We have now reached the second song of the bard, for the way has been
smoothed by the preceding description of the luxurious delights of the
Phaeacians. It is often called the Loves of Venus and Mars, or the
Adulterers caught on Olympus. From time immemorial much doubt of
various sorts, poetical, moral, philological, has been cast upon this
song. Some ancient commentators have regarded it an interpolation, not
a genuine part of Homer; modern expositors have not hesitated to follow
the same opinion.
And indeed there are strong grounds for suspicion. Almost every reader
feels at the first perusal its jar with the general character of this
idyllic Phaeacian world; it is decidedly adverse to the spirit of Arete
and Nausicaa, as previously unfolded; the fact would almost seem
impossible that, in an atmosphere created chiefly by these two women,
there could be such a kind of artistic enjoyment. The most conservative
reader is inclined here to agree with those who perform an act of
excision upon the text of Homer. The whole passage grates too harshly
upon nerves which have been attuned to the sweet innocent life depicted
in the two preceding Books.
The objections to the song may be summed up in the following heads. (1)
It is inconsistent and deeply discordant with the ethical tone of
Phaeacia already given. (2) It does not further Ulysses in any way, it
shows no trait in his character, unless his faint approval signifies
his liking for such songs. Nor does it seem on the surface to connect
him with Troy, as do the other two songs of Demodocus. (3) It gives an
unworthy view of the Gods, degrading them far below Homer's general
level, reducing them to ordinary burlesque figures which violate all
decency, not to speak of morality. (4) Philologists have picked out
certain words and expressions peculiar to this passage, which, not
being employed by Homer elsewhere, tend to indicate some other author.
Still, if the passage be an interpolation, this must have taken place
early in the history of the poems. Pausanias the traveler declares that
he saw the dancing scene of the Phaeacians depicted upon the throne of
Apollo at Amyclae, the artist of which probably flourished about 600 B.
C. The old philosopher Heraclitus, who would scourge Homer from the
festivals of the Gods, doubtless had this passage in mind. Plato
censures its indecency specially, and, as is well known, would exclude
all Homer from his ideal Republic. The ancients thus accepted the
passage as Homeric, with the exception of some of the later
grammarians.
Next come the many attempts, old and new, to allegorize the Olympian
scene, or to explain it away. From the fact that the sun keeps watch
and is mentioned twice in this part, the latest school of mythologists,
the comparative so-called, have taken much comfort, and have at once
found in the whole a sun-myth. Some ancient expositors, according to
Athenaeus, interpreted it as a story written for the purpose of
deterring the listeners from doing similar bad deeds, pointing to the
punishment even of Gods herein designated; thus they sought to save the
credit of Homer, treating him quite as some commentators have treated
certain morally questionable stories in the Bible. Thus along down the
ages to the present the loves of Venus and Mars have created trouble.
Undoubtedly the song has meaning and deserves a rational exposition.
Has it any connection with the other songs of this Book, or with Homer
in general? It is certainly a product of early Greek poesy; can it be
organically jointed into anything before it and after it? The burlesque
tone which it assumes towards certain Olympians has caused it to be
connected with the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and with the war of
the Gods in the Iliad (Book Twenty-First). Let us extend our horizon,
and take a new look in various directions.
In the first place this song connects with Troy and the Iliad like the
other two songs of Demodocus. The cause of the Trojan War and of its
poem was the deed of Paris. The seducer, the wife, the husband--Paris,
Helen, Manelaus--are the three central figures of the legend. Here this
legend is thrown up among the Gods themselves, who furnish three
corresponding characters--Mars, Venus, Vulcan. Then there is the wrong
and the punishment of the wrong in both cases. Such is the theme of the
Trojan War as it appears in the Iliad. Thus the three songs of
Demodocus indicate a Pre-Iliad, an Iliad, and a Post-Iliad in due
order.
In the second place one asks very emphatically: Why this present
treatment of the Gods on Homer's part? But here we must make an
important distinction. The Supreme God, Zeus, does not appear, nor does
Juno nor does Pallas, indeed none of the Goddesses except the guilty
one. The disgrace falls upon two mainly: Mars and Venus. In the Iliad
they are Trojan deities hostile to the Greeks, and here the Greek poet
serves them up together in an intermezzo, which makes them comic.
Indeed the Greek Hero Diomed fights and puts down just these two Trojan
deities in the Fifth Book of the Iliad. So must every Greek Hero at
Troy conquer Mars and Venus (Violence and Lust, to give a suggestion of
their purport) before Helen can be restored to home and country; he
must put down the hostile city and its Gods. Note too, whither the
Greek poet sends each of these deities after their release: Mars flies
off to Thrace, a distant, barbarous country, beyond the borders of
Hellas, where he can find his own; Venus on the contrary slips away
southeastward to Cyprus inhabited by peoples Oriental or Orientalizing,
and therein like Troy and herself. Both rush out of Greece with all
speed; they belong somewhere in the outskirts of the Greek world.
We may now see why the Phaeacians, without being so very wicked, could
find an element in the song which they enjoyed. To them, with the
Trojan War always in mind, this was the theme: the adulterous Trojan
deities caught and laughed out of Olympus--those being the two deities
who first misled by desire and then tried to keep by war the beautiful
Helen, the Greek woman. Throwing ourselves back into his spirit, we may
also see why Ulysses, the old war-horse from Troy, "was rejoiced in his
heart, hearing the song" which degraded and burlesqued the Gods whom he
had fought ten years, and who were, in part at least, the occasion of
his wandering ten more. Venus and Mars did not find much sympathy in
the Phaeacian company, we may be sure. Why then regard them as Gods? The
Greek deified everything; even the tendencies which he felt himself
obliged to suppress had something of the divine in them. Calypso, whom
Ulysses subordinated at last to the higher principle, was a Goddess;
Troy, the hostile city, had its deities, whom the Greek recognised. Now
its two chief deities are involved in a common shame, and flee from
Olympus, flee almost outside of the Greek world. Certainly the audience
could take some ethical satisfaction in that.
Then there is a third consideration different from the two preceding,
both of which seek to look at the song from the ancient Greek
standpoint. But from our modern standpoint it is also to be regarded.
There is no doubt that we see here the beginning of the end of
polytheism; the many Gods collide with one another, some are now put
out and all will be finally put out; they are showing their finitude
and transitoriness. Still further, we catch a glimpse of the sensuous
side of Greek life, the excess of which at last brought death. Homer is
the prophet of his people, when read with insight; he tells not only
what they are, but hints what they are to become.
In general, we pass in this second part of the present Book as we have
divided it, to the sensuous element of the Phaeacian world, the
inactive, quiet, self-indulgent phase, in decided contrast to the
preceding part which shows a love of manly action in games and in war.
Let us still further develop the twofold way in which this fact is
brought out.
1. The second song of Demodocus has the general theme of the Trojan War
and suggests the grand event of the aforetime. It manifestly carries
the Trojan scission into Olympus and drives out in disgrace the Trojan
deities. Vulcan, the wronged husband, is the divine artificer; he makes
a network of chains which could not be broken, "like a spider's web, so
fine that no one could see it, not even a God;" in this snare the
guilty deities are caught, exposed, punished. These invisible, yet
unbreakable chains have an ethical suggestion, and hint the law which
is also to be executed on Olympus, as it was below in Troy. As Vulcan
is the artist among the Gods, we are prompted to find also an artistic
bearing in the scene; the artist catches the wrong-doers by his art and
holds them fast in a marvelous net where they still lie, and shall lie
for all time; even the intercession of Neptune cannot get them free.
The scene is indeed caught out of the reality and holds to-day; the
dashing, finely-uniformed son of Mars (so called at present) is most
apt to win the heart of the gay, fashionable, beautiful daughter of
Venus, have an escapade, and cause a scandal. Oft too they are caught
in our modern, most adroitly woven spider's web, which goes under the
name of newspaper, and held up, if not before a seeing Olympus, at
least before a reading public, which not seldom indulges in
conversation very much in the style of the Gods as here set forth. We
moderns do not go to the market-place to hear such a strain, but have
it brought to us in the Morning Journal. One advantage the Phaeacian
had: Arete and Nausicaa did not go to the market-place, where this song
was sung, only men were there, but the print will enter the household
where are wife and daughter. At any rate, we have to pronounce the song
of Demodocus typical, universal, nay, ethical in spite of its
light-hearted raillery, inasmuch as the deed is regarded as a breach of
divine law, is exposed and punished, and the recompense for the release
of the guilty pair, the penalty, is duly stated in accordance with law.
Not every modern story-teller is so scrupulous, in meting out justice
to ethical violation.
2. So much for the song; we turn again to the Phaeacians, who are not
now engaged in athletic, but in a milder sport, the dance. Youths moved
their bodies in tune to the strain; still in Greece the dance and the
song often go together. Then two danced alone without the song, but
employed a ball, tossing it from one to the other, for the amusement of
the spectators. A rhythmical movement of the body in the dance shows
more internality than the athletic game, but it is less hardy, is more
indicative of luxury and effeminacy.
On account of these enjoyments, which have been unrolled before us in
so many striking pictures, the Phaeacians have been regarded by some
writers both in ancient and modern times as the mythical Sybarites
devoted simply to a life of pleasure. The love of the warm bath and
clean clothes, the dance and the song, above all the second lay of
Demodocus have given them a bad name. Heraclides Ponticus derived their
whole polity of non-intercourse, of concealment, of sending away the
stranger as soon as possible out of their island, from their desire to
resign themselves more completely to their luxurious habits, without
foreign disturbance. Horace expresses a similar view of this people.
Nitzsch in Commentary (_ad loc._) defends the Phaeacians warmly against
the charge, and the view that Arete and Nausicaa cannot be products of
a corrupt society holds good. An idyllic people, not by any means
enervated, though pleasure-loving--so we must regard them. That lay of
the bard, rightly looked into, does not tell against them as strongly
as is sometimes supposed. Still Heraclides touched upon a limitation of
Phaeacia in his criticism, it refused to join the family of nations,
it sought to be a kind of little China and keep all to itself. It
had solved, however, the problem of external war and of internal
dissension; no dispute with neighboring nations about commercial
privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet
has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element
out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in
peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of
art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it
must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization,
where life is a perpetual holiday, and even labor takes on a festal
appearance.
Ulysses gives the palm of excellence in the dance to the Phaeacians, and
with this recognition the king proposes a large number of
presents--hospitable gifts, such as the host gives to his honored
guest. Moreover an apology and a gift are required of that Euryalus who
recently offended Ulysses. Thus reconciliation is the word and the
deed. Then all are ready to return to the palace into the presence of
Arete, who is the orderer, and she makes arrangements for packing up
the gifts. Note the warm bath again, supposed sign of effeminacy; here
it is taken by Ulysses with decided approbation. Nausicaa, too, appears
in a passing glance, and simply asks to be remembered for her deed; the
response of Ulysses is emphatic: when he gets home he "will pray to her
as to a God day by day, for thou, O maiden, hast saved my life."
In this round of recognition, the bard must not be forgotten; he is
again led in, a banquet is served, and Ulysses takes special pains to
honor him "with a part of the fat back of a white-tusked boar," and to
speak a strong word of commendation: "Demodocus, I praise thee above
all mortals; either the Muse or Apollo has taught thee, so well dost
thou sing the fate of the Greeks."