If we now turn from the hero of the _Iliad_ to the hero of the
_Odyssey_, we find the same Gladstone declaring (II., 502) that "while
admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an immortal, Ulysses
frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope;"
and in the shorter treatise he goes so far as to say (131), that
"the subject of the Odyssey gives Homer the opportunity
of setting forth the domestic character of Odysseus, in
his profound attachment to wife, child, and home, in
such a way as to adorn not only the hero, but his age
and race."
The "profound attachment" of Odysseus to his wife may be gauged in the
first place by the fact that he voluntarily remained away from her ten
years, fighting to recover, for another king, a worthless, adulterous
wench. Before leaving on this expedition, from which he feared he
might never return, he spoke to his wife, as she herself relates
(XVIII., 269), begging her to be mindful of his father and mother,
"and when you see our son a bearded man, then marry whom you will, and
leave the house now yours"--namely for the benefit of the son, for
whose welfare he was thus more concerned than for a monopoly of his
wife's love.
After the Trojan war was ended he embarked for home, but suffered a
series of shipwrecks and misfortunes. On the island of Aeaea he spent
a whole year sharing the hospitality and bed of the beautiful
sorceress Circe, with no pangs of conscience for such conduct, nor
thought of home, till his comrades, in spite of the "abundant meat and
pleasant wine," longed to depart and admonished him in these words:
"Unhappy man, it is time to think of your native land, if you are
destined ever to be saved and to reach your home in the land of your
fathers." Thus they spoke and "persuaded his manly heart." In view of
the ease with which he thus abandoned himself for a whole year to a
life of indulgence, till his comrades prodded his conscience, we may
infer that he was not so very unwilling a prisoner afterward, of the
beautiful nymph Calypso, who held him eight years by force on her
island. We read, indeed, that, at the expiration of these years,
Odysseus was always weeping, and his sweet life ebbed away in longing
for his home. But all the sentiment is taken out of this by the words
which follow: [Greek: epei ouketi aendane numphae] "_because the nymph
pleased him no more_!" Even so Tannhäuser tired of the pleasures in
the grotto of Venus, and begged to be allowed to leave.
While thus permitting himself the unrestrained indulgence of his
passions, without a thought of his wife, Odysseus has the barbarian's
stern notions regarding the duties of women who belong to him. There
are fifty young women in his palace at home who ply their hard tasks
and bear the servant's lot. Twelve of these, having no one to marry,
yield to the temptations of the rich princes who sue for the hand of
Penelope in the absence of her husband.
Ulysses, on his return, hears of this, and forthwith takes measures to
ascertain who the guilty ones are. Then he tells his son Telemachus
and the swineherd and neatherd to
"go and lead forth these serving-maids out of the
stately hall to a spot between the roundhouse and the
neat courtyard wall, and smite them with your long
swords till you take life from all, so that they may
forget their secret amours with the suitors."
The "discreet" Telemachus carried out these orders, leading the maids
to a place whence there was no escape and exclaiming:
"'By no honorable death would I take away the lives of
those who poured reproaches on my head and on my
mother, and lay beside the suitors.'"
"He spoke and tied the cable of a dark-bowed ship to a
great pillar, then lashed it to the roundhouse,
stretching it high across, too high for one to touch
the feet upon the ground. And as the wide-winged
thrushes or the doves strike on a net set in the
bushes; and when they think to go to roost a cruel bed
receives them; even so the women held their heads in
line, and around every neck a noose was laid that they
might die most vilely. They twitched their feet a
little, but not long."
A more dastardly, cowardly, unmanly deed is not on record in all human
literature, yet the instigator of it, Odysseus, is always the "wise,"
"royal," "princely," "good," and "godlike," and there is not the
slightest hint that the great poet views his assassination of the poor
maidens as the act of a ruffian, an act the more monstrous and
unpardonable because Homer (XXII., 37) makes Odysseus himself say to
the suitors that they outraged his maids by force ([Greek: biaios]).
What world-wide difference in this respect between the greatest poet
of antiquity and Jesus of Nazareth who, when the Scribes and Pharisees
brought before him a woman who had erred like the maids of Odysseus,
and asked if she should be stoned as the law of Moses commanded, said
unto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her;" whereupon, being convicted by their own consciences,
they went out one by one. And Jesus said, "Where are those thine
accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?" She said, "No man, Lord." And
Jesus said unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more."
He is lenient to the sinner because of his sense of justice and mercy;
yet at the same time his ethical ideal is infinitely higher than
Homer's. He preaches that "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after
her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart;" whereas
Homer's ideas of sexual morality are, in the last analysis, hardly
above those of a savage. The dalliance of Odysseus with the nymphs,
and the licentious treatment of women captives by all the "heroes," do
not, any more than the cowardly murder of the twelve maids, evoke a
word of censure, disgust, or disapproval from his lips.
His gods are on the same low level as his heroes, if not lower. When
the spouse of Zeus, king of the gods, wishes to beguile him, she knows
no other way than borrowing the girdle of Aphrodite. But this scene
(_Iliad_, XIV., 153 _seq_.) is innocuous compared with the shameless
description of the adulterous amours of Ares and Aphrodite in the
Odyssey (VIII., 266-365), in presence of the gods, who treat the
matter as a great joke. For a parallel to this passage we would have
to descend to the Botocudos or the most degraded Australians. All of
which proves that the severity of the punishment inflicted on the
twelve maids of Odysseus does not indicate a high regard for chastity,
but is simply another illustration of typical barbarous fury against
women for presuming to do anything without the consent of the man
whose private property they are.