The Authoress of the Odyssey

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Title: The Authoress of the Odyssey

Author: Samuel Butler

Commentator: Henry Festing Jones

Release date: June 29, 2015 [eBook #49324]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: Madelaine Kilsby, Laura Rodrigues Natal and Marc D’Hooghe

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY ***

THE AUTHORESS

OF THE

ODYSSEY,

WHERE AND WHEN SHE WROTE, WHO SHE WAS, THE USE SHE

MADE OF THE _ILIAD_,

AND

HOW THE POEM GREW UNDER HER HANDS,

SAMUEL BUTLER

AUTHOR OF "EREWHON," "LIFE AND HABIT," "ALPS AND SANCTUARIES,"

"THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF DR. SAMUEL BUTLER," ETC.

"There is no single fact to justify a conviction," said Mr. Cock;
whereon the Solicitor General replied that he did not rely upon
any single fact, but upon a chain of facts, which taken all
together left no possible means of escape.
_Times_, Leader, Nov. 16, 1894.
(The prisoner was convicted).

New York

E. P. Dutton & Company

1922

[Illustration: Nausicaa (_See Preface_). (_Frontispiece_.)]

AL PROFESSORE

CAV. BIAGIO INGROIA,

PREZIOSO ALLEATO

L'AUTORE RICONOSCENTE.

PREFACE.

The following work consists in some measure of matter already
published in England and Italy during the last six years. The original
publications were in the _Athenæum_, Jan. 30 and Feb. 20, 1892, and in
the _Eagle_ for the Lent Term, 1892, and for the October Term, 1892.
Both these last two articles were re-published by Messrs. Metcalfe &
Co. of Cambridge, with prefaces, in the second case of considerable
length. I have also drawn from sundry letters and articles that
appeared in _Il Lambruschini_, a journal published at Trapani and
edited by Prof. Giacalone-Patti, in 1892 and succeeding years, as also
from two articles that appeared in the _Rassegna della Letteratura
Siciliana_, published at Acireale in the autumn of 1893 and of 1894,
and from some articles published in the _Italian Gazette_ (then edited
by Miss Helen Zimmern) in the spring of 1895.

Each of the publications above referred to contained some matter
which did not appear in the others, and by the help of local students
in Sicily, among whom I would name the late Signor E. Biaggini of
Trapani, Signor Sugameli of Trapani, and Cavaliere Professore Ingroia
of Calatafimi, I have been able to correct some errors and become
possessed of new matter bearing on my subject. I have now entirely
re-cast and re-stated the whole argument, adding much that has not
appeared hitherto, and dealing for the first time fully with the
question of the writer's sex.

No reply appeared to either of my letters to the _Athenœum_ nor to my
Italian pamphlets. It is idle to suppose that the leading Iliadic and
Odyssean scholars in England and the continent do not know what I have
said. I have taken ample care that they should be informed concerning
it. It is equally idle to suppose that not one of them should have
brought forward a serious argument against me, if there were any such
argument to bring. Had they brought one it must have reached me, and I
should have welcomed it with great pleasure; for, as I have said in my
concluding Chapter, I do not care whether the _Odyssey_ was written by
man or by woman, nor yet where the poet or poetess lived who wrote it;
all I care about is the knowing as much as I can about the poem; and I
believe that scholars both in England and on the continent would have
helped me to fuller understanding if they had seen their way to doing
so.

A new edition, for example, of Professor Jebb's _Introduction to Homer_
was published some six weeks after the first and more important of my
letters to the _Athenœum_ had appeared. It was advertised as "this
day" in the _Athenœum_ of March 12, 1892; so that if Professor Jebb had
wished to say anything against what had appeared in the _Athenœum_, he
had ample time to do so by way of postscript. I know very well what I
should have thought it incumbent upon me to do had I been in his place,
and found his silence more eloquent on my behalf than any words would
have been which he is at all likely to have written, or, I may add, to
write.

I repeat that nothing deserving serious answer has reached me from any
source during the six years, or so, that my Odyssean theories have been
before the public. The principal notices of them that have appeared so
far will be found in the _Spectator_, April 23, 1892; the _Cambridge
Observer_, May 31, 1892; the _Classical Review_ for November, 1892,
June, 1893, and February, 1895, and _Longman's Magazine_ (see _At the
Sign of the Ship_) for June, 1892.

My frontispiece is taken by the kind permission of the Messrs. Alinari
of Florence, from their photograph of a work in the museum at Cortona
called _La Musa Polinnia_. It is on slate and burnt, is a little more
than half life size, and is believed to be Greek, presumably of about
the Christian era, but no more precise date can be assigned to it. I
was assured at Cortona that it was found by a man who was ploughing his
field, and who happened to be a baker. The size being suitable he used
it for some time as a door for his oven, whence it was happily rescued
and placed in the museum where it now rests.

As regards the Greek text from which I have taken my abridged
translation, I have borne in mind throughout the admirable canons laid
down by Mr. Gladstone in his _Studies in Homer_, Oxford University
Press, 1858, Vol. I., p. 43. He holds:--

1. That we should adopt the text itself as the basis of all Homeric
enquiry, and not any preconceived theory nor any arbitrary standard of
criticism, referable to any particular periods, schools, or persons.

2. That as we proceed in any work of construction drawn from the text,
we should avoid the temptation to solve difficulties that lie in our
way by denouncing particular portions of it as corrupt or interpolated;
should never set it aside except on the closest examination of the
particular passage questioned; should use sparingly the liberty of even
arraying presumptions against it; and should always let the reader
understand both when and why it is questioned.

The only emendation I have ventured to make in the text is to read
Νηρίτῳ instead of Νηίῳ in i. 186 and ὑπονηρίτου for ὑπονηίου in iii.
81. A more speculative emendation in iv. 606, 607 I forbear even to
suggest. I know of none others that I have any wish to make. As for
interpolations I have called attention to three or four which I believe
to have been made at a later period by the writer herself, but have
seen no passage which I have been tempted to regard as the work of
another hand.

I have followed Mr. Gladstone, Lord Derby, Colonel Mure, and I may
add the late Professor Kennedy and the Rev. Richard Shilleto, men
who taught me what little Greek I know, in retaining the usual Latin
renderings of Greek proper names. What was good enough for the scholars
whom I have named is good enough for me, and I should think also for
the greater number of my readers. The public whom I am addressing
know the _Odyssey_ chiefly through Pope's translation, and will not,
I believe, take kindly to Odysseus for Ulysses, Aias for Ajax, and
Polydeukes for Pollux. Neither do I think that Hekabe will supersede
Hecuba, till

"What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?"

is out of date.

I infer that the authorities of the British Museum are with me in this
matter, for on looking out Odysseus in the catalogue of the library I
find "See Ulysses."

Moreover the authors of this new nomenclature are not consistent. Why
not call Penelope Penelopeia? She is never called anything else in
the _Odyssey_. Why not Achilleus? Why not Bellerophontes? Why Hades,
when Ἀίδης has no aspirate? Why Helios instead of Eëlios? Why insist
on Achaians and Aitolians, but never on Aithiopians? Why not Athenæans
rather than Athenians? Why not Apollon? Why not either Odusseus, or
else Odysseys? and why not call him Oduseus or Odyseys whenever the
_Odyssey_ does so?

Admitting that the Greek names for gods and heroes may one day become
as familiar as the Latin ones, they have not become so yet, nor shall
I believe that they have done so, till I have seen Odysseus supplant
Ulysses on railway engines, steam tugs, and boats or ships. Jove,
Mercury, Minerva, Juno, and Venus convey a sufficiently accurate idea
to people who would have no ready made idea in connection with Zeus,
Hermes, Athene, Here, and Aphrodite. The personalities of the Latin
gods do not differ so much from those of the Greek, as, for example,
the Athene of the _Iliad_ does from the Athene of the _Odyssey_.
The personality of every god varies more or less with that of every
writer, and what little difference may exist between Greek and Roman
ideas of Jove, Juno, &c., is not sufficient to warrant the disturbance
of a nomenclature that has long since taken an established place in
literature.

Furthermore, the people who are most shocked by the use of Latin names
for Greek gods and heroes, and who most insist on the many small
innovations which any one who opens a volume of the _Classical Review_
may discover for himself, are the very ones who have done most to foist
Wolf and German criticism upon us, and who are most tainted with that
affectation of higher critical taste and insight, which men of the
world distrust, and which has brought the word "academic" into use
as expressive of everything which sensible people will avoid. I dare
not, therefore, follow these men till time has shown whether they are
faddists or no. Nevertheless, if I find the opinion of those whom I
respect goes against me in this matter, I shall adopt the Greek names
in any new edition of my book that may be asked for. I need hardly say
that I have consulted many excellent scholars as to which course I
should take, and have found them generally, though not always, approve
of my keeping to the names with which Pope and others have already
familiarised the public.

Since Chapter XIV. was beyond reach of modification, I have asked the
authorities of the British Museum to accept a copy of the _Odyssey_
with all the Iliadic passages underlined and referred to in M.S. I
have every reason to believe that this will very shortly be indexed
under my name, and (I regret to say) also under that of Homer. It
is my intention within the next few weeks to offer the Museum an
_Iliad_ with all passages borrowed by the writer of the _Odyssey_
underlined--reference being given to the Odyssean passage in which they
occur.

Lastly, I would express my great obligations to my friend Mr.
H. Festing Jones, who in two successive years has verified all
topographical details on the ground itself, and to whom I have referred
throughout my work whenever I have been in doubt or difficulty.

_September 27th, 1897_.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

It may be said that we owe this book, The Authoress of the Odyssey,
to Charles Lamb. Butler, in his early days, had read all the usual
English classics that young people read--Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray,
Scott, Lamb, and so on; as he grew older, however, he became more
absorbed in his own work and had no time for general reading. When
people allege want of time as an excuse for not doing something,
they are usually trying to conceal their laziness. But laziness
was not the reason why Butler refused to read books except for the
purpose of whatever he was writing. It was that he was a martyr to
self-indulgence, and the sin that did most easily beset him was
over-work. He was St. Anthony, and the world of books was his desert,
full of charming appearances assumed by demons who were bent on luring
him to perdition. His refusal was not the cry of the slothful: "Yet
a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to
sleep"; it was the "Get thee behind me, Satan!" of one who is seeking
salvation. For he knew his weakness and that temptation comes in such
unexpected shapes that the only way of escape is by perpetual watching
and praying lest we fall. So he watched and prayed, and kept his powder
dry by minding his own business. The Devil, how- ever, was on the
watch also and had an inspiration; he baited his subtle hook with a
combination fly composed partly of the gentle Elia and partly of the
Rev. Canon Ainger. He knew that Butler, if he approached either of
these authors, would do so without suspicion, because he had looked
over his victim's shoulder one morning in the Reading Room of the
British Museum while he was making this note:

"Charles Lamb was like Mr. Darwin, 'a master of happy
simplicity.' Sometimes, of course, he says very good things,
at any rate some very good things have been ascribed to
him; but more commonly he is forced, faint, full of false
sentiment and prolix. I believe that he and his sister hated
one another, as only very near relations can hate. He made
capital out of his supposed admirable treatment of her. Aunt
Sarah likes him, so do most old maids who were told what
they ought to like about 55 yeara ago, but I never find men
whom I think well of admire him. As for Ainger's Life,
well, my sisters like it."

We need not agree, and I personally disagree, with Butler's view of
the relations between Charles and Mary Lamb, for it seems to me that
it is not supported by the Letters of Lamb. I do not suppose, however,
that Butler intended his words to be taken very seriously; nor are
they intended to be taken as direct abuse of Lamb. They are addressed
rather to Lamb's admirers, and are conceived in the spirit of the
Athenian, whose reason for helping to ostracise Aristides was that he
was so bored by hearing him perpetually called "the Just." They are
Butler's way of saying: "Don't you go and suppose that I should ever
have anything to do with self-sacrifice and devotion." And yet his
own life shows that he was himself capable of both; but, like many
Englishmen, he was shy of displaying emotion or of admitting that he
experienced it. When we remember that he had not read the Letters we
can understand his being put off Lamb first by the Essays, and then by
the admirers --Aunt Sarah, the old maids, and Canon Ainger. We must
also remember that Canon Ainger used to go and stay down at Shrewsbury
with a clergyman who, among other dissipations which he organised for
his guest, took him to tea with Butler's sisters, where he played on
their old piano which had been chosen by Mendelssohn. Nevertheless it
might have been better for Butler if he had not made the note, for
retribution followed.

In June, 1886, while we were completing the words and music of our
cantata Narcissus, which was published in 1888, Butler wrote to Miss
Butler:

"The successor of Narcissus is to be called Ulysses; and
is this time a serious work dealing with the wanderings of
the real Ulysses, and treating the subject much as Hercules
or Semele was treated by Handel. We think we could get some
sailor choruses, and some Circe and pig choruses, and the
sirens, and then Penelope and her loom all afford scope.
I made up my mind about it when I read Charles Lamb's
translation of parts of the 'Odyssey' in Ainger's book, but
please don't say anything about it." {Memoir, II, 38.)

The serpent was lurking within the leaves of Ainger's book, and
Butler was beguiled. The idea of using the story of the "Odyssey" for
the words of an oratorio led him on to re-reading the poem in the
original; but he could not make much progress just then because after
his father's death, in December, 1886, he came into possession of all
his grandfather's papers, and succumbed to the temptation of reading
them and of writing Dr. Butler's life. When he did settle down to the
poem it fascinated him, and there followed the further irresistible
temptation of translating it. His grandfather's life still kept him so
fully occupied that he did not reach Book ix till 1891; and then, as
he writes in Chapter i of The Authoress of the Odyssey: "It was not
till I got to Circe that it flashed upon me that I was reading the work
not of an old man but of a young woman." And on a letter of 9th August,
1891, which I sent to him at Chiavenna, he made this note:

"It was during the few days that I was at Chiavenna (at the
Hotel Grotta Crimee) that I hit upon the female authorship
of the 'Odyssey.' I did not find out its having been written
at Trapani till 1892."

Between 1892, when he made this discovery, and 1902, when he died,
Butler published the Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, Erewhon
Revisited, and a new and revised edition of Erewhon. These three
books were the working off of material which was already in his mind,
but everything else published during the last decade of his life grew
directly out of the "Odyssey." There was a pamphlet entitled The
Humour of Homer (1892), which was first delivered as a lecture at the
Working Men's College; there were two other pamphlets which appeared
in a Sicilian magazine (1893 and 1894), one of these being translated
into English and published in 1893; there were articles about his
Odyssean theories in The Italian Gazette, then under the editorship of
Miss Helen Zimmern, published in Florence. In 1897 came The Authoress
of the Odyssey; in 1898, The Iliad Rendered into English Prose; in
1899, Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered; and in 1900, The Odyssey
Rendered into English Prose. Besides these publications there were
letters and articles about the "Odyssey" in the Athaeneum, the
Eagle and Il Lambruschini, a journal published at Trapani in Sicily.

The translation of the "Iliad" became a necessity when once that of the
"Odyssey" had been undertaken, and the book about the Sonnets was also
a consequence of the "Odyssey," for his interest in the problem of the
Sonnets, the work of the greatest poet of modern times, was aroused
by his interest in the problem of the "Odyssey," one of the two great
poems of antiquity. Besides all this he was engaged upon the words and
music of Ulysses, in making journeys to Sicily to pick up more facts
about the topography of Scheria, and in making a journey to Greece and
the Troad to investigate the geography of the "Iliad." Thus it may
be said that the last ten years of his life were overshadowed by the
"Odyssey," which dominated his thoughts--and not only his thoughts,
his letters were full of it and it was difficult to get him to talk of
anything else. I have little doubt that this perpetual preoccupation--I
may even say obsession--tended to shorten his life.

None of the eminent classical scholars paid any attention to Butler's
views on the "Odyssey," or if any did they did not say so in public,
and he resented their neglect. He was not looking for praise; as Sir
William Phipson Beale, one of his oldest friends, said to me very
acutely: "People misunderstood Butler; he did not want praise, he
wanted sympathy." It is true as he records in The Authoress (p. 269),
that "one of our most accomplished living scholars"--I do not know who
he was, though I no doubt heard at the time--chided him and accused him
of being ruthless. "I confess," said the scholar, "I do not give much
heed to the details on which you lay so much stress; I read the poem
not to theorise about it but to revel in its amazing beauty." This can
hardly be called sympathy. Butler comments upon it thus:

"It would shock me to think that I have done anything to
impair the sense of that beauty which I trust I share in
even measure with himself; but surely if the 'Odyssey' has
charmed us as a man's work, its charm and its wonder are
infinitely increased when we see it as a woman's."

Still there were some competent judges who approved. The late Lord
Grimthorpe interested himself in the problem, accepted Butler's views,
and gave him valuable suggestions about the description in the poem
of the hanging of those maidservants in Ithaca who had disgraced
themselves. Mr. Justice Wills also expressed agreement, but he did it
in a letter to me after Butler's death. These names are mentioned in
the Memoir, and there is another name which ought to have appeared
there, but I overlooked the note at the right moment.

Butler delivered at the Fabian Society a lecture entitled, "Was the
'Odyssey' written by a Woman?" At the close of the lecture Mr. Bernard
Shaw got up and said that when he had first heard of the title he
supposed it was some fad or fancy of Butler's, but that on turning
to the "Odyssey" to see what could have induced him to take it up he
had not read a hundred lines before he found himself saying: "Why,
of course it was!" And he spoke so strongly that people who had only
laughed all though the lecture began to think there might be something
in it after all.

These, however, were not the eminent Homeric scholars to whom Butler
looked for sympathy. He was disappointed by the silence of the
orthodox, and it was here that Charles Lamb got in his revenge, for the
situation never would have arisen if it had not been for that fatal
reading of "Charles Lamb's translation of parts of the 'Odyssey' in
Ainger's book."

When Keats first looked into Chapman's Homer the result was the famous
sonnet. When Lamb did the same thing the result was "a juvenile book,
The Adventures of Ulysses." He wrote to Manning, 26th February, 1808:

"It is done out of the 'Odyssey,' not from the Greek (I
would not mislead you), nor yet from Pope's 'Odyssey,' but
from an older translation of one Chapman. The Shakespeare
Tales suggested the doing of it."

I suppose that by "Ainger's book" Butler means Charles Lamb in the
"English Men of Letters Series," edited by John Morley and published
by Macmillan in 1878; at least I do not find any other book by Ainger
about Lamb which contains any mention of The Adventures of Ulysses
between that date and the date of Butler's letter to his sister in
1886. If I remember right Butler saw "Ainger's book" at Shrewsbury
when he was staying with his sisters, and I like to think that it was
a copy given to them by the author. But I doubt whether he can have
done more than look into it; if he had read it with attention he would
scarcely have spoken of Lamb's work as translation. I imagine that he
listlessly took the book up off the drawing-room table, and, happening
to open it at page 68, saw that Lamb had written The Adventures of
Ulysses; this would be enough to suggest the story of the "Odyssey"
to him, and he must have missed or forgotten Ainger's statement that
Lamb said to Bernard Barton: "Chapman is divine and my abridgement has
not quite emptied him of his divinity." What concerns us now, however,
is to note the result on Butler, which was that he embarked upon all
this apparently fruitless labour. It is interesting to note also that
as Lamb, by writing the Tales from Shakespeare, had been led to the
"Odyssey," so Butler, by choosing Ulysses as the hero of our oratorio,
was led, in a contrary direction, to the Sonnets.

We must now come nearer to modern times. The Authoress of the Odyssey
appeared in 1897, and Butler's Translation in 1900--that is about
twenty years ago; during which period, sympathy or no sympathy, the
books must have had a good many readers, perhaps among the general
public rather than among classical scholars, for now, in 1921, the
stock is exhausted and new editions of both are wanted. They have been
reset entirely, misprints and obvious mistakes have been corrected,
the index has been revised, and there are a few minor typographical
changes; but nothing has been done which could be called editing,
bringing up to date, adding supplementary matter, dissenting or
recording dissent from any of the author's views. The size of the
original page has been reduced so as to make the books uniform with
Butler's other works; and, fortunately, it has generally been possible,
by using a smaller type, to get the same number of words into each
page, so that the pagination is scarcely altered and the references
remain good. Except for the alterations about to be noted (in respect
of The Authoress), the books are faithful reprints of the original
editions.

(a) About three lines have been interpolated on page 207 which upsets
the pagination until page 209. The interpolation, which is taken
from a note by Butler in his copy of the work, is to the effect that
the authoress, in Book vii, line 137, almost calls her countrymen
scoundrels by saying that they made their final drink-offerings not
to Jove but to Mercury, the god of thieves. On this passage there is
a note in the Translation saying that the poet here intends hidden
malice; but, except for this interpolation, attention does not appear
to be called to the malice anywhere else in The Authoress.

(b) The note on page 214 is so printed that the pagination is upset for
one page.

(c) The illustration of the coin which shows the design of the brooch
of Ulysses is now given on a separate page, whereas formerly it was in
the text, therefore the pagination is thrown out from page 227 until
the end of the chapter, page 231. Doubt has recently been cast upon
the accuracy of the statement on pp. 226-7, that this coin certainly
belongs to the Eryx and Segesta group.

(d) Some of the headlines have been shortened because of the reduction
in the size of the page, and here advantage has been taken of various
corrections of and additions to the headlines and shoulder-notes made
by Butler in his own copies of the two books.

(e) For the most part each of the illustrations now occupies a page,
whereas in the original editions they generally appeared two on one
page. It has been necessary to reduce the plan of the House of Ulysses.

On page 31 this note occurs: "Scheria means Jutland--a piece of land
jutting out into the sea." Butler afterwards found that Jutland means
the land of the Jutes, and has nothing to do with jutting. A note to
this effect is in The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, p. 350.

On page 153 Butler says: "No great poet would compare his hero to a
paunch full of blood and fat cooking before the fire (xx, 24-28)." This
passage is not given in the abridged "Story of the Odyssey" at the
beginning of the book, but in Butler's Translation it occurs in these
words:

"Thus he chided with his heart, and checked it into
endurance, but he tossed about as one who turns a paunch
full of blood and fat in front of a hot fire, doing it first
on one side then on the other, that he may get it cooked as
soon as possible; even so did he turn himself about from
side to side, thinking all the time how, single-handed as he
was, he should contrive to kill so large a body of men as
the wicked suitors."

It looks as though in the interval between the publication of The
Authoress (1897) and of the Translation (1900) Butler had changed his
mind; for in the first case the comparison is between Ulysses and a
paunch full, etc., and in the second it is between Ulysses and a man
who turns a paunch full, etc. The second comparison is perhaps one
which a great poet might make.

In seeing the works through the press I have had the invaluable
assistance of Mr. A. T. Bartholomew of the University Library,
Cambridge, and of Mr. Donald S. Robertson, Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge. To both these friends I give my most cordial thanks for
the care and skill exercised by them. Mr. Robertson has found time
for the labour of checking and correcting all the quotations from and
references to the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," and I believe that it could
not have been better performed* It was, I know, a pleasure for him; and
it would have been a pleasure also for Butler if he could have known
th£t his work was being shepherded by the son of his old friend, Mr. H.
R. Robertson, who more than a half a century ago was a fellow-student
with him at Cary's School of Art in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury.

HENRY FESTING JONES.

120 Maida Vale, W.9.
4th December, 1921.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY--THE STEPS WHEREBY I WAS LED TO MY
CONCLUSIONS--THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK POETESSES REMOVES
ANY _À PRIORI_ DIFFICULTY--THE MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS
OF LITERATURE--MAN, RATHER THAN WOMAN, THE INTERLOPER

CHAPTER II.

THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY

Book i. The council of the gods--Telemachus and the suitors in
the house of Ulysses
Book ii. Assembly of the people of Ithaca--Telemachus starts for
Pylos
Book iii. Telemachus at the house of Nestor
Book iv. Telemachus at the house of Menelaus--The suitors
resolve to lie in wait for him as he returns, and
murder him
Book v. Ulysses in the island of Calypso--He leaves the island
on a raft, and after great suffering reaches the land
of the Phæacians
Book vi. The meeting between Ulysses and Nausicaa
Book vii. The splendours of the house of King Alcinous--Queen
Arete wants to know how Ulysses got his shirt and
cloak, for she knows them as her own work. Ulysses
explains
Book viii. The Phæacian games and banquet in honour of Ulysses 37
Book ix. The voyages of Ulysses--The Cicons, Lotus-eaters, and the
Cyclops Polyphemus
Book x. Æolus--The Læstrygonians--Circe
Book xi. Ulysses in the house of Hades
Book xii. The Sirens--Scylla and Charybdis--The cattle of the Sun
Book xiii. Ulysses is taken back to Ithaca by the Phæacians
Book xiv. Ulysses in the hut of Eumæus
Book xv. Telemachus returns from Pylos, and on landing goes to the
hut of Eumæus
Book xvi. Ulysses and Telemachus become known to one another
Book xvii. Telemachus goes to the town, and is followed by Eumæus
and Ulysses, who is maltreated by the suitors
Book xviii. The fight between Ulysses and Irus--The suitors make
presents to Penelope--and ill-treat Ulysses
Book xix. Ulysses converses with Penelope, and is recognised by
Euryclea
Book xx. Ulysses converses with Eumæus, and with his herdsman
Philœtius--The suitors again maltreat him--Theoclymenus
foretells their doom and leaves the house
Book xxi. The trial of the bow and of the axes
Book xxii. The killing of the suitors
Book xxiii. Penelope comes down to see Ulysses, and being at last
convinced that he is her husband, retires with him to
their own old room--In the morning Ulysses, Telemachus,
Philœtius, and Eumæus go to the house of Laertes 96
Book xxiv. The Ghosts of the suitors in Hades--Ulysses sees his
father--is attacked by the friends of the suitors
--Laertes kills Eupeithes--Peace is made between him
and the people of Ithaca

CHAPTER III.

THE PREPONDERANCE OF WOMAN IN THE ODYSSEY 105

CHAPTER IV.

JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF WOMAN--SEVERITY
AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE DISGRACED THEIR SEX--LOVE OF SMALL
RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES--OF PREACHING--OF WHITE LIES AND
SMALL PLAY-ACTING--OF HAVING THINGS BOTH WAYS--AND OF MONEY

CHAPTER V.

ON THE QUESTION WHETHER OR NO PENELOPE IS BEING WHITEWASHED

CHAPTER VI.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE CHARACTER OF
PENELOPE--THE JOURNEY OF TELEMACHUS TO LACEDÆMON 134

CHAPTER VII.

FURTHER INDICATIONS THAT THE WRITER IS A WOMAN--YOUNG
--HEADSTRONG--AND UNMARRIED

CHAPTER VIII.

THAT ITHACA AND SCHERIA ARE BOTH OF THEM DRAWN FROM TRAPANI
AND ITS IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURHOOD

CHAPTER IX.

THE IONIAN AND THE ÆGADEAN ISLANDS--THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES
SHOWN TO BE PRACTICALLY A SAIL ROUND SICILY FROM TRAPANI TO
TRAPANI

CHAPTER X.

FURTHER DETAILS REGARDING THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES, TO
CONFIRM THE VIEW THAT THEY WERE A SAIL ROUND SICILY,
BEGINNING AND ENDING WITH MT. ERYX AND TRAPANI

CHAPTER XI.

WHO WAS THE WRITER?

CHAPTER XII.

THE DATE OF THE POEM, AND A COMPARISON OF THE STATE OF
THE NORTH WESTERN PART OF SICILY AS REVEALED TO US IN THE
ODYSSEY, WITH THE ACCOUNT GIVEN BY THUCYDIDES OF THE SAME
TERRITORY IN THE EARLIEST KNOWN TIMES

CHAPTER XIII.

FURTHER EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF AN EARLY IONIAN SETTLEMENT
AT OR CLOSE TO TRAPANI

CHAPTER XIV.

THAT THE ILIAD WHICH THE WRITER OF THE ODYSSEY KNEW WAS THE
SAME AS WHAT WE NOW HAVE

CHAPTER XV.

THE ODYSSEY IN ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER POEMS OF THE
TROJAN CYCLE, AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE HANDS OF THE
AUTHORESS

CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUSION

INDEX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece, Nausicaa.

The house of Ulysses
The cave of Polyphemus
Signor Sugameli and the author in the cave of Polyphemus
Map of Trapani and Mt. Eryx
The harbour Rheithron, now salt works of S. Cusumano
Mouth of the harbour Rheithron, now silted up
Map of the Ionian Islands
Map of the Ægadean Islands
Trapani from Mt. Eryx, showing Marettimo (Ithaca)
"all highest up in the sea"
Map of the voyage of Ulysses
Wall at Cefalù, rising from the sea
Megalithic remains on the mountain behind Cefalù
H. Festing Jones, Esq., in flute of column at Selinunte
Remains of megalithic wall on Mt. Eryx
Wall at Hissarlik, showing the effects of weathering
The Iliadic wall
A coin bearing the legend Iakin, and also showing
the brooch of Ulysses.

THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY.

CHAPTER I.

IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY--THE STEPS WHEREBY I WAS
LED TO MY CONCLUSIONS--THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK
POETESSES REMOVES ANY _À PRIORI_ DIFFICULTY--THE
MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS OF LITERATURE--MAN, RATHER
THAN WOMAN, THE INTERLOPER.

If the questions whether the _Odyssey_ was written by a man or a
woman, and whether or no it is of exclusively Sicilian origin, were
pregnant with no larger issues than the determination of the sex and
abode of the writer, it might be enough merely to suggest the answers
and refer the reader to the work itself. Obviously, however, they have
an important bearing on the whole Homeric controversy; for if we find
a woman's hand omnipresent throughout the _Odyssey_, and if we also
find so large a number of local details, taken so exclusively and so
faithfully from a single Sicilian town as to warrant the belief that
the writer must have lived and written there, the presumption seems
irresistible that the poem was written by a single person. For there
can hardly have been more than one woman in the same place able to
write such--and such homogeneous--poetry as we find throughout the
_Odyssey_.

Many questions will become thus simplified. Among others we can limit
the date of the poem to the lifetime of a single person, and if we
find, as I believe we shall, that this person in all probability
flourished, roughly between 1050 and 1000 B.C., if, moreover, we can
show, as we assuredly can, that she had the _Iliad_ before her much as
we have it now, quoting, consciously or unconsciously, as freely from
the most suspected parts as from those that are admittedly Homer's, we
shall have done much towards settling the question whether the _Iliad_
also is by one hand or by many.

Not that this question ought to want much settling. The theory that
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were written each of them by various hands,
and pieced together in various centuries by various editors, is not
one which it is easy to treat respectfully. It does not rest on the
well established case of any other poem so constructed; literature
furnishes us with no poem whose genesis is known to have been such as
that which we are asked to foist upon the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. The
theory is founded on a supposition as to the date when writing became
possible, which has long since been shown to be untenable; not only
does it rest on no external evidence, but it flies in the face of what
little external evidence we have. Based on a base that has been cut
from under it, it has been sustained by arguments which have never
succeeded in leading two scholars to the same conclusions, and which
are of that character which will lead any one to any conclusion however
preposterous, which he may have made up his mind to consider himself as
having established. A writer in the _Spectator_ of Jan. 2, 1892, whose
name I do not know, concluded an article by saying,

That the finest poem of the world was created out of the
contributions of a multitude of poets revolts all our
literary instincts.

Of course it does, but the Wolfian heresy, more or less modified, is
still so generally accepted both on the continent and in England that
it will not be easy to exterminate it.

Easy or no this is a task well worth attempting, for Wolf's theory
has been pregnant of harm in more ways than are immediately apparent.
Who would have thought of attacking Shakspeare's existence--for if
Shakspeare did not write his plays he is no longer Shakspeare--unless
men's minds had been unsettled by Wolf's virtual denial of Homer's?
Who would have reascribed picture after picture in half the galleries
of Europe, often wantonly, and sometimes in defiance of the clearest
evidence, if the unsettling of questions concerning authorship had not
been found to be an easy road to reputation as a critic? Nor does there
appear to be any end to it, for each succeeding generation seems bent
on trying to surpass the recklessness of its predecessor.

And more than this, the following pages will read a lesson of another
kind, which I will leave the reader to guess at, to men whom I will not
name, but some of whom he may perhaps know, for there are many of them.
Indeed I have sometimes thought that the sharpness of this lesson may
be a more useful service than either the establishment of the points
which I have set myself to prove, or the dispelling of the nightmares
of Homeric extravagance which German professors have evolved out of
their own inner consciousness.

Such language may be held to come ill from one who is setting himself
to maintain two such seeming paradoxes as the feminine authorship, and
Sicilian origin, of the _Odyssey_. One such shock would be bad enough,
but two, and each so far-reaching, are intolerable. I feel this, and am
oppressed by it. When I look back on the record of Iliadic and Odyssean
controversy for nearly 2500 years, and reflect that it is, I may say,
dead against me; when I reflect also upon the complexity of academic
interests, not to mention the commercial interests vested in well-known
school books and so-called education--how can I be other than dismayed
at the magnitude, presumption, and indeed utter hopelessness, of the
task I have undertaken?

How can I expect Homeric scholars to tolerate theories so subversive
of all that most of them have been insisting on for so many years?
It is a matter of Homeric (for my theory affects Iliadic questions
nearly as much as it does the _Odyssey_) life and death for them or
for myself. If I am right they have invested their reputation for
sagacity in a worthless stock. What becomes, for example, of a great
part of Professor Jebb's well-known _Introduction to Homer_--to quote
his shorter title--if the _Odyssey_ was written all of it at Trapani,
all of it by one hand, and that hand a woman's? Either my own work is
rubbish, in which case it should not be hard to prove it so without
using discourteous language, or not a little of theirs is not worth the
paper on which it is written. They will be more than human, therefore,
if they do not handle me somewhat roughly.

As for the _Odyssey_ having been written by a woman, they will tell me
that I have not even established a _primâ facie_ case for my opinion.
Of course I have not. It was Bentley who did this, when he said that
the _Iliad_ was written for men, and the _Odyssey_ for women.[1] The
history of literature furnishes us with no case in which a man has
written a great masterpiece for women rather than men. If an anonymous
book strikes so able a critic as having been written for women, a
_primâ facie_ case is established for thinking that it was probably
written by a woman. I deny, however, that the _Odyssey_ was written for
women; it was written for any one who would listen to it. What Bentley
meant was that in the _Odyssey_ things were looked at from a woman's
point of view rather than a man's, and in uttering this obvious truth,
I repeat, he established once for all a strong _primâ facie_ case for
thinking that it was written by a woman.

If my opponents can fasten a cavil on to the ninth part of a line of
my argument, they will take no heed of, and make no reference to,
the eight parts on which they dared not fasten a misrepresentation
however gross. They will declare it fatal to my theory that there were
no Greek-speaking people at Trapani when the _Odyssey_ was written.
Having fished up this assertion from the depths of their ignorance
of what Thucydides, let alone Virgil, has told us,--or if they set
these writers on one side, out of their still profounder ignorance of
what there was or was not at Trapani in the eleventh century before
Christ--they will refuse to look at the internal evidence furnished
by the _Odyssey_ itself. They will ignore the fact that Thucydides
tells us that "Phocians of those from Troy," which as I will show
(see Chapter XII.) can only mean Phocæans, settled at Mount Eryx, and
ask me how I can place Phocæans on Mount Eryx when Thucydides says it
was Phocians who settled there? They will ignore the fact that even
though Thucydides had said "Phocians" without qualifying his words by
adding "of those from Troy," or "of the Trojan branch," he still places
Greek-speaking people within five miles of Trapani.

As for the points of correspondence between both Ithaca and Scheria,
and Trapani, they will remind me that Captain Fluelen found
resemblances between Monmouth and Macedon, as also Bernardino Caimi
did between Jerusalem and Varallo-Sesia; they will say that if mere
topographical resemblances are to be considered, the Channel Islands
are far more like the Ionian group as described in the _Odyssey_ than
those off Trapani are, while Balaclava presents us with the whole
Scherian combination so far more plausibly than Trapani as to leave no
doubt which site should be preferred. I have not looked at the map of
Balaclava to see whether this is so or no, nor yet at other equally
promising sites which have been offered me, but am limiting myself to
giving examples of criticisms which have been repeatedly passed upon
my theory during the last six years, and which I do not doubt will be
repeatedly passed upon it in the future.

On the other hand I may comfort myself by reflecting that however
much I may deserve stoning there is no one who can stone me with a
clear conscience. Those who hold, as most people now do, that the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ belong to ages separated from one another by
some generations, must be haunted by the reflection that though the
diversity of authorship was prominently insisted on by many people more
than two thousand years ago, not a single Homeric student from those
days to the end of the last century could be brought to acknowledge
what we now deem self-evident. Professor Jebb, writing of Bentley,[2]
says

He had not felt what is now so generally admitted, that
the _Odyssey_ bears the marks of a later time than the
_Iliad_.

How came so great a man as Bentley not to see what is so obvious?
Truly, as has been said by Mr. Gladstone, if Homer is old, the
systematic and comprehensive study of him is still young.[3]

I shall not argue the question whether the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are
by the same person, inasmuch as if I convince the reader that the
_Odyssey_ was written by a woman and in Sicily, it will go without
saying that it was not written by Homer; for there can be no doubt
about the sex of the writer of the _Iliad_. The same canons which
will compel us to ascribe the _Odyssey_ to a woman forbid any other
conclusion than that the _Iliad_ was written by a man. I shall
therefore proceed at once to the question whether the _Odyssey_ was
written by a man or by a woman.

It is an old saying that no man can do better for another than he can
for himself, I may perhaps therefore best succeed in convincing the
reader if I retrace the steps by which I arrived at the conclusions I
ask him to adopt.

I was led to take up the _Odyssey_ by having written the libretto and
much of the music for a secular oratorio, _Ulysses_, on which my friend
Mr. H. Festing Jones and I had been for some time engaged. Having
reached this point it occurred to me that I had better after all see
what the _Odyssey_ said, and finding no readable prose translation, was
driven to the original, to which I had not given so much as a thought
for some five and thirty years.

The Greek being easy, I had little difficulty in understanding what I
read, and I had the great advantage of coming to the poem with fresh
eyes. Also, I read it all through from end to end, as I have since many
times done.

Fascinated, however, as I at once was by its amazing interest and
beauty, I had an ever-present sense of a something wrong, of a
something that was eluding me, and of a riddle which I could not read.
The more I reflected upon the words, so luminous and so transparent,
the more I felt a darkness behind them, that I must pierce before I
could see the heart of the writer--and this was what I wanted; for art
is only interesting in so far as it reveals an artist.

In the hope of getting to understand the poem better I set about
translating it into plain prose, with the same benevolent leaning, say,
towards Tottenham Court Road, that Messrs. Butcher and Lang have shewn
towards Wardour Street. I admit, however, that Wardour Street English
has something to say for itself. The "Ancient Mariner," for example,
would have lost a good deal if it had been called "The Old Sailor," but
on the whole I take it that a tale so absolutely without any taint of
affectation as the _Odyssey_ will speed best being unaffectedly told.

When I came to the Phæacian episode I felt sure that here at any rate
the writer was drawing from life, and that Nausicaa, Queen Arete, and
Alcinous were real people more or less travestied, and on turning
to Colonel Mure's work[4] I saw that he was of the same opinion.
Nevertheless I found myself continually aghast at the manner in which
men were made to speak and act--especially, for example, during the
games in honour of _Ulysses_ described in Book viii. Colonel Mure says
(p. 407) that "the women engross the chief part of the small stock
of common sense allotted to the community." So they do, but it never
occurred to me to ask myself whether men commonly write brilliant
books in which the women are made more sensible than the men. Still
dominated by the idea that the writer was a man, I conjectured that he
might be some bard, perhaps blind, who lived among the servants much
as the chaplain in a great house a couple of hundred years ago among
ourselves. Such a bard, even though not blind, would only see great
people from a distance, and would not mix with them intimately enough
to know how they would speak and act among themselves. It never even
crossed my mind that it might have been the commentators who were
blind, and that they might have thus come to think that the poet must
have been blind too.

The view that the writer might have lived more in the steward's room
than with the great people of the house served (I say it with shame) to
quiet me for a time, but by and by it struck me that though the men
often both said and did things that no man would say or do, the women
were always ladies when the writer chose to make them so. How could it
be that a servant's hall bard should so often go hopelessly wrong with
his men, and yet be so exquisitively right with every single one of his
women? But still I did not catch it. It was not till I got to Circe
that it flashed upon me that I was reading the work, not of an old man,
but of a young woman--and of one who knew not much more about what men
can and cannot do than I had found her know about the milking of ewes
in the cave of Polyphemus.

The more I think of it the more I wonder at my own stupidity, for I
remember that when I was a boy at school I used to say the _Odyssey_
was the _Iliad's_ wife, and that it was written by a clergyman.
But however this may be, as soon as the idea that the writer was a
woman--and a young one--presented itself to me, I felt that here was
the reading of the riddle that had so long baffled me. I tried to
divest myself of it, but it would not go; as long as I kept to it,
everything cohered and was in its right place, and when I set it aside
all was wrong again; I did not seek my conclusion; I did not even know
it by sight so as to look for it; it accosted me, introduced itself as
my conclusion, and vowed that it would never leave me; whereon, being
struck with its appearance, I let it stay with me on probation for a
week or two during which I was charmed with the propriety of all it
said or did, and then bade it take rank with the convictions to which I
was most firmly wedded; but I need hardly say that it was a long time
before I came to see that the poem was all of it written at Trapani,
and that the writer had introduced herself into her work under the name
of Nausicaa.

I will deal with these points later, but would point out that the
moment we refuse to attribute the _Odyssey_ to the writer of the
_Iliad_ (whom we should alone call Homer) it becomes an anonymous
work; and the first thing that a critic will set himself to do when
he considers an anonymous work is to determine the sex of the writer.
This, even when women are posing as men, is seldom difficult--indeed
it is done almost invariably with success as often as an anonymous
work is published--and when any one writes with the frankness and
spontaneity which are such an irresistible charm in the _Odyssey_, it
is not only not difficult but exceedingly easy; difficulty will only
arise, if the critic is, as we have all been in this case, dominated by
a deeply-rooted preconceived opinion, and if also there is some strong
_à priori_ improbability in the supposition that the writer was a woman.

It may be urged that it is extremely improbable that any woman in
any age should write such a masterpiece as the _Odyssey_. But so
it also is that any man should do so. In all the many hundreds of
years since the _Odyssey_ was written, no man has been able to write
another that will compare with it. It was extremely improbable that
the son of a Stratford wool-stapler should write _Hamlet_, or that a
Bedfordshire tinker should produce such a masterpiece as _Pilgrim s
Progress_. Phenomenal works imply a phenomenal workman, but there are
phenomenal women as well as phenomenal men, and though there is much
in the _Iliad_ which no woman, however phenomenal, can be supposed
at all likely to have written, there is not a line in the _Odyssey_
which a woman might not perfectly well write, and there is much beauty
which a man would be almost certain to neglect. Moreover there are
many mistakes in the _Odyssey_ which a young woman might easily make,
but which a man could hardly fall into--for example, making the wind
whistle over waves at the end of Book ii., thinking that a lamb could
live on two pulls a day at a ewe that was already milked (ix. 244, 245,
and 308, 309), believing a ship to have a rudder at both ends (ix. 483,
540), thinking that dry and well-seasoned timber can be cut from a
growing tree (v. 240), making a hawk while still on the wing tear its
prey--a thing that no hawk can do (xv. 527).

I see that Messrs. Butcher and Lang omit ix. 483 in which the rudder
is placed in the bows of a ship, but it is found in the text, and is
the last kind of statement a copyist would be inclined to intercalate.
Yet I could have found it in my heart to conceive the text in fault,
had I not also found the writer explaining in Book v. 255 that Ulysses
gave his raft a rudder "in order that he might be able to steer it."
People whose ideas about rudders have become well defined will let the
fact that a ship is steered by means of its rudder go without saying.
Furthermore, not only does she explain that Ulysses would want a rudder
to steer with, but later on (line 270) she tells us that he actually
did use the rudder when he had made it, and, moreover, that he used it
τεχνηέντως, or skilfully.

Young women know that a horse goes before a cart, and being told that
the rudder guides the ship, are apt--and I have more than once found
them do so--to believe that it goes in front of the ship. Probably the
writer of the _Odyssey_ forgot for the moment at which end the rudder
should be. She thought it all over yesterday, and was not going to
think it all over again to-day, so she put the rudder at both ends,
intending to remove it from the one that should prove to be the wrong
one; later on she forgot, or did not think it worth while to trouble
about so small a detail.

So with Calypso's axe (v. 234-36). No one who was used to handling an
axe would describe it so fully and tell us that it "suited Ulysses'
hands," and was furnished with a handle. I have heard say that a
celebrated female authoress was discovered to be a woman by her
having spoken of a two-foot _ruler_ instead of a two-foot _rule_, but
over minuteness of description is deeper and stronger evidence of
unfamiliarity than mistaken nomenclature is.

Such mistakes and self-betrayals as those above pointed out enhance
rather than impair the charm of the _Odyssey_. Granted that the
_Odyssey_ is inferior to the _Iliad_ in strength, robustness, and
wealth of poetic imagery, I cannot think that it is inferior in its
power of fascinating the reader. Indeed, if I had to sacrifice one or
the other, I can hardly doubt that I should let the _Iliad_ go rather
than the _Odyssey_--just as if I had to sacrifice either Mont Blanc or
Monte Rosa, I should sacrifice Mont Blanc, though I know it to be in
many respects the grander mountain of the two.[5]

It should go, however, without saying that much which is charming in
a woman's work would be ridiculous in a man's, and this is eminently
exemplified in the _Odyssey_. If a woman wrote it, it is as lovely as
the frontispiece of this volume, and becomes, if less vigorous, yet
assuredly more wonderful than the _Iliad_; if, on the other hand, it
is by a man, the half Bayeux tapestry, half Botticelli's Venus rising
from the sea, or Primavera, feeling with which it impresses us gives
place to astonishment how any man could have written it. What is a
right manner for a woman is a wrong one for a man, and _vice versa_.
Jane Austen's young men, for example, are seldom very interesting, but
it is only those who are blind to the exquisite truth and delicacy of
Jane Austen's work who will feel any wish to complain of her for not
understanding young men as well as she did young women.

The writer of a _Times_ leading article (Feb. 4th, 1897) says:

The sex difference is the profoundest and most far-reaching that exists
among human beings.... Women may or may not be the equals of men in
intelligence;... but women in the mass will act after the manner of
women, which is not and never can be the manner of men.

And as they will act, so will they write. This, however, does not make
their work any the less charming when it is good of its kind; on the
contrary, it makes it more so.

Dismissing, therefore, the difficulty of supposing that any woman could
write so wonderful a poem as the _Odyssey_, is there any _à priori_
obstacle to our thinking that such a woman may have existed, say, B.C.
1000? I know of none. Greek literature does not begin to dawn upon us
till about 600 B.C. Earlier than this date we have hardly anything
except the _Iliad_, _Odyssey_, and that charming writer Hesiod. When,
however, we come to the earliest historic literature we find that
famous poetesses abounded.

Those who turn to the article "Sappho" in Smith's _Dictionary of
Classical Biography_ will find Gorgo and Andromeda mentioned as her
rivals. Among her fellows were Anactoria of Miletus, Gongyle of
Colophon, Eunica of Salamis, Gyrinna, Atthis, and Mnasidica, "Those,"
says the writer, "who attained the highest celebrity for their works
were Damophylia the Pamphylian, and Erinna of Telos." This last-named
poetess wrote a long poem upon the distaff, which was considered equal
to Homer himself--the _Odyssey_ being probably intended.

Again, there was Baucis, who wrote Erinna's Epitaph. Turning to
Müller's work upon the Dorians, I find reference made to the amatory
poetesses of Lesbos. He tells us also of Corinna, who is said to have
competed successfully with Pindar, and Myrto, who certainly competed
with him, but with what success we know not. Again, there was Diotima
the Arcadian; and looking through Bergk's _Poetœ Lyrici Grœci_ I find
other names of women, fragments of whose works have readied us through
quotation by extant writers. Among the Hebrews there were Miriam,
Deborah, and Hannah, all of them believed to be centuries older than
the _Odyssey_.

If, then, poetesses were as abundant as we know them to have been in
the earliest known ages of Greek literature over a wide area in Greece,
Asia Minor, and the islands of the Ægæan, there is no ground for
refusing to admit the possibility that a Greek poetess lived in Sicily
B.C. 1000, especially when we know from Thucydides that the particular
part of Sicily where I suppose her to have lived was colonised from
the North West corner of Asia Minor centuries before the close of
the Homeric age. The civilisation depicted in the _Odyssey_ is as
advanced as any that is likely to have existed in Mitylene or Melos
600--500 B.C., while in both the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ the status
of women is represented as being much what it is at the present, and as
incomparably higher than it was in the Athenian civilisation with which
we are best acquainted. To imagine a great Greek poetess at Athens in
the age of Pericles would be to violate probability, but I might almost
say in an age when women were as free as they are represented to us in
the _Odyssey_ it is a violation of probability to suppose that there
were no poetesses.

We have no reason to think that men found the use of their tongue
sooner than women did; why then should we suppose that women lagged
behind men when the use of the pen had become familiar? If a woman
could work pictures with her needle as Helen did,[6] and as the wife of
William the Conqueror did in a very similiar civilisation, she could
write stories with her pen if she had a mind to do so.

The fact that the recognised heads of literature in the Homeric age
were the nine Muses--for it is always these or "The Muse" that is
involved, and never Apollo or Minerva--throws back the suggestion
of female authorship to a very remote period, when, to be an author
at all, was to be a poet, for prose writing is a comparatively late
development. Both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ begin with an invocation
addressed to a woman, who, as the head of literature, must be supposed
to have been an authoress, though none of her works have come down to
us. In an age, moreover, when men were chiefly occupied either with
fighting or hunting, the arts of peace, and among them all kinds of
literary accomplishment, would be more naturally left to women. If the
truth were known, we might very likely find that it was man rather than
woman who has been the interloper in the domain of literature. Nausicaa
was more probably a survival than an interloper, but most probably of
all she was in the height of the fashion.

[1] See Introduction to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, by R. C. Jebb,
1888, p. 106.

[2] _Bentley_, Macmillan, 1892, p. 148.

[3] _Homer_, Macmillan, 1878, p. 2.

[4] _Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_, Longman, 1850, Vol. I,
p. 404.

[5] Shakespeare, of course, is the whole chain of the Alps, comprising
both Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

[6] _Iliad_, III. 126.

CHAPTER II.

THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY.

It will help the reader to follow the arguments by which I shall
sustain the female authorship of the _Odyssey_, the fact of its being
written at Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, and its development
in the hands of the writer, if I lay before him an abridgement of
the complete translation that I have made, but not yet published. If
space permitted I should print my translation in full, but this is
obviously impossible, for what I give here is only about a fourth
of the whole poem. I have, therefore, selected those parts that
throw most light upon the subjects above referred to, with just so
much connecting matter as may serve to make the whole readable and
intelligible. I am aware that the beauty of the poem is thus fatally
marred, for it is often the loveliest passages that serve my purpose
least. The abridgement, therefore, that I here give is not to be
regarded otherwise than as the key-sketch which we so often see under
an engraving of a picture that contains many portraits. It is intended
not as a work of art, but as an elucidatory diagram.

As regards its closeness to the text, the references to the poem which
will be found at the beginning of each paragraph will show where the
abridgement has been greatest, and will also enable the reader to
verify the fidelity of the rendering either with the Greek or with
Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation. I affirm with confidence that
if the reader is good enough to thus verify any passages that may
strike him as impossibly modern, he will find that I have adhered as
severely to the intention of the original as it was possible for me to
do while telling the story in my own words and abridging it.

One of my critics, a very friendly one, has told me that I have
"distorted the simplicity of the _Odyssey_ in order to put it in a
ludicrous light." I do not think this. I have revealed, but I have
not distorted. I should be shocked to believe for one moment that I
had done so. True, I have nothing extenuated, but neither have I set
down aught in malice. Where the writer is trying to make us believe
impossibilities, I have shown that she is doing so, and have also
shown why she wanted us to believe them; but until a single passage
is pointed out to me in which I have altered the intention of the
original, I shall continue to hold that the conception of the poem
which I lay before the reader in the following pages is a juster one
than any that, so far as I know, has been made public hitherto; and,
moreover, that it makes both the work and the writer a hundred times
more interesting than any other conception can do.

I preface my abridgement with a plan of Ulysses' house, so far as I
have been able to make it out from the poem. The reader will find that
he understands the story much better if he will study the plan of the
house here given with some attention.

I have read what Prof. Jebb has written on this subject,[1] as also
Mr. Andrew Lang's Note 18 at the end of Messrs. Butcher and Lang's
translation of the _Odyssey_. I have also read Mr. Arthur Platt's
article on the slaying of the suitors,[2] and find myself in far closer
agreement with Mr. Lang than with either of the other writers whom I
have named. The only points on which I differ from Mr. Lang are in
respect of the inner court, which he sees as a roofed hall, but which
I hold to have been open to the sky, except the covered cloister or
μέγαρα σκιόεντα, an arrangement which is still very common in Sicilian
houses, especially at Trapani and Palermo. I also differ from him in so
far as I see no reason to think that the "stone pavement" was raised,
and as believing the ὀρσοθύρα to have been at the top of Telemachus's
tower, and called "in the wall" because the tower abutted on the wall.
These are details: substantially my view of the action and scene during
the killing of the suitors agrees with Mr. Lang's. I will not give the
reasons which compel me to differ from Prof. Jebb and Mr. Platt, but
will leave my plan of the house and the abridged translation to the
judgement of the reader.

* * * * *

_A_ was the body of the house, containing the women's apartments and
other rooms. It had an upper story, in which was Penelope's room
overlooking the court where the suitors passed the greater part of
their time.

It also contained the store-room, which seems to have been placed at
the far end of the house, perhaps in a basement. The store-room could
be reached by a passage from a doorway _A'_, and also by back-passages
from a side-entrance _A"_, which I suppose to have been the back door
of the house. The women's apartments opened on to the passage leading
from _A'_ to the store-room.

_B_ and _B'_ were the Megaron or Megara, that is to say inner court,
of which _B'_ was a covered cloister with a roof supported by
bearing-posts with cross-beams and rafters. The open part of the court
had no flooring but the natural soil. Animals seem to have been flayed
and dressed here, for Medon, who was certainly in the inner court while
the suitors were being killed, concealed himself under a freshly-flayed
ox (or heifer's) hide (xxii. 363).

_B'_ was called the μέγαρα σκιόεντα or "shaded" part of the court, to
distinguish it from that which was open to the sun. The end nearest the
house was paved with stone, while that nearest the outer court (and
probably the other two sides) were floored with ash. The part of the
cloister that was paved with stone does not appear to have been raised
above the level of the rest; at one end of the stone pavement there was
a door _a_, opening on to a narrow passage; this door, though mentioned
immediately after the ὀρσοθύρα or trap door (xxii. 126), which we shall
come to presently, has no connection with it. About the middle of the
pavement, during the trial of the axes, there was a seat _b_, from
which Ulysses shot through the axes, and from which he sprang when he
began to shoot the suitors; against one of the bearing-posts that
supported the roof of the cloister, there was _c_, a spear-stand.

[Illustration: The House of Ulysses.]

All the four sides of the cloisters were filled with small tables at
which the suitors dined. A man could hold one of these tables before
him as a shield (xxii. 74, 75).

In the cloisters there were also

_d_, an open hearth or fire-place in the wall at right angles to the
one which abutted on the house. So, at least, I read τοίχου τοῦ ἑτέρου
(xxiii. 90).

_e_, the table at which the wine was mixed in the mixing-bowl--as well,
of course, as the other tables above mentioned.

_f_, a door leading into _g_, the tower in which Telemachus used to
sleep [translating ἄγχι παρ' ὀρσοθύρην (xxii. 333) not "near the
ὀρσοθύρα," but "near towards the ὀρσοθύρα"].

At the top of this tower there was a trap-door _g'_ (ὀρσοθύρα), through
which it was possible to get out on to the roof of the tower and raise
an alarm, but which afforded neither ingress nor egress.

_C_ was the outer court or αὐλή, approached by _C'_, the main entrance,
or πρῶται θύραι, a covered gateway with a room over it. This covered
gateway was the αἰθούση ἐρίδουπος, or reverberating portico which we
meet with in other Odyssean houses, and are so familiar with in Italian
and Sicilian houses at the present day. It was surrounded by _C"_,
covered sheds or barns in which carts, farm implements, and probably
some farm produce would be stored. It contained

_h_, the prodomus, or vestibule in front of the inner court, into which
the visitor would pass through

_i_, the πρόθυρον or inner gateway (the word, πρόθυρον, however, is
used also for the outer gateway), and

_k_, the tholus or vaulted room, about the exact position of which all
we know is that it is described in xxii. 459, 460, as close up against
the wall of the outer court. I suspect, but cannot prove it, that this
was the room in which Ulysses built his bed (xxiii. 181-204).

_D_ was the τυκτὸν δάπεδον or level ground in front of Ulysses' house,
on which the suitors amused themselves playing at quoits and aiming a
spear at a mark (iv. 625, 627).

The only part of the foregoing plan and explanatory notes that forces
the text is in respect of the main gateway, which I place too far from
the mouth of the λαύρα for one man to be able to keep out all who would
bring help to the suitors; but considering how much other impossibility
we have to accept, I think this may be allowed to go with the rest.
A young woman, such as I suppose the writer of the _Odyssey_ to have
been, would not stick at such a trifle as shifting the gates a little
nearer the λαύρα if it suited her purpose.

In passing, I may say that Agamemnon appears to have been killed (_Od_.
iv. 530, 531) in much such a cloistered court as above supposed for the
house of Ulysses. A banquet seems to have been prepared in the cloister
on one side the court, while men were ambuscaded in the one on the
opposite side.

Lastly, for what it may be worth. I would remind the reader that there
is not a hint of windows in the part of Ulysses' house frequented by
the suitors.

THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY.

BOOK I.

_The council of the gods--Telemachus and the suitors in
the house of Ulysses_.

Tell me, oh Muse, of that ingenious hero who met with
many adventures while trying to bring his men home after
the Sack of Troy. He failed in this, for the men perished
through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the
Sun, and he himself, though he was longing to get back
to his wife, was now languishing in a lonely island, the
abode of the nymph Calypso. Calypso wanted him to marry
her, and kept him with her for many years, till at last
all the gods took pity upon him except Neptune, whose son
Polyphemus he had blinded.

Now it so fell out that Neptune had gone to pay a visit 21
to the Ethiopians, who lie in two halves, one half
looking on to the Atlantic and the other on to the Indian
Ocean. The other gods, therefore, held a council, and
Jove made them a speech about the folly of Ægisthus in 35
wooing Clytemnestra and murdering Agamemnon: finally,
yielding to Minerva, he consented that Ulysses should
return to Ithaca.

"In that case," said Minerva, "we should send Mercury to 80
Calypso to tell her what, we have settled. I will also go
to Ithaca and embolden Ulysses' son Telemachus to dismiss
the suitors of his mother Penelope, who are ruining him
by their extravagance. Furthermore, I will send him to
Sparta and Pylos to seek news of his father, for this
will get him a good name."

The goddess then winged her way to the gates of Ulysses' 96
house, disguised as an old family friend, and found
the suitors playing draughts in front of the house
and lording it in great style. Telemachus, seeing her
standing at the gate, went up to her, led her within,
placed her spear in the spear-stand against a strong
bearing-post, brought her a seat, and set refreshments
before her.

Meanwhile the suitors came trooping into the sheltered 114
cloisters that ran round the inner court; here, according
to their wont, they feasted: and when they had done
eating they compelled Phemius, a famous bard, to sing
to them. On this Telemachus began talking quietly to
Minerva: he told her how his father's return seemed now
quite hopeless, and concluded by asking her name and
country.

Minerva said she was Mentes, chief of the Taphians, and 178
was on her way to Temesa[3] with a cargo of iron, which
she should exchange for copper. She told Telemachus
that her ship was lying outside the town, under Mt. 186
Neritum,[4] in the harbour that was called Rheithron.[5]
"Go," she added, "and ask old Laertes, who I hear is now 189
living but poorly in the country and never comes into the
town; he will tell you that I am an old friend of your
father's."

She then said, "But who are all these people whom I 224
see behaving so atrociously about your house? What is
it all about? Their conduct is enough to disgust any
right-minded person."

"They are my mother's suitors," answered Telemachus, and 230
come from the neighbouring islands of Dulichium, Same,
and Zacynthus, as well as from Ithaca itself. My mother
does not say she will not marry again and cannot bring
her courtship to an end. So they are ruining me."

Minerva was very indignant, and advised him to fit out 252
a ship and go to Pylos and Sparta, seeking news of his
father. "If," she said, "you hear of his being alive, you
can put up with all this extravagance for yet another
twelve months. If on the other hand you hear of his
death, return at once, send your mother to her father's, 276
and by fair means or foul kill the suitors."

Telemachus thanked her for her advice, promised to take 306
it, and pressed her to prolong her visit. She explained
that she could not possibly do so, and then flew off into
the air, like an eagle.

Phemius was still singing: he had chosen for his subject 325
the disastrous return of the Achæans from Troy. Penelope
could hear him from her room upstairs, and came down into
the presence of the suitors holding a veil before her
face, and waited upon by two of her handmaids, one of
whom stood on either side of her. She stood by one of the
bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloisters,
and bade Phemius change his theme, which she found too
painful as reminding her of her lost husband.

Telemachus reasoned with her, and ended by desiring her 345
to go upstairs again. "Go back," he said, "within the
house and see to your daily duties, your loom, your
distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for speech is
man's matter, and mine above all others, for it is I who
am master here."

On this Penelope went back, with her women, wondering 360
into the house, and as soon as she was gone Telemachus
challenged the suitors to meet him next day in full
assembly, that he might formally and publicly warn them
to leave his house.

Antinous and Eurymachus, their two leaders, both 383
rejoined; but presently night fell, and the whole body
of suitors left the house for their own several abodes.
When they were gone, his old nurse Euryclea conducted
Telemachus by torch light to his bedroom, in a lofty
tower, which overlooked the outer courtyard and could be
seen from far and near.

Euryclea had been bought by Laertes when she was quite 430
young; he had given the worth of twenty oxen for her, and
she was made as much of in the house as his own wife was,
but he did not take her to his bed, for he respected his
wife's displeasure. The good old woman showed Telemachus
to his room, and waited while he undressed. She took his
shirt from him, folded it carefully up, and hung it on a
peg by his bed side. This done, she left him to dream all
night of his intended voyage.

BOOK II.

_Assembly of the people of Ithaca--Telemachus starts for
Pylos_.

Next morning, as soon as he was up and dressed,
Telemachus sent the criers round the town to call the
people in assembly. When they came together he told them
of his misfortune in the death of his father, and of the
still greater one that the suitors were making havoc of
his estate. "If anybody," he concluded, "is to eat me out 46
of house and home I had rather you did it yourselves; for
you are men of substance, so that if I sued you household
by household I should recover from yon; whereas there is
nothing to be got by suing a number of young men who have
no means of their own." 85

To this Antinous rejoined that it was Penelope's own
fault. She had been encouraging the suitors all the time
by sending flattering messages to every single one of
them. He explained how for nearly four years she had
tricked them about the web, which she said was to be a
pall for Laertes. "The answer, therefore," said he, "that
we make you is this: 'Send your mother away, and let her
marry the man of her own and of her father's choice;' for
we shall not go till she has married some one or other of
us."

Telemachus answered that he could not force his mother to 129
leave against her will. If he did so he should have to
refund to his grandfather Icarius the dowry that Ulysses
had received on marrying Penelope, and this would bear
hardly on him. Besides it would not be a creditable thing
to do.

On this Jove sent two eagles from the top of a 146
mountain,[6] who flew and flew in their own lordly flight
till they reached the assembly, over which they screamed
and fought, glaring death into the faces of those who
were below. The people wondered what it might all mean,
till the old Soothsayer Halitherses told them that it
foreshadowed the immediate return of Ulysses to take his
revenge upon the suitors.

Eurymachus made him an angry answer. "As long," he 177
concluded, "as Penelope delays her choice, we can marry
no one else, and shall continue to waste Telemachus's
estate."

Telemachus replied that there was nothing more to be 208
said, and asked the suitors to let him have a ship with a
crew of twenty men, that he might follow the advice given
him by Minerva.

Mentor now upbraided his countrymen for standing idly 224
by when they could easily coerce the suitors into good
behaviour, and after a few insolent words from Leocritus
the meeting dispersed. The suitors then returned to the
house of Ulysses.

But Telemachus went away all alone by the sea side to 260
pray. He washed his hands in the grey waves, and implored
Minerva to assist him; whereon the goddess came up to
him in the form of Mentor. She discoursed to him about
his conduct generally, and wound up by saying that she
would not only find him a ship, but would come with
him herself. He was therefore to go home and get the
necessary provisions ready.

He did as she directed him and went home, where, after 296
an angry scene with the suitors, in which he again
published his intention of going on his voyage, he went
down into the store room and told Euryclea to get the
provisions ready; at the same time he made her take a
solemn oath of secrecy for ten or twelve days, so as not
to alarm Penelope. Meanwhile Minerva, still disguised as
Mentor, borrowed a ship from a neighbour. Noëmon, and at
nightfall, after the suitors had left as usual, she and
Telemachus with his crew of twenty volunteers got the
provisions on board and set sail, with a fair wind that
whistled over the waters.

BOOK III.

_Telemachus at the house of Nestor_.

They reached Pylos on the following morning, and found
Nestor, his sons, and all the Pylians celebrating
the feast of Neptune. They were cordially received,
especially by Nestor's son Pisistratus, and were at once
invited to join the festivities. After dinner Nestor
asked them who they were, and Telemachus, emboldened
by Minerva, explained that they came from Ithaca under
Neritum,[7] and that he was seeking news of the death of
his father Ulysses.

When he heard this, Nestor told him all about his own 102
adventures on his way home from Troy, but could give him
no news of Ulysses. He touched, however, on the murder
of Agamemnon by Ægisthus, and the revenge taken by
Orestes.[8]

Telemachus said he wished he might be able to take a like 201
revenge on the suitors of his mother, who were ruining
him; "but this," he exclaimed, "could not happen, not
even if the gods wished it. It is too much even to think
of."

Minerva reproved him sharply. "The hand of heaven," she 229
said, "can reach far when it has a mind to save a man."
Telemachus then changed the conversation, and asked
Nestor how Ægisthus managed to kill Agamemnon, who was so
much the better man of the two. What was Menelaus doing?

"Menelaus," answered Nestor, "had not yet returned 253
from his long wanderings. As for Clytemnestra, she was 266
naturally of a good disposition, but was beguiled by
Ægisthus, who reigned seven years in Mycene after he had
killed Agamemnon. In the eighth year, however, Orestes
came from Athens and killed him, and on the very day when 311
Orestes was celebrating the funeral feast of Ægisthus and
Clytemnestra, Menelaus returned. Go then to Sparta, and
see if he can tell you anything."

By this time the sun had set, and Minerva proposed 329
that she and Telemachus should return to their ship,
but Nestor would not hear of their doing so. Minerva
therefore consented that Telemachus should stay on shore,
and explained that she could not remain with him inasmuch
as she must start on the following morning for the
Cauconians, to recover a large debt that had been long
owing to her.

Having said this, to the astonishment of all present she 371
flew away in the form of an eagle. Whereon Nestor grasped
Telemachus's hand and said he could see that he must be a
very important person. He also at once vowed to gild the
horns of a heifer and sacrifice her to the goddess. He
then took Telemachus home with him and lodged him in his
own house.

Next day Nestor fulfilled his vow; the heifer was brought 404
in from the plains, her horns were gilded, and Nestor's
wife Eurydice and her daughters shouted with delight at
seeing her killed.

After the banquet that ensued Nestor sent Telemachus 477
and his son Pisistratus off in a chariot and pair for
Lacedæmon, which they reached on the following morning,
after passing a night in the house of Diocles at Pheræ.

BOOK IV.

_Telemachus at the house of Menelaus--The suitors resolve
to lie in wait for him as he returns, and murder him_.

When the two young men reached Lacedæmon they drove
straight to Menelaus's house [and found him celebrating
the double marriage of his daughter Hermione and his son
Megapenthes.][9]

Menelaus (after a little demur on the part of his _major 22
domo_ Eteoneus, for which he was severely reprimanded by
his master) entertained his guests very hospitably, and
overhearing Telemachus call his friend's attention to the
splendour of the house, he explained to them how much
toil and sorrow he had endured, especially through the
murder of his brother Agamemnon, the plundering of his
house by Paris when he carried off Helen, and the death
of so many of his brave comrades at Troy. "There is one
man, however," he added, "of whom I cannot even think
without loathing both food and sleep. I mean Ulysses."

When Telemachus heard his father thus mentioned he could 112
not restrain his tears, and while Menelaus was in doubt
what to say or not say, Helen came down (dinner being now
half through) with her three attendant maidens, Adraste,
Alcippe, and Phylo, who set a seat for her and brought
her her famous work box which ran on wheels, that she
might begin to spin.

"And who pray," said she to her husband, "may these two 138
gentlemen be who are honouring us with their presence?
Shall I guess right or wrong, but I really must say what
I think. I never saw such a likeness--neither in man
nor woman. This young man can only be Telemachus, whom
Ulysses left behind him a baby in arms when he set out
for Troy."

"I too," answered Menelaus, "have observed the likeness. 147
It is unmistakeable."

On this Pisistratus explained that they were quite right, 155
whereon Menelaus told him all he had meant doing for
Ulysses, and this was so affecting that all the four who
were at table burst into tears. After a little while
Pisistratus complimented Menelaus on his great sagacity
(of which indeed his father Nestor had often told him),
and said that he did not like weeping when he was getting
his dinner; he therefore proposed that the remainder of
their lamentation should be deferred until next morning.
Menelaus assented to this, and dinner was allowed to 220
proceed. Helen mixed some Nepenthe with the wine, and
cheerfulness was thus restored.

Helen then told how she had met Ulysses when he entered 235
Troy as a spy, and explained that by that time she
was already anxious to return home, and was lamenting
the cruel calamity which Venus had inflicted on her 261
in separating her from her little girl and from her
husband, who was really not deficient either in person or
understanding.

Menelaus capped her story with an account of the 265
adventures of the Achæans inside the wooden horse. "Do
you not remember," said he, "how you walked all round it
when we were inside, and patted it? You had Deiphobus
with you, and you kept on calling out our names and 279
mimicking our wives, till Minerva came and took you away.
It was Ulysses' presence of mind that then saved us."

When he had told this, Telemachus said it was time to go 290
to rest, so he and Pisistratus were shown to their room
in the vestibule, while Menelaus and Helen retired to the
interior of the house.[10]

When morning came Telemachus told Menelaus about the 306
suitors, and asked for any information he could give him
concerning the death of his father. Menelaus was greatly
shocked, but could only tell him what he had heard from
Proteus. He said that as he was coming from Egypt he had
been detained some weeks through, the displeasure of the
gods, in the island of Pharos, where he and his men would
have been starved but for the assistance given him by a
goddess Idothea, daughter to Proteus, who taught him how
to ensnare her father, and compel him to say why heaven
was detaining him.

"Idothea," said Menelaus, "disguised me and my three 410
chosen comrades as seals; to this end she had brought
four fresh-flayed seal-skins, under which she hid us.
The strong smell of these skins was most distressing to
us--Who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could
help it? but Idothea put some ambrosia under each man's 443
nostrils, and this afforded us great relief. Other seals
(Halsoydne's chickens as they call them) now kept coming
up by hundreds, and lay down to bask upon the beach.

"Towards noon Proteus himself came up. First he counted 450
all his seals to see that he had the right number, and he
counted us in with the others; when he had so done he lay
down in the midst of them, as a shepherd with his sheep,
and as soon as he was asleep we pounced upon him and
gripped him tight; at one moment he became a lion, the
next he was running water, and then again he was a tree;
but we never loosed hold, and in the end he grew weary,
and told us what we would know.

"He told me also of the fate of Ajax, son of Oïleus, and 499
of my brother Agamemnon. Lastly he told me about Ulysses,
who he said was in the island of the nymph Calypso,
unable to get away inasmuch as he had neither ship nor
crew.

"Then he disappeared under the sea, and I, after 570
appeasing heaven's anger as he had instructed me,
returned quickly and safely to my own country."

Having finished his story Menelaus pressed Telemachus 587
to remain with him some ten or twelve days longer, and
promised to give him a chariot and a pair of horses
as a keepsake, but Telemachus said that he could not
stay. "I could listen to you," said he, "for a whole
twelve months, and never once think about my home and
my parents; but my men, whom I have left at Pylos, are
already impatient for me to return. As for any present
you may make me, let it be a piece of plate. I cannot
take horses to Ithaca; it contains no plains nor meadow
lands, and is more fit for breeding goats than horses.
None of our islands are suited for chariot races, and
Ithaca least among them all."

Menelaus smiled, and said he could see that Telemachus 600
came of good family. He had a piece of plate, of very
great value, which was just the thing, and Telemachus
should have it.

[Guests now kept coming to the king's house, bringing 621
both wine and sheep, and their wives had put them up
a provision of bread. Thus, then, did they set about
cooking their dinner in the courts.][11]

Meanwhile, the suitors in Ithaca were playing at quoits, 625
aiming spears at a mark, and behaving with all their
old insolence on the level ground in front of Ulysses'
house. While they were thus engaged Noëmon came up and
asked Antinous if he could say when Telemachus was likely
to be back from Pylos, for he wanted his ship. On this
everything came out, and the suitors, who had no idea
that Telemachus had really gone (for they thought he
was only away on one of his farms in Ithaca), were very
angry. They therefore determined to lie in wait for him
on his return, and made ready to start.

Medon, a servant, overhead their plot, and told all to 675
Penelope, who, like the suitors, learned for the first
time that her son had left home and gone to Pylos. She
bitterly upbraided her women for not having given her
a call out of her bed when Telemachus was leaving, for
she said she was sure they knew all about it. Presently,
however, on being calmed by Euryclea, she went upstairs
and offered sacrifice to Minerva. After a time she fell
into a deep slumber, during which she was comforted by a
vision of her sister Ipthime, which Minerva had sent to
her bedside.

When night fell the suitors set sail, intending to 842
way-lay Telemachus in the Strait between Same and Ithaca.

BOOK V.

_Ulysses in the island of Calypso--He leaves the island
on a raft, and after great suffering reaches the land of
the Phæacians_.

The gods now held a second council, at which Minerva and 28
Jove both spoke.

When Jove had done speaking he sent Mercury to Calypso
to tell that Ulysses was to return home, reaching the
land of the Phæacians in twenty days. The Phæacians would
load him with presents and send him on to Ithaca.

Mercury, therefore, flew over the sea like a cormorant 43
that fishes every hole and corner of the deep. In the
course of time he reached Calypso's cave and told his
story. Calypso was very angry, but seeing there was no
help for it promised obedience. As soon as Mercury was
gone she went to look for Ulysses, whom she found weeping
as usual and looking out ever sadly upon the sea; she
told him to build himself a raft and sail home upon
it, but Ulysses was deeply suspicious and would not be
reassured till she had sworn a very solemn oath that she
meant him no harm, and was advising him in all good faith.

The pair then returned to Calypso's cave. "I cannot 192
understand," she said, "why you will not stay quietly
here with me, instead of all the time thinking about
this wife of yours. I cannot believe that I am any worse
looking than she is. If you only knew how much hardship 206
you will have to undergo before you get back, you would
stay where you are and let me make you immortal."

"Do not be angry with me," answered Ulysses, "you are 215
infinitely better looking than Penelope. You are a
goddess, and she is but a mortal woman. There can be no
comparison. Nevertheless, come what may, I have a craving
to get back to my own home."

The next four days were spent in making the raft. Calypso 228
lent him her axe and auger and shewed him where the trees
grew which would be driest and whose timber would be the 240
best seasoned, and Ulysses cut them down. He made the
raft about as broad in the beam as people generally make
a good big ship, and he gave it a rudder--that he might 255
be able to steer it.

Calypso then washed him, gave him clean clothes, and he 264
set out, steering his ship skilfully by means of the 270
rudder. He steered towards the Great Bear, which is also
called the Wain, keeping it on his left hand, for so
Calypso had advised him.

All went well with him for seventeen days, and on the 278
eighteenth he caught sight of the faint outlines of the
Phæacian coast lying long and low upon the horizon.

Here, however, Neptune, who was on his way home from the 282
Ethiopians, caught sight of him and saw the march that
the other gods had stolen upon him during his absence.
He therefore stirred the sea round with his trident, and
raised a frightful hurricane, so that Ulysses could see
nothing more, everything being dark as night; presently 294
he was washed overboard, but managed to regain his raft.

He was giving himself up for lost when Ino, also named 333
Leucothea, took pity on him and flew on to his raft like
a sea gull; she reassured him and gave him her veil, at
the same time telling him to throw it back into the sea
as soon as he reached land, and to turn his face away
from the sea as he did so.

The storm still raged, and the raft went to pieces under 351
its fury, whereon Ulysses bound Ino's veil under his arms
and began to swim. Neptune on seeing this was satisfied
and went away.

As soon as he was gone Minerva calmed all the winds 369
except the North, which blew strong for two days and two
nights, so that Ulysses was carried to the South again.
On the morning of the third day he saw land quite close,
but was nearly dashed to pieces against the rocks on
trying to leave the water. At last he found the mouth of 451
a river, who, in answer to Ulysses's prayer, stayed his
flow, so that Ulysses was able to swim inland and get on
shore.

Nearly dead with exhaustion and in great doubt what to 456
do, he first threw Ino's veil into the salt waters of
the river, and then took shelter on the rising ground,
inland. Here he covered himself with a thick bed of
leaves and fell fast asleep.

BOOK VI.

_The meeting between Ulysses and Nausicaa_.

While Ulysses was thus slumbering, Minerva went to the
land of the Phæacians, on which Ulysses had been cast.

Now the Phæacians used to live in Hypereia near the 4
lawless Cyclopes, who were stronger than they were and
plundered them; so their king Nausithous removed them to
Scheria,[12] where they were secure. Nausithous was now
dead, and his son Alcinous was reigning.

Alcinous had an only daughter, Nausicaa, who was in her 15
bedroom fast asleep. Minerva went to her bedside and
appeared to her in a dream, having assumed the form of
one Captain Dymas's daughter, who was a bosom friend of
Nausicaa's. She reminded her of her approaching marriage
(for which, however, the bridegroom had not yet been
decided upon), and upbraided her for not making due
preparation by the washing of her own and of the family
linen. She proposed, therefore, that on the following
morning Nausicaa should take all the unwashed clothes to
the washing cisterns, and said that she would come and
help her: the cisterns being some distance from the town,
she advised Nausicaa to ask her father to let her have a
waggon and mules.

Nausicaa, on waking, told her father and mother about 50
her dream, "Papa, dear,"[13] said she, "could you manage
to let me have a good big waggon? I want to take all our
dirty clothes to the river and wash them. You are the
chief man here, so it is only proper that you should have 60
a clean shirt when you attend meetings of the council.
Moreover you have five sons, two of them married, while
the other three are good looking young bachelors; you
know they always like to have clean linen when they go
out to a dance."

Her father promised her all she wanted. The waggon 71
was made ready, her mother put her up a basket of
provisions, and Nausicaa drove her maids to the bank of
the river, where were the cisterns, through which there
flowed enough clear water to wash clothes however dirty
they might be. They washed their clothes in the pits
by treading upon them, laid them out to dry upon the
sea-beach, had their dinner as the clothes were drying,
and then began to play at ball while Nausicaa sang to
them.

In the course of time, when they were thinking about 110
starting home, Minerva woke Ulysses, who was in the wood
just above them. He sat up, heard the voices and laughter
of the women, and wondered where he was.

He resolved on going to see, but remembering that he had 127
no clothes on, he held a bough of olive before him, and
then, all grim, naked, and unkempt as he was, he came
out and drew near to the women, who all of them ran away
along the beach and the points that jutted into the sea.
Nausicaa, however, stood firm, and Ulysses set himself
to consider whether he should go boldly up to her and
embrace her knees, or speak to her from a respectful
distance.

On the whole he concluded that this would be the most 145
prudent course; and having adopted it, he began by asking
Nausicaa to inform him whether she was a goddess or no.
If she was a goddess, it was obvious from her beauty that
she could only be Diana. If on the other hand she was
a mortal, how happy would he be whose proposals in the
way of settlements had seemed most advantageous, and who
should take her to his own home. Finally he asked her
to be kind enough to give him any old wrapper which she
might have brought with her to wrap the clothes in, and
to show him the way to the town.

Nausicaa replied that he seemed really to be a very 186
sensible person, but that people must put up with their
luck whatever it might happen to be. She then explained
that he had come to the land of the Phæacians, and
promised to conduct him to their city.

Having so said, she told her maids not to be such 198
cowards. "The man," she said, "is quite harmless; we live
away from all neighbours on a land's end, with the sea
roaring on either side of us, and no one can hurt us. See
to this poor fellow, therefore, and give him something to
eat."

When they heard this the maids came back and gave 211
Ulysses a shirt and cloak; they also gave him a bottle
of oil and told him to go and wash in the river, but he
said, "I will not wash myself while you keep standing
there. I cannot bring myself to strip before a number of
good-looking young women." So they went and told their
mistress.

When Ulysses had done washing, Minerva made him look much 224
grander and more imposing, and gave him a thick head of
hair which flowed down in hyacinthine curls about his
shoulders, Nausicaa was very much struck with the change
in his appearance. "At first," she said, "I thought him
quite plain, but now he is of godlike beauty. I wish I
might have such a man as that for my husband, if he would
only stay here. But never mind this; girls, give him
something to eat and drink."

The maids then set meat and drink before Ulysses, who was 247
ravenously hungry. While he was eating, Nausicaa got the
clothes folded up and put on to the cart; after which
she gave him his instructions. "Follow after the cart,"
she said, "along with the maids, till you get near the
houses. As for the town, you will find it lying between
two good harbours, and approached by a narrow neck of 263
land, on either side of which you will see the ships
drawn up--for every man has a place where he can let his
boat lie. You will also see the walls, and the temple of
Neptune standing in the middle of the paved market-place,
with the ship-brokers' shops all round it.

"When you get near the town drop behind, for the people 273
here are very ill-natured, and they would talk about me.
They would say, 'Who is this fine looking stranger that
is going about with Nausicaa? Where did she find him? I
suppose she is going to marry him. Is he a sailor whom
she has picked up from some foreign vessel, or has a god
come down from heaven in answer to her prayers and he is
going to marry her? It would be a good thing if she would
go and find a husband somewhere else, for she will have
nothing to say to any of the many excellent Phæacians who
are in love with her.' This is what people would say,
and I could not blame them, for I should be scandalised
myself if I saw any girl going about with a stranger,
while her father and mother were yet alive, without being
married to him in the face of all the world.

"Do then as I say. When you come to the grove of Minerva 289
a little outside the town, wait till you think I and the
maids must have got home. Then come after us, ask which
is Alcinous's house, and when you reach it go straight
through the outer and inner courts till you come to my
mother. You will see her sitting with her back to a
bearing-post, and spinning her purple yarn by the fire.
My father will be sitting close by her; never mind about
him, but go and embrace my mother's knees for if she
looks favourably on your suit, you will probably get what
you want."

Nausicaa then drove on, and as the sun was about setting 316
they came to the grove of Minerva, where Ulysses sat down
and waited. He prayed Minerva to assist him, and she
heard his prayer, but she would not manifest herself to
him, for she did not want to offend her uncle Neptune.

BOOK VII.

_The splendours of the house of King Alcinous--Queen
Arete wants to know where Ulysses got his shirt and
cloak, for she knows them as her own work--Ulysses
explains_.

When Nausicaa reached home her brothers attended to the
waggon and mules, and her waiting-woman Eurymedusa lit
the fire and brought her supper for her into her own room.

Presently Ulysses considered it safe to come on, and 14
entered the town enveloped in a thick mist which Minerva
shed round him for his protection from any rudeness that
the Phæacians might offer him. She also met him outside
the town disguised as a little girl carrying a pitcher.

Ulysses saw her in spite of the mist, and asked her 21
to show him the way to the house of Alcinous; this,
she said, she could easily do, and when they reached
the house she told Ulysses all about the king's family
history, and advised him how he should behave himself.

"Be bold," she said; "boldness always tells, no matter 50
where a man comes from. First find the mistress of the
house. She is of the same family as her husband, and
her descent is in this wise. Eurymedon was king of the
giants, but he and his people were overthrown, and he
lost his own life. His youngest daughter was Peribœa,
a woman of surpassing beauty, who gave birth by Neptune
to Nausithous, king of the Phæacians. He had two sons, 62
Rhexenor and Alcinous; Rhexenor died young, leaving an
only daughter, Arete, whom her uncle Alcinous married,
and whom he honours as no other woman in the whole world
is honoured by her husband. All her family and all her
neighbours adore her as a friend and peacemaker, for she
is a thoroughly good woman. If you can gain her good
offices all will go well with you."

Minerva then left him and went to Marathon and Athens, 78
where she visited the house of Erechtheus, but Ulysses
went on to the house of Alcinous, and he pondered much
as he paused awhile before he reached the threshold of
bronze, for the splendour of the palace was like that of
the sun and moon. The walls on either side were of bronze
from end to end, and the cornice was of blue enamel. The
doors were of gold and hung on pillars of silver that
rose from a floor of bronze, while the lintel was of
silver and the hook of the door was of gold.

On either side there were gold and silver mastiffs which 91
Vulcan with his consummate skill had fashioned expressly
to keep watch over the palace of King Alcinous, so they
were immortal and could never grow old. Seats were ranged
here and there all along the wall, from one end to the
other, with coverings of fine woven work, which the women
of the house had made. Here the chief persons of the
Phæacians used to sit and eat and drink, for there was
abundance at all seasons; and there were golden figures
of young men with lighted torches in their hands, raised
on pedestals to give light to them that sat at meat.

There are fifty women servants in the house, some of 103
whom are always grinding rich yellow grain at the mill,
while others work at the loom and sit and spin, and their
shuttles go backwards and forwards like the fluttering of
aspen leaves, while the linen is so closely woven that it
will turn oil. As the Phæacians are the best sailors in
the world, so their women excel all others in weaving,
for Minerva has taught them all manner of useful arts,
and they are very intelligent.

Outside the gate of the outer court there is a large
garden[14] of about four acres, with a wall all round
it. It is full of beautiful trees--pears, pomegranates,
and the most delicious apples. There are luscious figs
also, and olives in full growth. The fruits never rot
nor fail all the year round, neither winter nor summer,
for the air is so soft that a new crop ripens before the
old has dropped. Pear grows on pear, apple on apple, and
fig on fig, and so also with the grapes, for there is
an excellent vineyard; on the level ground of a part of
this, the grapes are being made into raisins; on another
part they are being gathered; some are being trodden
in the wine-tubs; others, further on, have shed their
blossom and are beginning to show fruit; others, again,
are just changing colour. In the furthest part of the
ground there are beautifully arranged beds of flowers
that are in bloom all the year round. Two streams go
through it, the one turned in ducts throughout the whole
garden, while the other is carried under the ground of
the outer court to the house itself, and the townspeople
drew water from it. Such, then, were the splendours with
which heaven had endowed the house of King Alcinous.

So here Ulysses stood for a while and looked about 133
him, but when he had looked long enough he crossed the
threshold and went within the precincts of the house.
He passed through the crowd of guests who were nightly
visitors at the table of King Alcinous, and who were
then making their usual drink offering to Mercury before 137
going for the night. He was still shrouded in the mist
of invisibility with which Minerva had invested him,
and going up to Arete he embraced her knees, whereon he
suddenly became visible. Every one was greatly surprised
at seeing a man there, but Ulysses paid no attention to
this, and at once implored the queen's assistance; he
then sat down among the ashes on the hearth.

Alcinous did not know what to do or say, nor yet did any 154
one else till one of the guests Echeneüs told him it was
not creditable to him that a suppliant should be left
thus grovelling among the ashes. Alcinous ought to give
him a seat and set food before him. This was accordingly
done, and after Ulysses had finished eating Alcinous made
a speech, in which he proposed that they should have a
great banquet next day in their guest's honour, and then
provide him an escort to take him to his own home. This
was agreed to, and after a while the other guests went
home to bed.

When they were gone Ulysses was left alone with Alcinous 230
and Arete sitting over the fire, while the servants were
taking the things away after supper. Then Arete said,
"Stranger, before we go any further there is a question I
should like to put to you. Who are you? and who gave you
those clothes?" for she recognised the shirt and cloak
Ulysses was wearing as her own work, and that of her
maids.

Ulysses did not give his name, but told her how he had 240
come from Calypso's island, and been wrecked on the
Phæacian coast. "Next day," he said, "I fell in with your
daughter, who treated me with much greater kindness than
one could have expected from so young a person--for young
people are apt to be thoughtless. It was she who gave me
the clothes."

Alcinous then said he wished the stranger would stay with 308
them for good and all and marry Nausicaa. They would
not, however, press this, and if he insisted on going
they would send him, no matter where. "Even though it be
further than Eubœa, which they say is further off than
any other place, we will send you, and you shall be taken
so easily that you may sleep the whole way if you like." 318

To this Ulysses only replied by praying that the king 329
might be as good as his word. A bed was then made for him
in the gate-house and they all retired for the night.

BOOK VIII.

_The Phæacian games and banquet in honour of Ulysses_.

When morning came Alcinous called an assembly of the
Phæacian, and Minerva went about urging every one to
come and see the wonderful stranger. She also gave
Ulysses a more imposing presence that he might impress
the people favourably. When the Phæacians were assembled
Alcinous said:--

"I do not know who this stranger is, nor where he comes 28
from; but he wants us to send him to his own home, and no
guest of mine was ever yet able to complain that I did
not send him home quickly enough. Let us therefore fit
out a new ship with a crew of fifty-two men, and send
him. The crew shall come to my house and I will find them
in food which they can cook for themselves. The aldermen
and councillors shall be feasted inside the house. I can
take no denial, and we will have Demodocus to sing to us."

The ship and crew were immediately found, and the sailors 46
with all the male part of the population swarmed to the
house of Alcinous till the yards and barns and buildings
were crowded. The king provided them with twelve sheep,
eight pigs and two bullocks, which they killed and cooked.

The leading men of the town went inside the inner 62
courtyard; Pontonous, the _major domo_, conducted the
blind bard Demodocus to a seat which he set near one
of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the
cloisters, hung his lyre on a peg over his head, and
shewed him how to feel for it with his hands. He also set
a table close by him with refreshments on it, to which he
could help himself whenever he liked.

As soon as the guests had done eating Demodocus began 72
to sing the quarrel between Ulysses and Achilles before
Troy, a lay which at the time was famous. This so
affected Ulysses that he kept on weeping as long as the
bard sang, and though he was able to conceal his tears
from the company generally, Alcinous perceived his
distress, and proposed that they should all now adjourn
to the athletic sports--which were to consist mainly of
boxing, wrestling, jumping, and foot racing.

Demodocus, therefore, hung the lyre on its peg and 105
was led out to the place where the sports were to be
held. The whole town flocked to see them. Clytoneüs won
the foot race, Euryalus took the prize for wrestling,
Amphialus was the best jumper, and Alcinous' son Laodamas
the best boxer.

Laodamas and Euryalus then proposed that Ulysses should 131
enter himself for one of the prizes. Ulysses replied
that he was a stranger and a suppliant; moreover, he had
lately gone through great hardships, and would rather be
excused.

Euryalus on this insulted Ulysses, and said that he 138
supposed he was some grasping merchant who thought of
nothing but his freights. "You have none of the look,"
said he, "of an athlete about you."

Ulysses was furious, and told Euryalus that he was a 164
goodlooking young fool. He then took up a disc far
heavier than those which the Phæacians were in the habit
of throwing.[15] The disc made a hurtling sound as it
passed through the air, and easily surpassed any throw
that had been made yet. Thus encouraged he made another
long and very angry speech, in which he said he would
compete with any Phæacian in any contest they chose to
name, except in running, for he was still so much pulled
down that he thought they might beat him here. "Also,"
he said, "I will not compete in anything with Laodamas.
He is my host's son, and it is a most unwise thing for a
guest to challenge any member of his host's family. A man
must be an idiot to think of such a thing."

"Sir," said Alcinous, "I understand that you are 236
displeased at some remarks that have fallen from one of
our athletes, who has thrown doubt upon your prowess in
a way that no gentleman would do. I hear that you have
also given us a general challenge. I should explain that
we are not famous for our skill in boxing or wrestling,
but are singularly fleet runners and bold mariners.
We are also much given to song and dance, and we like
warm baths and frequent changes of linen. So now come
forward some of you who are the nimblest dancers, and
show the stranger how much we surpass other nations in
all graceful accomplishments. Let some one also bring
Demodocus's lyre from my house where he has left it."

The lyre was immediately brought, the dancers began to 256
dance, and Ulysses admired the merry twinkling of their
feet.

While they were dancing Demodocus sang the intrigue 266
between Mars and Venus in the house of Vulcan, and told
how Vulcan took the pair prisoners. All the gods came to
see them; but the goddesses were modest and would not 324
come.

Alcinous then made Halius and Laodamas have a game at 370
ball, after which Ulysses expressed the utmost admiration
of their skill. Charmed with the compliment Ulysses had
paid his sons, the king said that the twelve aldermen
(with himself, which would make thirteen) must at once
give Ulysses a shirt and cloak and a talent of gold, so
that he might eat his supper with a light heart. As for
Euryalus, he must not only make a present, but apologise
as well, for he had been rude.

Euryalus admitted his fault, and gave Ulysses his sword 398
with its scabbard, which was of new ivory. He said
Ulysses would find it worth a great deal of money to him.

Ulysses thanked him, wished him all manner of good 412
fortune, and said he hoped Euryalus would not feel the
want of the sword which he had just given him along with
his apology.

Night was now falling, they therefore adjourned to the 417
house of Alcinous. Here the presents began to arrive,
whereon the king desired Arete to find Ulysses a chest in
which to stow them, and to put a shirt and clean cloak
in it as his own contribution; he also declared his
intention of giving him a gold cup.[16] Meanwhile, he
said that Ulysses had better have a warm bath.

The bath was made ready. Arete packed all the gold and 423
presents which the Phæacian aldermen had sent, as also
the shirt and tunic from Alcinous. Arete told Ulysses to
see to the fastening, lest some one should rob him while
he was asleep on the ship; Ulysses therefore fastened the 445
lid on to the chest with a knot which Circe had taught
him. He then went into the bath room--very gladly, for he
had not had a bath since he left Calypso, who as long as
he was with her had taken as good care of him as though
he had been a god.

As he came from the bath room Nausicaa was standing by 457
one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of
the cloisters and bade him farewell, reminding him at
the same time that it was she who had been the saving
of him--a fact which Ulysses in a few words gracefully
acknowledged.

He then took his seat at table, and after dinner, at his 469
request, Demodocus sang the Sack of Troy and the Sally of
the Achæans from the Wooden Horse. This again so affected
him that he could not restrain his tears, which, however,
Alcinous again alone perceived.

The king, therefore, made a speech in which he said 536
that the stranger ought to tell them his name. He must
have one, for people always gave their children names
as soon as they were born. He need not be uneasy about
his escort. All he had to do was to say where he wanted
to go, and the Phæacian ships were so clever that they
would take him there of their own accord. Nevertheless he
remembered hearing his father Nausithous say, that one
day Neptune would be angry with the Phæacians for giving
people escorts so readily, and had said he would wreck
one of their ships as it was returning, and would also
bury their city under a high mountain.

BOOK IX.

_The voyages of Ulysses--The Cicons, Lotus eaters, and
the Cyclops Polyphemus_.

Then Ulysses rose. "King Alcinous," said he, "you ask
my name and I will tell you. I am Ulysses, and dwell in
Ithaca, an island which contains a high mountain called
Neritum. In its neighbourhood there are other islands
near to one another, Dulichium, Same, and Zacynthus. It
lies on the horizon all highest up in the sea towards the 25
West, while the other islands lie away from it to the
East. This is the island which I would reach, for however
fine a house a man may have in a land where his parents
are not, there will still be nothing sweeter to him than
his home and his own father and mother.

"I will now tell you of my adventures. On leaving Troy 37
we first made a descent on the land of the Cicons, and
sacked their city but were eventually beaten off, though
we took our booty with us.

"Thence we sailed South with a strong North wind behind 62
us, till we reached the island of Cythera, where we were
driven off our course by a continuance of North wind
which prevented my doubling Cape Malea.

"Nine days was I driven by foul winds, and on the tenth 82
we reached the land of the Lotus eaters, where the people
were good to my men but gave them to eat of the lotus,
which made them lose all desire to return home, so that I
had a great work to get those who had tasted it on board
again.

"Thence we were carried further, till we came to the land 105
of the savage Cyclopes. Off their coast, but not very
far, there is a wooded island abounding with wild goats.
It is untrodden by the foot of man; even the huntsmen,
who as a general rule will suffer any hardship in forest 120
or on mountain top, never go there; it is neither tilled
nor fed down, but remains year after year uninhabited
save by goats only. For the Cyclopes have no ships, and
cannot therefore go from place to place as those who have
ships can do. If they had ships they would have colonised
the island, for it is not at all a bad one and would
bring forth all things in their season. There is meadow
land, well watered and of good quality, that stretches
down to the water's edge. Grapes would do wonderfully
well there; it contains good arable land, which would
yield heavy crops, for the soil is rich; moreover it has
a convenient port--into which some god must have taken
us, for the night was so dark that we could see nothing.
There was a thick darkness all round the ships, neither
was there any moon, for the sky was covered with clouds.
No one could see the island, nor yet waves breaking upon
the shore till we found ourselves in the harbour. Here,
then, we moored our ships and camped down upon the beach.

[Illustration: The Cave of Polyphemus.]

[Illustration: Sig. Sugameli and the Author, in the Cave
of Polyphemus.]

"When morning came we hunted the wild goats, of which we 152
killed over a hundred,[17] and all day long to the going
down of the sun we feasted on them and the store of wine
we had taken from the Cicons. We kept looking also on the
land of the Cyclopes over against us, which was so near
that we could see the smoke of their stubble fires, and
almost fancy we heard the bleating of their sheep and
goats.

"We camped a second night upon the beach, and at day 169
break, having called a council, I said I would take my
own ship and reconnoitre the country, but would leave
the other ships at the island. Thereon I started, but
when we got near the main land we saw a great cave in the
cliff, not far from the sea, and there were large sheep
yards in front of it. On landing I chose twelve men and
went inland, taking with me a goat skin full of a very
wondrous wine that Maron, priest of Apollo, had given me
when I spared his life and that of his family at the time
that we were sacking the city of the Cicons. The rest of
my crew were to wait my return by the sea side.

"We soon reached the cave, and finding that the owner was 216
not at home we examined all that it contained; we saw
vessels brimful of whey, and racks loaded with cheeses:
the yards also were full of lambs and kids. My men
implored me to let them steal some cheeses, drive off
some of the lambs and kids, and sail away, but I would
not, for I hoped the owner might give me something.

"We lit a fire in the cave, sacrificed some of the 233
cheeses to the gods, and ate others ourselves, waiting
till the owner should return. When he came we found him
to be a huge monster, more like a peak standing out
against the sky on some high mountain than a human
being. He brought in with him a great bundle of firewood,
which he flung down upon the floor with such a noise that
we were scared and hid ourselves. He drove all his female
goats and ewes into the cave, but left the males outside;
and then he closed the door with a huge stone which not
even two and twenty waggons could carry. He milked his 245
goats and ewes all orderly, and gave each one her own
young [for these had been left in the yards all day];
then he drank some of the milk, and put part by for his
supper. Presently he lit his fire and caught sight of us,
whereon he asked us who we were.

"I told him we were on our way home from Troy, and begged 256
him in heaven's name to do us no hurt; but as soon as I
had answered his question he gripped up two of my men,
dashed them on the ground, and ate them raw, blood,
bones, and bowels, like a savage lion of the wilderness.
Then he lay down on the ground of the cave and went to
sleep: on which I should have crept up to him and plunged
my sword into his heart while he was sleeping had I not
known that if I did we should never be able to shift the
stone. So we waited till dawn should come.

"When day broke the monster again lit his fire, milked 307
his ewes all orderly, and gave each one her own young.
Then he gripped up two more of my men, and as soon as
he had eaten them he rolled the stone from the mouth of
the cave, drove out his sheep, and put the stone back
again. He had, however, left a large and long piece of
olive wood in the cave, and when he had gone I and my men
sharpened this at one end, and hid it in the sheep dung
of which there was much in the cave. In the evening he
returned, milked his ewes, and ate two more men; whereon
I went up to him with the skin of wondrous wine that
Maron had given me and gave him a bowl full of it. He
asked for another, and then another, so I gave them to
him, and he was so much delighted that he enquired my
name and I said it was Noman.

"The wine now began to take effect, and in a short time 371
he fell dead drunk upon the ground. Then my men and I put
the sharp end of the piece of olive wood in the fire till
it was well burning, and drove it into the wretch's eye,
turning it round and round as though it were an auger.
After a while he plucked it out, flung it from him, and
began crying to his neighbours for help. When they came,
they said, 'What ails you? Who is harming you?' and he
answered, 'No man is harming me.' They then said that he
must be ill, and had better pray to his father Neptune;
so they went away, and I laughed at the success of my
stratagem.

"Then I hid my men by binding them under the sheep's 424
bellies. The Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus, groped
his way to the stone, rolled it away, and sat at the
mouth of the cave feeling the sheep's backs as they went
out; but the men were under their bellies so he did not
find one of them. Nor yet did he discover me, for I was
ensconced in the thick belly-fleece of a ram which by
some chance he had brought in with the ewes. But he was
near finding me, for the ram went last, and he kept it
for a while and talked to it.

"When we were outside, I dropped from under the ram and 462
unbound my companions. We drove the ewes down to my ship,
got them on board, and rowed out to sea. When we were
a little way out I jeered at the Cyclops, whereon he
tore up a great rock and hurled it after us; it fell in
front of the ship and all but hit the rudder; the wash,
moreover, that it made nearly carried us back to the 483
land, but I kept the ship off it with a pole.

"When we had got about twice as far off as we were 491
before, I was for speaking to the Cyclops again, and
though my men tried to stay me, I shouted out to him
'Cyclops, if you would know who it is that has blinded
you, learn that it is I, Ulysses, son of Laertes, who
live in Ithaca.'

"'Alas,' he cried in answer, 'then the old prophecy about 506
me is coming true. I knew that I was to lose my sight by
the hand of Ulysses, but I was looking for some man of
great stature and noble mien, whereas he has proved to
be a mere whippersnapper. Come here, then, Ulysses that
I may offer you gifts of hospitality and pray my father
Neptune, who shall heal my eye, to escort you safely home.

"'I wish,' said I, 'that I could be as sure of killing 521
you body and soul as I am that not even Neptune will be
able to cure your eye.'

"Then he prayed to Neptune saying 'Hear me Neptune, if 526
I am indeed your son, and vouchsafe me that Ulysses son
of Laertes may never reach his home. Still, if he must
do so, and get back to his friends, let him lose all his
men, and though he get home after all, let it be late,
on another man's ship, and let him find trouble in his
house.'

"So saying he tore up a still larger rock and flung it 527
this time a little behind the ship, but so close that it
all but hit the rudder: the wash, however, that it made
carried us forward to the island from which we had set
out.

"There we feasted on the sheep that we had taken, and 556
mourned the loss of our comrades whom Polyphemus had
eaten.

BOOK X.

_Æolus--the Lœstrygonians--Circe_.

"So we sailed on and reached the island where dwells
Æolus with his wife and family of six sons and six
daughters, who live together amid great and continuous
plenty. I staid with him a whole month, and when I would
go, he tied all the winds up (for he was their keeper) in
a leather sack, which he gave me; but he left the West
wind free, for this was the one I wanted.

"Nine days did we sail, and on the tenth we could see our 28
native land with the stubble fires burning thereon. I had
never let the rudder out of my hands till then, but being
now close in shore I fell asleep. My men, thinking I had
treasure in the sack, opened it to see, on which the
winds came howling out and took us straight back to the
Æolian island. So I went to the house of Æolus and prayed
him to help me, but he said, 'Get you gone, abhorred of
heaven: him whom heaven hates will I in no wise help.' So
I went full sadly away.

"Six days thence did we sail onward, worn out in body 77
and mind, and on the seventh we reached the stronghold
of king Lamus, the Læstrygonian city Telepylus, where
the shepherd who drives his flock into the town salutes
another who is driving them out, and the other returns
his salute. A man in that country could earn double wages
if he could do without sleep, for they work much the same
by night as they do by day. Here we landed, and I climbed
a high rock to look round, but could see no signs of men
or beast, save only smoke rising from the ground.

"Then I sent two of my crew with an attendant, to see 100
what manner of men the people might be, and they met
a young woman who was coming down to fetch water from
the spring Artacia, whence the people drew their water.
This young woman took my men to the house of her father
Antiphates, whereon they discovered the people to be
giants and ogres like Polyphemus. One of my men was
gripped up and eaten, but the other two escaped and
reached the ships. The Læstrygonians raised a hue and cry
after them, and rushing to the harbour, within which all
my ships were moored except my own, they dashed my whole
fleet in pieces with the rocks that they threw. I and my
own ship alone escaped them, for we were outside, and I
bade the men row for their lives.

"On and on did we sail, till we reached the island of 133
Circe, where heaven guided us into a harbour. Here I
again climbed a rock and could see the smoke from Circe's
house rising out of a thick wood; I then went back to the
ship, and while on my way had the good fortune to kill a
noble stag, which gave us a supply of meat on which we
feasted all the rest of the day. Next morning I held a
council and told my men of the smoke that I had seen.

"Eurylochus and twenty-two men then went inland to 210
reconnoitre, and found Circe's house made of squared
stones and standing on high ground in the middle of the
forest. This forest was full of wild beasts, poor dazed
creatures whom Circe had bewitched, but they fawned upon
my men and did not harm them. When the men got to the
door of her house they could hear her singing inside most
beautifully, so they called her down, and when she came
she asked them in, gave them a drugged drink, and then
turned them into pigs--all except Eurylochus who had
remained outside.

"Eurylochus made all haste back to tell me, and I started 244
for Circe's house. When I was in the wood where the wild
beasts were, Mercury met me and gave me an herb called 277
Moly, which would protect me from Circe's spells; he also 305
told me how I should treat her. Then I went to her house,
and called her to come down.

"She asked me in, and tried to bewitch me as she had the 312
others, but the herb which Mercury had given me protected
me; so I rushed at her with my drawn sword. When she
saw this, she said she knew I must be Ulysses, and that
I must marry her at once. But I said, 'Circe, you have
just turned my men into pigs, and have done your best to
bewitch me into the bargain; how can you expect me to be
friendly with you? Still, if you will swear to take no
unfair advantage of me, I will consent.' So she swore,
and I consented at once.

"Then she set the four maid servants of her house to wash 348
me and feast me, but I was still moody and would not
eat till Circe removed her spells from off my men, and
brought them back safe and sound in human form. When she
had done this she bade me go back to my ship and bring
the rest of my men--which I presently did, and we staid
with her for a whole twelve months, feasting continually
and drinking an untold quantity of wine. At last,
however, my men said that if I meant going home at all it
was time I began to think of starting.

"That night, therefore, when I was in bed with Circe, 480
I told her how my men were murmuring, and asked her to
let me go. This she said she would do; but I must first
go down into the house of Hades, and consult the blind
Theban prophet Tiresias. And she directed me what I
should do.

"On the following morning I told my men, and we began 551
to get ready; but we had an accident before we started,
for there was a foolish and not very valiant young man
in my ship named Elpenor, who had got drunk and had gone
on to the roof of Circe's house to sleep off his liquor
in the cool. The bustle my men made woke him, and in his
flurry he forgot all about coming down by the staircase,
and fell right off the roof; whereby he broke his neck
and was killed. We started, however, all the same, and
Circe brought us a lamb and a black sheep to offer to
the Shades below. She passed in and out among us, but we
could not see her; who, indeed, can see the gods, when
they are in no mind to be seen?

BOOK XI.

_Ulysses in the house of Hades_.

"When we were at the water side we got the lamb and
the ewe on board and put out to sea, running all that
day before a fair wind which Circe had sent us, and at
nightfall entering the deep waters of the river Oceanus.
Here is the land of the Cimmerians, who dwell in darkness
which the sun's rays never pierce; we therefore made our
ships fast to the shore and came out of her, going along
the beach till we reached the place of which Circe had
told us.

"Perimedes and Eurylochus then held the victims, while 23
I followed the instructions of Circe and slaughtered
them, letting their blood flow into a trench which I had
dug for it. On this, the ghosts came up in crowds from
Erebus, brides, young bachelors, old men, maids who had
been crossed in love, and warriors with their armour
still smirched with blood. They cried with a strange
screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear, but I
would let none of them taste of the blood till Tiresias
should have come and answered my questions.

"The first ghost I saw was that of Elpenor whose body was 51
still lying unburied at Circe's house. Then I said, 'How
now, Elpenor? you have got here sooner by land than I
have done by water.' The poor fellow told me how he had
forgotten about the stairs, and begged me to give him
all due rites when I returned to Circe's island--which I
promised faithfully that I would do.

"Then I saw the ghost of my mother Anticlea, but in all 81
sadness I would not let her taste of the blood till
Tiresias should have come and answered my questions.

"Presently Tiresias came with his golden sceptre in his 90
hand, bade me let him taste of the blood, and asked me
why I had come.

"I told him I would learn how I was to get home to 97
Ithaca, and he said I should have much difficulty;
'Still,' he continued, 'you will reach your home if you
can restrain your men when you come to the Thrinacian
island, where you will find the cattle of the Sun. If you
leave these unharmed, after much trouble you will yet
reach Ithaca; but if you harm them, you will lose your
men, and though you may get home after all, it will be
late, [on another man's ship,[18] and you will find your 115
house full of riotous men who are wasting your substance
and wooing your wife.

"'When you have got back you will indeed kill these men 118
either by treachery or in fair fight, and you must then
take an oar, which you must carry till you have reached a
people who know nothing about the sea and do not mix salt
with their bread. These people have never heard of ships,
nor of oars that are the wings with which ships fly; I
will tell you how you may know them; you will meet a man
by the way who will ask you whether it is a winnowing
shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; when you
hear this you must fix your oar in the ground, and offer
sacrifice to Neptune, a ram, a bull and a boar; then go
home again, and offer hecatombs to the gods that dwell in
heaven.[19] As for your own end, death shall come to you
very gently from the sea, and shall take you when you are
full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall
bless you.'] 137

"Having thus said he went back within the house of Hades. 150
Then I let my mother's ghost draw near and taste of the
blood, whereon she knew me, and asked me what it was
that had brought me though still alive into the abode of
death. So I told her, and asked her how she had come by
her end. 'Tell me, also,' I continued, 'about my father,
and the son whom I left behind me. Is my property still
safe in their hands, or does another hold it who thinks
that I shall not return? Of what mind, again, is my wife? 177
Does she still live with her son and keep watch over his
estate, or is she already married to the best man among
the Achæans?'

"'Your wife,' answered my mother, 'is still at home, 180
but she spends her life in tears both night and day.
Telemachus holds your estate, and sees much company, for
he is a magistrate and all men invite him. Your father
lives a poor hard life in the country and never goes near
the town. As for me, I died of nothing but sheer grief on
your account. And now, return to the upper world as fast
as you can, that you may tell all that you have seen to
your wife.'

"Then Proserpine sent up the ghosts of the wives and 225
daughters of great kings and heroes of old time, and I
made each of them tell me about herself. There were Tyro,
Antiope, Alcmena, Epicaste the mother of Œdipus, Chloris,
Leda, Iphimedea, Phædra, Procris, Ariadne, and hateful
Eriphyle; with all these did I discourse, nor can I tell
you with how many more noble women, for it is now late,
and time to go to rest."

Here Ulysses ceased, and from one end of the covered 333
cloisters to the other his listeners sat entranced with
the charm of his story.

Then Arete said, "What think you of this man now, 336
Phæacians, both as regards his personal appearance and
his abilities? True he is my guest, but his presence is
an honour to you all. Be not niggardly, therefore, in the
presents that you will make him, for heaven has endowed
you all with great abundance." Alcinous also spoke urging
Ulysses to tell still more of his adventures, and to say
whether he met any of the heroes who had fought together
with him at Troy. Thus pressed Ulysses resumed his story.

"When Proserpine," said he, "had dismissed the female 385
ghosts, the ghost of Agamemnon drew near, surrounded by
those of the men who had fallen with him in the house of
Ægisthus. He was weeping bitterly, and I asked him how he
met his end; whereon he detailed to me the treachery of
Clytemnestra, which he said threw disgrace upon all women
even on the good ones. 'Be sure,' he continued, 'that you 433
never be too open with your wife; tell her a part only,
and keep the rest to yourself. Not that you need have
any fear about Penelope for she is an admirable woman.
You will meet your son, too, who by this time must be a 449
grown man. Nevertheless, do not let people know when you
are coming home, but steal a march upon them. And now
give me what news you can about my son Orestes.' To which
I answered that I could tell him nothing.

"While we were thus holding sad talk with one another, 465
the ghost of Achilles came up and asked me for news of
his father Peleus, and of his son. I said I could tell
him nothing about Peleus, but his son Neoptolemus was
with me in the wooden horse, and though all the others
were trembling in every limb and wiping the tears from
their cheeks, Neoptolemus did not even turn pale, nor
shed a single tear. Whereon Achilles strode away over a
meadow full of asphodel, exulting in the prowess of his
son.

"Other ghosts then came up and spoke with me but that of 541
Ajax alone held aloof, for he was still brooding over
the armour of Achilles which had been awarded to me and
not to him. I spoke to him but he would not answer;
nevertheless I should have gone on talking to him till he
did, had I not been anxious to see yet other ghosts.

"I saw Minos with his golden sceptre passing sentence on 568
the dead; Orion also, driving before him over a meadow
full of asphodel the ghosts of the wild beasts whom he
had slain upon the mountains. I saw Tityus with the
vulture ever digging its beak into his liver, Tantalus
also, in a lake whose waters reached his neck but fled
him when he would drink, and Sisyphus rolling his mighty
stone uphill till the sweat ran off him and the steam
rose from him.

"Then I saw mighty Hercules. The ghosts were screaming 601
round him like scared birds, flying all whithers. He
looked black as night with his bare bow in his hand and
his arrow on the string, glaring round as though ever on
the point of taking aim. About his breast there was a
wondrous golden belt marvellously enriched with bears,
wild boars, and lions with gleaming eyes; there were also
war, battle, and death.

"And I should have seen yet others of the great dead had 630
not the ghosts come about me in so many thousands that
I feared Proserpine might send up the Gorgon's head. I
therefore bade my men make all speed back to their ship;
so they hastened on board and we rowed out on to the
waters of Oceanus, where before long we fell in with a
fair wind.

BOOK XII.

_The Sirens--Scylla and Charybdis--the cattle of the Sun._

"As soon as we were clear of the river Oceanus, we got
out into the open and reached the Ææan island, where
there is dawn and sunrise. There we landed, camped down
upon the beach, and waited till morning came. At daybreak
I sent my men to fetch the body of Elpenor, which we
burned and buried. We built a barrow over him, and in it
we fixed the oar with which he had been used to row.

"When Circe heard that we had returned, she came down 16
with her maids, bringing bread and wine. 'To-day,' she
said, 'eat and drink, and to-morrow go on your way.'

"We agreed to this, and feasted the live-long day to the 23
going down of the sun, but at nightfall Circe took me
aside, and told me of the voyage that was before us. 'You
will first,' said she, 'come to the island of the two
Sirens, who sit in a field of flowers, and warble all who
draw near them to death with the sweetness of their song.
Dead men's bones are lying strewn all round them; still,
if you would hear them, you can stop your men's ears with
wax and bid them bind you to a cross-plank on the mast.

"'As regards the next point that you will reach I can 55
give you no definite instructions as to which of two
courses you must take. You must do the best you can. I
can only put the alternatives before you. I refer to the
cliffs which the gods call "the wanderers," and which
close in on anything that would pass through them--even
upon the doves that are bringing ambrosia to Father Jove.
The sea moreover is strewn with wreckage from ships which
the waves and hurricanes of fire have destroyed.

"'Of the two rocks,[20] the one rises in a peak to 73
heaven, and is overhung at all times with a dark cloud
that never leaves it. It looks towards the West, and
there is a cave in it, higher than an arrow can reach.
In this sits Scylla yelping with a squeaky voice like
that of a young hound, but she is an awful monster with
six long necks and six heads with three rows of teeth
in each; whenever a ship passes, she springs out and
snatches up a man in each mouth.

"'The other rock is lower, but they are so close that 101
you can shoot an arrow from the one to the other. [On
it there is a fig-tree in full leaf].[21] Underneath it 103
is the terrible whirlpool of Charybdis, which sucks the
water down and vomits it out again three times a day. If
you are there when she is sucking, not even Neptune can
save you; so hug the Scylla side, for you had better lose
six men than your whole crew.

"'You will then arrive at the Thrinacian island, where 127
you will see the cattle of the Sun (and also his sheep)
in charge of the two nymphs Lampetie and Phaëthusa. If 132
you leave these flocks unharmed, after much trouble you
will yet reach Ithaca; but if you harm them, you will
lose your men, and though you may get home after all, it
will be late.'

"Here she ended, and at break of day we set out, with a 142
fair wind which Circe sent us. I then told my men about
the two Sirens, but had hardly done so before we were
at the island itself, whereon it fell a dead calm. I
kneaded wax and stopped the men's ears; they bound me
to a cross-plank on the mast; I heard the Sirens sing,
and when I struggled to free myself they bound me still
tighter. So we passed the island by.

"Shortly after this I saw smoke and a great wave ahead, 201
and heard a dull thumping sound. The sea was in an
uproar, and my men were so frightened that they loosed
hold of their oars, till I put heart into them, bade
them row their hardest, and told the steersman to hug
the Scylla side. But I said nothing about Scylla, though
I kept straining my eyes all over her rock to see if I
could espy her.

"So there we were, with Scylla on the one hand and dread 234
Charybdis on the other. We could see the sea seething as
in a cauldron, and the black ooze at the bottom with a
wall of whirling waters careering round it. While my men
were pale with fear at this awful sight, Scylla shot out
her long necks and swooped down on six of them. I could
see their poor hands and feet struggling in the air as
she bore them aloft, and hear them call out my name in
one last despairing cry. This was the most horrid sight
that I saw in all my voyages.

"Having passed the cliffs,[22] and Scylla and Charybdis, 260
we came to the Thrinacian island, and from my ship I
could hear the cattle lowing, and the sheep bleating.
Then, remembering the warning that Tiresias and Circe had
given me, I bade my men give the island a wide berth. But
Eurylochus was insolent, and sowed disaffection among
them, so that I was forced to yield and let them land for
the night, after making them swear most solemnly that
they would do the cattle no harm. We camped, therefore,
on the beach near a stream.

"But in the third watch of the night there came up a 312
great gale, and in the morning we drew our ship ashore
and left her in a large cave wherein the sea nymphs meet
and hold their dances. I then called my men together, and
again warned them.

"It blew a gale from the South for a whole month, except 325
when the wind shifted to the East, and there was no
other wind save only South and East. As long as the corn
and wine which Circe had given us held out, my men kept
their word, but after a time they began to feel the
pangs of hunger, and I went apart to pray heaven to take
compassion upon us. I washed my hands and prayed, and
when I had done so, I fell asleep.

"Meanwhile Eurylochus set my men on to disobey me, and 339
they drove in some of the cattle and killed them. When
I woke, and had got nearly back to the ship, I began to
smell roast meat and knew full well what had happened.

"The nymph Lampetie went immediately and told the Sun 374
what my men had done. He was furious, and threatened
Jove that if he was not revenged he would never shine in
heaven again but would go down and give his light among
the dead. 'All day long,' said he, 'whether I was going
up heaven or down, there was nothing I so dearly loved to
look upon as those cattle.'

"Jove told him he would wreck our ship as soon as it was 385
well away from land, and the Sun said no more. I know all
this because Calypso told me, and she had it from Mercury.

"My men feasted six days--alarmed by the most awful 397
prodigies; for the skins of the cattle kept walking
about, and the joints of meat lowed while they were being
roasted. On the seventh day the wind dropped and we got
away from the island, but as soon as we were out of sight
of land a sudden squall sprang up, during which Jove
struck our ship with his thunderbolts and broke it up.
All my men were drowned, and so too should I have been,
had I not made myself a raft by lashing the mast (which I
found floating about) and the ship's keel together.

["The wind, which during the squall came from the West, 426
now changed to the South, and blew all night, so that by
morning I was back between Scylla and Charybdis again.
My raft got carried down the whirlpool, but I clung on
to the boughs of the fig tree, for a weary weary while,
during which I felt as impatient as a magistrate who is
detained in court by troublesome cases when he wants to
get home to dinner. But in the course of time my raft
worked its way out again, and when it was underneath me I
dropped on to it and was carried out of the pool. Happily
for me Jove did not let Scylla see me.][23]

"Thence I was born along for nine days in the sea, and 447
was taken to the Ogygian island of Calypso. I told you
about this yesterday and will not repeat it, for I hate
saying the same thing twice over."

BOOK XIII.

_Ulysses is taken back to Ithaca by the Phæacians_.

Thus did Ulysses speak, and Alcinous immediately proposed
that they should make him still further presents. The
expence, however, of these, he said, should be borne
by a levy or rate upon the public at large. The guests
assented, and then went home to bed.

Next morning they brought their presents of hardware down 18
to the ship, and Alcinous saw them so stowed that they
should not incommode the rowers. There was then a second
banquet at Alcinous's house, but Ulysses kept looking
at the sun all the time, longing for it to set that he
might start on his way. At last he rose and addressed the
Phæacians; after thanking them, he concluded by saying
that he hoped he should find his wife on his return
living among her friends in peace and quietness,[24] and 43
that the Phæacians would continue to give satisfaction
to their wives and children. He also bade farewell to
Arete, and wished her all happiness with her children,
her people, and with King Alcinous.

When Ulysses reached the ship, a rug and sail were spread 73
for him, on which he lay down, and immediately fell into
a deep sleep--so deep as to resemble death itself. The
ship sped on her way faster than a falcon's flight and 80
with the break of day they reached Ithaca.

Now in Ithaca there is a sheltered harbour in which a 96
ship can ride without being even moored. At the head of
this there is a large olive tree, near which there is a
cave sacred to the Naiads, where you may find their cups
and amphoræ of stone, and the stone looms whereon they
weave their robes of sea-purple--very curious. The wild
bees, too, build their nests in it. There is water in it
all the year round, and it has two entrances, one looking
North, by which mortals can go down into the cave, and
the other towards the South, but men cannot enter by
it--it is the way taken by gods.

The sailors knew this harbour, and took the ship into it. 112
They were rowing so hard that they ran half her length on
to the shore, and when they had got out of her they took
Ulysses off, still fast asleep on his rug and sail, and
laid him down on the ground. Hard by him they also laid
all the presents the Phæacians had made him; they left
them by the roots of the olive tree, a little out of the
path, that no passer by might steal them, and then went
back to Scheria.

Neptune now saw what the Phæacians had done, and went to 125
consult Jove how he should be revenged. It was arranged
that he should go to Scheria, turn the ship into stone
just as it was coming into port, and root it in the sea. 163
So he did this, and the Phæacians said, "Alack, who has
rooted the ship in the sea just as it was coming in? We
could see all of it a minute ago."

Then Alcinous told them how Neptune had long ago 171
threatened to do this to some Phæacian ship on its return
from giving an escort, and also to bury their city under
a high mountain as a punishment for giving escorts so
freely. The Phæacians, therefore, made ready great
sacrifices to Neptune, that he might have mercy upon them.

While they were thus standing round the altar of the god, 185
Ulysses woke in his own land, but he had been away so
long that he did not know it. Minerva, too, had shed a
thick mist round him so that he might remain unseen while
she told him how things were going on; for she did not
want his wife or anyone else to know of his return until
he had taken his revenge upon the suitors. Therefore she
made everything look strange to him--the long straight
paths, the harbours with their shipping, the steep
precipices, and the trees.

Ulysses now stood up and wondered where he was. He did 197
not believe he was in Ithaca and complained bitterly
of the Phæacians for having brought him wrong. Then he
counted all the tripods, cauldrons, gold, and raiment,
that they had given him, to see if he had been robbed;
but everything was there, and he was in dismay as to what
he should do with them. As he was thus in doubt Minerva
came up to him disguised as a young shepherd, so he asked
her what country he was in, and she answered that he was
in Ithaca.

Ulysses said he had heard that there was such a place; he 256
told Minerva a long lying story as to how he had come to
be where she saw him, and on this the goddess assumed the
form of a woman, fair, stately, and wise, and laughed at
him for not knowing her. Ulysses answered that she was
not an easy person to recognise for she was continually
changing her appearance. Moreover, though she had been
very good to him at Troy, she had left him in the lurch
ever since, until she had taken him into the city of the
Phæacians. "Do not," he said, "deceive me any further,
but tell me whether or no this is really Ithaca."

"You are always cunning and suspicious," replied the 329
goddess, "and that is why I cannot find it in my heart to
leave you. Any one else on returning from a long voyage
would at once have gone up to his house to see his wife
and children, but you do not seem to care about knowing
anything about them, and only think of testing your
wife's fidelity. As for my having left you in the lurch, 339
I knew all the time that you would get home safely in the
end, and I did not want to quarrel with my uncle Neptune.
I will now prove to you that you are in Ithaca--Here is
the harbour of the old merman Phorcys, with the large 345
olive tree at the head of it; near it is the cave which
is sacred to the Naiads; here, again, is the overarching 347
cavern in which you have sacrificed many a hecatomb to 349
the nymphs, and this is the wooded mountain of Neritum." 351

The goddess then dispersed the mist and let the prospect 352
be seen. Ulysses was thus convinced, and Minerva helped
him to hide the treasure which the Phæacians had given
him, by concealing it in the cave. Having done this she
bade Ulysses consider how he should kill the wicked
suitors. "They have been lording it," she said, "in your
house this three years,[25] paying court to your wife
and making her gifts of wooing, while she, poor woman, 380
though she flatters them, and holds out hopes to every
man of them by sending him messages, is really plunged in
the deepest grief on your account, and does not mean a
word of what she says."

"Great heavens," replied Ulysses, "what a narrow escape I 382
have had from meeting the fate of Agamemnon. Stand by me,
goddess, and advise me how I shall be revenged."

"I will disguise you," said Minerva, "as a miserable old 397
beggar so that no one shall know you. "When I have done
so, go to your swineherd, who has been always loyal to
you and yours. You will find him with his pigs by the
fountain Arethusa near the rock that is called Raven.
Meantime I will go to Sparta and fetch Telemachus, who is
gone thither to try and get news of you."

"But why," Ulysses answered, "did you not tell him, for 416
you knew all about it?"

"Do not be uneasy about him," she answered, "he is in the 420
midst of great abundance. I sent him, that he might get
himself a good name by having gone."

Minerva then disguised Ulysses beyond all possible 429
recognition, and the two separated--she going to Sparta,
and Ulysses to the abode of his swineherd.

BOOK XIV.

_Ulysses in the hut of Eumæus_.

Ulysses followed a steep path that led from the harbour
through the forest and over the top of the mountain, till
he reached the hut of Eumæus, who was the most thrifty
servant he had, and had built a number of fine yards and
pigstyes during his master's absence.

Ulysses found him sitting at the door of his hut, which 5
had been built high up in a place that could been seen
from far; he had his four fierce dogs about him, and was
cutting himself out a pair of sandal shoes.

The dogs flew at Ulysses, and it was all Eumæus could do 29
to check them; "They were like," said he, "to have made
an end of you, which would have got me into a scrape,
and I am in sorrow enough already through the loss, which
I deplore without ceasing, of the best of masters. But
come in, have something to eat, and then tell me your
story."

On this he brought him inside, threw some brushwood on 48
the floor, and spread a goat's skin over it for Ulysses
to lie on. "I cannot do much for you," he said; "servants
go in fear when they have young lords over them, as I now
have, for my good old master went to Troy with Agamemnon
and I shall never see him again."

He then went out and killed two sucking pigs, singed 72
them, cut them up, put the pieces of meat on skewers
to roast on the embers, and brought them smoking hot,
skewers and all, to Ulysses, who floured them. "Eat,"
said the swineherd, "a dish of servant's pork; the fuller
grown meat has to go down to the suitors." He then
explained how rich Ulysses was.

"And who, pray," said Ulysses, "was this noble master of 115
yours? You say that he fell at Troy, and in that case I
might be able to give you news of him."

"That," answered Eumæus, "may not be: people are always 121
coming and flattering my poor mistress with false hopes,
but they are all liars. My master Ulysses is dead and
gone, and I shall never see another like him. I cannot
bear even to mention his name."

"My friend," replied Ulysses, "do not be too hard of 148
belief. I swear by this hearth to which I am now come,
that Ulysses will return before the present month is
over. If he comes you shall give me a shirt and cloak,
but I will take nothing till then."

"My friend," said Eumæus, "say not another word. You 165
will never get your shirt and cloak. Now, moreover, I
am as anxious about his son Telemachus as I have been
about Ulysses himself; for he is gone to Pylos, and the
suitors are lying in wait for him on his return. Let us,
however, say no more about him now; tell me, rather,
about yourself who you are, and how you came here."

Then Ulysses told him a long lying story about his 191
adventures in Crete: how he was compelled to go to Troy
in joint command with Idomeneus over the Cretan forces;
how he made a descent on Egypt, got taken prisoner,
acquired wealth, and afterwards was inveigled into going
to Libya; how on the voyage thither, after leaving Crete,
the ship was wrecked and he was cast on the coast of
Thesprotia. "Here it was," he continued, "that I heard
of Ulysses from King Pheidon, who was expecting him
back daily from Dodona, where he had been to consult
the oracle; he told me Ulysses was to return to Ithaca
immediately, but there was a ship bound for Dulichium,
and the king sent me on board it before Ulysses returned
from Dodona. The sailors on this ship resolved to sell me
as a slave, and bound me; but they landed on the coast of
Ithaca, where I gave them the slip, and found my way to
your hut."

"Poor man," answered the swineherd, "but you will never 360
get me to believe about Ulysses. Why should you tell me
such lies? I have heard these stories too often, and will
never believe them again."

Ulysses tried still further to convince him, but it was 390
no use, and presently the under swineherds came back with
the pigs that had been out feeding, and Eumæus told them
to kill the best pig they had, and get supper ready,
which they accordingly did. He was a good man and mindful
of his duties to the gods, so when the pig was killed
he threw some of its bristles into the fire and prayed
heaven for the return of Ulysses. Then they supped and
went to bed.

Now it was a wild rough night, and after they had lain 457
down, Ulysses, fearing that he might be cold, told
another lying story of an adventure he had had at Troy
in company with Ulysses, by means of which Eumæus was
induced to cover him over with a spare cloak of his
own. Then the swineherd went out to pass the night with
the pigs--and Ulysses was pleased at seeing how well
he looked after his property, though he believed his
master to be absent. First he slung his sword over his
shoulders, and put on a thick cloak to keep out the wind;
he also took the skin of a well-fed goat, and a javelin
in case of attack from men or dogs. Thus equipped he
went to his rest where the pigs were camped under an
overhanging rock that sheltered them from the North Wind.

BOOK XV.

_Telemachus returns from Pylos, and on landing goes to
the hut of Eumæus_.

Minerva now went to Lacedæmon and found Telemachus and
Pisistratus fast asleep. She appeared to Telemachus in
a dream, and told him that he was to return at once to
Ithaca, for his mother was about to marry Eurymachus, and
would probably go off with some of his property. She also 17
told him how the suitors were lying in wait for him in
the straits between Ithaca and Samos. She said that as
soon as he reached Ithaca he was to leave the ship before 29
sending it on to the town, and go to the swineherd's hut.
"Sleep there," she said, "and in the morning send the
swineherd to tell Penelope that you have returned safely."

Then she went away and Telemachus woke up. He kicked 43
Pisistratus to wake him, and said that they must start at
once. Pisistratus answered that this was impossible; it
was still dark, and they must say good bye to Menelaus,
who, if Telemachus would only wait, would be sure to give
them a present.

At break of day, seeing Menelaus up and about, Telemachus 56
flung on his shirt and cloak, and told him that they must
go.

Menelaus said he would not detain them, but on the score 67
alike of propriety and economy, they must have something
to eat before starting, and also receive the presents
that were waiting Telemachus's acceptance. "I will tell
the servants," said he, "to get something ready for you
of what there may be in the house, and if you would like
to make a tour of the principal cities of the Peloponese,
I will conduct you. No one will send us away empty
handed. Every one will give us something."

But Telemachus said he must start at once, for he had 86
left property behind him that was insecurely guarded.

When Menelaus heard this he told his wife and servants to 92
get dinner ready at once. Eteoneus, who lived at no great
distance, now came up, and Menelaus told him to light the
fire and begin cooking; and he did as he was told.

Menelaus then went down into his store room together with 99
Megapenthes, and brought up a double cup and a silver
mixing bowl, while Helen fetched a dress of wondrous 125
beauty, the work of her own hands. Menelaus presented the
cup and mixing bowl, and then Helen said, "Take this, my
son, as a keepsake from the hand of Helen, and let your
bride wear it on her wedding day. Till then let your dear
mother keep it for you. Thus may you go on your way with
a light heart."

Telemachus thanked her; Pisistratus stowed the presents 130
in the chariot, and they all sat down to dinner. Eteoneus
carved, and Megapenthes served round the wine. When they
had done eating the two young men prepared to set out.

As they were on the point of starting, an eagle flew upon 160
their right hand, with a goose in its talons which it had
carried off from the farm yard. This omen was so good
that every one was delighted to see it, and Pisistratus
said, "Say, king Menelaus, is the omen for us or for
yourself?"

Menelaus was in doubt how to answer, but Helen said that 169
as the eagle had come from a mountain and seized the
goose, so Ulysses should return and take vengeance on the
suitors. Telemachus said he only hoped it might prove so,
and the pair then drove on. They reached Pylos on the
following day, and Telemachus urged Pisistratus to drive 199
him straight to his ship, for fear Nestor should detain
him if he went to his house.

"I know," said Pisistratus, "how obstinate he is. He 211
would come down to your ship, if he knew you were there,
and would never go back without you. But he will be very
angry." He then drove to the ship, and Telemachus told
the crew to get her under way as fast as they could.

Now as he was attending to every thing and sacrificing 222
to Minerva, there came to him a man of the race of
Melampus who was flying from Argos because he had killed
a man. His name was Theoclymenus and he came of an old
and highly honourable family, his father and grandfather
having been celebrated prophets and divines. He besought
Telemachus to take him to Ithaca and thus save him from
enemies who were in pursuit. Telemachus consented, took
Theoclymenus on board, and laid his spear down on the
deck.

Then they sailed away, and next day they got among the 297
flying islands,[26] whereon Telemachus wondered whether
he should be taken or should escape.

All this time Ulysses was in the hut with Eumæus, and 301
after supper Ulysses said he should like to go down to
the town next day, and see if the suitors would take him
into their service. Eumæus at once explained to him that
any such idea was out of the question. "You do not know,"
he said, "what men these suitors are; their insolence
reaches heaven; the young men who wait on them have good
looking faces and well kempt heads; the tables are always
clean and loaded with abundance. The suitors would be the
death of you; stay here, then, where you are in nobody's
way, till Telemachus returns from Pylos."

Ulysses thanked Eumæus for his information, and then 340
began to ask whether his father and mother were still
living; he was told that Anticlea was dead,[27] and that
Laertes, though still alive, would be glad to follow her.
Eumæus said he had been brought up in their service, and
was better off formerly, for there was no getting a good
word out of his mistress now, inasmuch as the suitors had
turned the house upside down. "Servants," he said, "like
to have a talk with their mistress and hear things from
her own lips; they like being told to eat and drink, and
being allowed to take something back with them into the
country. This is what will keep servants cheerful and
contented."

On being further questioned by Ulysses, Eumæus told 380
how he had been kidnapped as a child by some Phœnician
traders who had seduced his nurse (also a Phœnician) and
persuaded her to go away with them, and bring him with
her.

"I was born," he said, "in the island of Syra over 403
against Ortygia, where the sun turns.[28] It is not
populous, but contains two cities which occupy the whole
land between them, and my father was king over them both.
A few days after my nurse had kidnapped me, and while we
were on our voyage, Diana killed her, and she was flung
overboard, but I was taken to Ithaca where Laertes bought
me."

Ulysses and Eumæus spent the greater part of the night 493
talking with one another, and at dawn Telemachus's crew
drew near to land, furled their sails and rowed into the
harbour. There they threw out their mooring stones, made
their ship fast, landed, and ate their dinner on the
shore. When they had done, Telemachus said, "Now take
the ship on to the city; I will go to look after my farm
and will come down in the evening. Tomorrow morning I
will give you all a hearty meal to reward you for your
trouble."

"But what," said Theoclymenus, "is to become of me? To 508
whose house am I to go?"

"At any other time," answered Telemachus, "I should take 512
you to my own house, but you would not find it convenient
now, for I shall not be there, and my mother will not
see you. I shall therefore send you to the house of
Eurymachus, who is one of the first men we have, and is
most eager in his suit for my mother's hand."

As he spoke a hawk flew on Telemachus's right hand, with 525
a dove whose feathers it was plucking while it flew.
Theoclymenus assured Telemachus that this was an omen
which boded most happily for the prosperity of his house.
It was then settled that Theoclymenus should go to the
house of Piræus the son of Clytius.

The crew now loosed the ship from her moorings and went 547
on as they had been told to do, while Telemachus wended
his way in all haste to the pig farm where Eumæus lived.

BOOK XVI.

_Ulysses and Telemachus become known to one another_.

Ulysses and Eumæus prepared their meal at daybreak.
When Telemachus was reaching the hut, Ulysses observed
that the dogs did not bark, though he heard footsteps,
and enquired whether the visitor was some acquaintance 30
of the swineherd's. He had hardly done speaking when
Telemachus entered, and was welcomed by Eumæus.

"Is my mother still at the house," said he, "or has she 33
left it with another husband, and the bed of Ulysses is
festooned with cobwebs?"

"She is still there," answered Eumæus, "spending her time 36
in tears both night and day."

Eumæus set refreshments before him and when he had done 49
eating he asked who the stranger might be.

When Telemachus heard that Ulysses was a ship-wrecked 68
suppliant he was much displeased. "I am as yet too
young," he said, "to be able to hold my own in the house;
what sufficient support, then, can I give this man?
Still, as he has come to you I will send him clothes and
all necessary food; and let him stay with you; I will not
have him go near the suitors, for harm would be sure to
come of it."

Ulysses expressed his surprise and indignation about the 90
suitors, whereon Telemachus explained still further,
and wound up by telling Eumæus to go at once and inform
Penelope of his return. Eumæus asked if he should turn a
little out of his way and tell Laertes, but Telemachus
said he was not to do so. Penelope would send him word
all in due course.

As soon as Eumæus was gone Minerva came to the hut. 157
Ulysses knew her, and so did the dogs, for they went
whining away to the other end of the yards, but
Telemachus did not see her. She made a sign to Ulysses
that he was to come outside, and when he had done so she
told him he was to reveal himself to his son--whereon
she struck him with her wand, endowed him with a noble
presence, and clothed him in goodly raiment.

Then he went back into the hut and told his son who he 178
was; but for a long while Telemachus would not believe.
At last, however, when he was convinced, the pair flung
their arms about each other's necks, and wept like eagles
or vultures who had been robbed of their young. Indeed
they would have wept till sundown had it not occurred to
Telemachus to ask his father in what ship he had come to
Ithaca, and whose crew it was that had brought him.

Ulysses told him about the Phæacians, and how he had 225
hidden the presents they had given him. "I am now come,"
he said, "by Minerva's advice, to consult with you as
to how we shall take vengeance on the suitors. I would
therefore learn how many there are of them, and consider
whether we two can kill them, or whether we must get help
from outside."

Telemachus said it was hopeless to think of attacking the 240
suitors without assistance. There were fifty-two from
Dulichium, with six followers, twenty-four from Same,
twenty from Zacynthus, and twelve from Ithaca.

Ulysses explained that he could rely on help from Jove 258
and from Minerva, and thought that this would be enough.
"They will not be long in joining us," said he, "when the
fight has begun in good earnest. Go, then, tomorrow to
the town, and join the suitors; let the swineherd bring
me later, disguised as a poor miserable beggar. Never
mind how much violence you may see the suitors do me.
Look on and say nothing, beyond asking them in a friendly
way to leave me alone. Also, find some pretext for
removing the armour from the walls. Say it is taking harm
with the smoke, and that the sight of armour sometimes
sets men fighting, so that it is better away--but leave
two swords, shields and spears for you and me to snatch 295
up."

As they were thus conversing, the ship that had brought 321
Telemachus from Pylos reached the harbour of Ithaca, and
the crew took the presents which Menelaus had given him
to the house of Clytius. They sent a man to tell Penelope
that Telemachus was at the farm, and had sent the ship on
to allay her anxiety. This man and the swineherd met at
the house of Ulysses, and the man said, in the presence
of the maids, "Madam, your son is returned from Pylos;"
but Eumæus stood by her, and told her all that her son
had bidden him. Then he went back to his pig-farm.

The suitors were very angry, and were about sending 342
a ship to fetch those who had been lying in wait for
Telemachus, when Amphinomus, a suitor, happened to
turn round and saw their ship coming into harbour. So
he laughed and said, "We have no need to send, for the
men are here." On this they all went to meet the ship,
and Antinous said that as Telemachus had escaped them
in spite of their great vigilance, they must kill him,
either at the farm or as he was coming thence. Otherwise
he would expose their plot, and they would have the
people rise against them. "If," he concluded, "this does
not please you, and you would let him live, we cannot eat
up his estate any longer, but must go home, urge our suit
each from his own house, and let the one among us take
Penelope who will give most for her, or whose lot it may
happen to be."

Amphinomus, who came from the well-grassed and 394
grain-growing island of Dulichium, then spoke. He was a
man of good natural disposition, and his conversation
was more pleasing to Penelope than that of any of the
other suitors; "I will only consent to kill Telemachus,"
said he, "if the gods give us their approval. It is a
serious thing to kill a man who is of royal race. If
they sanction it, I will be with you; otherwise I am for
letting it alone."

The rest assented, and they went back to the house. 406
But Medon told Penelope of this new plot, so she went
attended by her gentlewomen, stood by one of the
bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloister,
and bitterly rebuked Antinous for his ingratitude in
forgetting how Ulysses in old days had saved the life of
his father Eupeithes.

Eurymachus then made a fair but false speech vowing 431
eternal friendship to Telemachus, and Penelope returned
to her own room to mourn her husband till Minerva closed
her eyes in slumber.

In the evening Eumæus got back to his hut just as the 452
others had killed a yearling pig and were getting supper
ready. Meanwhile Minerva had again disguised Ulysses as
an old beggar.

"What news from the town, Eumæus?" said Telemachus. "Have 460
the suitors got back with their ship?"

"I did not ask," answered Eumæus, "for when I had 464
given my message I turned straight home; but I met the
messenger from your own crew, who told your mother of
your return before I could do so. As I was coming here,
and was on the hill of Mercury above the town, I saw a
ship with many men and much armour coming into port; so
I suppose it was the suitors, but I cannot be sure."

Telemachus gave his father a look, but so that the 476
swineherd could not see him. Then they all got their
supper and went to bed.

BOOK XVII.

_Telemachus goes to the town, and is followed by Eumæus
and Ulysses, who is maltreated by the suitors_.

When morning came Telemachus told Eumæus that he would
now go to the town and show himself to his mother, who
would never be comforted till she saw him with her own
eyes. "As for this miserable stranger," he continued,
"take him to the town, that he may beg there and get what
he can; if this does not please him, so much the worse
for him, but I like to say what I mean."

Ulysses said he should be glad to go, for a beggar could 16
do much better in town than country; but he must warm
himself first, and wait till the sun had got some heat in
it; his clothes were very bad, and he should perish with
cold, for the town was some way off.

Telemachus then left, and when he reached the house he 26
set his spear against a strong bearing post, crossed the
stone pavement and went inside. He found Euryclea putting
the sheep skins on to the seats. She and all the other
maids ran up to him as soon as they saw him, and kissed
him on the head and shoulders. Then Penelope came weeping
from her room, embraced him, and told him to tell her all
that he had seen.

Telemachus bade her go back to her room and pray to 45
Minerva that they might be revenged on the suitors. "I
must go," said he, "to the place of assembly, to look
after a guest whom I have brought with me, and whom I
have left with Piræus."

Penelope did as her son had said, while Telemachus went 61
to the place of assembly, and his two dogs with him. The
suitors, who had not yet gone to the house of Ulysses for
the day, gathered round him, and made him fair speeches,
but he knew their falsehood and went to sit with his
old friends Mentor, Antiphus and Halitherses. Presently
Piræus came up, bringing Theoclymenus with him, and said,
"I wish you would send some of your women to my house to
take away the presents that Menelaus gave you."

Telemachus said he did not know what might happen; if 77
the suitors killed him, he had rather Piræus kept the
presents than that the suitors should have them. If, on
the other hand, he killed the suitors he should be much
obliged if Piræus would let him have the presents.

Then he took Theoclymenus to his own house, where they 84
had a bath, and refreshments were set before them.
Penelope sat near them, spinning, while they were at
table, and then said she should go up stairs and lie down
on that couch which she had never ceased to water with
her tears from the day her husband left her. "But you had
not the patience," she added, "to tell me, before the
suitors came, whether you had been able to hear anything
about your father."

Telemachus told her how good Nestor had been to him, 107
and how he had sent him on to Menelaus, who had assured
him that Ulysses was still alive, but was detained by
Calypso, from whom he could not get away for want of a
ship. Penelope was very much agitated, but Theoclymenus
reassured her by telling her about the omen which had
greeted Telemachus on his return to Ithaca.

While they were thus conversing, the suitors were 166
playing at quoits and aiming javelins at a mark on the
level ground in front of Ulysses' house. But when it
was near dinner time and the flocks were coming in from
all the country round with their shepherds as usual [to
be milked], Medon, who was a great favourite with the
suitors, called them to come in and set about getting
their dinner ready. They therefore came in and began to
butcher some sheep, goats, pigs, and a heifer.

Meanwhile Eumæus told Ulysses that it was time to make 182
a start, for the day was well up and if he waited till
afternoon he would find the cold more severe. "At any
rate," said Ulysses, "let me have a staff if you have
one, for the path is rugged." Eumæus gave him one, and
they set out along the steep path leading to the town.
When they were nearly there they came to the fountain
which Ithacus, Neritus, and Polyctor had made, and from
which the people drew their water; here they fell in with
Melantheus[29] son of Dolius, who was bringing goats for
the suitors' dinner, he and his two under shepherds.

Melanthius heaped all kinds of insult on Ulysses and 215
Eumæus, and tried to kick Ulysses off the path, but
could not do so. Ulysses restrained himself, and prayed
to the nymphs, whereon Melanthius said he would put him
on board ship and sell him in some foreign country. He
then hurried on, leaving the swineherd and his master to
follow at their own pace.

When they got near the house they could hear the sound of 260
Phemius's lyre, and his voice as he sang to the suitors.
They could also smell the savour of roast meats.[30]
Eumæus said that he would go in first, but that Ulysses
had better follow him soon, for if he was seen standing
about in the outer court people might throw things at him.

As they were thus talking the old hound Argus who was 290
lying on the dunghill, very full of fleas, caught sight
of Ulysses, recognised him, wagged his tail, and tried to
come to him, but could not do so. Thereon Ulysses wiped
a tear from his eyes, and asked Eumæus whether the dog
was of any use, or whether he was kept only for his good
looks. Eumæus said what a noble hound Argus had been, but
the dog, having seen his master, died just as Eumæus went
inside the house.

Telemachus saw him enter and beckoned him to a seat 328
at his own table. Ulysses followed him shortly, and
sat down on the floor of ash wood inside the door way,
leaning against a bearing-post of well-squared Cyprus
wood. Telemachus noted him and said to Eumæus, "Take the
stranger this handful of bread and meat, tell him also to
go round and beg from the others, for a beggar must not
be shamefaced." Eumæus gave him both the message and the
bread and meat.

Then Ulysses began to go round begging, for he wanted to 360
exploit the suitors. He went from left to right, and some
took compassion on him while others begun asking who
he might be; Melanthius then said that he had come with
the swineherd. Antinous, therefore, asked Eumæus what he
meant by bringing such a man to plague them.

"I did not ask him to come," answered Eumæus. "Who was 350
likely to ask a man of that sort? One would ask a divine,
a physician, a carpenter, or a bard. You are always
hardest of all the suitors on Ulysses' servants, and
especially upon me, but I do not care so long as I have
Penelope and Telemachus on my side."

"Hush," said Telemachus, "Antinous has the bitterest 392
tongue of them all, and he makes the others worse." Then
he turned towards Antinous and said, "Give him something:
I do not grudge it. Never mind my mother or any of the
servants--not you--but you are fonder of eating than of
giving."

Antinous said, "You are a swaggering upstart; if all the 405
suitors will give him as much as I will, he will not come
near the house again this three months."

As he spoke he menaced Ulysses with the footstool 409
from under his table. The other suitors all gave him
something; and he was about to leave, when he determined
to again beg from Antinous and trumped him up a story of
the misfortunes that had befallen him in Egypt.

"Get out," said Antinous, "into the open part of the 445
court,[31] and away from my table, or I will give you
Egypt over again."

Ulysses drew back, and said, "Your looks are better than 453
your understanding. I can see that if you were in your
own house you would not spare a poor man so much as a
pinch of salt."

Antinous scowled at him. "Take that," he cried, "and be 458
off out of the court." As he spoke he threw a footstool
at him which hit him on the right shoulder, but Ulysses
stood firm as a rock, and prayed that if there was a god,
or an avenger of beggars, Antinous might be a corpse
before he was a bridegroom.

"Have a care," replied Antinous, "and hold your peace, or 477
we will flay you alive."

The others reproved Antinous. "You did ill," they said, 481
"to strike the man. Who knows but he may be one of the
gods who go about the world in disguise to redress wrong,
and chastise the insolence of mankind?"

Penelope from her room upstairs heard what had been going 491
on, and spoke with her women bitterly about the suitors.
The housekeeper Eurynome answered that if her prayers
were heard, not a single one of them would live till
morning. "Nurse," replied Penelope, "I hate them all,
but Antinous is the worst." Then she sent for Eumæus and
said, "Tell the stranger that I want to see him; he looks
like a man who has travelled, and he may have seen or
heard something of Ulysses."

"He has been three days and three nights at my hut, 515
Madam," replied Eumæus, "and the most accomplished bard
could not have given me better entertainment. He told me
that Ulysses was among the Thesprotians and would return
shortly, bringing much treasure with him."

"Then call him to me," said Penelope, "and as for the 528
others, let them dine at their own expense for the future
or how they best may, so long as they leave off coming
here."

Telemachus, who was down below, gave a great sneeze as 541
she spoke, which echoed over the whole house. Penelope
explained to Eumæus that this was a most favourable omen,
and added that if she was satisfied of the truth of what
the stranger told her she would give him a shirt and
cloak.

Eumæus gave Penelope's message to Ulysses, but he feared 551
the violence of the suitors, and told him to say that she
must wait till nightfall, when the suitors would be gone.
"Then," he said, "let her set me down in a warm seat by
the fire, and I will tell her about her husband; for my
clothes are in a very bad state; you know they are, for
your's was the first house I came to."

Penelope was displeased at his delay, and asked Eumæus 574
whether his fears were reasonable, or whether it was only
that he was shamefaced. Eumæus explained that he was
quite reasonable, whereon Penelope was satisfied; he then
went back to where the suitors were, and told Telemachus
that he would return to his pigs.

Telemachus said that he had better get something to eat 598
first, and was to come back to the town on the following
morning, bringing the pigs that were to be killed for
dinner. It was now afternoon, and the suitors had turned
to their singing and dancing.

BOOK XVIII.

_The fight between Ulysses and Irus--The suitors make
presents to Penelope--and ill-treat Ulysses_.

Now there came a common tramp to Ulysses' house,
begging--a great hulking fellow with no stay in
him--whose name was Arnæus; but people called him Irus,
because he would run errands for any one who would send
him on them. This man began to threaten Ulysses, and said
the suitors had urged him to turn him away from the house.

Ulysses said there was room enough for both of them, and 14
that it should be a case of live-and-let-live between
them. "If, however," he continued, "it comes to blows, I
will deluge your mouth and chest with blood, and I shall
have the place to myself, for you will not come back
again."

Irus retorted angrily, and Antinous, hearing them 34
wrangle, told the other suitors that Irus and the
stranger were about to have a fight. "It is the finest
piece of sport," he said, "that heaven ever sent into
this house. We are to have goat's paunches stuffed with
blood and fat for supper; whichever of the two beats in
this fight shall have his pick of the lot of them."

The preliminaries being arranged, and fair play bargained 58
for by Ulysses, he began to strip. When Irus saw his
muscles his heart misgave him; but Antinous kept him up
to it, and the fight began.[32] Ulysses forthwith nearly
killed Irus and dragged him by the heels into the outer
court, where he put his staff in his hand and propped him
up against the wall more dead than alive. Antinous then
gave Ulysses a great goat's paunch, and Amphinomus drank
his health.

Ulysses made Amphinomus a very grave and impressive 124
speech, warning him to leave the house, inasmuch as
Ulysses would return shortly. "You seem," said he, "to
be a man of good understanding, as indeed you may well
be, seeing whose son you are. I have heard your father
well spoken of; he is Nisus of Dulichium, a man both
brave and wealthy. They tell me you are his son and you
seem to be a considerable person; listen, therefore, and
take heed to what I am saying. Man is the vainest of all
creatures that live and move upon the earth: as long as
heaven vouchsafes him health and strength he thinks that
he shall come to no harm hereafter, and even when the
blessed gods bring sorrow upon him, he bears it as he
needs must and makes the best of it, for God Almighty
gives men their daily minds day by day. I know all about
it, for I was a rich man once, and did much wrong in the
stubbornness of my pride and in the confidence that my
father and my brothers would support me; therefore let
a man fear God in all things always, and take the good
that heaven may see fit to send him without vainglory."
But Amphinomus, though his heart boded ill, would not be
persuaded.

Minerva then put it in Penelope's mind to get some 158
presents out of the suitors. "I hate them," said she to
Eurynome, "but still for once in a way I will see them; I
want to warn my son against them."

"Certainly, my dear child," answered Eurynome, "but you 169
must wash your face first. You cannot be seen with the
stain of tears upon your cheeks."

"Eurynome," replied her mistress, "do not try to persuade 177
me. Heaven robbed me of all my beauty on the day when my
husband sailed for Troy; but send Autonoë and Hippodamia
to attend me, for I cannot think of seeing the suitors
unattended." The old woman then went through the house
to fetch the women; and as soon as she was gone, Minerva
sent Penelope into a deep sleep during which she endowed
her with the most dazzling beauty, washing her face with
the ambrosial loveliness which Venus wears when she goes
out dancing with the Graces, and giving her a statelier
and more imposing presence. When the two maids came,
the noise of their coming woke her. "What a delicious
sleep," she exclaimed, "has overshadowed me. Would that
it had been the sleep of death, which had thus ended all
my sorrows."

She then went down stairs, and the suitors were dazzled 206
with her beauty. She began by upbraiding Telemachus
for having allowed the fight to take place. Telemachus
admitted his fault, but pleaded the extreme difficulty
of his situation and the fact that after all Ulysses had
thrashed Irus.

Enrymachus broke in upon their conversation by telling 243
Penelope how very beautiful she was; and Penelope
answered that heaven had robbed her of all her beauty on
the day when her husband sailed for Troy. "Moreover," she
added, "I have another great sorrow--you suitors are not
wooing me in the usual way. When men are suing for the
hand of one who they think will make them a good wife,
they generally bring oxen and sheep for her relations to
feast upon, and make rich presents to the lady herself,
instead of sponging upon other people's property."

When Ulysses heard her say this, he was delighted at 281
seeing his wife trying to get presents out of the
suitors, and hoodwinking them.

Then Antinous said, "Penelope, take all the presents 284
you can get, but we will not go till you have married
the best man among us." On this they all made Penelope
magnificent presents, and she went back to her own room,
followed by the women, who carried the presents for her.

The suitors now turned to singing and dancing, lighted 304
by large braziers that were placed in the court,[33] 307
and also by torches, which the maids held up by turns.
Ulysses after a while told them to go inside, saying that
he would hold the torches himself. The maids laughed at 317
this, and Melantho, who was one of them, began to gibe
at him. She was daughter to Dolius but Penelope had
brought her up from childhood, and used to give her toys;
she showed no consideration, however, for Penelope's
sorrows, but misconducted herself with Eurymachus. "Are
you drunk?" she said to Ulysses, "or are you always like
this?"

Ulysses scowled at her, and said he would tell 337
Telemachus, who would have her cut up into mincemeat.
The women, therefore, were frightened and went away, so
Ulysses was left holding up the flaming torches--looking
upon all the suitors and brooding over his revenge.

Presently Eurymachus began to jeer at him, and taunt 346
him by saying he preferred begging to working. Ulysses
answered, "If you and I, Eurymachus, were matched one
against the other in early summer, when the days are
at their longest--give us each a good scythe, and see
whether you or I will mow the stronger or fast the
longer, from dawn till dark when the mowing grass is
about. Or let us be in a four acre field with a couple
of tawny full fed oxen each, and see which of us can
drive the straighter furrow. Again, let war break out
this day--give me armour and you will find me fighting
among the foremost. You are insolent and cruel, and think
yourself a great man because you live in a little world,
and that a bad one."

Eurymachus was furious, and seized a stool; but Ulysses 394
sat down by the knees of Amphinomus of Dulichium, for
he was afraid; the stool hit the cupbearer and knocked
him down, whereon there was a general uproar, amid which
Telemachus said that he would compel no man, but he
thought it would be better if they would all go home to
bed. To this they assented, and shortly afterwards left
the house.

BOOK XIX.

_Ulysses converses with Penelope, and is recognised by
Euryclea_.

Ulysses and Telemachus were left alone in the cloister,
and Ulysses said, "We must take the armour down from the
walls; if the suitors are surprised, say what I told you
when we were in Eumæus's hut."

Telemachus called Euryclea, and bade her shut the women 15
up in their room, for he was going to take the armour
down into the store room. "Who," asked Euryclea, "will
show you a light if the women are all shut up?" "The
stranger," answered Telemachus; "I will not have people
doing nothing about my premises."

He and Ulysses then began removing the armour, and 31
Minerva went before them, shedding a strange lambent
light that played on walls and rafters. Telemachus was
lost in wonder, but Ulysses said, "Hush, this is the
manner of the gods. Get you to bed, and leave me to talk
with your mother and the maids." So Telemachus crossed
the court and went to the room in which he always slept,
leaving Ulysses in the cloister.

Penelope now came down, and they set a seat for her by 53
the fire; the maids also were l

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