The poems also set a high value on personal honor. The outrage done Menelaus by Paris, who violated the most sacred laws of hospitality by carrying away his host’s wife, was the whole cause of the Trojan War. To avenge this outrage all the princes of the Achaeans rallied as if the wrong suffered had been their own. Agamemnon’s high-handed act in taking the captive Briseis from Achilles roused that wrath which is the first word of the Iliad. The Odyssey is the epic of a personal will which, triumphing over all disasters, finally wreaked a terrible vengeance on the insolent suitors who had wooed Odysseus’ wife, devoured his substance, plotted against his son, and at the end shamefully insulted Odysseus himself. The punishment of the suitors is the victory of justice over lawlessness, and possesses a moral significance which was not lost on antiquity. In what I have just been saying I have already implied that man’s relation to the gods was not ethical but ritualistic. We must remember that when we speak of “sin” or a “consciousness of guilt,” we are presupposing a self-conscious and self-searching individual. This the Homeric man was not; on the contrary he was in the highest degree natural, unreflective, and unconscious of self. In fact the Homeric concept of sin touches our moral ideas at hardly more than three points. Disregard for an oath, failure to honor one’s father and mother, and disrespect for the stranger and suppliant were high offenses against heaven and brought down divine wrath on the transgressor. But in general sin is failure to recognize man’s absolute dependence on the immortals, to give them due honor, to pay them proper sacrifice, and to walk humbly on the earth. Sacrifice is tribute whereby man acquires merit with divinity; of such meritorious credit the priest Chryses reminds Apollo in his prayer at the beginning of the Iliad:[42] “Hear me, Lord of the silver bow, ... if ever I have roofed over a temple pleasing to thee, or if ever I have burnt in thy honor fat thighs of bulls or of goats, then accomplish this my prayer.” Agamemnon in the stress of battle reproaches Zeus for bringing his present disaster upon him in spite of the fact that he made sacrifice on every altar as he hurried to Ilion;[43] and many other illustrations might be cited. Failure to make due offering might bring serious disaster. Menelaus, on his way home from Troy, omitted sacrifice before leaving Egypt; so he was forced to return from the island of Pharos and repair his failure, after which he accomplished his voyage easily.[44] When Oeneus neglected Artemis, she sent the Calydonian boar to afflict his land: “Artemis of the golden throne sent a plague upon them, angry that Oeneus did not offer her the first fruits of his rich land. All the other gods had their feast of hecatombs, and only to the daughter of mighty Zeus did he fail to make offering, whether he forgot or had no thought of the matter. But he showed great folly in his soul.”[45]