1.55
“Because [Aphrodite] denotes a permanent reality which draws everything into her power, and bestows her spirit and impresses her character upon the whole realm of the elemental and the living, she is a world—and for the Greeks this means a divinity.”[1]
“It is in the full sense a world, that is to say, a whole world, not a fraction of the total sum of existence, which Hermes inspirits and rules. All things belong to it, but they appear in a different light than in the realms of the other gods.”[2]
“This applies also to the supreme gods, Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, the bearers of the highest ideals. None of them represents a single virtue, none is to be encountered in only one direction of teeming life: each desires to fill, shape, and illumine the whole compass of human existence with his [sic] peculiar spirit.”[3]
[1] Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, trans. Moses Hadas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954, 1964), p. 100.
[2] Otto, Homeric Gods, p. 120.
[3] ibid, p. 160–1.