Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Bidwell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES
BY
CHARLES LAMB
PREFACE
This work is designed as a supplement to the Adventures of Telemachus. It
treats of the conduct and sufferings of Ulysses, the father of Telemachus.
The picture which it exhibits is that of a brave man struggling with
adversity; by a wise use of events, and with an inimitable presence of
mind under difficulties, forcing out a way for himself through the
severest trials to which human life can be exposed; with enemies natural
and preternatural surrounding him on all sides. The agents in this tale,
besides men and women, are giants, enchanters, sirens: things which denote
external force or internal temptations, the twofold danger which a wise
fortitude must expect to encounter in its course through this world. The
fictions contained in it will be found to comprehend some of the most
admired inventions of Grecian mythology.
The groundwork of the story is as old as the Odyssey, but the moral and
the coloring are comparatively modern. By avoiding the prolixity which
marks the speeches and the descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity
to the narration which I hope will make it more attractive and give it
more the air of a romance to young readers, though I am sensible that by
the curtailment I have sacrificed in many places the manners to the
passion, the subordinate characteristics to the essential interest of the
story. The attempt is not to be considered as seeking a comparison with
any of the direct translations of the Odyssey, either in prose or verse,
though if I were to state the obligations which I have had to one obsolete
version, [Footnote: The translation of Homer by Chapman in the reign of
James I.] I should run the hazard of depriving myself of the very slender
degree of reputation which I could hope to acquire from a trifle like the
present undertaking.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
The Cicons.--The Fruit of the Lotus-tree.--Polyphemus and the Cyclops.--
The Kingdom of the Winds, and God Aeolus's Fatal Present.--The
Laestrygonian Man-eaters.
CHAPTER TWO
The House of Circe.--Men changed into Beasts.--The Voyage to Hell.--The
Banquet of the Dead.
CHAPTER THREE
The Song of the Sirens.--Scylla and Charybdis.--The Oxen of the Sun.--The
Judgment.--The Crew Killed by Lightning.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Island of Calypso.--Immortality Refused.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Tempest.--The Sea-bird's Gift.--The Escape by Swimming.--The Sleep in
the Woods.
CHAPTER SIX
The Princess Nausicaa.--The Washing.--The Game with the Ball.--The Court
of Phaeacia and King Alcinous.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Songs of Demodocus--The Convoy Home.--The Manners--Transformed to
Stone--The Young Shepherd.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Change from a King to a Beggar.--Eumaeus and the Herdsmen--Telemachus.
CHAPTER NINE
The Queen's Suitors--The Battle of the Beggars.--The Armour Taken Down.--
The Meeting with Penelope.
CHAPTER TEN
The Madness from Above--The Bow of Ulysses.--The Slaughter.--The
Conclusion.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Cyclop,' he said, 'take a bowl of wine from the hand of your guest'"
"Out rushed with mighty noise all the winds"
"And straight they were transformed into swine"
"'Who or what manner of man art thou?'"
"And the dead came to his banquet"
"He would have broken his bonds to rush after them"
"Nine days was he floating about with all the motions of the sea"
"Took a last leave of her and of her nymphs"
"And Nausicaa joined them in a game with the ball"
"He gave them a brief relation of all the adventures that had befallen
him"
"Consulting how they might with safety bring about his restoration"
"'But such as your fare is, eat it, and be welcome'"
"'I am no more but thy father: I am even he'"
"But the greater part reviled him and bade him begone"
"When the maids were lighting the queen through a stately gallery"
"Rose in a mass to overwhelm and crush those two"
THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES
CHAPTER ONE
The Cicons.--The Fruit of the Lotos-tree.--Polyphemus and the Cyclops.--
The Kingdom of the Winds, and God Aeolus's Fatal Present.--The
Laestrygonian Man-eaters.
This history tells of the wanderings of Ulysses and his followers in their
return from Troy, after the destruction of that famous city of Asia by the
Grecians. He was inflamed with a desire of seeing again, after a ten
years' absence, his wife and native country, Ithaca. He was king of a
barren spot, and a poor country in comparison of the fruitful plains of
Asia, which he was leaving, or the wealthy kingdoms which he touched upon
in his return; yet, wherever he came, he could never see a soil which
appeared in his eyes half so sweet or desirable as his country earth. This
made him refuse the offers of the goddess Calypso to stay with her, and
partake of her immortality in the delightful island; and this gave him
strength to break from the enchantments of Circe, the daughter of the Sun.
From Troy, ill winds cast Ulysses and his fleet upon the coast of the
Cicons, a people hostile to the Grecians. Landing his forces, he laid
siege to their chief city, Ismarus, which he took, and with it much spoil,
and slew many people. But success proved fatal to him; for his soldiers,
elated with the spoil, and the good store of provisions which they found
in that place, fell to eating and drinking, forgetful of their safety,
till the Cicons, who inhabited the coast, had time to assemble their
friends and allies from the interior; who, mustering in prodigious force,
set upon the Grecians, while they negligently revelled and feasted, and
slew many of them, and recovered the spoil. They, dispirited and thinned
in their numbers, with difficulty made their retreat good to the ships.
Thence they set sail, sad at heart, yet something cheered that with such
fearful odds against them they had not all been utterly destroyed. A
dreadful tempest ensued, which for two nights and two days tossed them
about, but the third day the weather cleared, and they had hopes of a
favourable gale to carry them to Ithaca; but, as they doubled the Cape of
Malea, suddenly a north wind arising drove them back as far as Cythera.
After that, for the space of nine days, contrary winds continued to drive
them in an opposite direction to the point to which they were bound, and
the tenth day they put in at a shore where a race of men dwell that are
sustained by the fruit of the lotos-tree. Here Ulysses sent some of his
men to land for fresh water, who were met by certain of the inhabitants,
that gave them some of their country food to eat--not with any ill
intention towards them, though in the event it proved pernicious; for,
having eaten of this fruit, so pleasant it proved to their appetite that
they in a minute quite forgot all thoughts of home, or of their
countrymen, or of ever returning back to the ships to give an account of
what sort of inhabitants dwelt there, but they would needs stay and live
there among them, and eat of that precious food forever; and when Ulysses
sent other of his men to look for them, and to bring them back by force,
they strove, and wept, and would not leave their food for heaven itself,
so much the pleasure of that enchanting fruit had bewitched them. But
Ulysses caused them to be bound hand and foot, and cast under the hatches;
and set sail with all possible speed from that baneful coast, lest others
after them might taste the lotos, which had such strange qualities to make
men forget their native country and the thoughts of home.
Coasting on all that night by unknown and out-of-the-way shores, they came
by daybreak to the land where the Cyclops dwell, a sort of giant shepherds
that neither sow nor plough, but the earth untilled produces for them rich
wheat and barley and grapes, yet they have neither bread nor wine, nor
know the arts of cultivation, nor care to know them; for they live each
man to himself, without law or government, or anything like a state or
kingdom; but their dwellings are in caves, on the steep heads of
mountains; every man's household governed by his own caprice, or not
governed at all; their wives and children as lawless as themselves, none
caring for others, but each doing as he or she thinks good. Ships or boats
they have none, nor artificers to make them, no trade or commerce, or wish
to visit other shores; yet they have convenient places for harbours and
for shipping. Here Ulysses with a chosen party of twelve followers landed,
to explore what sort of men dwelt there, whether hospitable and friendly
to strangers, or altogether wild and savage, for as yet no dwellers
appeared in sight.
The first sign of habitation which they came to was a giant's cave rudely
fashioned, but of a size which betokened the vast proportions of its
owner; the pillars which supported it being the bodies of huge oaks or
pines, in the natural state of the tree, and all about showed more marks
of strength than skill in whoever built it. Ulysses, entering it, admired
the savage contrivances and artless structure of the place, and longed to
see the tenant of so outlandish a mansion; but well conjecturing that
gifts would have more avail in extracting courtesy than strength would
succeed in forcing it, from such a one as he expected to find the
inhabitant, he resolved to flatter his hospitality with a present of Greek
wine, of which he had store in twelve great vessels, so strong that no one
ever drank it without an infusion of twenty parts of water to one of wine,
yet the fragrance of it even then so delicious that it would have vexed a
man who smelled it to abstain from tasting it; but whoever tasted it, it
was able to raise his courage to the height of heroic deeds. Taking with
them a goat-skin flagon full of this precious liquor, they ventured into
the recesses of the cave. Here they pleased themselves a whole day with
beholding the giant's kitchen, where the flesh of sheep and goats lay
strewed; his dairy, where goat-milk stood ranged in troughs and pails; his
pens, where he kept his live animals; but those he had driven forth to
pasture with him when he went out in the morning. While they were feasting
their eyes with a sight of these curiosities, their ears were suddenly
deafened with a noise like the falling of a house. It was the owner of the
cave, who had been abroad all day feeding his flock, as his custom was, in
the mountains, and now drove them home in the evening from pasture. He
threw down a pile of fire-wood, which he had been gathering against
supper-time, before the mouth of the cave, which occasioned the crash they
heard. The Grecians hid themselves in the remote parts of the cave at
sight of the uncouth monster. It was Polyphemus, the largest and savagest
of the Cyclops, who boasted himself to be the son of Neptune. He looked
more like a mountain crag than a man, and to his brutal body he had a
brutish mind answerable. He drove his flock, all that gave milk, to the
interior of the cave, but left the rams and the he-goats without. Then
taking up a stone so massy that twenty oxen could not have drawn it, he
placed it at the mouth of the cave, to defend the entrance, and sat him
down to milk his ewes and his goats; which done, he lastly kindled a fire,
and throwing his great eye round the cave (for the Cyclops have no more
than one eye, and that placed in the midst of their forehead), by the
glimmering light he discerned some of Ulysses's men.
"Ho! guests, what are you? Merchants or wandering thieves?" he bellowed
out in a voice which took from them all power of reply, it was so
astounding.
Only Ulysses summoned resolution to answer, that they came neither for
plunder nor traffic, but were Grecians who had lost their way, returning
from Troy; which famous city, under the conduct of Agamemnon, the renowned
son of Atreus, they had sacked, and laid level with the ground. Yet now
they prostrated themselves humbly before his feet, whom they acknowledged
to be mightier than they, and besought him that he would bestow the rites
of hospitality upon them, for that Jove was the avenger of wrongs done to
strangers, and would fiercely resent any injury which they might suffer.
"Fool!" said the Cyclop, "to come so far to preach to me the fear of the
gods. We Cyclops care not for your Jove, whom you fable to be nursed by a
goat, nor any of your blessed ones. We are stronger than they, and dare
bid open battle to Jove himself, though you and all your fellows of the
earth join with him." And he bade them tell him where their ship was in
which they came, and whether they had any companions. But Ulysses, with a
wise caution, made answer that they had no ship or companions, but were
unfortunate men, whom the sea, splitting their ship in pieces, had dashed
upon his coast, and they alone had escaped. He replied nothing, but
gripping two of the nearest of them, as if they had been no more than
children, he dashed their brains out against the earth, and, shocking to
relate, tore in pieces their limbs, and devoured them yet warm and
trembling, making a lion's meal of them, lapping the blood; for the
Cyclops are _man-eaters_, and esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far
above goat's or kid's; though by reason of their abhorred customs few men
approach their coast, except some stragglers, or now and then a
shipwrecked mariner. At a sight so horrid, Ulysses and his men were like
distracted people. He, when he had made an end of his wicked supper,
drained a draught of goat's milk down his prodigious throat, and lay down
and slept among his goats. Then Ulysses drew his sword, and half resolved
to thrust it with all his might in at the bosom of the sleeping monster;
but wiser thoughts restrained him, else they had there without help all
perished, for none but Polyphemus himself could have removed that mass of
stone which he had placed to guard the entrance. So they were constrained
to abide all that night in fear.
When day came the Cyclop awoke, and kindling a fire, made his breakfast of
two other of his unfortunate prisoners, then milked his goats as he was
accustomed, and pushing aside the vast stone, and shutting it again when
he had done upon the prisoners, with as much ease as a man opens and shuts
a quiver's lid, he let out his flock, and drove them before him with
whistlings (as sharp as winds in storms) to the mountains.
Then Ulysses, of whose strength or cunning the Cyclop seems to have had as
little heed as of an infant's, being left alone, with the remnant of his
men which the Cyclop had not devoured, gave manifest proof how far manly
wisdom excels brutish force. He chose a stake from among the wood which
the Cyclop had piled up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast,
which he sharpened and hardened in the fire, and selected four men, and
instructed them what they should do with this stake, and made them perfect
in their parts.
When the evening was come, the Cyclop drove home his sheep; and as fortune
directed it, either of purpose, or that his memory was overruled by the
gods to his hurt (as in the issue it proved), he drove the males of his
flock, contrary to his custom, along with the dams into the pens. Then
shutting-to the stone of the cave, he fell to his horrible supper. When he
had despatched two more of the Grecians, Ulysses waxed bold with the
contemplation of his project, and took a bowl of Greek wine, and merrily
dared the Cyclop to drink.
[Illustration: _'Cyclop,' he said, 'take a bowl of wine from the hand of
your guest.'_]
"Cyclop," he said, "take a bowl of wine from the hand of your guest: it
may serve to digest the man's flesh that you have eaten, and show what
drink our ship held before it went down. All I ask in recompense, if you
find it good, is to be dismissed in a whole skin. Truly you must look to
have few visitors, if you observe this new custom of eating your guests."
The brute took and drank, and vehemently enjoyed the taste of wine, which
was new to him, and swilled again at the flagon, and entreated for more,
and prayed Ulysses to tell him his name, that he might bestow a gift upon
the man who had given him such brave liquor. The Cyclops, he said, had
grapes, but this rich juice, he swore, was simply divine. Again Ulysses
plied him with the wine, and the fool drank it as fast as he poured out,
and again he asked the name of his benefactor, which Ulysses, cunningly
dissembling, said, "My name is Noman: my kindred and friends in my own
country call me Noman."
"Then," said the Cyclop, "this is the kindness I will show thee, Noman: I
will eat thee last of all thy friends." He had scarce expressed his savage
kindness, when the fumes of the strong wine overcame him, and he reeled
down upon the floor and sank into a dead sleep.
Ulysses watched his time, while the monster lay insensible, and,
heartening up his men, they placed the sharp end of the stake in the fire
till it was heated red-hot, and some god gave them a courage beyond that
which they were used to have, and the four men with difficulty bored the
sharp end of the huge stake, which they had heated red-hot, right into the
eye of the drunken cannibal, and Ulysses helped to thrust it in with all
his might, still farther and farther, with effort, as men bore with an
auger, till the scalded blood gushed out, and the eye-ball smoked, and the
strings of the eye cracked, as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye
hissed, as hot iron hisses when it is plunged into water.
He, waking, roared with the pain so loud that all the cavern broke into
claps like thunder. They fled, and dispersed into corners. He plucked the
burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. Then
he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren the Cyclops, that dwelt
hard by in caverns upon hills; they, hearing the terrible shout, came
flocking from all parts to inquire, What ailed Polyphemus? and what cause
he had for making such horrid clamours in the night-time to break their
sleeps? if his fright proceeded from any mortal? if strength or craft had
given him his death's blow? He made answer from within that Noman had hurt
him, Noman had killed him, Noman was with him in the cave. They replied,
"If no man has hurt thee, and no man is with thee, then thou art alone,
and the evil that afflicts thee is from the hand of Heaven, which none can
resist or help." So they left him and went their way, thinking that some
disease troubled him. He, blind and ready to split with the anguish of the
pain, went groaning up and down in the dark, to find the doorway, which
when he found, he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold, feeling if
he could lay hold on any man going out with the sheep, which (the day now
breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their accustomed pastures. But
Ulysses, whose first artifice in giving himself that ambiguous name had
succeeded so well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be caught
by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which
he could contrive for escape (no less than all their lives depending on
the success), at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the
osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly slept; with which he tied the
fattest and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the
belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping himself
fast with both his hands in the rich wool of one, the fairest of the
flock.
And now the sheep began to issue forth very fast; the males went first,
the females, unmilked, stood by, bleating and requiring the hand of their
shepherd in vain to milk them, their full bags sore with being unemptied,
but he much sorer with the loss of sight. Still, as the males passed, he
felt the backs of those fleecy fools, never dreaming that they carried his
enemies under their bellies; so they passed on till the last ram came
loaded with his wool and Ulysses together. He stopped that ram and felt
him, and had his hand once in the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not, and he
chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and
asked it whether it did not wish that its master had his eye again, which
that abominable Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they had
got him down with wine; and he willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in
the cave his enemy lurked, that he might dash his brains and strew them
about, to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it.
After a deal of such foolish talk to the beast, he let it go.
When Ulysses found himself free, he let go his hold, and assisted in
disengaging his friends. The rams which had befriended them they carried
off with them to the ships, where their companions with tears in their
eyes received them, as men escaped from death. They plied their oars, and
set their sails, and when they were got as far off from shore as a voice
could reach, Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: "Cyclop, thou shouldst not
have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy guests. Jove
by my hand sends thee requital to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop
heard, and came forth enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a
rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped
lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat, but with the fall it raised
so fierce an ebb as bore back the ship till it almost touched the shore.
"Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee who imposed on thee that
unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the
king of Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities." Then they crowded sail,
and beat the old sea, and forth they went with a forward gale; sad for
fore-past losses, yet glad to have escaped at any rate; till they came to
the isle where Aeolus reigned, who is god of the winds.
Here Ulysses and his men were courteously received by the monarch, who
showed him his twelve children which have rule over the twelve winds. A
month they stayed and feasted with him, and at the end of the month he
dismissed them with many presents, and gave to Ulysses at parting an ox's
hide, in which were enclosed _all the winds_: only he left abroad the
western wind, to play upon their sails and waft them gently home to
Ithaca. This bag, bound in a glittering silver band so close that no
breath could escape, Ulysses hung up at the mast. His companions did not
know its contents, but guessed that the monarch had given to him some
treasures of gold or silver.
Nine days they sailed smoothly, favoured by the western wind, and by the
tenth they approached so nigh as to discern lights kindled on the shores
of their country earth: when, by ill-fortune, Ulysses, overcome with
fatigue of watching the helm, fell asleep. The mariners seized the
opportunity, and one of them said to the rest, "A fine time has this
leader of ours; wherever he goes he is sure of presents, when we come away
empty-handed; and see what King Aeolus has given him, store no doubt of
gold and silver." A word was enough to those covetous wretches, who quick
as thought untied the bag, and, instead of gold, out rushed with mighty
noise _all the winds_.
[Illustration: _Out rushed with mighty noise all the winds_.]
Ulysses with the noise awoke, and saw their mistake, but too late, for the
ship was driving with all the winds back far from Ithaca, far as to the
island of Aeolus from which they had parted, in one hour measuring back
what in nine days they had scarcely tracked, and in sight of home too! Up
he flew amazed, and, raving, doubted whether he should not fling himself
into the sea for grief of his bitter disappointment. At last he hid
himself under the hatches for shame. And scarce could he be prevailed
upon, when he was told he was arrived again in the harbour of King Aeolus,
to go himself or send to that monarch for a second succour; so much the
disgrace of having misused his royal bounty (though it was the crime of
his followers, and not his own) weighed upon him; and when at last he
went, and took a herald with him, and came where the god sat on his
throne, feasting with his children, he would not thrust in among them at
their meat, but set himself down like one unworthy in the threshold.
Indignation seized Aeolus to behold him in that manner returned; and he
said, "Ulysses, what has brought you back? Are you so soon tired of your
country; or did not our present please you? We thought we had given you a
kingly passport." Ulysses made answer: "My men have done this ill
mischief to me; they did it while I slept." "Wretch!" said Aeolus,
"avaunt, and quit our shores: it fits not us to convoy men whom the gods
hate, and will have perish."
Forth they sailed, but with far different hopes than when they left the
same harbour the first time with all the winds confined, only the west
wind suffered to play upon their sails to waft them in gentle murmurs to
Ithaca. They were now the sport of every gale that blew, and despaired of
ever seeing home more. Now those covetous mariners were cured of their
surfeit for gold, and would not have touched it if it had lain in untold
heaps before them.
Six days and nights they drove along, and on the seventh day they put into
Lamos, a port of the Laestrygonians. So spacious this harbour was that it
held with ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor, safe from any
storms, all but the ship in which Ulysses was embarked. He, as if
prophetic of the mischance which followed, kept still without the harbour,
making fast his bark to a rock at the land's point, which he climbed with
purpose to survey the country. He saw a city with smoke ascending from the
roofs, but neither ploughs going, nor oxen yoked, nor any sign of
agricultural works. Making choice of two men, he sent them to the city to
explore what sort of inhabitants dwelt there. His messengers had not gone
far before they met a damsel, of stature surpassing human, who was coming
to draw water from a spring. They asked her who dwelt in that land. She
made no reply, but led them in silence to her father's palace. He was a
monarch, and named Antiphas. He and all his people were giants. When they
entered the palace, a woman, the mother of the damsel, but far taller than
she, rushed abroad and called for Antiphas. He came, and snatching up one
of the two men, made as if he would devour him. The other fled. Antiphas
raised a mighty shout, and instantly, this way and that, multitudes of
gigantic people issued out at the gates, and, making for the harbour, tore
up huge pieces of the rocks and flung them at the ships which lay there,
all which they utterly overwhelmed and sank; and the unfortunate bodies of
men which floated, and which the sea did not devour, these cannibals
thrust through with harpoons, like fishes, and bore them off to their dire
feast. Ulysses with his single bark, that had never entered the harbour,
escaped; that bark which was now the only vessel left of all the gallant
navy that had set sail with him from Troy. He pushed off from the shore,
cheering the sad remnant of his men, whom horror at the sight of their
countrymen's fate had almost turned to marble.
CHAPTER TWO
The House of Circe.--Men changed into Beasts.--The Voyage to Hell.--The
Banquet of the Dead.
On went the single ship till it came to the island of Aeaea, where Circe,
the dreadful daughter of the Sun, dwelt. She was deeply skilled in magic,
a haughty beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her parent, and
begot her and her brother Aeaetes (such another as herself) upon Perse,
daughter to Oceanus.
Here a dispute arose among Ulysses's men, which of them should go ashore
and explore the country; for there was a necessity that some should go to
procure water and provisions, their stock of both being nigh spent; but
their hearts failed them when they called to mind the shocking fate of
their fellows whom the Laestrygonians had eaten, and those which the foul
Cyclop Polyphemus had crushed between his jaws; which moved them so
tenderly in the recollection that they wept. But tears never yet supplied
any man's wants; this Ulysses knew full well, and dividing his men (all
that were left) into two companies, at the head of one of which was
himself, and at the head of the other Eurylochus, a man of tried courage,
he cast lots which of them should go up into the country, and the lot fell
upon Eurylochus and his company, two-and-twenty in number, who took their
leave, with tears, of Ulysses and his men that stayed, whose eyes wore the
same wet badges of weak humanity, for they surely thought never to see
these their companions again, but that on every coast where they should
come they should find nothing but savages and cannibals.
Eurylochus and his party proceeded up the country, till in a dale they
descried the house of Circe, built of bright stone, by the roadside.
Before her gate lay many beasts, as wolves, lions, leopards, which, by her
art, of wild, she had rendered tame. These arose when they saw strangers,
and ramped upon their hinder paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and his men,
who dreaded the effects of such monstrous kindness; and staying at the
gate they heard the enchantress within, sitting at her loom, singing such
strains as suspended all mortal faculties, while she wove a web, subtile
and glorious, and of texture inimitable on earth, as all the housewiferies
of the deities are. Strains so ravishingly sweet provoked even the sagest
and prudentest heads among the party to knock and call at the gate. The
shining gate the enchantress opened, and bade them come in and feast. They
unwise followed, all but Eurylochus, who stayed without the gate,
suspicious that some train was laid for them. Being entered, she placed
them in chairs of state, and set before them meal and honey, and Smyrna
wine, but mixed with baneful drugs of powerful enchantment. When they had
eaten of these, and drunk of her cup, she touched them with her
charming-rod, and straight they were transformed into swine, having the
bodies of swine, the bristles, and snout, and grunting noise of that
animal; only they still retained the minds of men, which made them the
more to lament their brutish transformation. Having changed them, she
shut them up in her sty with many more whom her wicked sorceries had
formerly changed, and gave them swine's food--mast, and acorns, and
chestnuts--to eat.
[Illustration: _And straight they were transformed into swine_.]
Eurylochus, who beheld nothing of these sad changes from where he was
stationed without the gate, only instead of his companions that entered
(who he thought had all vanished by witchcraft) beheld a herd of swine,
hurried back to the ship, to give an account of what he had seen; but so
frighted and perplexed, that he could give no distinct report of anything,
only he remembered a palace, and a woman singing at her work, and gates
guarded by lions. But his companions, he said, were all vanished.
Then Ulysses, suspecting some foul witchcraft, snatched his sword and his
bow, and commanded Eurylochus instantly to lead him to the place. But
Eurylochus fell down, and, embracing his knees, besought him by the name
of a man whom the gods had in their protection, not to expose his safety,
and the safety of them all, to certain destruction.
"Do thou then stay, Eurylochus," answered Ulysses: "eat thou and drink in
the ship in safety; while I go alone upon this adventure: necessity, from
whose law is no appeal, compels me."
So saying, he quitted the ship and went on shore, accompanied by none;
none had the hardihood to offer to partake that perilous adventure with
him, so much they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly he pursued
his journey till he came to the shining gates which stood before her
mansion; but when he essayed to put his foot over her threshold, he was
suddenly stopped by the apparition of a young man, bearing a golden rod in
his hand, who was the god Mercury. He held Ulysses by the wrist, to stay
his entrance; and "Whither wouldest thou go?" he said, "O thou most erring
of the sons of men! knowest thou not that this is the house of great
Circe, where she keeps thy friends in a loathsome sty, changed from the
fair forms of men into the detestable and ugly shapes of swine? art thou
prepared to share their fate, from which nothing can ransom thee?" But
neither his words nor his coming from heaven could stop the daring foot of
Ulysses, whom compassion for the misfortune of his friends had rendered
careless of danger: which when the god perceived, he had pity to see
valour so misplaced, and gave him the flower of the herb _moly_, which is
sovereign against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly root, its
virtues but little known and in low estimation; the dull shepherd treads
on it every day with his clouted shoes; but it bears a small white flower,
which is medicinal against charms, blights, mildews, and damps. "Take this
in thy hand," said Mercury, "and with it boldly enter her gates; when she
shall strike thee with her rod, thinking to change thee, as she has
changed thy friends, boldly rush in upon her with thy sword, and extort
from her the dreadful oath of the gods, that she will use no enchantments
against thee; then force her to restore thy abused companions." He gave
Ulysses the little white flower, and, instructing him how to use it,
vanished.
When the god was departed, Ulysses with loud knockings beat at the gate of
the palace. The shining gates were opened, as before, and great Circe with
hospitable cheer invited in her guest. She placed him on a throne with
more distinction than she had used to his fellows; she mingled wine in a
costly bowl, and he drank of it, mixed with those poisonous drugs. When he
had drunk, she struck him with her charming-rod, and "To your sty!" she
cried; "out, swine! mingle with your companions!" But those powerful words
were not proof against the preservative which Mercury had given to
Ulysses; he remained unchanged, and, as the god had directed him, boldly
charged the witch with his sword, as if he meant to take her life; which
when she saw, and perceived that her charms were weak against the antidote
which Ulysses bore about him, she cried out and bent her knees beneath his
sword, embracing his, and said, "Who or what manner of man art thou? Never
drank any man before thee of this cup but he repented it in some brute's
form. Thy shape remains unaltered as thy mind. Thou canst be none other
than Ulysses, renowned above all the world for wisdom, whom the Fates have
long since decreed that I must love. This haughty bosom bends to thee. O
Ithacan, a goddess wooes thee to her bed."
[Illustration: '_Who or what manner of man art thou?_']
"O Circe," he replied, "how canst thou treat of love or marriage with one
whose friends thou hast turned into beasts? and now offerest him thy hand
in wedlock, only that thou mightest have him in thy power, to live the
life of a beast with thee, naked, effeminate, subject to thy will, perhaps
to be advanced in time to the honour of a place in thy sty. What pleasure
canst thou promise which may tempt the soul of a reasonable man? Thy
meats, spiced with poison; or thy wines, drugged with death? Thou must
swear to me that thou wilt never attempt against me the treasons which
thou hast practised upon my friends." The enchantress, won by the terror
of his threats, or by the violence of that new love which she felt
kindling in her veins for him, swore by Styx, the great oath of the gods,
that she meditated no injury to him. Then Ulysses made show of gentler
treatment, which gave her hopes of inspiring him with a passion equal to
that which she felt. She called her handmaids, four that served her in
chief, who were daughters to her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers,
and to her consecrated woods, to deck her apartments, to spread rich
carpets, and set out her silver tables with dishes of the purest gold, and
meat as precious as that which the gods eat, to entertain her guest. One
brought water to wash his feet, and one brought wine to chase away, with a
refreshing sweetness, the sorrows that had come of late so thick upon him,
and hurt his noble mind. They strewed perfumes on his head, and, after he
had bathed in a bath of the choicest aromatics, they brought him rich and
costly apparel to put on. Then he was conducted to a throne of massy
silver, and a regale, fit for Jove when he banquets, was placed before
him. But the feast which Ulysses desired was to see his friends (the
partners of his voyage) once more in the shapes of men; and the food which
could give him nourishment must be taken in at his eyes. Because he missed
this sight, he sat melancholy and thoughtful, and would taste of none of
the rich delicacies placed before him. Which when Circe noted, she easily
divined the cause of his sadness, and leaving the seat in which she sat
throned, went to her sty, and let abroad his men, who came in like swine,
and filled the ample hall, where Ulysses sat, with gruntings. Hardly had
he time to let his sad eye run over their altered forms and brutal
metamorphosis, when, with an ointment which she smeared over them,
suddenly their bristles fell off, and they started up in their own shapes,
men as before. They knew their leader again, and clung about him, with joy
of their late restoration, and some shame for their late change; and wept
so loud, blubbering out their joy in broken accents, that the palace was
filled with a sound of pleasing mourning, and the witch herself, great
Circe, was not unmoved at the sight. To make her atonement complete, she
sent for the remnant of Ulysses's men who stayed behind at the ship,
giving up their great commander for lost; who when they came, and saw him
again alive, circled with their fellows, no expression can tell what joy
they felt; they even cried out with rapture, and to have seen their
frantic expressions of mirth a man might have supposed that they were just
in sight of their country earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only
Eurylochus would hardly be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders, for
he remembered with a kind of horror how his companions had vanished from
his sight.
Then great Circe spake, and gave order that there should be no more
sadness among them, nor remembering of past sufferings. For as yet they
fared like men that are exiles from their country, and if a gleam of mirth
shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with the thought of their
helpless and homeless condition. Her kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses
and the rest, and they spent twelve months in all manner of delight with
her in her palace. For Circe was a powerful magician, and could command
the moon from her sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its place to make
it dance for their diversion, and by the help of her illusions she could
vary the taste of pleasures, and contrive delights, recreations, and jolly
pastimes, to "fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious
year as in a delightful dream."
At length Ulysses awoke from the trance of the faculties into which her
charms had thrown him, and the thought of home returned with tenfold
vigour to goad and sting him; that home where he had left his virtuous
wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus. One day when Circe had been
lavish of her caresses, and was in her kindest humour, he moved her
subtly, and as it were afar off, the question of his home-return; to which
she answered firmly, "O Ulysses, it is not in my power to detain one whom
the gods have destined to further trials. But leaving me, before you
pursue your journey home, you must visit the house of Ades, or Death, to
consult the shade of Tiresias the Theban prophet; to whom alone, of all
the dead, Proserpine, queen of hell, has committed the secret of future
events: it is he that must inform you whether you shall ever see again
your wife and country." "O Circe," he cried, "that is impossible: who
shall steer my course to Pluto's kingdom? Never ship had strength to make
that voyage." "Seek no guide," she replied; "but raise you your mast, and
hoist your white sails, and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind
shall waft you through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the
ocean and come to where grow the poplar groves and willows pale of
Proserpine: where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their
waves. Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and
make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, and
wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and turn away
thy face while thou pourest in, and the dead shall come flocking to taste
the milk and the blood; but suffer none to approach thy offering till thou
hast inquired of Tiresias all which thou wishest to know."
He did as great Circe had appointed. He raised his mast, and hoisted his
white sails, and sat in his ship in peace. The north wind wafted him
through the seas, till he crossed the ocean, and came to the sacred woods
of Proserpine. He stood at the confluence of the three floods, and digged
a pit, as she had given directions, and poured in his offering--the blood
of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, milk, and honey, and wine; and the
dead came to his banquet; aged men, and women, and youths, and children
who died in infancy. But none of them would he suffer to approach, and dip
their thin lips in the offering, till Tiresias was served, not though his
own mother was among the number, whom now for the first time he knew to be
dead, for he had left her living when he went to Troy, and she had died
since his departure, and the tidings never reached him; though it irked
his soul to use constraint upon her, yet in compliance with the injunction
of great Circe he forced her to retire along with the other ghosts. Then
Tiresias, who bore a golden sceptre, came and lapped of the offering, and
immediately he knew Ulysses, and began to prophesy: _he denounced woe to
Ulysses--woe, woe, and many sufferings--through the anger of Neptune for
the putting out of the eye of the sea-god's son. Yet there was safety
after suffering, if they could abstain from slaughtering the oxen of the
Sun after they landed in the Triangular island. For Ulysses, the gods had
destined him from a king to become a beggar, and to perish by his own
guests, unless he slew those who knew him not_.
[Illustration: _And the dead came to his banquet_.]
This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that Tiresias was empowered
to unfold, or else there was no longer place for him; for now the souls of
the other dead came flocking in such numbers, tumultuously demanding the
blood, that freezing horror seized the limbs of the living Ulysses, to see
so many, and all dead, and he the only one alive in that region. Now his
mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint from her son, and now
she knew him to be her son, and inquired of him why he had come alive to
their comfortless habitations. And she said that affliction for Ulysses's
long absence had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave.
Ulysses's soul melted at her moving narration, and forgetting the state of
the dead, and that the airy texture of disembodied spirits does not admit
of the embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about her to clasp
her: the poor ghost melted from his embrace, and, looking mournfully upon
him, vanished away.
Then saw he other females: Tyro, who when she lived was the paramour of
Neptune, and by him had Pelias and Neleus. Antiope, who bore two like sons
to Jove, Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes. Alcmena, the mother of
Hercules, with her fair daughter, afterwards her daughter-in-law, Megara.
There also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and wife of
Oedipus; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with her son, and when she had
discovered the unnatural alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself. He
continued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted by the dreadful
Furies. There was Leda, the wife of Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful
Helen, and of the two brave brothers Castor and Pollux, who obtained this
grace from Jove, that, being dead, they should enjoy life alternately,
living in pleasant places under the earth. For Pollux had prayed that his
brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son of Tyndarus, should
partake of his own immortality, which he derived from an immortal sire.
This the Fates denied; therefore Pollux was permitted to divide his
immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living alternately.
There was Iphimedia, who bore two sons to Neptune that were giants, Otus
and Ephialtes: Earth in her prodigality never nourished bodies to such
portentous size and beauty as these two children were of, except Orion. At
nine years old they had imaginations of climbing to heaven to see what the
gods were doing; they thought to make stairs of mountains, and were for
piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting Pelion upon that, and had perhaps
performed it, if they had lived till they were striplings; but they were
cut off by death in the infancy of their ambitious project. Phaedra was
there, and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and
Maera, and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.
But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, the
mighty leader of all the host of Greece and their confederate kings that
warred against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little of the blood at
that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was moved with compassion to see him
among them, and asked him what untimely fate had brought him there, if
storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or if he had perished in some
mutiny by his own soldiers at a division of the prey.
"By none of these," he replied, "did I come to my death; but slain at a
banquet to which I was invited by Aegisthus after my return home. He
conspiring with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my destruction,
training me forth to a banquet as an ox goes to the slaughter, and, there
surrounding me, they slew me with all my friends about me.
"Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows which she swore to me
in wedlock, would not lend a hand to close my eyes in death. But nothing
is so heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill her spouse
that married her a maid. When I brought her home to my house a bride, I
hoped in my heart that she would be loving to me and to my children. Now,
her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion on her whole sex. Blessed
husbands will have their loving wives in suspicion for her bad deeds."
"Alas!" said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality in your royal house of
Atreus, and that they are hated of Jove for their wives. For Helen's sake,
your brother Menelaus's wife, what multitudes fell in the wars of Troy!"
Agamemnon replied, "For this cause be not thou more kind than wise to any
woman. Let not thy words express to her at any time all that is in thy
mind, keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any bloody
contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall. Exceeding wise she is,
and to her wisdom she has a goodness as eminent; Icarius's daughter,
Penelope the chaste: we left her a young bride when we parted from our
wives to go to the wars, her first child sucking at her breast, the young
Telemachus, whom you shall see grown up to manhood on your return, and he
shall greet his father with befitting welcomes. My Orestes, my dear son, I
shall never see again. His mother has deprived his father of the sight of
him, and perhaps will slay him as she slew his sire. It is now no world to
trust a woman in. But what says fame? is my son yet alive? lives he in
Orchomen, or in Pylus, or is he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court?
As yet, I see, divine Orestes is not here with me."
To this Ulysses replied that he had received no certain tidings where
Orestes abode, only some uncertain rumours which he could not report for
truth.
While they held this sad conference, with kind tears striving to render
unkind fortunes more palatable, the soul of great Achilles joined them.
"What desperate adventure has brought Ulysses to these regions," said
Achilles; "to see the end of dead men, and their foolish shades?"
Ulysses answered him that he had come to consult Tiresias respecting his
voyage home. "But thou, O son of Thetis," said he, "why dost thou
disparage the state of the dead? Seeing that as alive thou didst surpass
all men in glory, thou must needs retain thy pre-eminence here below: so
great Achilles triumphs over death."