When he stormed there for the fourth time then it was that the god, enveloped in obscure night, made toward him among the medley and smote him on the back and the shoulders, tore away from him his helmet, so that it rolled on the ground, and rang out sharply as it struck the hoofs of the chargers; and the plumes of it were besmirched with blood and dust, which none ever wot of before. Apollo also breaks the brazen spear in his hands, the shield drops from his shoulders, and his armour is loosened on him by the god. This interference of Apollo we may accept as the poetic explanation of the circumstance, that it is exhaustion no less than natural death which seizes upon and subdues Patroclus in the turmoil and heat of battle at the fourth encounter. Then it was that Euphorbus was able to thrust his spear into his back between the shoulders. Yet one more time Patroclus endeavoured to withdraw from the battle; but Hector had already hastened to meet him, and thrust his spear deep into his side. Then Hector rejoiced and mocked the sinking hero. But Patroclus, speaking in low tones, replied that it was Zeus and Apollo who had mastered him, and withal with no trouble, because they had taken his weapons from off his shoulders. "Twenty men such as thou art," he exclaims, "I could have laid low with my spear, but I am slain by fateful necessity and the hand of Apollo. Thou, Euphorbus, hast but slain me the second time, and thou, Hector, but the third." Here, too, we may remark that the appearance of the gods simply points to the fact that Patroclus, albeit protected by the armour of Achilles, becomes faint, confounded, and despite of it slain. And this is not by any means a superstitious freak or empty play of the imagination, or rather a statement which amounts to this[196], that Hector's fame will be detracted from by this interposition of Apollo, and that even Apollo does not play in the entire affair a part which entirely redounds to his honour, since we necessarily take into account the might of the god--speculations of this kind merely betray a superstition of the prosaic mind as destitute of taste as it is devoid of reason. For in every case where Homer explains specific events by means of such appearances of the gods the gods use that which is already immanent in the conscious life of men, the power, that is, of their own passion and observation, or the potentialities of the general condition in which the man is placed, the force and the foundation of that which befalls and happens to anyone as a consequence of such conditions If it is true that at times traits that are wholly external and absolutely positive assert themselves in the appearance of the gods these in their turn have a comic aspect; as in the case when the lame Hephaestos goes round as cup-bearer. And generally we may say that Homer never treats the reality of such appearances from first to last seriously. At one time we see the gods in action, at another