These elaborate preparations for her “work”—which is some delicate fabric of wool tinged with the costly purple dye—have little in common with the household loom of Penelope. Here, as in the Iliad, refinement and elegance of taste are the distinctive characteristics of Helen; and they help to explain, though they in no way excuse, the fascination exercised over her by Paris, the accomplished musician and brilliant converser, rich in all the graces which Venus, for her own evil purposes, had bestowed on her favourite. Helen is still, as in the Iliad, emphatically “the lady;” the lady of rank and fashion, as things were in that day, with all the fashionable faults, and all the fashionable good qualities: selfish, and luxurious, gracious and fascinating. Her transgressions, and the seemingly lenient view which the poet takes of them, have been discussed sufficiently in the Iliad. They are all now condoned. She has recovered from her miserable infatuation; and if we are inclined to despise Menelaus for his easy temper as a husband, we must remember the mediæval legends of Arthur and Guinevere, to whom Helen bears, in many points of character, a strong resemblance. The readiness which Arthur shows to have accepted at any time the repentance of his queen is almost repulsive to modern feeling, but was evidently not so to the taste of the age in which those legends were popular; nor is it at all clear that such forgiveness is less consonant with the purest code of morality than the stern implacability towards such offences which the laws of modern society would enjoin. Menelaus has forgiven Helen, even as Arthur—though not Mr Tennyson’s Arthur—would have forgiven Guinevere. But she has not forgiven herself, and this is a strong redeeming point in her character; “shameless” is still the uncompromising epithet which she applies to herself, as in the Iliad, even in the presence of her husband and his guests.
They, too, have been wanderers since the fall of Troy, like the lost Ulysses. The king tells his own story before he interrogates his guest:—
He has grown rich in his travels, and would be happy, but for the thought of his brother Agamemnon’s miserable end. Another grief, too, lies very close to his heart—the uncertainty which still shrouds the fate of his good comrade Ulysses.
The son is touched at the reminiscence, and drops a quiet tear, while for a moment he covers his eyes with his robe. It is at this juncture that Helen enters the hall. Her quick thought seizes the truth at once; as she had detected the father through his disguise of rags when he came as a spy into Troy, so now she recognises the son at once by his strong personal resemblance. Then Menelaus, too, sees the likeness, and connects it with the youth’s late emotion. Young Pisistratus at once tells him who his friend is, and on what errand they are travelling together. Warm is the greeting which the King of Sparta bestows on the son of his old friend. There shall be no more lamentation for this night; all painful subjects shall be at least postponed until the morrow. But still, as the feast goes on, the talk is of Ulysses. Helen has learnt, too, in her wanderings, some of the secrets of Egyptian pharmacy. She has mixed in the wine a potent Eastern drug, which raises the soul above all care and sorrow—
The “Nepenthes” of Helen has obtained a wide poetical celebrity. Some allegorical interpreters of the poem would have us understand that it is the charms of conversation which have this miraculous power to make men forget their grief. Without at all questioning their efficacy, it may be safely assumed that the poet had in his mind something more material. The drug has been supposed to be opium; but the effects ascribed to the Arabian “haschich”—a preparation of hemp—correspond very closely with those said to be produced by Helen’s potion. Sir Henry Halford thought it might more probably be the “hyoscyamus,” which he says is still used at Constantinople and in the Morea under the name of “Nebensch.”[30]
Not till the next morning does Telemachus discuss with Menelaus the object of his journey. What little the Spartan king can tell him of the fate of his father is so far reassuring, that there is good hope he is yet alive. But he is—or was—detained in an enchanted island. There the goddess Calypso holds him an unwilling captive, and forces her love upon him. He longs sore for his home in Ithaca; but the spells of the enchantress are too strong. So much has Menelaus learnt, during his own wanderings, while wind-bound at Pharos in Egypt, from Proteus, “the old man of the sea”—
The knowledge had to be forced from him by stratagem. Proteus was in the habit of coming up out of the sea at mid-day to sleep under the shadow of the rocks, with his flock of seals about him. Instructed by his daughter Eidothea—who had taken pity on the wanderers—Menelaus and some of his comrades had disguised themselves in seal-skins[31] (though much disturbed, as he confesses, by the “very ancient and fish-like smell”), and had seized the ancient sea-god as he lay asleep on the shore. Proteus, like the genie in the Arabian tale, changed himself rapidly into all manner of terrible forms; but Menelaus held him fast until he was obliged to resume his own, when, confessing himself vanquished by the mortal, the god proceeded in recompense to answer his questions as to his own fate, and that of his companion chiefs, the wanderers on their way home from Troy. The transformations of Proteus have much exercised the ingenuity of the allegorists. The pliancy of such principles of interpretation becomes amusingly evident, when one authority explains to us that here are symbolised the wiles of sophistry—another, that it is the inscrutability of truth, ever escaping from the seeker’s grasp; while others, again, see in Proteus the versatility of nature, the various ideals of philosophers, or the changes of the atmosphere. From such source had the king learnt the terrible end of his brother Agamemnon, and the ignoble captivity of Ulysses; but for himself, the favourite of heaven, a special exemption has been decreed from the common lot of mortality. It is thus that Proteus reads the fates for the husband of Helen:—
The grand lines of Homer are thus grandly rendered by Abraham Moore. Homer repeats the description of the Elysian fields, the abode of the blest, in a subsequent passage of the poem, which has been translated almost word for word—yet as only a poet could translate it—by the Roman Lucretius. Mr Tennyson has the same great original before him when he makes his King Arthur see, in his dying thought,
The calm sweet music of these lines has charmed many a reader who never knew that the strain had held all Greece enchanted two thousand years ago. It has been scarcely possible to add anything to the quiet beauty of the original Greek, but the English poet has at least shown exquisite skill in the setting of the jewel. But Homer has always been held as common property by later poets. Milton’s classical taste had previously adopted some of the imagery; the “Spirit” in the ‘Masque of Comus’ speaks of the happy climes which are his proper abode:—
Gladly would Menelaus have kept the son of his old comrade with him longer as a guest, but Telemachus is impatient to rejoin his galley, which waits for him at Pylos. His host reluctantly dismisses him, not without parting gifts; but the gift which the king would have had him take—a chariot and yoke of three swift horses—the island-prince will not accept. Ithaca has no room for horse-coursing, and he loves his rocky home all the better.
There is much consternation in the palace of Ulysses when the absence of Telemachus is at last discovered. Antinous and his fellow-revellers are struck with astonishment at the bold step he has suddenly taken, and with alarm at the possible result. Antinous will man a vessel at once, and waylay him in the straits on his return. The revelation of this plot to Penelope by Medon, the herald, one of the few faithful retainers of Ulysses’ house, makes her for the first time aware of her son’s departure; for old Eurycleia has kept her darling’s secret safe even from his mother. In an agony of grief she sits down amidst her sympathising maidens, and bewails herself as “twice bereaved,” of son and husband. She lifts her prayer to Minerva, and the goddess hears. When Penelope has wept herself to sleep, there stands at the head of her couch what seems the form of her sister Iphthimè, and assures her of her son’s safety: he has a guardian about his path “such as many a hero would pray to have.” Even in her dream, Penelope is half conscious of the dignity of her visitor; and, true wife that she is, she prays the vision to tell her something of her absent husband. But such revelation, the figure tells her, is no part of its mission, and so vanishes into thin air. The sleeper awakes—it is a dream indeed; but it has left a lightness and elasticity of spirit which the queen accepts as an augury of good to come.
The fifth book of the poem opens with a second council of the gods. It has been remarked with some truth that the gods of the Odyssey are, on the whole, more dignified than those of the Iliad. They are divided in this poem, as well as in the other, in their loves and hates towards mortals, but their dissensions are neither so passionate nor so grotesque. Minerva complains bitterly to the Ruler of Olympus of the injustice with which her favourite Ulysses is treated, by being kept so long an exile from his home. She, too, repeats the indignant protest which the poet had before put into the mouth of Mentor, which has found vent in all times and ages, from Job and the Psalmist downwards, when in the bitterness of a wounded spirit men rebel against what seems the inequality of the justice of heaven; that “there is one event to the righteous and the wicked;” nay, that the wicked have even the best of it. “Let never king henceforth do justly and love mercy; but let him rule with iron hand and work all iniquity; for lo! what is Ulysses’ reward?” Jupiter is moved by the appeal. He at once despatches Mercury to the island of Calypso, to announce to her that Ulysses must be released from her toils; such is his sovereign will, and it must be obeyed. The description of the island-grotto in which Calypso dwells is one of the most beautiful in Homer, and it is a passage upon which our English translators have delighted to employ their very best powers. Perhaps Leigh Hunt’s version is the most simply beautiful, and as faithful as any. Mercury has sped on his errand;—
Calypso recognises the messenger, for the immortals, says the poet, know each other always. Mercury tells his errand—a bitter one for the nymph to hear, for she has set her heart upon her mortal lover. Very hard and envious, she says, is the Olympian tyrant, to grudge her this harmless fancy. [She must have thought in her heart, though the poet does not put it into words for her, that Jupiter should surely have some sympathy for weaknesses of which he set so remarkable an example.] But she will obey, as needs she must. Ulysses shall go; only he must build himself a boat, for there is none in her island. She goes herself to announce to him his coming deliverance. She finds him sitting pensively, as is his wont, on the sea-beach, looking and longing in the direction of Ithaca.
His heart is in his native island; but, sooth to say, he makes the best of his present captivity. He endures, if he does not heartily reciprocate, the love of his fair jailer. The correspondence in many points of these Homeric lays with the legends of mediæval Christendom, especially with those of Arthur and his Round Table, has been already noticed. It has been said also that, on the whole, the moral tone of Homer is far purer. But there is one bright creation of mediæval fiction which finds no counterpart in the song of the Greek bard. It was only Christianity—one might almost say it was only mediæval Christianity—which could conceive the pure ideal of the stainless knight who has kept his maiden innocence,—who only can sit in the “siege perilous” and win the holy Grail, “because his heart is pure.” Among all the heroes of Iliad or Odyssey there is no Sir Galahad.
Calypso obeys the behest of Jove reluctantly, but without murmuring. Goddess-like or woman-like, however, she cannot fail to be mortified at the want of any reluctance on her lover’s part to leave her. There is something touching in her expostulation:—
Ulysses’ reply is honest and manful:—
It cannot but be observed, however, that while Penelope’s whole thoughts and interests are concentrated upon her absent husband, the longing of Ulysses is rather after his fatherland than his wife. She is only one of the many component parts of the home-scene which is ever before the wanderer’s eyes; and not always the most important part, for his aged father and mother and his young son seem to be at least equal objects of anxiety. It may be urged that in this parting scene with Calypso he is purposely reticent in the matter of his affection for Penelope, not caring to draw down upon himself the proverbial wrath of “a woman scorned;” and that for a similar reason he suppresses his feelings, and quite ignores the existence of his wife, at the court of Alcinous, when that king offers him his daughter in marriage. But there is, to say the least, some lack of enthusiasm on the husband’s part throughout. Of the single-hearted devotion of woman to man we have striking instances both in Penelope and in the Andromache of the Iliad; but the devotion of man to woman had yet long to wait for its development in the age of chivalry.
He builds himself a boat on the island, by Calypso’s instructions, and when all is ready, she stores it plentifully with food and wine, and gives him directions for his voyage. He launches and sets sail; but the angry god of the sea (irate especially against Ulysses for having blinded his son, the giant Polyphemus, as we shall learn hereafter) stirs winds and waves against him, wrecks his bark, and leaves him clinging for life to a broken spar. One of the sea-nymphs, Ino, takes pity on him, and gives him a charmed scarf—so long as he wears it his life is safe. For two nights and days he is tossed helplessly on the ocean; on the third, with sore wounds and bruises, he makes good his landing on the rock-bound coast of a strange island. Utterly exhausted, he scrapes together a bed of leaves, and creeping into it, sinks into a profound sleep.
He awakes to find himself in a kind of faeryland. The island on which he has been cast is Scheria,[32] inhabited by the Phæacians, whose king and people are very far indeed from being of the ordinary type of mortal men. Whether the poet, in his description of these Phæacian islanders, was exercising his imagination only, or indulging his talent for satire, is a controverted question with Homeric critics. Those who would assign this poem of the Odyssey to a different author from the writer or writers of the Iliad, and to a much later date than that commonly given to Homer, have thought that in the good-humoured boastfulness of the Phæacian character, their love of pleasure and novelty, and their attachment to the sea, some Ionian poet was showing up, under fictitious names, the weaknesses of his own countrymen. Others take the Phæacians to be only another name for the Phœnicians, the sailors of all seas, who had probably in their character somewhat of the egotism and exaggeration which have been commonly reputed faults of men who have travelled far and seen much. Whatever may be the true interpretation of the story, or whether there be any interpretation at all, this curious episode in the adventures of Ulysses is unquestionably rather comic than serious. The names are all significant, somewhat after the fashion of those assumed by the Red men. The king (Alcinous) is “Strong-mind,” son of “The Swift Seaman,” and he has a brother called “Crusher of Men.” The nautical names of his courtiers—“Prow-man” and “Stern-man,” and the rest—are as palpably conventional as our own Tom Bowline and Captain Crosstree. The hero’s introduction to his new hosts presents, nevertheless, one of the most beautiful scenes in the poem. The patriarchal simplicity of the tale cannot fail to remind the reader, as Homer so often does, of the narratives of the earlier Scriptures.
The princess Nausicaa, daughter of the king of the Phæacians, has had a dream. The dream—which comes as naturally to princesses, no doubt, as to other young people—is of marriage; and in this case it could be no possible reproach to the dreamer, since the goddess of wisdom is represented as having herself suggested it. Nor is the dream of any bridegroom in particular, but simply of what seems to us the very prosaic fact that a wedding outfit, which must soon come to be thought of, required household stores of good linen; and that the family stock in the palace, from long disuse, stood much in need of washing. Nausicaa awakes in the morning, and begs of her father to lend her a chariot and a yoke of mules, that she and her maidens may go down to the shore, where the river joins the sea, to perform this domestic duty. The pastoral simplicity of the whole scene is charming. It has all the freshness of those earlier ages when the business of life was so leisurely and jovially conducted, that much of it wore the features of a holiday. The princess and her maidens plunge the linen in the stream, and stamp it clean with their pretty bare feet (a process which will remind an English reader of Arlette and Robert of Normandy, and which may be seen in operation still at many a burn-side in Scotland), and then go themselves to bathe. An outdoor banquet forms part of the day’s enjoyment; for the good queen, Nausicaa’s mother, has stored the wain with delicate viands and a goat-skin of sweet wine. When this is over, the girls begin to play at ball. Ulysses, be it remembered, is all this while lying fast asleep under his heap of leaves, and, as it happens, close by the spot where this merry party are disporting themselves. By chance Nausicaa, too eager in her game, throws the ball out into the sea; whereupon the whole chorus of handmaidens raise a cry of dismay, which at once awakens the sleeper. He is puzzled, when he comes to himself, to make out where he is; and still more confounded, when he peers out from his hiding-place, to find himself in the close neighbourhood of this bevy of joyous damsels, especially when he bethinks himself of the very primitive style of his present costume; for the scarf which the sea-nymph gave him us a talisman he had cast into the sea upon his landing, as she had especially charged him. But Ulysses is far too old a traveller to allow an over-punctilious modesty to stand in his way when he is in danger of starving. He has no idea of missing this opportunity of supplying his wants merely because he has lost his wardrobe. He extemporises some very slight covering out of an olive-bough, and, in this strange attire, makes his sudden appearance before the party. Nausicaa’s maidens all scream and take to flight—very excusably; but the king’s daughter, with a true nobility, stands firm. She sees only a shipwrecked man, and “to the pure all things are pure.” Ulysses is a courtier as well as a traveller, and knows much of “cities and men;” and it is not the flattery of a suppliant, but the quick discernment of a man of the world, which makes him at once assign her true rank to the fair stranger who stands before him. He remains at a respectful distance, while, in the language of Eastern compliment, he compares her to the young palm-tree for grace and beauty, and invokes the blessing of the gods upon her marriage-hour, if she will take pity on his miserable case. Nausicaa recalls her fugitive attendants, and rebukes them for their folly, reminding them that “the stranger and the poor are the messengers of the gods.” The shipwrecked hero is supplied at once with food and drink and raiment; and when he reappears, after having bathed and clothed himself, it is with a mien and stature more majestic than his wont, with the “hyacinthine locks” of immortal youth flowing round his stately shoulders—such grace does his guardian goddess bestow upon him, that he may find favour in the sight of the Phæacian princess. She looks upon him now with simple and undisguised admiration, confessing aside to her handmaidens that, when her time for marriage does come, she should wish for just such a husband as this godlike stranger. There is nothing unmaidenly in such language from the lips of Nausicaa. To remain unmarried was a reproach in her day, whatever it may be in ours, and a reproach not likely to fall upon a king’s daughter; so, looking upon the marriage state as inevitable, and at her age very near at hand, she thinks and speaks of it unreservedly to her companions. Our modern conventional silence on such topics arises in great degree from the fact that a perpetual maidenhood is the inevitable lot of far too many in our over-civilised society, and, being inevitable, is no reproach. It does not consort, therefore, with maidenly dignity to express any interest about marriage, for which an opportunity may never be offered.
But Nausicaa is at least as careful to observe the proprieties, according to her own view of them, as any modern young lady. She will promise the shipwrecked stranger a welcome at her father’s court; but he must by no means ride home in the wain with her, or even be seen entering the city in her company. So Ulysses runs by the side of her mules, and waits in a sacred grove near the city gates, until the princess and her party have re-entered the palace. When they have disappeared, he issues forth, and meets a girl carrying a pitcher. It is once more his guardian goddess in disguise. She veils him in a mist, so that he passes the streets unquestioned by the natives (who have no love for strangers), and stands at last in the presence of King Alcinous.
The king of the Phæacians, as well as his queen, boast to be descended from Neptune. His subjects therefore, are, as has been said, emphatically a seagoing people. Ulysses has already seen with admiration, as he passed,
Their galleys, moreover, are unlike any barks that ever walked the seas except in a poet’s imagination. King Alcinous himself describes them:—
The wondrous art of navigation might well seem nothing less than miraculous in an age when all the forces of nature were personified as gods. So, when the great ship Argo carried out her crew of ancient heroes on what was the first voyage of discovery, the fable ran that in her prow was set a beam cut from the oak of Dodona, which had the gift of speech, and gave the voyagers oracles in their distress. Our English Spenser must have had these Phæacian ships in mind when he describes the “gondelay” which bears the enchantress Phædria:—
As the men of Phæacia excel all others in seamanship, so also do the women in the feminine accomplishments of weaving and embroidery. But they are not, as they freely confess, a nation of warriors: they love the feast and the dance and the song, and care little for what other men call glory. The palace of Alcinous and its environs are all in accordance with this luxurious type of character. All round the palace lie gardens and orchards, which rejoice in an enchanted climate, under whose influence their luscious products ripen in an unfailing succession:—
When the traveller enters within the palace itself, he finds himself surrounded with equal wonders.
King Alcinous sits on his golden throne, “quaffing his wine like a god.” His queen, Arete, sits beside him, weaving yarn of the royal purple. Warned by his kind friend the princess, Ulysses passes by the king’s seat, and falls at the feet of the queen. In the court of Phæacia—whether the story be disguised fact or pure fiction, whether the poet was satiric or serious—the ruling influence lies with the women. The mist in which Minerva had enveloped his person melts away; and while all gaze in astonishment at his sudden appearance, he claims hospitality as a shipwrecked wanderer, and then, after the fashion of suppliants, seats himself on the hearth-stone. The hospitality of Alcinous is prompt and magnificent. He bids one of his sons rise up and cede the place of honour to the stranger. If he be mortal man, the boon he asks shall be granted; but it may be that he is one of the immortals, who, as he gravely assures his guest, often condescend to come down and share the banquets of the Phæacians, and make themselves known to them face to face. Ulysses assures his royal host, in a passage which is in itself sufficient to mark the subdued comedy of the episode, that far from having any claim to divinity, he is very mortal indeed, and wholly taken up at present with one of the most inglorious of mortal cravings:—
There is every appliance to satisfy appetite, however, in the luxurious halls of Alcinous. While Ulysses is seated at table, Queen Arete, careful housewife as she is with all her royalty, marks with some curiosity that the raiment which their strange guest wears must have come from her own household stores—so well does she know the work of herself and her handmaidens. This leads to a confession on Ulysses’ part of his previous interview with Nausicaa, whom he praises, as he had good right to do, as wise beyond her years. So charmed is the king with his guest’s taste and discernment, that he at once declares that nothing would please him better than to retain him at his court in the character of a son-in-law. Ulysses (whose fate it is throughout his wanderings to make himself only too interesting to the fair sex generally) is by this time too much accustomed to such proposals to show any embarrassment. With his usual diplomacy he puts the question aside—bowing his acknowledgments only, it may be, though Homer does not tell us even so much as this. The one point to which he addresses himself is the king’s promise to send him safe home, which he accepts with thankfulness. Before they retire for the night, the queen herself does not disdain to give special orders for their guest’s accommodation. She bids her maidens prepare
The combination of magnificence with simplicity is of a wholly Oriental character. The appliances of the court might be those of a modern Eastern potentate; yet the queen is a thrifty housekeeper, the princess-royal superintends the family wash, and the five sons of the royal family, when their sister comes home, themselves come forward and unyoke her mules from the wain which has brought home the linen.
The next day is devoted to feasting and games in honour of the stranger. Amongst the company sits the blind minstrel Demodocus, in whose person it has been thought that the poet describes himself—
Such honour has the bard in all lands. The king’s son does not disdain to guide “the blind fingers;” and when the song is over, the herald leads him carefully to his place at the banquet, where his portion is of the choicest—“the chine of the white-tusked boar.” The subject of his lay is the tale which charms all hearers—Phæacian, Greek, or Roman, ancient or modern, then as now—the tale of Troy. Touched with the remembrances which the song awakens, Ulysses wraps his face in his mantle to hide his rising tears. The king marks his guest’s emotion: too courteous to allude to it, he contents himself with rising at once from the banquet-table, and giving order for the sports to begin. Foot-race, wrestling, quoit-throwing, and boxing, all have their turn; and in all the king’s’ sons take their part, not unsuccessfully. It is suggested at last that the stranger, who stands silently looking on, should exhibit some feat of strength or skill. Ulysses declines—he has no heart just now for pastimes. Then one of the young Phæacians, Euryalus, who has just won the wrestling-match, gives vent to an ungracious taunt. Their guest, he says, is plainly no hero, nor versed in the noble science of athletics; he must be some skipper of a merchantman, “whose talk is all of cargoes.” He brings down upon himself a grand rebuke from Ulysses:—
Then the hero who has thrown the mighty Ajax in the wrestling-ring, who is swifter of foot than any Greek except Achilles, and who has been awarded that matchless hero’s arms as the prize of valour against all competitors,—rises in his wrath, and gives his gay entertainers a taste of his quality. Not deigning even to throw off his mantle, he seizes a huge stone quoit, and hurls it, after a single swing, far beyond the point reached by any of the late competitors. The astonished islanders crouch to the ground as it sings through the air above their heads. Once roused, Ulysses launches out into the self-assertion which has been remarked as being common to all the heroes of Homeric story. He challenges the whole circle of bystanders to engage with him in whatsoever contest they will—