NECESSITY, in mythology, a power superior to all other powers, and equally irresistible by gods and by men. Herodotus, as he is quoted by Cudworth, mentions an oracle which declared that "God himself could not shun his destined fate." And among the fragments of Philemon collected by Le Clerc, is the following sentence:
Δουκὶ βασιλεύει ἰσχυρὸν, ἐξ ἀναγκαῖον δὲ, ἢ ἢν ἀναγκαῖον.
"We are subject to kings, kings to the gods, and God to necessity." Hence it is, that, in the Iliad, we find Jove himself, the fire of gods and men, regretting that he was restrained by necessity from rescuing his favourite son from the sword of Patroclus. Nay to such a height was this impiety carried in the earliest ages of Greece, that we find Hesiod and Homer teaching that the gods themselves were generated by necessity, of night and chaos.
This power, though always represented as blind and unintelligent, was however worshipped as a goddess, bearing in her hand large iron-nails, wedges, anchors, and melted lead*, as emblems of the inflexible severity of her nature. "In the city of Corioth she had a temple, in which the goddess Violence likewise resided, and into which no person was ever permitted to enter but the priest who officiated in sacris."*
Learned men have exercised their ingenuity in vain attempts to trace this portentous notion to its
origin. Some, who wished to interpret it in a pious sense, have supposed that the gods who were subject to necessity were only those who were the ministers of the supreme numen; and that by necessity itself was meant nothing more than divine providence. But this is not consistent with Hesiod and Homer's generation of the gods, or with the epithets saevas necessitas, dura necessitas, by which this power was perpetually distinguished. Others, and among them Moheim, have supposed that this monstrous fable was invented by the pagan priests, and diligently inculcated upon the minds of the people, in order to excuse the villanies of the objects of their worship. For, says he, who could be indignant at Jupiter's numberless adulteries, after it was known that in all his actions he was the servant of blind necessity? In the thefts of Mercury, the whoredoms of Venus, and the frequent squabbles of the other gods, there could be no moral turpitude, if they were under the influence of a superior power.
Numina cum videas deris obnoxia fati,
Invidus possit exonerare deos†.
This account of the matter is at least as plausible as any other which is usually given; but the real case undoubtedly was, that when men "did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient; when their foolish heart was darkened, and professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." See PARCA.