Poor Juno, the _ox-eyed Juno_, the unfortunate wife of the Olympic thunderer, was the most unhappy of women, eternally quarrelling with her imperial husband and complaining of his partiality to her enemies. Minerva, too, more beloved by Jupiter than his own wife, complains of him as raging with an evil mind, in perpetual opposition to her inclinations. Old Vulcan, it is well known, got his lameness by being thrown out of heaven by Jupiter in a mad fit, occasioned by Vulcan's interference in behalf of Juno, when persecuted by her unreasonable and irascible husband. The gods, too, are represented as frequently engaged in actual strife with men, and with one another. In the 20th book of the Iliad, when Jupiter permits the gods to enter the hitherto forbidden field of Troy, and take sides according to their inclinations, we have a regular battle between them. Diomed wounds no less than two gods in the engagement; Venus, who went off weeping to Jupiter, and Mars, the great god of war. In the same engagement, we have Neptune pitted against Apollo, the god of the sun, and Pallas or Minerva, matched with Mars, and actually prostrating him by a huge rock, a most unfeminine, _unlady-like_ act. "Thundering he falls: a mass of monstrous size, And seven broad acres covers, as he lies." This wise, but most austere and forbidding old maid, appears truly terrific in this battle of the gods, and seems an overmatch for all, save the Olympic thunderer. But again, the morals of the gods were of the most corrupt and profligate character. Jupiter was the greatest rake of all the ancient world. How many wives and maidens was he represented as seducing by the most unfair means? and so regardless was he of his wife Juno, that she was obliged to borrow the girdle and charms of Venus, when she wished to captivate the thunderer. The historian tells us that the Amphitrion of Aristophanes, was supposed in Greece, to be very pleasing to Jupiter--that he was like all rakes, exceedingly fond of the recital of his prowess in the arts of love and seduction. Venus, the goddess of beauty, as we might well suppose, after hearing a description of her ungainly hard favored husband, was no better than the thunderer. Her levities _bred_ disturbances in heaven, and heroes on earth.[2] In view of these circumstances, no one need wonder at the account which St. Peter gives of the Gentiles in his time, that "they walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries." [Footnote 2: The Trojan wanderer, the hero of the Æneid, was the son of Venus, by Anchises a mortal.]