I.

The first sentence strikes the leading thought: "The wind, bearing me

from Troy, brought me to the Ciconians." Troy is the starting-point,

the background out of which everything moves. After the fall of the

city Nestor gives an account of the disputes of the Greek leaders and

their separation (Book III. l. 134 et seq.); Ulysses is driven alone

with his contingent across the sea toward Thrace, where he finds a city

in peace, though it had been an ally of Troy. "I sacked the city, I

destroyed its people;" he treated them as he did the Trojans, "taking

as booty their wives and property." Such is the spirit begotten of that

ten years' war in the character of Ulysses, a spirit of violence and

rapine, totally unfitted for a civilized life, at bottom negative to

Family and State. This is the spiritual starting-point from which he is

to return to home and country through a long, long, but very needful

discipline.

He is well aware that he has done something for which vengeance awaits

him, so he urges his companions to flee at once. But they would not

obey, they stayed there "drinking much wine and slaughtering sheep and

oxen along the sea-shore." Revel and feasting follow, till the

Ciconians rouse the outlying neighbors and drive the Greeks to the

ships, with the loss of six companions for each ship. Such is the first

incident after the Trojan War, showing clearly the destructive phase

thereof, which has been drilled into the character by so long a period

of bloodshed.

This is not yet Fairyland, but a real people and a real conflict. The

Ciconians in the later historic time of Herodotus still dwelt in

Thrace. Grotius in his famous book _On the Rights of Peace and War_

cites the present instance as a violation of international justice. The

grand positive ground of attacking Troy is not found here; there was no

Helen detained in wrongful captivity. The sack of Ismarus pictures the

evil results which spring from all war, even the most just. Again we

must affirm that this deed of wrongful violence is the start toward the

great Return, and hints what has to be overcome internally by the

journey through Fairyland.

Later we find a fact, not here mentioned, pertaining to the sack of the

city of the Ciconians. Ulysses had saved Maron, the priest of Apollo,

who in gratitude gave him the strong wine with which he overcame

Polyphemus in the cave. His merciful deed thus helped him conquer the

monster of nature. But in general it is plain that Ulysses, though

desiring to get back to an institutional life, is not ready by any

means for such a step; he is in reality hostile to the very essence of

institutional life. He is too much like the suitors now to be their

punisher.

All put to sea again, to be tossed on that unruly element, with their

little vessels exposed to wind and wave. "They call thrice by name each

one of their dead companions" ere they set out; the meaning of this

invocation has been much discussed, but it probably rests upon the

belief that they could thus call the souls of the deceased to go along

with them to home and country. The fact that just six were lost from

each ship was made the ground of an assault upon Homer in antiquity by

Zoilus, famed as the Homeromastix, or Homer's trouncer.

The great sea with its tempests is now before them, heaving and

tossing; after the attack upon the Ciconians we can well imagine that

this storm has its inner counterpart in the soul of Ulysses. Does he

not show within himself a deep scission--between his desire to return

and his deed? At any rate he is borne forward; when he sought to round

Maleia, the southern point of Greece (now Cape St. Angelo), and sail

home to Ithaca, he was carried out to sea by the winds, beyond the

Island Cythera, across the main toward the coast of Africa. Thus he is

swept outside the boundaries of Hellas proper into a region dimly

known, half-mythical; he cannot make the sharp turn at Maleia, inside

the Greek world; he must go beyond it and there reach his final

experience. Not simply physical is this description, else it would be a

mere statement in geography; it is also spiritual and hence rises into

poetry.