought. We have now to observe how strong and genuine, as well as pure, was his appetite for beauty. Since here, as elsewhere, it is not the Poet’s usage to declare himself by express statements and elaborate descriptions, we must resort in the usual manner to secondary evidence; which, however, converging from many different and opposite quarters upon a single point, is perhaps more conclusive than mere statement, because it shows that we are not dealing with a simple opinion, but with a sentiment, a passion, and a habit, which penetrated through the Poet’s whole nature. I shall notice Homer’s sense of beauty with reference, first and chiefly, to the human countenance and form; next, with respect to animals; and thirdly, with respect to inanimate objects and to combinations of them. As regards the first and chief branch of this inquiry, we must notice to what persons, and in what degrees, Homer assigns beauty, from whom he withholds it; and how far he considers it to give a title to special notice, in cases where no other claim to such a distinction can be made good. We may then observe that Homer does not commonly assign personal beauty to any human person, who is morally odious. In any questionable instance where he does so assign it, he seems to follow an historical tradition, or to be constrained by his subject. He has covered Thersites with every sort of deformity; and in the description of the persons and of the twelve dissolute women among the fifty domestic servants of Ulysses, there is barely a word that implies beauty[745]. [745] Od. xxii. 424-73.