William Lucas Collins

“ Troy, after the long siege, had fallen at last; but not to Achilles. For him the dying prophecy of Hector had been soon fulfilled, and an arrow from the bow of Paris had stretched him in death, like his noble enemy, "before the Scæan gates." It was his son Neoptolemus, "the red-haired," to whom the oracles pointed as the destined captor of the city. Ulysses went back to Greece to fetch him, and even handed over to the young hero, on his arrival, the armour of his father—his own much valued prize. ”

“ And when Ulysses attempts to comfort him with the thought of the deathless glory which surrounds his name, the hopelessness of his answer sets forth, in the darkest colours, that gloomy view of human destiny which breaks out from time to time in the creed of the poet, and which belongs to the character of his favourite hero. Whether the Odyssey did or did not come from the same hand as the Iliad, at least Achilles is the same in both. ”

“ And all along Ulysses is the hero of the lay. He is the leader of the venturous band who thus carried their lives in their hands into the midst of their enemies: he it is who, "like unto Mars," storms the house of Deiphobus, who had taken Helen to wife after the death of his brother Paris, and restores the Spartan princess to her rightful lord. Tears of emotion again fill the listener's eyes; and again the courteous king bids the minstrel cease, when he sees that some chord of mournful remembrance is struck in the heart of his guest. ”

“ The main purpose of the poet seems to be the opportunity once more of introducing the shades of the great heroes, Achilles and Agamemnon; the latter contrasting his own miserable and dishonoured end with that of Achilles, blest above all mortals, dying in battle with all the flower of Ilium and Greece around him, and leaving a name which is a sound of glory over the whole earth. ”

“ In contrast, though not necessarily in contradiction, to this physical allegory, stands the moral interpretation, a favourite one with some of the mediæval students of Homer, which sees in the Odyssey nothing less than the pilgrimage of human life—beset with dangers and seductions on every side, yet blessed with divine guidance, and reaching its goal at last, through suffering and not without loss. Every point in the wanderings of the hero has been thus made to teach its parable, more or less successfully. ”

“ The subject of his lay is the tale which charms all hearers—Phæacian, Greek, or Roman, ancient or modern, then as now—the tale of Troy. Touched with the remembrances which the song awakens, Ulysses wraps his face in his mantle to hide his rising tears. The king marks his guest's emotion: too courteous to allude to it, he contents himself with rising at once from the banquet-table, and giving order for the sports to begin. Foot-race, wrestling, quoit throwing, and boxing, all have their turn ”

“ Yet, had the scene found place in the work of a modern poet, we should have understood at once that, without any kind of reproach to the perfect maidenly delicacy of Nausicaa, it was meant to show us the dawn of a tender sentiment—nothing more—towards the stranger-guest whom the gods had endowed with such majestic graces of person, who stood so high above all rivals in feats of strength and skill, whose misfortunes surrounded him with a double interest, and, above all, in whom she felt a kind of personal property as his deliverer. ”

“ One cunning feat she remembers which her hero was wont to perform—to drive an arrow straight through the hollow rings of twelve axe-heads set up in a line. Whichsoever of her suitors can bend the strong bow, and send a shaft right through the whole row of twelve, like the lost Ulysses, that man she will follow, however reluctantly, as her future lord. She has more than a lingering hope, we may be sure, that one and all will fail in a trial so manifestly difficult. They would refuse the ordeal, but for Antinous. Confident in his own powers, he hopes to succeed—he knows the rest will fail. ”

“ Yes—if his host cares to listen, Ulysses can tell him a sad tale of some of his old comrades. He saw the great Agamemnon there, and heard from his lips the treachery of the adulterous Clytemnestra. Antilochus and Patroclus, too, he had recognised, and Ajax; but the latter, retaining in the world below the animosities of earthly life, had stood far aloof, and sullenly refused to speak a word in answer to his successful rival. The only one who reveals anything of the secrets of his prison-house is Achilles. ”

“ This is one of those noble passages in which the creed of the poet soars far above his mythology. The god who is the avenger of broken oaths, and the protector of the poor and the stranger, though he bears the name of Zeus or Jupiter, is a power of very different type from the Ruler of Olympus, who indulges his sensual passions in base amours with mortals,—who in the Iliad is perpetually engaged in domestic wrangles with his queen, and even in the Odyssey wreaks a weak vengeance on Ulysses merely to gratify the spite of Neptune. ”

“ Ten years have nearly passed since the fall of Troy, and still his wife Penelope, and his aged father Laertes, and his young son Telemachus, now growing up to manhood, keep weary watch for the hero's return. There is, moreover, a twofold trouble in the house. It is not only anxiety for an absent husband, but the perplexity caused by a crowd of importunate suitors for her hand, which vexes the soul of Penelope from day to day. The young nobles of Ithaca and its dependent islands have for many years flocked to the palace to seek the hand of her whom they consider as virtually a widowed queen. ”

“ He builds himself a boat on the island, by Calypso's instructions, and when all is ready, she stores it plentifully with food and wine, and gives him directions for his voyage. He launches and sets sail; but the angry god of the sea (irate especially against Ulysses for having blinded his son, the giant Polyphemus, as we shall learn hereafter) stirs winds and waves against him, wrecks his bark, and leaves him clinging for life to a broken spar. One of the sea-nymphs, Ino, takes pity on him, and gives him a charmed scarf—so long as he wears it his life is safe. ”

“ Bearing away from the shore of the Lotus-eaters, Ulysses and his crew next reached the island where the Cyclops dwell—a gigantic tribe of rude shepherds, monsters in form, having but one eye planted in the centre of their foreheads, who know neither laws, nor arts, nor commerce. Adventure and discovery have always a charm for Ulysses ”

“ It is not without reason that the most ancient works of art which bear the figure of Ulysses represent him not as a warrior but as a sailor.
The Tale of Troy, as has been already said, embraces in its whole range three decades of years. It is with the last ten that the Odyssey has to do; and as in the Iliad, though the siege itself had consumed ten years, it is with the last year only that the poet deals; so in this second great poem also, the main action occupies no more than the last six weeks of the third and concluding decade. ”

“ Then Menelaus, too, sees the likeness, and connects it with the youth's late emotion. Young Pisistratus at once tells him who his friend is, and on what errand they are travelling together. Warm is the greeting which the King of Sparta bestows on the son of his old friend. There shall be no more lamentation for this night; all painful subjects shall be at least postponed until the morrow. But still, as the feast goes on, the talk is of Ulysses. Helen has learnt, too, in her wanderings, some of the secrets of Egyptian pharmacy. ”

“ Nausicaa's maidens all scream and take to flight—very excusably; but the king's daughter, with a true nobility, stands firm. She sees only a shipwrecked man, and "to the pure all things are pure." Ulysses is a courtier as well as a traveller, and knows much of "cities and men;" and it is not the flattery of a suppliant, but the quick discernment of a man of the world, which makes him at once assign her true rank to the fair stranger who stands before him. ”

“ Telemachus indignantly refuses to send his mother home to her father; and repeats his passionate appeal to the gods for vengeance against the wrongs which he is himself helpless to deal with. At once an omen from heaven seems to betoken that the appeal is heard and accepted. Two eagles are seen flying over the heads of the crowd assembled in the marketplace, where they suddenly wheel round, and tear each other furiously with beak and talons. ”

“ From the lips of Tiresias Ulysses has learnt the future which awaits him. On the coast of Sicily he should find pasturing the herds and flocks of the Sun: if he and his comrades left them uninjured, they should soon see again their native Ithaca; if they laid sacrilegious hands on them, he alone should escape, and reach home after long suffering. ”

“ But even in his lightest mood the poet has no sort of sympathy with a wife's unfaithfulness. He takes his gods and goddesses as he found them in the popular creed; had enough, and far worse than the mortal men and women of his own poetical creation. But his own morals are far higher than those of Olympus. Even in this questionable ballad of the Phæacian minstrel the point of the jest is in strong contrast to some of the comedies of a more modern school. It is on the detected culprits, not on the injured husband, that the ridicule of gods and men is mercilessly showered. ”

“ We must not be too angry with Telemachus because, in the first flush of his newly-awakened sense of the responsibilities of his position, he uses language, in addressing his mother, which to our ears has a sound of harshness and reproach. He bids her not presume to set limits to the inspiration of the bard—the noblest theme is ever the best. Here minds her that woman's kingdom is the loom and the distaff, and that the rule over men in his father's house now belongs to him. ”

“ Ulysses preserves his disguise, and rises from his seat to offer it to the young chief. But Telemachus, like all Homer's heroes, is emphatically a gentleman; and he will not take an old man's place, though that man be but a poor wayfarer clad in rags. When he has broken his fast at his retainer's table, he would know from him who the stranger is. Eumæus repeats the fictitious history which he has heard from Ulysses, and Telemachus promises the shipwrecked wanderer relief and protection. ”

“ As the young prince sits thus, an unwilling host in his father's hall, meditating, says the poet, whether or no some day that father may return suddenly and take vengeance on these invaders of his rights, against whom he himself seems powerless, he lifts his eyes and sees a stranger standing at the gate. ”

“ This love-story of the Cyclops is better known, perhaps, to English readers, through Handel's Pastoral, 'Acis and Galatæa.'
The imprecation of Polyphemus was heard, and Ulysses was long to suffer the penalty of his bold deed. Yet, but for the weakness of his comrades, he might perhaps have escaped it. For, as they sailed on over unknown seas, they won the friendship of the King of the Winds. He feasted them a whole month on his brass-bound island; and he, too, like all the world of gods and men, asked eagerly for the last news of the heroes of Troy. ”

“ Ulysses plies his arrows till they are exhausted, and then the four together continue the unequal combat with the spears now brought by Telemachus. The details of the work of retribution, like some of the long slaughter-lists in the Iliad, sufficiently interesting to an audience for whom war was the great game of human life, are scarcely so to modern and more fastidious readers. The hero, like all heroes of romance, performs deeds which in a mere prosaic view would appear impossibilities. ”

“ That night, at least, they must remain as his guests—on the morrow he will send them on to the court of Menelaus at Sparta, where they may chance to learn the latest tidings of Ulysses. Telemachus's guardian bids him accept the invitation, then suddenly spreads wings, and takes to flight in the likeness of a sea-eagle; and both Nestor and Telemachus recognise at last that, in the shape of Mentor, the goddess of wisdom has been so long his guide. A sacrifice is forthwith offered in her honour—a heifer, with horns overlaid with gold ”

“ In the Iliad the poet never missed an opportunity of letting us know that—whoever he was and wherever he was born—he knew the sea well, and had a seaman's tastes. But there his tale confined him chiefly to the plain before Troy, and such opportunities presented themselves but rarely. In the Odyssey we roam from sea to sea throughout the narrative, and the restless hero seems never so much at home as when he is on shipboard. ”

“ There is no distinct principle of reward or punishment discernible in the regions of the dead, as seen by Ulysses. Indeed, anything like happiness in this shadowy future seems incompatible with the feelings put into the mouth of Achilles. Orion, the mighty hunter, appears to enjoy something like the Red Indian's paradise—pursuing, in those shadowy fields, the phantoms of the wild creatures which he slew on earth; but, with this exception, there is no hint of pleasurable interest or occupation for the mighty dead. Punishments there are for notorious offenders against the majesty of the gods ”

“ It is quite unnecessary to insist upon the actual connection which some enthusiastic champions of sacred literature have either traced or fancied between the lays of the Greek bard and the inspired records of the chosen people. Whether the Hebrew chronicles, in any form, could have reached the eye or ear of the poet in his many wanderings is, to say the least, extremely doubtful. But Homer bears an independent witness to the truth and accuracy of the sacred narrative, so far as its imagery and diction are to be taken into account, which is very remarkable and valuable. ”