_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 Ææa, 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 Æastes (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 Læstrygonians 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 staid, 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 road's
side. 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, subtle 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 bad them come in and feast. They unwise
followed, all but Eurylochus, who staid 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.
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 frightened and perplexed, that he could give no distinct
report of any thing, 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 stopt 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 woos thee to her bed."
"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 shew 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 staid 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, that 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 to her subtilly, 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 enquired 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._
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 enquired 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 Iphimedeia, 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.--Phædra was there,
and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and Mæra,
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 Ægisthus 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. Blest 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 suckling
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."
But Achilles made reply, that he had much rather be a peasant-slave
upon the earth, than reign over all the dead. So much did the
inactivity and slothful condition of that state displease his
unquenchable and restless spirit. Only he enquired of Ulysses if his
father Peleus were living, and how his son Neoptolemus conducted
himself.
Of Peleus Ulysses could tell him nothing; but of Neoptolemus he thus
bore witness: "From Scyros I convoyed your son by sea to the Greeks:
where I can speak of him, for I knew him. He was chief in council, and
in the field. When any question was proposed, so quick was his conceit
in the forward apprehension of any case, that he ever spoke first,
and was heard with more attention than the older heads. Only myself
and aged Nestor could compare with him in giving advice. In battle I
cannot speak his praise, unless I could count all that fell by his
sword. I will only mention one instance of his manhood. When we sat
hid in the belly of the wooden horse, in the ambush which deceived
the Trojans to their destruction, I, who had the management of that
stratagem, still shifted my place from side to side to note the
behaviour of our men. In some I marked their hearts trembling, through
all the pains which they took to appear valiant, and in others tears,
that in spite of manly courage would gush forth. And to say truth, it
was an adventure of high enterprise, and as perilous a stake as was
ever played in war's game. But in him I could not observe the least
sign of weakness, no tears nor tremblings, but his hand still on his
good sword, and ever urging me to set open the machine and let us out
before the time was come for doing it; and when we sallied out he was
still first in that fierce destruction and bloody midnight desolation
of king Priam's city."
This made the soul of Achilles to tread a swifter pace, with
high-raised feet, as he vanished away, for the joy which he took in
his son being applauded by Ulysses.
A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses knew to be the ghost of Ajax,
his opponent, when living, in that famous dispute about the right of
succeeding to the arms of the deceased Achilles. They being adjudged
by the Greeks to Ulysses, as the prize of wisdom above bodily
strength, the noble Ajax in despite went mad, and slew himself. The
sight of his rival turned to a shade by his dispute, so subdued the
passion of emulation in Ulysses, that for his sake he wished that
judgment in that controversy had been given against himself, rather
than so illustrious a chief should have perished for the desire of
those arms, which his prowess (second only to Achilles in fight) so
eminently had deserved. "Ajax," he cried, "all the Greeks mourn for
thee as much as they lamented for Achilles. Let not thy wrath burn for
ever, great son of Telamon. Ulysses seeks peace with thee, and will
make any atonement to thee that can appease thy hurt spirit." But the
shade stalked on, and would not exchange a word with Ulysses, though
he prayed it with many tears and many earnest entreaties. "He might
have spoke to me," said Ulysses, "since I spoke to him; but I see the
resentments of the dead are eternal."
Then Ulysses saw a throne on which was placed a judge distributing
sentence. He that sat on the throne was Minos, and he was dealing out
just judgments to the dead. He it is that assigns them their place in
bliss or woe.
Then came by a thundering ghost, the large-limbed Orion, the mighty
hunter, who was hunting there the ghosts of the beasts which he had
slaughtered in desart hills upon the earth. For the dead delight in
the occupations which pleased them in the time of their living upon
the earth.
There was Tityus suffering eternal pains because he had sought to
violate the honour of Latona as she passed from Pytho into Panopeus.
Two vultures sat perpetually preying upon his liver with their crooked
beaks; which as fast as they devoured, is for ever renewed; nor can he
fray them away with his great hands.
There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, standing up to the
chin in water, which he can never taste, but still as he bows his
head, thinking to quench his burning thirst, instead of water he licks
up unsavoury dust. All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of delicious
flavour, hang in ripe clusters about his head, seeming as though they
offered themselves to be plucked by him; but when he reaches out his
hand, some wind carries them far out of his sight into the clouds: so
he is starved in the midst of plenty by the righteous doom of Jove, in
memory of that inhuman banquet at which the sun turned pale, when the
unnatural father served up the limbs of his little son in a dish, as
meat for his divine guests.
There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labours. His punishment
is, to be for ever rolling up a vast stone to the top of a mountain,
which when it gets to the top, falls down with a crushing weight, and
all his work is to be begun again. He was bathed all over in sweat,
that reeked out a smoke which covered his head like a mist. His crime
had been the revealing of state secrets.
There Ulysses saw Hercules: not that Hercules who enjoys immortal life
in heaven among the gods, and is married to Hebe or Youth; but his
shadow which remains below. About him the dead flocked as thick as
bats, hovering around, and cuffing at his head: he stands with his
dreadful bow, ever in the act to shoot.
There also might Ulysses have seen and spoken with the shades of
Theseus, and Pirithous, and the old heroes; but he had conversed
enough with horrors: therefore covering his face with his hands, that
he might see no more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and
pushed off. The bark moved of itself without the help of any oar,
and soon brought him out of the regions of death into the cheerful
quarters of the living, and to the island of Ææa, whence he had set
forth.