Publication
These lines are a heading to “A Germ Destroyer” in Plain Tales from the Hills.
Notes on the Text
Little Tin Gods locally important people, an expression which may well have been coined here by Kipling, and passed into general usage.
Great Jove nods It was Homer that nodded as Horace observed in Ars Poetica, 359: ‘Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.’ (‘But if Homer, usually good, nods for a moment, I think it shame.’) Jove did fall asleep under Hera’s influence (liad, XIV) but wrought havoc on the Trojans when he woke.
See Something of Myself, Chapter 2, “Regulus”, the poem “A Translation” , various Horace-associated items in the Kipling Library and the poem “When ‘Omer Smote ‘Is Bloomin’ Lyre.”
[J.McG.]
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