BOOK XXIV.

_The Ghosts of the suitors in Hades--Ulysses sees

his father--is attacked by the friends of the

suitors--Laertes kills Eupeithes--Peace is made between

him and the people of Ithaca._

Then Mercury took the fair golden wand with which he

seals men's eyes in sleep or wakes them just as he

pleases, and led the ghosts of the suitors to the house

of Hades whining and gibbering as they followed. As bats

fly squealing about the hollow of a great cave when

one of them has fallen from the cluster in which they

hang--even so did they whine and squeal as Mercury the

healer of sorrow led them down into the dark abode of

death. When they had passed the waters of Oceanus and

the rock Leucas, they came to the gates of the Sun and

the land of dreams, whereon they reached the meadow of

asphodel where dwell the souls and shadows of men that

can labour no more.

Here they came upon the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, 15

Antilochus, and Ajax, and that of Agamemnon joined them.

As these were conversing, Mercury came up with the ghosts

of the suitors, and Agamemnon's ghost recognised that of

Amphimedon who had been his host when he was in Ithaca;

so he asked him what this sudden arrival of fine young

men--all of an age too--might mean, and Amphimedon told

him the whole story from first to last.

Thus did they converse in the house of Hades deep within 203

the bowels of the earth. Meanwhile Ulysses and the others

passed out of the city and soon reached the farm of

Laertes, which he had reclaimed with infinite labour.

Here was his house with a lean-to running all round it,

where the slaves who worked for him ate and slept, while

inside the house there was an old Sicel woman, who looked

after him in this his country farm.

"Go," said Ulysses to the others, "to the house, and kill 214

the best pig you have for dinner; I wish to make trial of

my father and see whether he will know me."

So saying he gave his armour to Eumæus and Philœtius, 219

and turned off into the vineyard, where he found his

father alone, hoeing a vine. He had on a dirty old shirt,

patched and very shabby; his legs were bound round with

thongs of oxhide to keep out the brambles, and he wore

sleeves of leather against the thorns. He had a goatskin

cap on his head and was looking very woebegone.

When Ulysses saw him so worn, so old and full of sorrow, 232

he stood still under a tall pear tree and began to weep.

He doubted whether to embrace him, kiss him, and tell

him all about his having come home, or whether he should

first question him and see what he would say. On the

whole he decided that he would be crafty with him, so he

went up to his father who was bending down and digging

about a plant.

"I see, Sir," said Ulysses, "that you are an excellent 244

gardener--what pains you take with it to be sure. There

is not a single plant, not a fig-tree, vine, olive, pear,

nor flower-bed, but bears the traces of your attention.

I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I

say that you take better care of your garden than of

yourself. You are old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad.

It cannot be because you are idle that your master takes

such poor care of you; indeed, your face and figure have

nothing of the slave about them, but proclaim you of

noble birth. I should have said you were one of those

who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night

as old men have a right to do. But tell me, and tell me

true, whose bondsman are you, and in whose garden are you

working? Tell me also about another matter--is this place

that I have come to really Ithaca? I met a man just now

who said so, but he was a dull fellow, and had not the

patience to hear my story out when I was asking whether

an old friend of mine who used to live here was still

alive. My friend said he was the son of Laertes son of

Arceisius, and I made him large presents on his leaving

me."

Laertes wept and answered that in this case he would 280

never see his presents back again, though he would have

been amply requited if Ulysses had been alive. "But tell

me," he said, "who and whence are you? Where is your

ship? or did you come as passenger on some other man's

vessel?"

"I will tell you every thing," answered Ulysses, "quite 302

truly. I come from Alybas, and am son to king Apheides.

My name is Eperitus; heaven drove me off my course as I

was leaving Sicania, and I have been carried here against

my will. As for my ship, it is lying over yonder off the 307

open country outside the town. It is five years since

Ulysses left me--Poor fellow! we had every hope that we 308

should meet again and exchange presents."

Laertes was overcome with grief, and Ulysses was so 315

much touched that he revealed himself. When his father

asked for proof, he shewed him the scar on his leg.

"Furthermore," he added, "I will point out to you the

trees in the vineyard which you gave me, and I asked

you all about them as I followed you round the garden.

We went over them all, and you told me their names and

what they all were. You gave me thirteen pear trees, ten

apple trees, and forty fig trees, and you also said you

would give me fifty rows of vines; there was corn planted

between each row, and the vines yield grapes of every

kind when the heat of heaven has beaten upon them." He

also told his father that he had killed the suitors.

Laertes was now convinced, but said he feared he should 345

have all the people of Ithaca coming to attack them.

Ulysses answered that he need not trouble about this, and

that they had better go and get their dinner, which would

be ready by the time they got to the house.

When they reached the house the old Sicel woman took 361

Laertes inside, washed him, and anointed him. Minerva

also gave him a more imposing presence and made him look

taller and stronger than before. "When he came back,

Ulysses said, "My dear father, some god has been making

you much taller and better looking." To which Laertes

answered that if he was as young and hearty as when he

took the stronghold Nericum on the foreland, he should

have been a great help to him on the preceding day, and

would have killed many suitors.

Dolius and his sons, who had been working hard by, now 383

came up, for the old Sicel woman, who was Dolius's

wife, had been to fetch them. When they were satisfied

that Ulysses was really there, they were overjoyed and

embraced him one after the other. "But tell me," said

Dolius, "does Penelope know, or shall we send and tell

her?" "Old man," answered Ulysses, "she knows already.

What business is that of yours?" Then they all took their

seats at table.

Meanwhile the news of the slaughter of the suitors had 412

got noised abroad, and the people gathered hooting and

groaning before the house of Ulysses. They took their

dead, buried every man his own, and put the bodies of

those who came from elsewhere on board the fishing

vessels, for the fishermen to take them every man to his

own place. Then they met in assembly and Eupeithes urged

them to pursue Ulysses and the others before they could

escape over to the main land.

Medon, however, and Phemius had now woke up, and came to 439

the assembly. Medon dissuaded the people from doing as

Eupeithes advised, inasmuch as he had seen a god going

about killing the suitors, and it would be dangerous to

oppose the will of heaven. Halitherses also spoke in the

same sense, and half the people were pursuaded by him.

The other half armed themselves and followed Eupeithes in

pursuit of Ulysses.

Minerva then consulted Jove as to the course events 472

should take. Jove told her that she had had everything

her own way so far, and might continue to do as she

pleased. He should, however, advise that both sides

should now be reconciled under the continued rule of

Ulysses. Minerva approved of this and darted down to

Ithaca.

Laertes and his household had now done dinner, and 489

Eupeithes with his band of men were seen to be near at

hand. Ulysses and the others put on their armour, and

Minerva joined them. "Telemachus," said Ulysses, "now

that you are about to fight in a decisive engagement,

see that you do no discredit to your ancestors, who were

eminent all the world over for their strength and valour."

"You shall see, my dear father," replied Telemachus, "if 510

you choose, that I am in no mind, as you say, to disgrace

your family."

"Good heavens," exclaimed Laertes, "what a day I am 513

enjoying. My son and grandson are vying with one another

in the matter of valour." Minerva then came up to him,

and bade him pray to her. She infused fresh vigour into

him, and when he had prayed to her he aimed his spear

at Eupeithes and killed him. Ulysses and his men fell

upon the others, routed them, and would have killed one

and all of them had not Minerva raised her voice and

made every one pause. "Men of Ithaca," she cried, "cease

this dreadful war, and settle the matter without further

bloodshed."

On this they turned pale with fear, dropped their armour, 533

and fled every man towards the city. Ulysses was swooping

down upon them like an eagle, but Jove sent a thunderbolt

of fire that fell just in front of Minerva. "Whereon she

said, "Ulysses, stay this strife, or Jove will be angry

with you."

Ulysses obeyed her gladly. Minerva then assumed the voice 545

and form of Mentor, and presently made a covenant of

peace between the two contending parties.

[1] _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, Vol. VII. 170-88, and _Introduction

to Homer_, 3rd edit. 1888, pp. 57-62, and Appendix, Note 1.

[2] _Journal of Philology_, Vol. XXIV. p. 39, &c.

[3] Temesa was on the West side of the toe of Italy and was once famous

for its copper mines, which, however, were worked out in Strabo's time.

See _Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography_.

[4] Heading Νηρίτῳ instead of Νηίῳ, cf. Book xiii. 96, &c., and 351,

where the same harbour is obviously intended.

[5] _i.e._ "flowing," or with a current in it.

[6] The mountain is singular, as though it were an isolated mountain

rather than a range that was in the mind of the writer. It is also

singular, not plural, in the parallel cases of xv. 175 and xix. 538.

[7] Reading ὑπονηρίτου for ὑπονηίου, _cf_.i. 186 and also xiii. 351.

[8] The reader will note that the fact of Orestes having also killed

his mother is not expressly stated here, nor in any of the three

other passages in which the revenge taken by Orestes is referred

to--doubtless as being too horrible. The other passages are _Od_. i. 40

and 299 (not given in this summary), and xi. 408, &c.

[9] For fuller translation and explanation why I have bracketed the

passage, see Chapter VI.

[10] It is curious that the sleeping arrangements made by Helen for

Telemachus and Pisistratus, as also those made for Ulysses by Queen

Arete (vii. 336, &c.), though taken almost verbatim from those made by

Achilles for Priam and Idicus (_Il_. xxiv. 643-47 and 673-76), should

do so well for a building of such a different character as the house of

Menelaus must have been from the quarters of Achilles before Troy.

[11] For explanation why I bracket this passage see Chapter VI.

[12] Scheria means "Jutland"--a piece of land jutting out into the sea.

[13] Gr. πάππα φίλ', line 57.

[14] Penelope and Calypso also had gardens: so had Laertes (xxiv. 217).

I remember no allusion to them in the _Iliad_.

[15] It is a little odd that this disc should have been brought,

considering that none such were used by the Phæacians. We must suppose

that Minerva put it in along with the others, and then shed a thick

darkness over it, which prevented the attendants from noticing it.

[16] Alcinous never seems to have got beyond saying that he was going

to give the cup; he never gives it, nor yet the talent--the familiar ῶς

εἰπὼν ἐν χερσὶ τίθει κ.τ.λ. is noticeably absent. He found the chest,

and he took a great deal of pains about stowing the presents in the

ship that was to take Ulysses to Ithaca (see xiii. 18, &c.), but here

his contributions seem to have ended.

[17] Dwellers on the East coast of Sicily believe the island here

referred to to be Acitrezza, between Acireale and Catania. I have been

all over it and do not believe that it contains more than two acres of

land on which any goat could ever have fed. The idea that the writer

of the _Odyssey_ would make Ulysses and his large body of men spend

half a day in killing over a hundred goats on such a site need not be

discussed seriously, I shall therefore pass it over without notice

when I come to discuss the voyage of Ulysses. That it should be so

confidently believed to be the island off the land of the Cyclopes

serves as a warning to myself, inasmuch as it shows how easily people

can bring themselves to accept any site for any scene if they make up

their minds to do so.

[18] See Chapter xv. for reasons why I have bracketed lines 115--137.

[19] Ulysses was to appease Neptune's anger by going as a missionary to

preach his name among a people that did not know him.

[20] The want of coherence here is obvions, but as it is repeated when

Ulysses ought to come to the wandering cliffs (which he never does) it

must be referred to a _lacuna_ not in the text, but in the writer's

sources of information--of which she seems fully aware.

[21] I suppose this line to have been added when lines 426--446 of this

book were added.

[22] The wandering cliffs are certainly intended, for when Ulysses is

recapitulating his adventures in Book xxiii. he expressly mentions

having reached the πλαγκτὰς πέτρας, just after the Sirens, and before

Scylla and Charybdis (xxiii. 327). The writer is determined to have

them in her story however little she may know about them.

[23] I incline to think that these lines are an after thought, added by

the writer herself.

[24] σὺν ἀρτεμέεσσι φίλοισιν.

[25] Minerva, in her desire to minimise the time during which the

suitors had been at Ulysses' house, seems to have forgotten that they

had been there ever since Telemachus was quite a child (_Od_. ii.

312-14).

[26] _i.e_. which seemed to fly past them.

[27] According to tradition, she had hanged herself on hearing a report

of the death of her son.

[28] See Chapter XII, near the beginning.

[29] In almost all other places he is called Melanthius.

[30] All this might very well be, if the scene is laid in an open

court, but hardly if it was in a hall inside a house.

[31] ἐς μέσσον (line 447).

[32] They might very well fight in the middle of an open court, but

hardly in a covered hall. They would go outside.

[33] ἐν μεγάροισιν, but not ἐν μεγάροισι σκιόεσσι.

[34] There is no indication as though they went out to do this; they

seem to have emptied the ashes on to the open part of the court.

[35] I have repeatedly seen geese so feeding at Trapani and in the

neighbourhood. In summer the grass is all burned up so that they cannot

graze as in England.

[36] This is the only reference to Sardinia in either _Iliad_ or

_Odyssey_.

[37] If Telemachus had never seen anything of the kind before, so

probably, neither had the writer of the _Odyssey_--at any rate no

commentator has yet been able to understand her description, and I

doubt whether she understood it herself. It looks as though the axe

heads must have been wedged into the handles or so bound on to them as

to let the hole be visible through which the handle would go when the

axe was in use. The trial is evidently a double one, of strength as

regards the bending of the bow, and accuracy of aim as regards shooting

through a row of rings.

[38] It is not expressly stated that the "stone pavement" is here

intended. The Greek has simply ἆλτο δ᾽ ἐπὶ μέγαν οὐδόν, but I do not

doubt that the stone pavement is intended.

[39] This again suggests, though it does not prove, that we are in an

open court surrounded by a cloister, on the rafters of which swallows

would often perch. Line 297 suggests this even more strongly, "the

roof" being, no doubt, the roof of the cloister, on to which Minerva

flew from the rafter, that her ægis might better command the whole

court.

[40] Probably the hide of the heifer that Philœtius had brought in that

morning (xx. 186).

[41] This room was apparently not within the body of the house. It was

certainly on the ground floor, for the bed was fixed on to the stump

of a tree; I strongly suspect it to be the vaulted room, round the

outside of which the bodies of the guilty maids were still hanging, and

I also suspect it was in order to thus festoon the room that Telemachus

hanged the women instead of stabbing them, but this is treading on that

perilous kind of speculation which I so strongly deprecate in others.

If it were not for the gruesome horror of the dance, in lines 129--151,

I should not have entertained it.

CHAPTER III.

THE PREPONDERANCE OF WOMAN IN THE ODYSSEY.

Having in my first chapter met the only _à priori_ objections to my

views concerning the sex of the writer which have yet been presented to

me, I now turn to the evidence of female authorship which is furnished

by the story which I have just laid before the reader.

What, let me ask, is the most unerring test of female authorship?

Surely a preponderance of female interest, and a fuller knowledge of

those things which a woman generally has to deal with, than of those

that fall more commonly within the province of man. People always write

by preference of what they know best, and they know best what they most

are, and have most to do with. This extends to ways of thought and to

character, even more than to action. If man thinks the noblest study

for mankind to be man, woman not less certainly believes it to be woman.

Hence if in any work the women are found to be well and sympathetically

drawn, while the men are mechanical and by comparison perfunctorily

treated, it is, I imagine, safe to infer that the writer is a woman;

and the converse holds good with man. Man and woman never fully

understand one another save, perhaps, during courtship and honeymoon,

and as a man understands man more fully than a woman can do, so does a

woman, woman. Granted, it is the delight of either sex to understand

the other as fully as it can, and those who succeed most in this

respect are the best and happiest whether men or women; but do what

we may the barriers can never be broken down completely, and each sex

will dwell mainly, though not, of course, exclusively, within its own

separate world. When, moreover, we come to think of it, it is not

desirable that they should be broken down, for it is on their existence

that much of the attraction of either sex to the other depends.

Men seem unable to draw women at all without either laughing at them

or caricaturing them; and so, perhaps, a woman never draws a man so

felicitously as when she is making him ridiculous. If she means to

make him so she is certain to succeed; if she does not mean it she

will succeed more surely still. Either sex, in fact, can caricature

the other delightfully, and certainly no writer has ever shown more

completely than the writer of the _Odyssey_ has done that, next to the

glorification of woman, she considers man's little ways and weaknesses

to be the fittest theme on which her genius can be displayed. But I

doubt whether any writer in the whole range of literature (excepting,

I suppose, Shakspeare) has succeeded in drawing a full length,

life-sized, serious portrait of a member of the sex opposite to the

writer's own.

It is admitted on all hands that the preponderance of interest in the

_Iliad_ is on the side of man, and in the _Odyssey_ on that of woman.

Women in the _Iliad_ are few in number and rarely occupy the stage.

True, the goddesses play important parts, but they are never taken

seriously.

Shelley, again, speaking of the "perpetually increasing magnificence of

the last seven books" of the _Iliad_, says, "The _Odyssey_ is sweet,

but there is nothing like this."[1] The writer of the _Odyssey_ is

fierce as a tigress at times, but the feeling of the poem is on the

whole exactly what Shelley says it is. Strength is felt everywhere even

in the tenderest passages of the _Iliad_, but it is sweetness rather

than strength that fascinates us throughout the _Odyssey_. It is the

charm of a woman not of a man.

So, again, to quote a more recent authority, Mr. Gladstone in his work

on _Homer_ already referred to, says (p. 28):--

It is rarely in the _Iliad_ that grandeur or force give way to allow

the exhibition of domestic affection. Conversely, in the _Odyssey_ the

family life supplies the tissue into which is woven the thread of the

poem.

Any one who is familiar with the two poems must know that what Mr.

Gladstone has said is true; and he might have added, not less truly,

that when there is any exhibition of domestic life and affection in the

_Iliad_ the men are dominant, and the women are under their protection,

whereas throughout the _Odyssey_ it is the women who are directing,

counselling, and protecting the men.

Who are the women in the _Odyssey_? There is Minerva, omnipresent

at the elbows of Ulysses and Telemachus to keep them straight and

alternately scold and flatter them. In the _Iliad_ she is a great

warrior but she is no woman: in the _Odyssey_ she is a great woman but

no warrior; we have, of course, Penelope--masterful nearly to the last

and tossed off to the wings almost from the moment that she has ceased

to be so; Euryclea, the old servant, is quite a match for Telemachus,

"do not find fault, child," she says to him, "when there is no one to

find fault with" (xx. 135). Who can doubt that Helen is master in the

house of Menelaus--of whom all she can say in praise is that he is "not

deficient either in person or understanding" (iv. 264)? Idothea in Book

iv. treats Menelaus _de haut en bas_, all through the Proteus episode.

She is good to him and his men, but they must do exactly what she tells

them, and she evidently enjoys "running" them,--for I can think of no

apter word. Calypso is the master mind, not Ulysses; and, be it noted,

that neither she nor Circe seem to have a manservant on their premises.

I was at an inn once and asked the stately landlady if I could see the

landlord. She bridled up and answered, "We have no landlord, sir, in

this house; I cannot see what use a man is in a hotel except to clean

boots and windows." There spoke Circe and Calypso, but neither of them

seem to have made even this much exception in man's favour.

Let the reader ask any single ladies of his acquaintance, who live in

a house of their own, whether they prefer being waited upon by men

or by women, and I shall be much surprised if he does not find that

they generally avoid having a man about the house at all--gardeners

of course excepted. But then the gardener generally has a wife, and a

house of his own.

Take Nausicaa again, delightful as she is, it would not be wise to

contradict her; she knows what is good for Ulysses, and all will go

well with him so long as he obeys her, but she must be master and he

man. I see I have passed over Ino in Book v. She is Idothea over again,

just as Circe is Calypso, with very little variation. Who again is

master--Queen Arete or King Alcinous? Nausicaa knows well enough how to

answer this question. When giving her instructions to Ulysses she says:

"Never mind my father, but go up to my mother and embrace

her knees; if she is well disposed towards you there is

some chance of your getting home to see your friends

again" (vi. 310-315).

Throughout the Phæacian episode Arēte (whose name, by the way, I take

to be one of the writer's tolerably transparent disguises, and to be

intended to suggest Arĕte, or "Goodness") is a more important person

than Alcinous. I do not believe in her myself; I believe Penelope

would have been made more amiable if Arete had been as nice a person

as the writer says she was; leaving her, however, on one side, so

much more important are wives than husbands in the eyes of the author

of the _Odyssey_ that when Ulysses makes his farewell speech to the

Phæacians, she makes him say that he hopes they may continue to give

satisfaction to their wives and children (xiii. 44, 45), instead of

hoping that their wives and children will continue to give satisfaction

to them. A little lower down he wishes Queen Arete all happiness with

her children, her people, and lastly with King Alcinous. As for King

Alcinous, it does not matter whether he is happy or no, provided he

gives satisfaction to Queen Arete; but he was bound to be happy as the

husband of such an admirable woman.

So when the Duke of York was being married I heard women over and over

again say they hoped the Princess May would be very happy with him, but

I never heard one say that she hoped the Duke would be very happy with

the Princess May. Men said they hoped the pair would be very happy,

without naming one more than the other.

I have touched briefly on all the more prominent female characters of

the _Odyssey_. The moral in every case seems to be that man knows very

little, and cannot be trusted not to make a fool of himself even about

the little that he does know, unless he has a woman at hand to tell him

what he ought to do. There is not a single case in which a man comes to

the rescue of female beauty in distress; it is invariably the other way

about.

The only males who give Ulysses any help while he is on his wanderings

are Æolus, who does him no real service and refuses to help him a

second time, and Mercury, who gives him the herb Moly (x. 305) to

protect him against the spells of Circe. In this last case, however, I

do not doubt that the writer was tempted by the lovely passage of _Il_.

XXIV., where Mercury meets Priam to conduct him to the Achæan camp; one

pretty line, indeed (and rather more), of the Iliadic passage above

referred to is taken bodily by the writer of the _Odyssey_ to describe

the youth and beauty of the god.[2] With these exceptions, throughout

the poem Andromeda rescues Perseus, not Perseus Andromeda--Christiana

is guide and guardian to Mr. Greatheart, not Mr. Greatheart to

Christiana.

The case of Penelope may seem to be an exception. It may be urged that

Ulysses came to her rescue, and that the whole poem turns on his doing

so. But this is not true. Ulysses kills the suitors, firstly, because

they had wasted his substance--this from the first to last is the main

grievance; secondly, because they had violated the female servants of

his house; and only, thirdly, because they had offered marriage to his

wife while he was still alive (xxii. 36-38). Never yet was woman better

able to hold her own when she chose, and I will show at full length

shortly that when she did not hold it it was because she preferred not

to do so.

I have dealt so far with the writer's attitude towards women when in

the world of the living. Let us now see what her instinct prompts her

to consider most interesting in the kingdom of the dead. When Ulysses

has reached the abode of Hades, the first ghost he meets is that of his

comrade Elpenor, who had got drunk and fallen off the roof of Circe's

house just as Ulysses and his men were about to set sail. We are

expressly told that he was a person of no importance, being remarkable

neither for sense nor courage, so that it does not matter about killing

him, and it is transparent that the accident is only allowed to happen

in order to enable Ulysses to make his little joke when he greets the

ghost in Hades to the effect that Elpenor has got there more quickly by

land than Ulysses had done by water. Elpenor therefore, does not count.

The order, however, in which the crowd of ghosts approach Ulysses,

is noticeable. After the blood of the victims sacrificed by Ulysses

had flowed into the trench which he had dug to receive it, the writer

says:--

"The ghosts came trooping up from Erebus--brides, young

bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had

been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed

in battle, with their armour still smirched with blood;

they came from every quarter, and flitted round the

trench with a strange kind of screaming sound that made

me turn pale with fear" (xi. 36-43).

I do not think a male writer would have put the brides first, nor yet

the young bachelors second. He would have begun with kings or great

warriors or poets, nor do I believe he would make Ulysses turn pale

with fear merely because the ghosts screamed a little; they would have

had to menace him more seriously.

What does Bunyan do? When Christian tells Pliable what kind of company

he will meet in Paradise, he says:--

"There we shall see elders with their golden crowns;

there we shall see holy virgins with their golden

harps; there we shall see men that by the world were

cut in pieces, burnt in flames, eaten of beasts,

drowned in the seas, for the love they bore to the Lord

of that place; all well and cloathed with immortality

as with a garment."

Men present themselves to him instinctively in the first instance,

and though he quits them for a moment, he returns to them immediately

without even recognising the existence of women among the martyrs.

Moreover, when Christian and Hopeful have passed through the river of

death and readied the eternal city, it is none but men who greet them.

True, after having taken Christian to the Eternal City, Bunyan conducts

Christiana also, and her children, in his Second Part; but surely if

he had been an inspired woman and not an inspired man, and if this

woman had been writing as it was borne in upon her by her own instinct,

neither aping man nor fearing him, she would have taken Christiana

first, and Christian, if she took him at all, in her appendix.

Next to Elpenor the first ghost that Ulysses sees is that of his

mother Anticlea, and he is sorely grieved that he may not, by Circe's

instructions, speak to her till he has heard what the Theban prophet

Tiresias had got to tell him. As soon as he has heard this, he enquires

how he can make his mother recognise him, and converse with him. This

point being answered there follows the incomparably beautiful scene

between him and Anticlea, which occupies some seventy or eighty lines,

and concludes by his mother's telling him to get home as fast as he

can that he may tell of his adventures in Hades--to whom? To the world

at large? To his kinsmen and countrymen? No: it is to his wife that he

is to recount them and apparently to nobody else (xi. 223, 224). Very

right and proper; but more characteristic of a female than of a male

writer.

Who follow immediately on the departure of Anticlea? Proserpine sends

up "all the wives and daughters of great princes"--Tyro, daughter of

Salmoneus, Antiope daughter of Asopus, Alcmena, Epicaste (better known

as Jocasta), Chloris wife of Neleus, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phædra, Procris,

Ariadne, Mæra, Clymene, and Eriphyle. Ulysses says that there were many

more wives and daughters of heroes whom he conversed with, but that

time would not allow him to detail them further; in deference, however,

to the urgent request of King Alcinous, he goes on to say how he met

Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax (who would not speak to him); he touched

lightly also on Minos, Orion, Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Hercules.

I have heard women say that nothing can be made out of the fact that

the women in Hades are introduced before the men, inasmuch as they

would themselves have been more likely to put the men before the women,

and can understand that a male writer would be attracted in the first

instance by the female shades. When women know what I am driving at,

they generally tell me this, but when I have got another woman to sound

them for me, or when I have stalked them warily, I find that they

would rather meet the Virgin Mary, Eve, Queen Elizabeth, Cleopatra,

Sappho, Jane Austen, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Helen of Troy, Zenobia,

and other great women than even Homer and Shakspeare. One comfortable

homely woman with whom I had taken great pains said she could not think

what I meant by asking such questions, but if I wanted to know, she

would as lief meet Mrs. Elizabeth Lazenby as Queen Elizabeth or any

one of them. For my own part, had I to choose a number of shades whom

I would meet, I should include Sappho, Jane Austen, and the authoress

of the _Odyssey_ in my list, but I should probably ask first for Homer,

Shakspeare, Handel, Schubert, Arcangelo Corelli, Purcell, Giovanni

Bellini, Rembrandt, Holbein, De Hooghe, Donatello, Jean de Wespin and

many another man--yet the writer of the _Odyssey_ interests me so

profoundly that I am not sure I should not ask to see her before any of

the others.

I know of no other women writers who have sent their heroes down

to Hades, but when men have done so they deal with men first and

women afterwards. Let us turn to Dante. When Virgil tells him whom

Christ first saved when he descended into Hell, we find that he first

rescued Adam. Not a word is there about Eve. Then are rescued Abel,

Noah, Abraham, David, Jacob and his sons--and lastly, just before

the _et ceteri_--one woman, Rachel. When Virgil has finished, Dante

begins meeting people on his own account. First come Homer, Horace,

Ovid, and Lucan; when these have been disposed of we have Electra,

Hector, Æneas, Cæsar, Camilla, Penthesilea, Latinus, Lavinia, Brutus,

Cato's wife Marcia, Julia, Cornelia, Saladin, Socrates, Plato,

Democritus, Diogenes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Thales,

Zeno, Dioscorides, Orpheus, Linus, Cicero, Seneca, Euclid, Ptolemy,

Hippocrates, Galen, Avicen, and Averroes. Seven women to twenty-six

men. This list reminds me of Sir John Lubbock's hundred books, I shall

therefore pursue Dante no further; I have given it in full because I do

not like him. So far as I can see the Italians themselves are beginning

to have their doubts about him; "Dante è un falso idolo," has been said

to me more than once lately by highly competent critics.

Let us now look to the _Æneid_. When Æneas and the Sibyl approach the

river Styx, we read:--

Hue omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat

Matres atque viri, defunctaque corpora vitâ

Magnanimûm heroum, pueri, innuptæque puellæ,

Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum.

_Æn_. vi. 305-308.

The women indeed come first, but the _i_ in _viri_ being short Virgil

could not help himself, and the first persons whom he recognises as

individuals are men--namely two of his captains who had been drowned,

Leucaspis and Orontes--and Palinurus. After crossing the Styx he first

passes through the region inhabited by those who have died as infants;

then that by those who have been unjustly condemned to die; then that

by suicides; then that of those who have died for love, where he sees

several women, and among them Dido, who treats him as Ajax treated

Ulysses. The rest of those whom Æneas sees or converses with in Hades

are all men.

Lucian is still more ungallant, for in his dialogues of the dead he

does not introduce a single woman.

One other case alone occurs to me among the many that ought to do so; I

refer to Fielding's _Journey to the next World_. The three first ghosts

whom he speaks to in the coach are men. When he gets to his journey's

end, after a short but most touching scene with his own little daughter

who had died a mere child only a few months before Fielding wrote, and

who is therefore nothing to the point, he continues: "The first spirit

with whom I entered into discourse, was the famous Leonidas of Sparta."

Of course; soldier will greet soldier first. In the next paragraph

one line is given to Sappho, who we are told was singing to the

accompaniment of Orpheus. Then we go on to Homer,[3] Virgil, Addison,

Shakspeare, Betterton, Booth, and Milton.

Defoe, again, being an elderly married man, and wanting to comfort

Robinson Crusoe, can think of nothing better for him than the

companionship of another man, whereon he sends him Friday. A woman

would have sent him an amiable and good-looking white girl whom the

cannibals had taken prisoner from some shipwrecked vessel. This she

would have held as likely to be far more useful to him.

So much to show that the mind of man, unless when he is young and

lovesick, turns more instinctively to man than to woman. And I am

convinced, as indeed every one else is whether he or she knows it

or no, that with the above exception, woman is more interested in

woman. This is how the Virgin Mary has come to be Queen of Heaven, and

practically of more importance than the Trinity itself in the eyes of

the common people in Roman Catholic countries. For the women support

the theologians more than the men do. The male Jews, again, so I am

told, have a prayer in which the men thank God that they were not born

women, and the women, that they were not born men. Each sex believes

most firmly in itself, nor till we have done away with individualism

altogether can we find the smallest reason to complain of this

arrangement. A woman if she attempts an Epic is almost compelled to

have a man for her central figure, but she will minimise him, and will

maximise his wife and daughters, drawing them with subtler hand. That

the writer of the _Odyssey_ has done this is obvious; and this fact

alone should make us incline strongly towards thinking that we are in

the hands not of a man but of a woman.

[1] _Select Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, edited by Richard

Garnett, Kegan Paul Trench & Co., 1882, p. 149.

[2] _Od_. x. 278, 279; cf. _Il_. XXIV. 347, 348.

[3] Talking of _Homer_ Fielding says, "I had the curiosity to ask him

whether he had really writ that poem [the _Iliad_] in detached pieces

and flung it about all over Greece, according to the report that went

of him. He smiled at my question, and asked me whether there appeared

any connection in the poem; for if there did he thought I might answer

for myself." This was first published in 1743, and is no doubt intended

as a reply to Bentley. See Jebb's _Introduction to Homer_, ed. 1888,

note 1 on p. 106.

CHAPTER IV.

JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF WOMAN--SEVERITY AGAINST THOSE

WHO HAVE DISGRACED THEIR SEX--LOVE OF SMALL RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES--OF

PREACHING--OF WHITE LIES AND SMALL PLAY-ACTING--OF HAVING THINGS BOTH

WAYS--AND OF MONEY.

Not only does the writer shew a markedly greater both interest and

knowledge when dealing with women, but she makes it plain that she

is exceedingly jealous for the honour of her sex, and by consequence

inexorable in her severity against those women who have disgraced it.

Goddesses may do what they like, they are not to be judged by mortal

codes; but a mortal woman who has fallen must die.

No woman throughout the _Odyssey_ is ever laughed at. Women may be

hanged but they must not be laughed at. Men may be laughed at, indeed

Alcinous is hardly mentioned at all except to be made more or less

ridiculous. One cannot say that Menelaus in Books iv. and xv. is being

deliberately made ridiculous, but made ridiculous he certainly is, and

he is treated as a person of far less interest and importance than his

wife is. Indeed Ulysses, Alcinous, Menelaus, and Nestor are all so like

one another that I do not doubt they were drawn from the same person,

just as Ithaca and Scheria are from the same place. Who that person was

we shall never know; nevertheless I would point out that unless a girl

adores her father he is generally, to her, a mysterious powerful being

whose ways are not as her ways. He is feared as a dark room is feared

by children; and if his wife is at all given to laughing at him, his

daughter will not spare him, however much she may cajole and in a way

love him.

But, as I have said, though men may be laughed at, the women are never

taken other than quite seriously. Venus is indeed, made a little

ridiculous in one passage, but she was a goddess, so it does not

matter; besides, the brunt of the ridicule was borne by Mars, and Venus

was instantly readorned and comforted by the Graces. I cannot remember

a single instance of a woman's being made to do anything which she

could not do without loss of dignity--I except, of course, slaves, and

am speaking of the higher social classes.

It has often been observed that the Messenger of the Gods in the

_Iliad_ is always Iris, while in the _Odyssey_ he is no less invariably

Mercury. I incline to attribute this to the author's dislike of the

idea that so noble a lady as Iris should be made to fetch and carry

for anybody. For it is evident Iris was still generally held to have

been the messenger of the gods. This appears from the beginning of

Book xviii., where we are told that Irus's real name was Arnæus, but

that he was called Irus (which is nothing but Iris with a masculine

termination) "because he used to carry messages when any one would send

him." Writers do not fly in the face of current versions unless for

some special reasons of their own.

If, however, a woman has misconducted herself she is to be shewn no

mercy. There are only three cases in point, and one of these hardly

counts inasmuch as the punishment of the guilty woman, Clytemnestra,

was not meted out to her by the authoress herself. The hold, however,

which the story of Clytemnestra's guilt has upon her, the manner

in which she repeatedly recurs to it, her horror at it, but at the

same time her desire to remove as much of the blame as possible

from Clytemnestra's shoulders, convinces me that she acutely feels

the disgrace which Clytemnestra's treachery has inflicted upon all

women "even on the good ones." Why should she be at such pains to

tell us that Clytemnestra was a person of good natural disposition

(iii. 266), and was irreproachable until death had removed the bard

under whose protection Agamemnon had placed her?[1] When she was left

alone--without either husband or guardian, and with an insidious wretch

like Ægisthus beguiling her with his incessant flattery, she yielded,

and there is no more to be said, except that it was very dreadful and

she must be abandoned to her fate. I see Mr. Gladstone has wondered

what should have induced Homer (whom he holds to have written the

_Odyssey_ as well as the _Iliad_) to tell us that Clytemnestra was a

good woman to start with,[2] but with all my respect for his great

services to Homeric literature, I cannot think that he has hit upon

the right explanation. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that this

extenuation of Clytemnestra's guilt belongs to a part of the _Odyssey_

that was engrafted on to the original design--a part in which, as I

shall show later, there was another woman's guilt, which was only not

extenuated because it was absolutely denied in the face of overwhelming

evidence--I mean Penelope's.

The second case in point is that of the woman who stole Eumæus when he

was a child. A few days after she has done this, and has gone on board

the ship with the Phœnician traders, she is killed by Diana, and thrown

overboard to the seals and fishes (xv. 403-484).

The third case is that of the women of Ulysses' household who had

misconducted themselves with the suitors during his absence. We are

told that there were fifty women servants in the house, of whom twelve

alone were guilty. It is curious that the number of servants should

be exactly the same as that of the maidservants in the house of king

Alcinous, and it should be also noted that twelve is a very small

number for the guilty servants, considering that there were over a

hundred suitors, and that the maids seem to have been able to leave

the house by night when they chose to do so (xx. 6-8)--true, we are

elsewhere told that the women had been violated and only yielded under

compulsion, but this makes it more wonderful that they should be so

few--and I may add, more terribly severe to hang them. I think the

laxity of prehistoric times would have prompted a writer who was not

particularly jealous for the honour of woman, to have said that there

were thirty-eight, or even more, guilty, and only twelve innocent. We

must bear in mind on the other hand that when Euryclea brought out the

thirty-eight innocent women to see Ulysses after he had killed the

suitors, Ulysses recognised them all (xxii. 501). The youngest of them

therefore can hardly have been under forty, and so me no doubt were

older--for Ulysses had been gone twenty years.

Now how are the guilty ones treated? A man who was speaking of my

theory that the _Odyssey_ was written by a woman as a mere _mauvaise

plaisanterie_, once told me it was absurd, for the first thing a woman

would have thought of after the suitors had been killed was the dining

room carpet. I said that _mutatis mutandis_ this was the very thing she

did think of.

As soon as Ulysses has satisfied himself that not a single suitor is

left alive, he tells Euryclea to send him the guilty maidservants, and

on their arrival he says to Telemachus, Eumæus and Philœtius (xxii.

437-443):--

"Begin to bear away the corpses, and make the women help

you. When you have done this, sponge down the seats and

tables, till you have set the whole house in order; then

take the maids outside....and thrust them through with

your swords."

These orders are faithfully obeyed; the maids help in the work of

removing the bodies and they sponge the chairs and tables till they

are clean--Ulysses standing over them and seeing that they lose no

time. This done, Telemachus (whose mother, we are told (xxii. 426-427)

had never yet permitted him to give orders to the female servants)

takes them outside and hangs them (xxii. 462), as a more dishonourable

death than the one his father had prescribed for them--perhaps also

he may have thought he should have less blood to clean up than if he

stabbed them--but see note on p. 98. The writer tells us in a line

which she borrows in great part from the _Iliad_,[3] that their feet

move convulsively for a short time though not for very long, but her

ideas of the way in which Telemachus hanged them are of the vaguest.

No commentator has ever yet been able to understand it; the only

explanation seems to be that the writer did not understand it herself,

and did not care to do so. Let it suffice that the women were obviously

hanged.

No man writing in pre-Christian times would have considered the guilt

of the women to require so horrible a punishment. He might have ordered

them to be killed, but he would not have carried his indignation to

the point of making them first clean up the blood of their paramours.

Fierce as the writer is against the suitors, she is far more so against

the women. When the suitors are all killed, Euryclea begins to raise a

cry of triumph over them, but Ulysses checks her. "Hold your tongue,

woman," he says, "it is ill bragging over the bodies of dead men"

(xxii. 411). So also it is ill getting the most hideous service out

of women up to the very moment when they are to be executed; but the

writer seems to have no sense of this; where female honour has been

violated by those of woman's own sex, no punishment is too bad for them.

The other chief characteristics of the _Odyssey_ which incline me

to ascribe it to a woman are a kind of art for art's sake love of a

small lie, and a determination to have things both ways whenever it

suits her purpose. This never seems to trouble her. There the story

is, and the reader may take it or leave it. She loves flimsy disguises

and mystifications that stultify themselves, and mystify nobody. To

go no further than books i. and iii., Minerva in each of these tells

plausible stories full of circumstantial details, about her being on

her way to Temesa with a cargo of iron and how she meant to bring back

copper (i. 184), and again how she was going to the Cauconians on the

following morning to recover a large debt that had been long owing to

her (iii. 366), and then, before the lies she had been at such pains to

concoct are well out of her mouth she reveals herself by flying into

the air in the form of an eagle. This, by the way, she could not well

do in either case if she was in a roofed hall, but might be conceived

as doing if, as I suppose her to have been in both cases, she was in a

roofed cloister that ran round an open court.

There is a flavour of consecutive fifths in these flights,[4] if

indeed they are not downright octaves, and I cannot but think that

the writer would have found a smoother progression open to her if she

had cared to look for one; but letting this pass, the way in which

white lies occur from the first book to the last, the punctiliousness,

omnipresent, with which small religious observances are insisted

upon, coupled with not a little unscrupulousness when these have been

attended to, the respect for gods and omens, and for the _convenances_

generally--all these seem to me to be more characteristic of a woman's

writing than a man's.

The seriousness, again, with which Telemachus is taken, the closeness

with which he adheres to his programme, the precision with which

he invariably does what his father, his mother, Minerva, or any

responsible person tells him that he should do, except in one passage

which is taken almost _verbatim_ from the _Iliad_,[5] the way in

which Minerva beautifies him and preaches to him; the unobtrusive but

exemplary manner in which he discharges all his religious, moral, and

social duties--all seem to me to point in the direction of thinking

that the writer is a woman and a young one.

How does Minerva preach to him? When he has washed his hands in the sea

he prays that she will help him on his intended voyage in search of

news concerning his father. The goddess then comes up to him disguised

as Mentor, and speaks as follows:

"Telemachus, if you are made of the same stuff as your

father you will be neither fool or coward henceforward,

for Ulysses never broke his word nor left his work half

done. If, then, you take after him your voyage will not

be fruitless, but unless you have the blood of Ulysses

and Penelope in your veins I see no likelihood of your

succeeding. Sons are seldom as good men as their fathers;

they are generally worse not better; still, as you are

not going to be either fool or coward henceforward, and

are not entirely without some share of your father's wise

discernment, I look with hope upon your undertaking" (ii.

270-280).

Hence the grandmotherly reputation which poor Mentor is never likely to

lose. It was not Mentor but Minerva. The writer does not make Minerva

say that daughters were rarely as good women as their mothers were. I

had a very dear kind old aunt who when I was a boy used to talk to me

just in this way. "Unstable as water," she would say, "thou shalt not

excel." I almost heard her saying it (and more to the same effect) when

I was translating the passage above given. My uncles did not talk to me

at all in the same way.

I may add parenthetically here, but will deal with the subject more

fully in a later chapter, that all the time Minerva was lecturing

Telemachus she must have known that his going would be worse than

useless, inasmuch as Ulysses was, by her own arrangements, on the

very eve of his return; and indeed he was back again in Ithaca before

Telemachus got home.

See, again, the manner in which Penelope scolds him in Book xviii. 215

&c., for having let Ulysses and Irus fight. She says:--

"Telemachus, I fear you are no longer so discreet and

well conducted as you used to be. When you were younger

you had a greater sense of propriety; now, however,

that you are grown up, though a stranger to look at you

would take you for the son of a well-to-do father as far

as size and good looks go, your conduct is by no means

what it should have been. What is all this disturbance

that has been going on, and how came you to allow a

stranger to be so disgracefully ill-treated? What would

have happened if he had suffered serious injury while a

suppliant in our house? Surely this would have been very

discreditable to you."

I do not believe any man could make a mother rebuke her son so

femininely.

Again, the fidelity with which people go on crying incessantly for a

son who has been lost to them for twenty years, though they have still

three sons left,[6] or for a brother whom they have never even seen,[7]

is part and parcel of that jealousy for the sanctity of domestic life,

in respect of which women are apt to be more exacting than men.

And yet in spite of all this the writer makes Telemachus take no

pains to hide the fact that his grievance is not so much the alleged

ill-treatment of his mother, nor yet the death of his father, as the

hole which the extravagance of the suitors is making in his own pocket.

When demanding assistance from his fellow countrymen, he says, of the

two great evils that have fallen upon his house:--

"The first of these is the loss of my excellent father,

who was chief among all you here present and was like

a father to every one of you. The second is much more

serious, and ere long will be the utter ruin of my

estate. The sons of all the chief men among you are

pestering my mother to marry them against her will. They

are afraid to go to her father Icarius, asking him to

choose the one he likes best, and to provide marriage

gifts for his daughter, but day after day they keep

hanging about my father's house, sacrificing our oxen,

sheep, and fat goats for their banquets, and never giving

so much as a thought to the quantity of wine they drink.

No estate can stand such recklessness (ii. 46-48)."

Moreover it is clear throughout Books iii. and iv., in which Telemachus

is trying to get news of his father, that what he really wants is

evidence of his death, not of his being alive, though this may only

be because he despairs of the second alternative. The indignation

of Telemachus on the score of the extravagance of the suitors is

noticeably shared by the writer all through the poem; she is furious

about it; perhaps by reason of the waste she saw going on in her

father's house. Under all she says on this head we seem to feel the

rankling of a private grievance, and it often crosses my mind that in

the suitors she also saw the neighbours who night after night came

sponging on the reckless good nature of Alcinous, to the probable

eventual ruin of his house.

Woman, religion, and money are the three dominant ideas in the mind

of the writer of the _Odyssey_. In the _Iliad_ the _belli causa_ is a

woman, money is a detail, and man is most in evidence. In the _Odyssey_

the _belli causa_ is mainly money, and woman is most in evidence--often

when she does not appear to be so--just as in the books of the _Iliad_

in which the Trojans are supposed to be most triumphant over the

Achæans, it is the Trojans all the time whose slaughter is most dwelt

upon.

It is strange that the _Odyssey_, in which money is so constantly

present to the mind of the writer, should show not even the faintest

signs of having been written from a business point of view, whereas the

_Iliad_, in which money appears but little, abounds with evidence of

its having been written to take with a certain audience whom the writer

both disliked and despised--and hence of having been written with an

eye to money.

I will now proceed to the question whether Penelope is being, if I may

say so, whitewashed. Is the version of her conduct that is given us

in the _Odyssey_ the then current one, or is the writer manipulating

a very different story, and putting another face on it--as all poets

are apt to do with any story that they are re-telling? Tennyson, not

to mention many earlier writers, has done this with the _Arthurian

Legends_, the original form of which takes us into a moral atmosphere

as different as can well be conceived from the one we meet with in the

_Idylls of the King_.

There is no improbability (for other instances will occur to the reader

so readily that I need not quote them) in the supposition that the

writer of the _Odyssey_ might choose to recast a story which she deemed

insulting to her sex, as well as disgusting in itself; the question

is, has she done so or not? Do traces of an earlier picture show up

through the one she has painted over it, so distinctly as to make it

obvious what the original picture represented? If they do not, I will

give up my case, but if they do, I shall hold it highly improbable that

a man in the Homeric age would undertake the impossible task of making

Penelope at the same time plausible and virtuous. I am afraid I think

he would be likely to make her out blacker than the last poet who had

treated the subject, rather than be at any pains to whiten her.

Least of all would Homer himself have been prompted to make Penelope

out better than report says she was. He would not have cared whether

she was better or worse. He is fond of women, but he is also fond of

teasing them, and he shows not the slightest signs of any jealousy for

female honour, or of a desire to exalt women generally. He shows no

more sign of this than he does of the ferocity with which punishment

is inflicted on the women of Ulysses' household--a ferocity which is

in itself sufficient to make it inconceivable that the _Iliad_ and the

_Odyssey_ should be by the same person.

[1] The part about the bard is omitted in my abridgement.

[2] _Studies on Homer and the Homeric age_.--Oxford University Press

1858, p. 28.

[3] _Od_. xxii. 473, _cf_. _Il_. XIII. 573.

[4] I should explain to the non-musical writer that it is forbidden in

music to have consecutive fifths or octaves between the same parts.

[5] _Od_. i. 356-359, _cf_. _Il_. VI. 490-493. The word "war" in the

_Iliad_ becomes "speech" in the _Odyssey_. There is no other change.

[6] _Od_. ii. 15-23.

[7] _Od_. iv. 186-188. Neither of these passages is given in my

abridgement.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE QUESTION WHETHER OR NO PENELOPE IS BEING WHITEWASHED.

It is known that scandalous versions of Penelope's conduct were current

among the ancients; indeed they seem to have prevailed before the

completion of the Epic cycle, for in the _Telegony_, which is believed

to have come next in chronological order after the _Odyssey_, we find

that when Ulysses had killed the suitors he did not go on living with

Penelope, but settled in Thesprotia, and married Callidice, the queen

of the country. He must, therefore, have divorced Penelope, and he

could hardly have done this if he accepted the Odyssean version of

her conduct. According to the author of the _Telegony_, Penelope and

Telemachus go on living in Ithaca, where eventually Ulysses returns

and is killed by Telegonus, a son who had been born to him by Circe.

For further reference to ancient, though a good deal later, scandalous

versions, see _Smith's Dictionary_ under "Penelope."

Let us see what the _Odyssey_ asks us to believe, or rather, swallow.

We are told that more than a hundred young men fall violently in

love, at the same time, with a supposed widow, who before the close

of their suit can hardly have been under forty, and who had a grown

up son--pestering her for several years with addresses that they know

are most distasteful to her. They are so madly in love with her that

they cannot think of proposing to any one else (ii. 205-207) till she

has made her choice. When she has done this they will go; till then,

they will pay her out for her cruel treatment of them by eating her son

Telemachus out of house and home. This, therefore, they proceed to do,

and Penelope, who is a model both wife and mother, suffers agonies of

grief, partly because of the death of her husband, and partly because

she cannot get the suitors out of the house.

One would have thought all she had to do was to bolt the doors as soon

as the suitors had left for the night, and refuse to open them in the

morning; for the suitors never sleep in the same house with Penelope.

They sleep at various places in the town, in the middle of which

Ulysses' house evidently stands, and if they were meek enough to let

themselves be turned out, they would be meek enough to let themselves

be kept out, if those inside showed anything of a firm front. Not one

of them ever sees Penelope alone; when she comes into their presence

she is attended by two respectable female servants who stand on either

side of her, and she holds a screen or veil modestly before her

face--true, she was forty, but neither she nor the poetess seem to

bear this in mind, so we may take it as certain that it was modesty

and nothing else that made her hold up the veil. The suitors were not

men of scrupulous delicacy, and in spite of their devotion to Penelope

lived on terms of improper intimacy with her women servants--none

of whom appear to have been dismissed instantly on detection. It is

a little strange that not one of those suitors who came from a long

distance should have insisted on being found in bed as well as board,

and so much care is taken that not one breath of scandal should

attach to Penelope, that we infer a sense on the writer's part that

it was necessary to put this care well in evidence. I cannot think,

for example, that Penelope would have been represented as nearly so

incredulous about the return of Ulysses in Book xxiii., if she had

been nearly as virtuous as the writer tries to make her out. The

amount of caution with which she is credited is to some extent a gauge

of the thickness of the coat of whitewash which the writer considers

necessary. In all Penelope's devotion to her husband there is an ever

present sense that the lady doth protest too much.

Still stranger, however, is the fact that these ardent passionate

lovers never quarrel among themselves for the possession of their

middle-aged paragon. The survival of the fittest does not seem to

have had any place in their system. They show no signs of jealousy,

but jog along cheek by jowl as a very happy family, aiming spears at

a mark, playing draughts, flaying goats and singeing pigs in the

yard, drinking an untold quantity of wine, and generally holding high

feast. They insist that Penelope should marry somebody, but who the

happy somebody is to be is a matter of no importance.[1] No one seems

to think it essential that she shall marry himself in particular. Not

one of them ever finds out that his case is hopeless and takes his

leave; and thus matters drift on year after year--during all which time

Penelope is not getting any younger--the suitors dying of love for

Penelope, and Penelope dying only to be rid of them.

Granted that the suitors are not less in love with the good cheer they

enjoy at Telemachus's expense, than they are with his mother; but this

mixture of perfect lover and perfect sponger is so impossible that no

one could have recourse to it unless aware that he (or she) was in

extreme difficulty. If men are in love they will not sponge; if they

sponge they are not in love; we may have it either way but not both;

when, therefore, the writer of the _Odyssey_ not only attributes such

impossible conduct to the suitors, but asks us also to believe that a

clever woman could not keep at any rate some few of her hundred lovers

out of the house, although their presence had been for many years

in a high degree distasteful to her, we may know that we are being

hoodwinked as far as the writer can hoodwink us, and shall be very

inclinable to believe that the suitors were not so black, nor Penelope

so white, as we are being given to understand.

As for her being overawed by the suitors, she talks very plainly to

them at times, as for example in xviii. 274-280, and again in xix. 322

where she speaks as though she were perfectly able to get rid of any

suitor who was obnoxious to her.

Over and above this we may infer that the writer who can tell us such

a story with a grave face cannot have even the faintest conception of

the way in which a man feels towards a woman he is in love with, nor

yet much (so far as I may venture to form an opinion) of what women

commonly feel towards the man of their choice; I conclude, therefore,

that she was still very young, and unmarried. At any rate the story

told above cannot have been written by Homer; if it is by a man at all

it must be by some prehistoric Fra Angelico, who had known less in his

youth, or forgotten more in his old age, than the writer of the _Iliad_

is at all likely to have done. If he had still known enough to be able

to write the _Odyssey_, he would have remembered more than the writer

of the _Odyssey_ shows any signs of having ever known.

A man, if he had taken it into his head (as the late Lord Tennyson

might very conceivably have done) to represent Penelope as virtuous

in spite of current scandalous stories to the contrary--a man, would

not have made the suitors a band of lovers at all. He would have seen

at once that this was out of the question, and would have made them

mere marauders, who overawed Penelope by their threats, and were only

held in check by her mother wit and by, say, some three or four covert

allies among the suitors themselves. Do what he might he could not make

the permanent daily presence of the suitors plausible, but it would

be possible; whereas the combination of perfect sponger and perfect

lover which is offered us by the writer of the _Odyssey_ is grotesquely

impossible, nor do I imagine that she would have asked us to accept it,

but for her desire to exalt her sex by showing how a clever woman can

bring any number of men to her feet, hoodwink them, spoil them, and in

the end destroy them. This, however, is surely a woman's theme rather

than a man's--at least I know of no male writer who has attempted

anything like it.

We have now seen the story as told from Penelope's point of view; let

us proceed to hear it from that of the suitors. We find this at the

beginning of Book ii., and I will give Antinous's speech at fuller

length than I have done in my abridgement. After saying that Penelope

had for years been encouraging every single suitor by sending him

flattering messages (in which, by the way, Minerva fully corroborated

him in Book xiii. 379-381) he continues:--

"And then there was that other trick she played us. She set up a

great tambour frame in her room, and began to work on an enormous

piece of fine needlework. 'Sweethearts,' said she, 'Ulysses is indeed

dead, still, do not press me to marry again immediately; wait--for I

would not have my skill in needlework perish unrecorded--till I have

completed a pall for the hero Laertes, to be ready against the time

when death shall take him. He is very rich, and the women of the place

will talk if he is laid out without a pall.'

"This was what she said, and we assented; whereon we could see her,

working on her great web all day, but at night she would unpick the

stiches again by torchlight. She fooled us in this way for three years

and we never found her out, but as time wore on and she was now in her

fourth year, one of her maids, who knew what she was doing, told us,

and we caught her in the act of undoing her work; so she had to finish

it, whether she would or no.

"The suitors, therefore, make you this answer, that both you and the

Achæans may understand: 'Send your mother away, and bid her marry the

man of her own and her father's choice,' for I do not know what will

happen if she goes on plaguing us much longer with the airs she gives

herself on the score of the accomplishments Minerva has taught her,

and because she is so clever. We never yet heard of such a woman. We

know all about Tyro, Alcmena, Mycene, and the famous women of old, but

they were nothing to your mother any one of them. It was not fair of

her to treat us in that way, and as long as she continues in the mind

with which heaven has now endowed her, so long shall we go on eating up

your estate; and I do not see why she should change, for it is she who

gets the honour and glory, and it is you, not she, who lose all this

substance. We however, will not go about our business, nor anywhere

else, till she has made her choice and married some one or other of us"

(ii. 93-128).

Roughly, then, the authoress's version is that Penelope is an injured

innocent, and the suitors', that she is an artful heartless flirt who

prefers having a hundred admirers rather than one husband. Which comes

nearest, not to the truth--for we may be sure the suitors could have

said a great deal more than the writer chooses to say they said--but to

the original story which she was sophisticating, and retelling in a way

that was more to her liking? The reader will have noted that on this

occasion the suitors seem to have been in the house after nightfall.

We cannot forget that when Telemachus first told Miranda about the

suitors, he admitted that his mother had not point blank said that she

would not marry again. "She does not," he says, "refuse the hateful

marriage, nor yet does she bring matters to an end" (i. 249, 250).

Apparently not; but if not, why not? Not to refuse at once is to court

courtship, and if she had not meant to court it she seems to have been

adept enough in the art of hoodwinking men to have found some means of

"bringing the matter to an end."

Sending pretty little messages to her admirers was not exactly the way

to get rid of them. Did she ever try snubbing? Nothing of the kind is

placed on record. Did she ever say, "Well Antinous, whoever else I

may marry, you may make your mind easy that it will not be you." Then

there was boring--did she ever try that? Did she ever read them any of

her grandfather's letters? Did she sing them her own songs, or play

them music of her own composition? I have always found these courses

successful when I wanted to get rid of people. There are indeed signs

that something had been done in this direction, for the suitors say

that they cannot stand her high art nonsense and æsthetic rhodomontade

any longer, but it is more likely she had been trying to attract than

to repel. Did she set them by the ears by repeating with embellishments

what they had said to her about one another? Did she ask Antinous or

Eurymachus to sit to her for her web--give them a good stiff pose, make

them stick to it, and talk to them all the time? Did she find errands

for them to run, and then scold them, and say she did not want them?

or make them do commissions for her and forget to pay them, or keep on

sending them back to the shop to change things, and they had given ever

so much too much money and she wished she had gone and done it herself?

Did she insist on their attending family worship? In a word, did she do

a single one of the thousand things so astute a matron would have been

at no loss to hit upon if she had been in earnest about not wishing to

be courted? With one touch of common sense the whole fabric crumbles

into dust.

Telemachus in his rejoinder to the suitors does not deny a single one

of their facts. He does not deny that his mother had been in the habit

of sending them encouraging messages, nor does he attempt to explain

her conduct about the web. This, then, being admitted, and it being

also transparent that Penelope had used no due diligence in sending

her lovers to the right about, can we avoid suspecting that there is a

screw loose somewhere, and that a story of very different character is

being manipulated to meet the exigencies of the writer? And shall we go

very far wrong if we conclude that according to the original version,

Penelope picked out her web, not so much in order to delay a hateful

marriage, as to prolong a very agreeable courtship?

It was no doubt because Laertes saw what was going on that he went to

live in the country and left off coming into the town (i. 189, 190),

and Penelope probably chose the particular form her work assumed in

order to ensure that he should not come near her. Why could she not set

about making a pall for somebody else? Was Laertes likely to continue

calling, when every time he did so he knew that Euryclea would only

tell him her mistress was upstairs working at his pall, but she would

be down directly? Do let the reader try and think it out a little for

himself.

As for Laertes being so badly off as Anticlea says he was in Book xi.,

there is not one grain of truth in that story. The writer had to make

him out poor in order to explain his not having interfered to protect

Penelope, but Penelope's excuse for making her web was that he was a

man of large property. It is the same with the suitors. When it is

desired to explain Telemachus's not having tried in some way to recover

from them, they are so poor that it would be a waste of money to sue

them; when, on the other hand, the writer wants Penelope to air her

woman's wit by getting presents out of them (xviii. 274-280), just

before Ulysses kills them, they have any amount of money. One day more,

and she would have been too late. The writer knew that very well, but

she was not going to let Penelope lose her presents. She evidently

looks upon man as fair game, which male writers are much less apt to

do. Of course the first present she receives is a new dress.

Returning to Laertes, he must have had money, or how could Ulysses

be so rich? Where did Ulysses' money come from? He could hardly have

made much before he went to Troy, and he does not appear to have sent

anything home thence. Nothing has been heard from him, and in Book

x.,[2] he appears to be bringing back his share of the plunder with

him--in which case it was lost in the shipwreck off the coast of the

Thrinacian island. He seems to have had a dowry of some kind with

Penelope, for Telemachus says that if he sends his mother away he shall

have to refund it to his grandfather Icarius, and urges this fact as

one of the reasons for not sending her (ii. 132, 133); the greater

part, however, of Ulysses' enormous wealth must have come to him from

Laertes, who we may be sure kept more for himself than he gave to his

son. What, then, had become of all this money--for Laertes seems to

have been a man of very frugal habits? The answer is that it was still

in Laertes' hands, and the reason for his never coming to town now

was partly, no doubt, the pall; partly the scandalous life which his

daughter was leading; but mainly the writer's inability to explain his

non-interference unless she got him out of the way.

The account, again, which Ulysses' mother gives him in Hades (xi.

180, &c.) of what is going on in Ithaca shows a sense that there

is something to conceal. She says not one word about the suitors.

All she says is that Telemachus has to see a good deal of company,

which is only reasonable seeing that he is a magistrate and is asked

out everywhere himself (xi. 185-187). Nothing can be more coldly

euphemistic, nor show a fuller sense that there was a good deal more

going on than the speaker chose to say. If Anticlea had believed her

daughter-in-law to be innocent, she would have laid the whole situation

before Ulysses.

It may be maintained that the suitors were not yet come to Ithaca

in force, for the visit to Hades occurs early in the wanderings of

Ulysses, and before his seven years' sojourn with Calypso, so that

Anticlea may really have known nothing about the suitors; but the

writer has forgotten this, and has represented Telemachus as already

arrived at man's estate. In truth, at this point Telemachus was at the

utmost only twelve or thirteen years old, and a children's party was

all the entertainment he need either receive or give. The writer has

made a slip in her chronology, for throughout the poem Telemachus is

represented as only just arriving at man's estate in the twentieth year

of Ulysses' absence. It is evident that in describing the interview

with Anticlea the writer has in her mind the state of things existing

just before Ulysses' return, when the suitors were in full riot. This,

indeed, appears still more plainly lower down, when Agamemnon, also

in Hades, says that Telemachus was a baby in arms when the Trojan war

broke out, and that he must now be grown up (xi. 448, 449).

The silence therefore of Ulysses' mother is wilful so far as the writer

is concerned. She must have conceived of Anticlea as knowing all about

the suitors perfectly well--for she did not die till Telemachus was,

by her own account, old enough to be a magistrate. The explanation

I believe to be, that at the time Book xi. was written, the writer

had as yet no intention of adding Books i.-iv., and from line 187

of Book xiii. to Book xxiv. but proposed to ignore the current

scandalous stories about Penelope, and to say as little as possible

about her. I will deal with this more fully when I come to the genesis

and development of the poem, but may as well say at once that the

difficulty above pointed out will have to remain unexplained except as

a slip in chronology on the part of a young writer who was piecing new

work on to old. Any one but the writer herself would have seen it and

avoided it; indeed it is quite possible that she came to see it, and

did not think it worth her while to be at the trouble of altering it.

If this is so I, for one, shall think none the worse of her.

[1] _Od_. ii. 127-128 and 203-207.

[2] _Od_. x. 40, this passage is not given in my abridgement.

CHAPTER VI.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE CHARACTER OF PENELOPE--THE

JOURNEY OF TELEMACHUS TO LACEDÆMON.

The question whether or no the writer of the _Odyssey_ is putting

her own construction on grosser versions of Penelope's conduct

current among her countrymen, has such an important bearing on that

of the writer's sex, that I shall bring further evidence to show

how impossible she finds it to conceal the fact that those who knew

Penelope best had no confidence in her.

Minerva with quick womanly instinct took in the situation at a glance,

and went straight to the point. On learning from Telemachus that

Penelope did not at once say she would not marry again, she wastes no

words, but says promptly, "If your mother's mind is set on marrying

again" (and surely this implies that the speaker had no doubt that

it was so set) "let her go back to her father" (i. 276). From this

we may infer that Minerva had not only formed her own opinion about

Penelope's intentions, but saw also that she meant taking her time

about the courtship, and was not likely to be brought to the point by

any measures less decisive than sending her back to her father's house.

We know, moreover, what Minerva thought of Penelope from another

source. Minerva appears to Telemachus in a dream when he is staying

with King Menelaus, and gives him to understand that his mother is on

the point of marrying Eurymachus, one of the suitors (xv. 1-42). This

was (so at least we are intended to suppose) a wanton falsehood on

Minerva's part. Nevertheless if the matter had ended there, nothing

probably would have pleased Telemachus better; for in spite of his

calling the marriage "hateful," there can be no question that he would

have been only too thankful to get his mother out of the house, if

she would go of her own free will. Penelope says he was continually

urging her to marry and go, on the score of the expense he was being

put to by the protracted attentions of the suitors (xix. 530-534).

Penelope indeed seems to have been such an adept at lying that it is

very difficult to know when to believe her, but Telemachus says enough

elsewhere to leave no doubt that, in spite of a certain decent show of

reluctance, he would have been glad that his mother should go.

Unfortunately Minerva's story does not end with saying that Penelope

means marrying Eurymachus; she adds that in this case she will probably

steal some of Telemachus's property. She says to him:--

"You know what women are; they always want to do the

best they can for the man who is married to them at

the moment. They forget all about their first husband

and the children that they have had by him. Go home,

therefore, at once, and put everything in charge of the

most respectable housekeeper you can find, until it shall

please heaven to send you a wife of your own" (xv. 20-26).

This passage not only betrays a want of confidence in Penelope which

is out of keeping with her ostensible antecedents, but it goes far to

show that Minerva had read the _Cypria_, in which poem (now lost) we

are told that Helen did exactly what is here represented as likely to

be done by Penelope; but leaving this, surely if Penelope's antecedents

had been such as the writer wishes us to accept, Telemachus would have

made a very different answer to the one he actually made. He would have

said, "My dear Minerva, what a word has escaped the boundary of your

teeth. My mother steal my property and go off with an unprincipled

scoundrel like Eurymachus? No one can know better than yourself that

she is the last woman in the world to be capable of such conduct." And

then he would have awoke as from a hideous dream.

What, however, happens in reality? Telemachus does indeed wake up (xv.

43) in great distress, but it is about his property, not about his

mother. "Who steals my mother steals trash, but whoso filches from me

my family heirlooms &c." He kicks poor Pisistratus to wake him, and

says they must harness the horses and be off home at once. Pisistratus

rejoins that it is pitch dark; come what may they must really wait

till morning. Besides, they ought to say good bye to Menelaus, and get

a present out of him; he will be sure to give them one, if Telemachus

will not be in such an unreasonable hurry. Can anything show more

clearly what was the inner mind both of Minerva and Telemachus about

Penelope--and also what kind of ideas the audience had formed about her?

How differently, again, do Minerva and Telemachus regard the stealing.

Telemachus feels it acutely and at once. Minerva takes it as a matter

of course--but then the property was not hers. The authoress of the

_Odyssey_ is never severe about theft. Minerva evidently thinks it

not nice of Penelope to want to marry again before it is known for

certain that Ulysses is dead, but she explains that Eurymachus has been

exceeding all the other suitors in the magnificence of his presents,

and has lately increased them (xv. 17, 18). After all, Penelope had

a right to please herself, and as long as she was going to be _bonâ

fide_ married, she might steal as much as she could, without loss of

dignity or character. The writer put this view into Minerva's mouth as

a reasonable one for a woman to take. So perhaps it was, but it is not

a man's view.

Here I will close my case--as much of it, that is to say, as I have

been able to give in the space at my disposal--for the view that

the writer of the _Odyssey_ was whitewashing Penelope. As, however,

we happen to be at Lacedæmon let me say what more occurs to me in

connection with the visit of Telemachus to King Menelaus that bears on

the question whether the writer is a man or a woman.

When Telemachus and Nestor's son Pisistratus reached Lacedæmon at the

beginning of Book iv., Menelaus was celebrating the double marriage of

his son Megapenthes and of his daughter Hermione. The writer says:--

....they reached the low lying city of Lacedæmon, where

they drove straight to the abode of Menelaus, [and found

him in his own house feasting with his many clansmen in

honour of the wedding of his son, and also that of his

daughter whom he was giving in marriage to the son of

that valiant warrior Achilles. He had given his consent

and promised her to him while he was still at Troy, and

now the gods were bringing the marriage about, so he was

sending her with chariots and horses to the city of the

Myrmidons over whom Achilles' son was reigning. For his

only son he had found a bride from Sparta, the daughter

of Alector. This son, Megapenthes, was born to him of

a bondwoman, for heaven had vouchsafed Helen no more

children after she had borne Hermione who was fair as

golden Venus herself (iv. 1-14).]

I have enclosed part of the above quotation in brackets not because I

have any doubt that the whole of it is by the same hand as the rest

of the poem, but because I am convinced that the bracketed lines were

interpolated by the writer after her work had been completed, or at

any rate after Books iv. and xv. had assumed their present shape. The

reason for the interpolation I take to be that she could not forgive

herself for having said nothing about Hermione, whose non-appearance

in Book xv. and in the rest of Book iv. she now attempts to explain

by interpolating the passage above quoted, and thus making her quit

Lacedæmon for good and all at the very beginning of this last named

book. But whatever the cause of the interpolation may have been, an

interpolation it certainly is, for nothing can be plainer from the rest

of Book iv. than that there were no festivities going on, and that the

only guests were uninvited ones--to wit Telemachus and Pisistratus.

True, the writer tried to cobble the matter by introducing lines

621-624, which in our texts are always inclosed in brackets as

suspected--I suppose because Aristarchus marked them with _obeli_,

though he did not venture to exclude them. The cobble, however, only

makes things worse, for it is obviously inadequate, and its abruptness

puzzles the reader.

Accepting, then, lines 2-19 and 621-624 of Book iv. as by the writer

of the rest of the poem, the reader will note how far more interesting

she finds the marriage of Hermione than that of Megapenthes--of whose

bride, by the way, there is no trace in Book xv. The marriage of the

son is indeed mentioned in the first instance before that of the

daughter; but surely this is only because υἱέος ἠδὲ θυγατρός lends

itself more readily to a hexameter verse than any transposition of

the nouns would do. Having mentioned that both son and daughter are to

be married, the writer at once turns to Hermione, and appears only to

marry Megapenthes because, as his sister is being married, he may as

well be married too. A male writer would have married Megapenthes first

and Hermione afterwards; nor would he have thought it worth while to

make a very awkward interpolation in his poem merely in order to bring

Hermione into it, for by this time she must have been over thirty, and

it would have been easy to suppose that she had been married years ago

during Menelaus's absence.

As regards the second and shorter interpolation (iv. 621-624), it

refers to the day after the pretended marriages, and runs as follows:--

Thus did they converse [and guests kept coming to the

king's house. They brought sheep and wine, while their

wives had put up bread for them to take with them. So

they were busy cooking their dinners in the courts.]

Passing over the fact that on such a great occasion as the marriage of

his son and daughter, Menelaus would hardly expect his guests to bring

their own provisions with them (though he might expect them as Alcinous

did[1] to do their own cooking) I would ask the reader to note that the

writer cannot keep the women out even from a mere cobble. A man might

have told us that the guests brought meat and wine and bread, but his

mind would not instinctively turn to the guests' wives putting up the

bread for them.

I say nothing about the discrepancy between the chronology of

Telemachus's visit to Sparta, and of Ulysses' journey from the island

of Calypso to Ithaca where he arrives one day before Telemachus does.

The reader will find it dwelt on in Colonel Mure's _Language and

Literature of Ancient Greece_, Vol. I., pp. 439, 440. I regard it as

nothing more than a slip on the part of a writer who felt that such

slips are matters of very small importance; but I will call attention

to the manner in which the gorgeousness of Menelaus's establishment

as described in Book iv. has collapsed by the time we reach Book xv.,

though as far as I can determine the length of Telemachus's stay with

Menelaus, the interval between the two books should not exceed one

entire day.

When Telemachus has informed Menelaus that he must go home at once,

Menelaus presses his guests to stay and have something to eat before

they start; this, he tells them, will be not only more proper and more

comfortable for them, but also cheaper.

We know from _Il_. VII. 470-475 that Menelaus used to sell wine when

he was before Troy, as also did Agamemnon, but there is a frank

_bourgoisie_ about this invitation which a male writer would have

avoided. Still franker, however, is the offer of Menelaus to take them

on a personally conducted tour round the Peloponesus. It will be very

profitable, for no one will send them away empty handed; every one will

give them either a bronze tripod or a cauldron, or two mules, or a gold

chalice (xv. 75-85). As for the refreshments which they are to have

immediately, the king explains that they will have to take potluck, but

says he will tell the women to see that there is enough for them, of

what there might happen to be in the house.

That is just like Menelaus's usual fussiness. Why could he not have

left it all to Helen? After reading the _Odyssey_ I am not surprised

at her having run away with Paris; the only wonder is that a second

great war did not become necessary very shortly after the Trojan matter

had been ended. Surely the fact that two young bachelors were going to

stay and dine was not such a frightful discord but that it might have

been taken unprepared, or at any rate without the monarch's personal

interference. "Of what there may be in the house" indeed. We can see

that the dinner is not going to be profusely sumptuous. If there did

not happen to be anything good in the house--and I suspect this to

have been the case--Menelaus should have trusted Helen to send out

and get something. But there should have been no sending out about

it; Menelaus and Helen ought never to have had a meal without every

conceivable delicacy.

What a come down, again, is there not as regards the butler Eteoneus.

He was not a real butler at all--he was only a kind of char-butler;

he did not sleep in the house (xv. 96), and for aught we know may

have combined a shop round the corner with his position in Menelaus'

household. Worse than this, he had no footman, not even a boy, under

him, for Menelaus tells him to light the fire and set about cooking

dinner (xv. 97, 98), which he proceeds to do without one syllable of

remonstrance. What has become of Asphaliou? Where are the men servants

who attended to Telemachus and Pisistratus on their arrival? They

have to yoke their own horses now. The upper and under women servants

who appear at all Odyssean meals are here as usual, but we hear

nothing more of Adraste, Alcippe, and Phylo. It seems as though after

describing the splendour of Menelaus's house in Book iv. the writer's

nerve has failed her, and by Book xv. her instinctive thrift has

re-asserted itself.

And now let me return, as I said in Chapter IV. that I intended doing,

to the very singular--for I do not like to say feminine--nature of

the arrangements made by Minerva for her protégé in the matter of his

voyage to Pylos and Lacedæmon.

When Minerva first suggested it to him, she knew that Ulysses was on

the point of starting from Calypso's island for Scheria, and would

be back in Ithaca almost immediately. Yet she must needs choose

this particular moment, of all others, for sending Telemachus on a

perilons voyage in quest of news concerning him. We have seen how she

preached to him; but surely if Telemachus had known that she was all

the time doing her very utmost to make his voyage useless, he might

have retorted with some justice that whether he was going to be a

fool henceforward or no, he should not make such a fool of any young

friend of his own as she was now making of himself. Besides, he was to

be away, if necessary, for twelve months; yet here before he has been

gone more than four or five days, Minerva fills him with an agony of

apprehension about his property and sends him post haste back to Ithaca

again.

The authoress seems to have felt the force of this, for in xiii.

416-419 she makes Ulysses remonstrate with Minerva in this very sense,

and ask:--

"Why did you not tell him, for you know all about it? Did you want him,

too, to go sailing about amid all kinds of hardships when others were

eating up his estate?"

Minerva answered, "Do not trouble yourself about him. I sent him that

he might be well spoken about for having gone. He is in no sort of

difficulty, but is staying comfortably with Menelaus, and is surrounded

with abundance of every kind. The suitors have put out to sea and are

on the watch for him, for they mean to kill him before he can got home.

I do not much think they will succeed, but rather that some of those

who are now eating up your estate will first find a grave themselves."

What she ought to have said was:--

"You stupid man, can you not understand that my poetess

had set her heart on bringing Helen of Troy into her

poem, and could not see her way to this without sending

Telemachus to Sparta? I assure you that as soon as ever

he had interviewed Helen and Menelaus, I took--or will

take, for my poetess's chronology puzzles my poor head

dreadfully--stops to bring him back at once."

At the end of Book iv. Penelope shows a like tendency to complain of

the manner in which she is kept in the dark about information that

might easily have been vouchsafed to her.

Minerva has sent her a vision in the likeness of her sister Ipthime.

This vision comes to Penelope's bedside and tells her that her son

shall come safely home again. She immediately says:--

"If, then, you are a goddess, or have heard news from Heaven tell me

about that other unhappy one. Is he still alive, or is he dead and in

the house of Hades?"

And the vision answered, "I shall not tell you for certain whether he

is alive or dead, and there is no use in idle conversation."

On this it vanished through the thong-hole of the door.

I may add that I never quite understood the fastening of the Odyssean

bedroom door, till I found my bedroom at the Hotel Centrale, Trapani,

fastened in the Odyssean manner.