The enchantress Acrasia, with her transformed lovers—the “seeming beasts who are men in deed”—is but a copy from Circe; while the “Gulf of Greediness” yawning on one side of the Lake—
and on the other side the “Rock of Vile Reproach,” whose fatal magnetic power draws in all who try to shun the whirlpool opposite, are the Scylla and Charybdis of Homer.
At length the voyagers reached the shore where the oxen of the Sun were pastured. In vain did Ulysses, remembering the prophecy of Tiresias, bid them steer on and leave the land unvisited. Eurylochus, his lieutenant, broke out at last into something like mutiny. He had some show of reason, when he complained of his chief, almost in the words of Sir Dinadan to Sir Tristram in the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ that he was tired of such mad company, and would no longer follow a man to whose iron frame the toils and dangers which wore out ordinary mortals were a mere disport. Seeing that the rest backed Eurylochus in his proposal to land and rest, Ulysses was fain to give way, after exacting a vow that at least none of them should lay sacrilegious hands upon the sacred herds, since they had store of corn and wine, the parting gifts of Circe, on board their vessel. But stress of weather detained them in the anchorage a whole month, until corn and wine were exhausted, and they had to snare birds and catch fish—a kind of food which a Greek seaman especially despised—to keep them from starving. Then at last, while their chief had withdrawn to a quiet spot, and fallen asleep wearied with long prayer, Eurylochus persuaded the rest to break their vow, and slay the choicest of the oxen. Terrible prodigies followed the unhallowed meal; the skins of the slain animals moved and crawled after their slayers, and the meat, while roasting on the spits, uttered fearful cries and groans. One of the old allegorical interpreters has drawn from this incident a moral which, however fanciful, is not without a certain beauty and appositeness of illustration—the sins of the wicked, he says, dog their steps, and cry aloud against them. When next they put to sea, Jupiter raised winds and waves to punish them; for the Sun had threatened that, if such insult went unavenged, he would light the heavens no more, but go down and shine in Hades. Their ship was riven by a thunderbolt, and Ulysses alone, sole survivor of all his crew, after once more narrowly escaping the whirlpool of Charybdis, after floating nine days upon the broken mast, was cast ashore on the island of Calypso, and there detained until his release by the intercession of Minerva, as has been told, which had ended in this second shipwreck on the coast of his present entertainers.
The hero, at his departure, is loaded with rich presents of honour from his Phæacian hosts. The twelve princes of the kingdom each contribute their offering—gold and changes of raiment; the king adds a gold drinking-cup of his own, and Queen Arete a mantle and tunic. The careful queen also supplies him with a magnificent chest, in which she packs his treasures with her own royal hands; and Ulysses secures the whole with a “seaman’s knot,” whose complications will defy the uninitiated—a secret which he has learnt from Circe, and which he seems to have handed down to modern sailors. Thus equipped, he is sent on board one of the magic galleys, to be conveyed home to his native Ithaca. They embark in the evening, and early the next morning the crew—apparently in order to give the adventure the half-ludicrous turn which seems inseparable from the Phæacians—land their passenger, still sound asleep, and leave him on shore under an olive-tree, with his store of presents heaped beside him. When he awakes, he fails to recognise his native island, for Minerva has spread a mist over it. The goddess herself presently accosts him, in the form of a shepherd, and listens patiently to a story which the hero invents, with his usual readiness, to account for his presence on the island. Then she discovers herself, with a somewhat ironical compliment on the inveterate craftiness which has led him to attempt to impose on the wisest of the immortals. She tells him news of his wife and of his son, and promises him her help against the accursed suitors. She lays her golden wand upon him, and lo! the majestic presence which had touched the maiden fancy of Nausicaa, and won him favour in the eyes of the Phæacian court (to say nothing of Circe and Calypso) has at once given place to the decrepitude of age. The ruddy cheeks grow wrinkled, the bright eyes are dimmed, the flowing locks turned grey, and Ulysses is, to all appearance, an aged beggar, clad in squalid rags. Thus disguised, so that none shall recognise him till his hour comes, he seeks shelter, by direction of the goddess, with his own swineherd Eumæus.
Eumæus is one of the most characteristic personages in the poem, and has given the most trouble to the poet’s various critics. He occupies a sort of forester’s lodge in the woods, where the vast herds of swine belonging to the absent king are fed by day, and carefully lodged at night. Though he is but a keeper of swine, Homer applies to him continually the epithets “godlike,” and “chief of men,” which he commonly uses only of territorial lords such as Ulysses and Menelaus. He not only has subordinates in his employ, but an attendant slave, whom he has purchased with his own money; and he so far exercises an independent right of property in the animals which are under his care as to kill and dress them—two at a time, such is the lavish hospitality of the age—to feast the stranger-guest who has now come to him. It may be straining a point to see in him, as one of the most genial of Homeric critics does, “a genuine country gentleman of the age of Homer;” but his position, so far as it is possible to compare it with anything at all in modern social life, appears something like that of the agricultural steward of a large landed proprietor, with whom his relations, though strictly subordinate, are of a highly confidential and friendly character. The charge of the swine would be a much more important office in an age when, as is plain from many passages both in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the flesh of those animals held a place of honour at the banquets of chiefs and kings: and as we find that even the sons of a royal household did not think the keeping of sheep beneath their dignity, so the care of other animals would by no means imply a menial position. Eumæus, indeed, turns out to be himself of princely birth—stolen in his childhood by a treacherous nurse from the island where his father was king, sold by Phœnician merchants to Laertes in Ithaca, and brought up in his household almost as a son, and regarding the lost Ulysses “as an elder brother.” Very loyal is he to the house of his benefactors; prefacing his meal by a prayer that his lord may yet return in safety, and grieving specially that the lady Penelope, in her present troubles, has seldom the opportunity to see or speak with him in the kindly intercourse of old. The cordial and simple relations between master and servant—even though the servant was commonly nothing more or less than a purchased slave—are a striking feature, very pleasant to dwell upon, in these Homeric poems. They remind us, as Homer does so often, of similar pictures in the sacred narrative of the gentler affections which redeemed so often the curse of slavery—of the little captive Israelite maiden whose concern for her Syrian master led to his cure, and of the faithful steward, “born in the house” of Abraham, whom the childless patriarch once thought to make his heir.
Eumæus entertains the stranger right hospitably—warning him, at the same time, not to pretend, as others have often done in the hope of reward, to bring tidings of the lost Ulysses. His guest’s own story he will be glad to hear. The hero is always ready at narrative, whether the tale is to be fact or fiction. At present he chooses fiction; he gives his listener an imaginary history of his past life, as a Cretan chief who had seen much good service in many lands, especially under King Idomeneus at Troy, but who had met with a succession of disasters since. Of course he had seen and known Ulysses; had heard of him since the fall of Troy; and he offers his host a wager that he will yet return. Eumæus will hear nothing of such flattering hopes; by this time his men are coming in from the field, and when the swine are safely housed, supper and bedtime follow. But the night is bitter cold, and Ulysses has nothing but his beggar’s rags. He indirectly begs a covering from his host by an ingenious story, very characteristic of the style of the lighter episodes of the Odyssey. He relates an adventure of his own while lying in ambush, one winter night, under the walls of Troy. Dr Maginn’s translation of this passage, in the old English ballad style, though somewhat free, preserves fairly the spirit and humour of the original:—
The self-laudation which the hero, speaking in another person, takes the opportunity to introduce, is in perfect keeping with his character throughout.
The hint so broadly given is quite successful, and Eumæus provides his guest with some warm coverings and a place near the fire; but he himself will not sleep so far from his charge. Wrapped in a mighty wind-proof cloak, he takes up his quarters for the night under the shelter of a rock, hard by the lair of his swine.
The story returns to Telemachus, whom we left at Sparta. His stay at that court has been prolonged a whole month, for which the excuse, we must suppose, is to be found in the hospitalities of Menelaus and the fascinations of Helen. No wonder that his guardian goddess admonishes him in a dream that, under his present circumstances, such delays are dangerous. Penelope has a hard time of it in his absence, even her father pressing her to marry some one of her suitors. Nay, Minerva more than hints—though we beg our readers not to accept such an insinuation against Penelope, even on the authority of a goddess—that Eurymachus, one of the richest of the rivals, is beginning to find favour in her eyes. Telemachus is roused once more to action: awakening his young friend Pisistratus, he proposes that they should set out on their return at once—before the day breaks. The son of the old “Horse-tamer” sensibly reminds him that driving in the dark is very undesirable, and it is agreed to wait for the morning. Menelaus, with genuine courtesy, refrains from any attempt to detain his guests longer than seems agreeable to themselves. A portion of his speech, as rendered by Pope, has passed into a popular maxim as to the true limits of hospitality, and has been quoted, no doubt, by many, with very little idea that they were indebted to Homer for the precept—
Another maxim of the hospitable Spartan has long been adopted by Englishmen—that all wise men, who have a long day’s journey before them, should lay in a substantial breakfast. This the travellers do, and then prepare to mount their chariot; Telemachus bearing with him, as the parting gift of his royal host, a bowl of silver wondrously chased, “the work of Vulcan”—too fair to come from any mortal hand—which Menelaus had himself received from the King of Sidon; while Helen adds an embroidered robe “that glistened like a star,” one of many which she has woven with her own hands, which she begs him to keep to adorn his bride on her marriage-day. Even as they part, lo! there is an omen in the sky—an eagle bearing off a white goose in her talons. Who shall expound it? Menelaus, who is appealed to, is no soothsayer. Helen alone can unlock the riddle:—
Telemachus blesses her for the happy interpretation, and promises that, should the word come true, he will worship the fair prophetess in Ithaca as nothing less than a divinity. Whether or no he made good his vow the poet does not tell us. Worse mortals have been canonised both in ancient and modern calendars. And whether Helen was honoured thus in Ithaca or not, she certainly was at Sparta, where we are told that she displayed her new powers as a divinity once at least in a very appropriate manner—transforming a child of remarkable ugliness, at the prayer of its nurse, into a no less remarkable beauty.
The young men make their first evening halt at Pheræ, as before, and reach Nestor’s court at Pylos next day. Telemachus insists on driving straight to the bay where his patient crew still await him with the galley—for he knows old Nestor will try to detain him, out of kindness, if he once set foot again in the palace—and instantly on his arrival they hoist sail for home. They round the peninsula in the night, and with the morning’s dawn they sight the spiry peaks of Ithaca. The crew moor the vessel in a sheltered bay, while Telemachus—to escape the ambuscade which he knows to have been laid for him—makes straight for the swineherd’s lodge, instead of entering the town. As he draws near the threshold, the watch-dogs know his step, and run out to greet him; Eumæus himself, in his delight at the meeting, drops from his hands the bowl of wine which he was carefully mixing as a morning draught for his disguised guest, and falls on his young lord’s neck, kissing him, and weeping tears of joy.
Ulysses preserves his disguise, and rises from his seat to offer it to the young chief. But Telemachus, like all Homer’s heroes, is emphatically a gentleman; and he will not take an old man’s place, though that man be but a poor wayfarer clad in rags. When he has broken his fast at his retainer’s table, he would know from him who the stranger is. Eumæus repeats the fictitious history which he has heard from Ulysses, and Telemachus promises the shipwrecked wanderer relief and protection. He sends Eumæus to announce his own safe return to Penelope; and when the father and son are left alone, suddenly Minerva appears—visible only to Ulysses and to the dogs, who cower and whine at the supernatural presence—and bids him discover himself to his son. The beggar’s rags fall off, a royal robe takes their place, and he resumes all the majesty of presence which he had worn before. But Telemachus does not recognise the father whom he has never known; the sudden transformation rather suggests to him some heavenly visitant. He was but an infant when Ulysses went to Troy; and even when his father assures him of his identity, he will not believe. There is a quiet sadness, but no reproach, in the hero’s reply:—
It is long before either, in their first emotion, can find words to tell their story. Ulysses takes his son fully into his counsels, and charges him to keep the news of his return as yet a secret even from his mother, until they two shall discover who among the household can be trusted to aid them in the extermination of the intruders and their powerful retinue. He knows that his day of vengeance is come at last, and nothing less than this will satisfy him. Telemachus has some timorous misgivings, according to his nature—What are they two against so many? But Ulysses knows that the gods are on his side—Minerva and the Father of the gods himself; or shall we say with the allegorists, in this case, the Counsels of Heaven and the Justice of Heaven? There is a grand irony in the question which he puts to his son—“Thinkest thou these allies will suffice, or shall we seek for other helpers?”
Great is the consternation amongst the riotous crew in the palace, when they find that Telemachus has escaped their toils, and has returned; and great the joy of Penelope when she hears this good news from Eumæus, which yet she hardly believes, until it is confirmed by a visit from her son in person. The suitors receive him with feigned courtesy, though some among them have already determined on his assassination. The swineherd follows to the palace, bringing with him, by command of Telemachus, the seeming beggar—for Ulysses has undergone a second transformation, and is once more an aged man in mean apparel. As a poor wanderer, dependent on public charity, he is sure to find that ready admittance into the royal precincts which is so necessary for carrying out his plans of vengeance, without raising the suspicions of the present occupants. On the way they are met by Melanthius the goatherd, whose character stands in marked contrast to that of Eumæus. He is utterly faithless to his absent master’s interests, and has become the ready instrument of his enemies. With mocking insolence he jeers at Eumæus and his humble acquaintance, and even goes so far as to spurn the latter with his foot. Ulysses fully justifies his character for patience and endurance; though for a moment he does debate in his heart the alternative, whether he should break the skull of the scoffer with his club, or lift him from his feet and dash his brains out on the ground. As he draws near the gates of his own palace he espies another old retainer, of a different type, belonging to a race noted in all lands and ages for its fidelity. There lies on the dunghill, dying of old age, disease, and neglect, his dog Argus—the companion of many a long chase in happier days. The dog has all Eumæus’s loyalty, and more than his discernment. His instinct at once detects his old master, even through the disguise lent by the goddess of wisdom. Before he sees him, he knows his voice and step, and raises his ears—
Eustathius (who made none the worse archbishop because he was a thorough lover of Homer) has remarked, somewhat pertinently, that the fate of his dog draws from the imperturbable Ulysses the tears which he never sheds for any thought of Penelope. But such lesser pathetic incidents have often, in actual life, a stronger emotional effect than is produced by the deeper affections.[40] But he masters his emotion, for this is no time to betray himself, and follows Eumæus through the entrance-doors. It is poor Argus’s last effort, and the old hound turns and dies—
The story is told by the Greek poet with somewhat more prolixity of detail than suits our modern notions of the pathetic, but the pathos of the incident itself is of the simplest and purest kind.
In beggar’s guise Ulysses enters his own hall, and makes his rounds of the party who sit there at table, soliciting some contribution of broken meat to his wallet. None is so hard of heart as to refuse, except Antinous. In vain does Ulysses compliment him on his princely beauty, and remind him of the uncertainty of fortune, as evidenced by his own present case:—
Antinous haughtily bids him stand off, and when Ulysses expresses his wonder that in so fair a body should dwell so mean a spirit, hurls a stool at him. The blow does not shake the strong frame of Ulysses, who moves to the doorway, lays down his wallet, and lifts his voice in solemn imprecation to the Powers on high who protect the stranger and the poor:—
Even some amongst the young man’s companions are horrified by this reckless violation of the recognised laws of charity and hospitality. One of them speaks out in strong rebuke:—
This is one of those noble passages in which the creed of the poet soars far above his mythology. The god who is the avenger of broken oaths, and the protector of the poor and the stranger, though he bears the name of Zeus or Jupiter, is a power of very different type from the Ruler of Olympus, who indulges his sensual passions in base amours with mortals,—who in the Iliad is perpetually engaged in domestic wrangles with his queen, and even in the Odyssey wreaks a weak vengeance on Ulysses merely to gratify the spite of Neptune.
Additional insults await the hero in his own hall. There comes from the town a sturdy beggar, known as Irus—“the messenger”—by a kind of parody on the name of the rainbow goddess, Iris, who performs the same office for the immortals. Jealous of a rival mendicant, such as Ulysses appears, he threatens to drive him from the hall. Ulysses quietly warns him to keep his hands off—there is room enough for both. The young nobles shout with delight at a quarrel which promises such good sport, and at once form a ring for the combatants, and undertake to see fair play. When the disguised king strips off his squalid rags for the boxing-match, and discovers the brawny chest and shoulders for which he was remarkable, Irus trembles at the thought of encountering him. But it is too late: with a single blow Ulysses breaks his jaw, and drags him out into the courtyard. The revellers now hail the conqueror with loud applause, and award him the prize of victory—a goat-paunch filled with mince-meat and blood, the prototype, apparently, both of the Scotch haggis and the English black-pudding. Amphinomus—who has already shown something of a nobler nature than the rest—adds a few words of generous sympathy: he sees in the wandering mendicant one who has known better days, and pledges him in a cup of wine, with a hope that brighter fortunes are yet in store. Ulysses is touched with pity for the fate which the young man’s evil companions are inevitably drawing on him. He had heard, he tells him, of his father, Nisus—had known him, doubtless, in fact—a wise and good man; such ought the son to be. He adds a voice of ominous warning, tinged with that saddened view of man at his best estate which continually breaks forth, even amidst the lighter passages of the poet.
Penelope now descends from her chamber for a moment into the hall, to have speech with her son. The goddess Minerva has shed on her such radiant grace and beauty, that her appearance draws forth passionate admiration from Eurymachus. She does but taunt him in reply: most suitors, she says, at least bring presents in their hand; these of hers do but rob, where others give freely. They are all stung sufficiently by her words to produce at once from their stores some costly offerings—embroidered robes, chains and brooches and necklaces of gold and electrum. The queen, after the practical fashion of the age, is not too disdainful to carry them off to her chamber; while Ulysses—as indeed seems more in accordance with his character—secretly rejoices to see his wife thus “spoiling the Egyptians.” Some commentators have apologised for this seeming meanness on the part of Penelope by the explanation, that she does it to inspire them with false hopes of her choosing one of them now at last for her husband, and so lulling them into a false security in order to insure their easier destruction. But it is best to take the moral tone of these early poems honestly, as we find it, and not attempt to force it into too close agreement with our own.
After some further acts of insult, still borne with a wrathful endurance by Ulysses, the company quit the hall, as usual, for the night. Then Penelope descends again from her chamber, and sitting by the hearth, bids a chair be set also for the wandering stranger: she will hear his tale. He represents himself to her as the brother of King Idomeneus of Crete, and as having once in his brother’s absence entertained the great Ulysses in his halls. To Penelope’s eager questions, by which she seeks to test his veracity, he answers by describing not so much the person of her husband as his distinctive dress. The queen recognises, in this description, the curiously-embroidered mantle which she had worked for him, and the golden clasp, “linked with twin stars,” which she had fastened with her own hands when he parted from her to go to Troy. She breaks into floods of tears at the recollection; while the disguised Ulysses sets his eyes hard, “as though they were of horn or steel,” and checks his rising tears. He comforts her with the assurance that he brings recent news of her hero—of his shipwreck and visit to the Phæacians; that he is even now on his way to Ithaca, last heard of in the neighbouring island of Dulichium, within easy reach of home; nay, this very year, he would be content to pledge himself, Ulysses shall stand once more in his own halls. Incredulous, yet thankful for the comfort, the queen orders the wanderer to be taken to the bath, and entertained as an honoured guest. But he refuses all attendance save that of the aged Eurycleia. She marks with wonder his likeness to her absent master; but such resemblance, he assures her, has been noticed frequently by others. As she bathes his feet, her eyes fall on a well-remembered scar, left by a wound received from a boar’s tusk in his youth while hunting on Mount Parnassus with his grandsire Autolycus.[41] The old nurse doubts no longer. She lets the foot fall heavily, and upsets the bath.
He puts his hand upon her throat, and forcibly checks her outcry; his purpose is not to be known openly as yet, for he feels there are few, even of his own household, whom he can trust. He charges her—even on pain of death, much as he loves her—to keep his secret; then, refusing all softer accommodation, he lies down in the vestibule on a couch of bullhide, not sleeping, but nursing his wrath in a fever of wakefulness.
The morrow is a festival of Apollo. It is kept by the riotous crew in the halls of Ulysses with more than their usual revelry. The disguised hero himself, feeding at a small table apart by command of Telemachus, is still subject to their insults. But portents are not wanting of their impending doom. In the midst of the feast Minerva casts them into fits of ghastly laughter; the meat which they are eating drips with gore; and the seer Theoclymenus—a refugee under the protection of Telemachus—who has been of late their unwilling companion, sees each man’s head enveloped in a misty darkness, and the whole court and vestibule thronged with ghostly shapes. He cries out in affright, and tells them what sight he sees; but they only answer him with mockery, and threaten to drive him forth as one who has lost his wits. After warning them of the fate which he foresees awaiting them, he quits the company. They turn upon Telemachus, and taunt him with his sorry choice of guests: first yon lazy disreputable vagabond, and now this prating would-be soothsayer. The young man makes no reply, but watches his father anxiously; and Ulysses still bides his time.
The queen meanwhile has bethought her of a new device, to put off yet awhile the evil day in which she must at length make her choice amongst her importunate lovers. She unlocks an inner chamber where the treasures of the house are stored, and draws from its case Ulysses’ bow, the gift of his dead friend Iphitus, which he had not taken with him to Troy. Before she carries it down, she lays it fondly on her knees, and weeps as she thinks of its absent master. One cunning feat she remembers which her hero was wont to perform—to drive an arrow straight through the hollow rings of twelve axe-heads set up in a line. Whichsoever of her suitors can bend the strong bow, and send a shaft right through the whole row of twelve, like the lost Ulysses, that man she will follow, however reluctantly, as her future lord. She has more than a lingering hope, we may be sure, that one and all will fail in a trial so manifestly difficult. They would refuse the ordeal, but for Antinous. Confident in his own powers, he hopes to succeed—he knows the rest will fail. They, out of shame, accept the test. Telemachus himself fixes the weapons firmly in the earth in a true and even line, a task in itself of no small difficulty, but which he performs with such skill as to win the admiration of the whole party. He claims the right to make trial first himself, in the hope to prove himself his father’s true son. Thrice he draws the bow-string, but not yet to its right extent. As he is making a fourth attempt, sanguine of success, he meets a look from his father which checks his hand. Ulysses foresees that should his son succeed where the others fail, and so claim what they are really seeking, the royal power of Ithaca, the whole band might suddenly unite against him, and so frustrate his present scheme of vengeance. Reluctantly, at his father’s sign, the youth lays down the bow, and professes to lament the weakness of his degenerate hand. One after another the rival princes in turn strive to bend it, but in vain; even Antinous and Eurymachus, notably the best among them, fail to move the string, though the bow is warmed by the fire and rubbed well with melted fat to make it more pliable. Antinous finds plausible excuse for the failure—they have profaned the festival of Apollo by this contest; it shall be renewed under better auspices on the morrow. Then the seeming beggar (who meanwhile has made himself known as their true lord to Eumæus and another faithful retainer, the herdsman Philœtius) makes request that he may try his hand upon this wondrous bow. Loud and coarse is the abuse which Antinous and his fellows shower upon him for his audacity; but Telemachus exerts the authority in his mother’s house which his uninvited guests seem never quite to make up their minds to dispute when it is firmly claimed, and the weapon is given into the hands of its true owner. He handles it gently and lovingly, turning it over and over to see whether it has in any way suffered by time or decay, and brings notes from the tight-strained bow-string, “shrill and sweet as the voice of the swallow.” At last he fits an arrow to the notch, and, not deigning even to rise from his seat to make the effort, draws it to its full stretch, and sends the shaft right through the whole line of axe-heads. It is the immediate prelude to the bloody tragedy which follows—
The philosopher Plato, who did not spare the poet occasionally, in his criticisms, speaks of this passage as worthy of all admiration. We have here the primitive type, since worked out into countless shapes, of the “situations” and “discoveries” which abound in modern romance and drama.
Ulysses aims the first arrow at Antinous. It pierces him in the throat as he is raising a goblet to his lips, and he falls backward in the agonies of death, spilling the untasted wine upon the floor; thus giving occasion (so says Greek tradition) to that which has now become a common English proverb—“There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.”[42] His comrades stand aghast for a moment, not certain whether the shot be deliberate or merely accidental. Ulysses sets them at rest on that point by declaring himself and his purpose. They look round the hall for the arms which usually hang upon the walls, but these have been secretly removed during the previous night by Ulysses and his son. Eurymachus, who has more plausible rhetoric at his command than the others, now endeavours to make terms. Antinous, he confesses, has well deserved his fate—he had plotted against the life of Telemachus; but for himself and the rest, now that the king has come to his own again, they will submit themselves, and pay such fine as shall amply satisfy him for the despoiling of his goods. Ulysses scornfully rejects all such compromise. Then, at Eurymachus’ call, the boldest of the party draw their knives and make a rush upon him. But a second arrow from the terrible bow strikes Eurymachus through the breast before he reaches him; Amphinomus falls by the spear of Telemachus as soon as he gets within range; and while the father, backed by his two retainers, holds the rest at bay—rather, we must suppose, by the terror of his presence than the actual use of his bow—the son rushes off to find arms for the little party. Ulysses plies his arrows till they are exhausted, and then the four together continue the unequal combat with the spears now brought by Telemachus. The details of the work of retribution, like some of the long slaughter-lists in the Iliad, sufficiently interesting to an audience for whom war was the great game of human life, are scarcely so to modern and more fastidious readers. The hero, like all heroes of romance, performs deeds which in a mere prosaic view would appear impossibilities. Suffice it to say, that with the Goddess of Wisdom as an ally (who appears once more under the form of Mentor), the combat ends in the slaughter of the whole band of intruders, even though they are partially supplied with arms by the treacherous goatherd, who brings them from the armoury which Telemachus has carelessly left open. A graze upon the wrist of Telemachus, and a slight flesh-wound where the spear of one of the enemy “wrote on the shoulder” of the good swineherd Eumæus, are the only hurts received by their party in the combat. The vengeance of the hero is implacable; otherwise it were not heroic, in the Homeric sense. Not content with the utter extermination of the men who have usurped his palace, harassed his wife, and insulted his son, he hangs up also their guilty paramours among the women-servants, who have joined them in defiling his household gods; first, however, making them swill and scour clean the blood-stained hall which has been the scene of the slaughter. The traitorous goatherd Melanthius is by the same stern orders miserably lopped of ears, and nose, and limbs, before death releases him. We find the same pitiless cruelty towards his enemies in the hero of the Odyssey as in the hero of the Iliad. Yet the poet would teach us that the vengeance of Ulysses is but the instrument of the divine justice. Like Moses or Joshua, he is but the passionless executor of the wrath of heaven; while, still to continue the parallel, the merciless character of the retribution takes its colour from the ferocity of the age. When the aged Eurycleia, who as yet alone of the women of the household knows the secret of his return, comes down and sees the floor strewn with the bloody corpses, she is about to raise a shout of triumph. But the king checks her:—