ULYSSES WITH CALYPSO AND THE PHÆACIANS.
The fifth book of the poem opens with a second council of the gods. It
has been remarked with some truth that the gods of the Odyssey are, on
the whole, more dignified than those of the Iliad. They are divided in
this poem, as well as in the other, in their loves and hates towards
mortals, but their dissensions are neither so passionate nor so
grotesque. Minerva complains bitterly to the Ruler of Olympus of the
injustice with which her favourite Ulysses is treated, by being kept so
long an exile from his home. She, too, repeats the indignant protest
which the poet had before put into the mouth of Mentor, which has found
vent in all times and ages, from Job and the Psalmist downwards, when in
the bitterness of a wounded spirit men rebel against what seems the
inequality of the justice of heaven; that “there is one event to the
righteous and the wicked;” nay, that the wicked have even the best of
it. “Let never king henceforth do justly and love mercy; but let him
rule with iron hand and work all iniquity; for lo! what is Ulysses’
reward?” Jupiter is moved by the appeal. He at once despatches Mercury
to the island of Calypso, to announce to her that Ulysses must be
released from her toils; such is his sovereign will, and it must be
obeyed. The description of the island-grotto in which Calypso dwells is
one of the most beautiful in Homer, and it is a passage upon which our
English translators have delighted to employ their very best powers.
Perhaps Leigh Hunt’s version is the most simply beautiful, and as
faithful as any. Mercury has sped on his errand;--
“And now arriving at the isle, he springs
Oblique, and landing with subsided wings,
Walks to the cavern ’mid the tall green rocks,
Where dwelt the goddess with the lovely locks.
He paused; and there came on him, as he stood,
A smell of cedar and of citron wood,
That threw a perfume all about the isle;
And she within sat spinning all the while,
And sang a low sweet song that made him hark and smile.
A sylvan nook it was, grown round with trees,
Poplars, and elms, and odorous cypresses,
In which all birds of ample wing, the owl
And hawk, had nests, and broad-tongued waterfowl.
The cave in front was spread with a green vine,
Whose dark round bunches almost burst with wine;
And from four springs, running a sprightly race,
Four fountains clear and crisp refreshed the place;
While all about a meadowy ground was seen,
Of violets mingling with the parsley green.”
Calypso recognises the messenger, for the immortals, says the poet, know
each other always. Mercury tells his errand--a bitter one for the nymph
to hear, for she has set her heart upon her mortal lover. Very hard and
envious, she says, is the Olympian tyrant, to grudge her this harmless
fancy. [She must have thought in her heart, though the poet does not
put it into words for her, that Jupiter should surely have some
sympathy for weaknesses of which he set so remarkable an example.] But
she will obey, as needs she must. Ulysses shall go; only he must build
himself a boat, for there is none in her island. She goes herself to
announce to him his coming deliverance. She finds him sitting pensively,
as is his wont, on the sea-beach, looking and longing in the direction
of Ithaca.
“Companion of the rocks, the livelong light,
He dreaming on the shore, but not at rest,
With groans and tears and lingering undelight
Gazed on the pulses of the ocean’s breast.”
His heart is in his native island; but, sooth to say, he makes the best
of his present captivity. He endures, if he does not heartily
reciprocate, the love of his fair jailer. The correspondence in many
points of these Homeric lays with the legends of mediæval Christendom,
especially with those of Arthur and his Round Table, has been already
noticed. It has been said also that, on the whole, the moral tone of
Homer is far purer. But there is one bright creation of mediæval fiction
which finds no counterpart in the song of the Greek bard. It was only
Christianity--one might almost say it was only mediæval
Christianity--which could conceive the pure ideal of the stainless
knight who has kept his maiden innocence,--who only can sit in the
“siege perilous” and win the holy Grail, “because his heart is pure.”
Among all the heroes of Iliad or Odyssey there is no Sir Galahad.
Calypso obeys the behest of Jove reluctantly, but without murmuring.
Goddess-like or woman-like, however, she cannot fail to be mortified at
the want of any reluctance on her lover’s part to leave her. There is
something touching in her expostulation:--
“Child of Laertes, wouldst thou fain depart
Hence to thine own dear fatherland? Farewell!
Yet, couldst thou read the sorrow and the smart,
With me in immortality to dwell
Thou wouldst rejoice, and love my mansion well.
Deeply and long thou yearnest for thy wife;
Yet her in beauty I perchance excel.
Beseems not one who hath but mortal life
With forms of deathless mould to challenge a vain strife.”
Ulysses’ reply is honest and manful:--
“All this I know and do myself avow.
Well may Penelope in form and brow
And stature seem inferior far to thee,
For she is mortal, and immortal thou.
Yet even thus ’tis very dear to me
My long-desired return and ancient home to see.
“But if some god amid the wine-dark flood
With doom pursue me, and my vessel mar,
Then will I bear it as a brave man should.
Not the first time I suffer. Wave and war
Deep in my life have graven many a scar.”
It cannot but be observed, however, that while Penelope’s whole thoughts
and interests are concentrated upon her absent husband, the longing of
Ulysses is rather after his fatherland than his wife. She is only one of
the many component parts of the home-scene which is ever before the
wanderer’s eyes; and not always the most important part, for his aged
father and mother and his young son seem to be at least equal objects
of anxiety. It may be urged that in this parting scene with Calypso he
is purposely reticent in the matter of his affection for Penelope, not
caring to draw down upon himself the proverbial wrath of “a woman
scorned;” and that for a similar reason he suppresses his feelings, and
quite ignores the existence of his wife, at the court of Alcinous, when
that king offers him his daughter in marriage. But there is, to say the
least, some lack of enthusiasm on the husband’s part throughout. Of the
single-hearted devotion of woman to man we have striking instances both
in Penelope and in the Andromache of the Iliad; but the devotion of man
to woman had yet long to wait for its development in the age of
chivalry.
He builds himself a boat on the island, by Calypso’s instructions, and
when all is ready, she stores it plentifully with food and wine, and
gives him directions for his voyage. He launches and sets sail; but the
angry god of the sea (irate especially against Ulysses for having
blinded his son, the giant Polyphemus, as we shall learn hereafter)
stirs winds and waves against him, wrecks his bark, and leaves him
clinging for life to a broken spar. One of the sea-nymphs, Ino, takes
pity on him, and gives him a charmed scarf--so long as he wears it his
life is safe. For two nights and days he is tossed helplessly on the
ocean; on the third, with sore wounds and bruises, he makes good his
landing on the rock-bound coast of a strange island. Utterly exhausted,
he scrapes together a bed of leaves, and creeping into it, sinks into a
profound sleep.
He awakes to find himself in a kind of faeryland. The island on which
he has been cast is Scheria,[32] inhabited by the Phæacians, whose king
and people are very far indeed from being of the ordinary type of mortal
men. Whether the poet, in his description of these Phæacian islanders,
was exercising his imagination only, or indulging his talent for satire,
is a controverted question with Homeric critics. Those who would assign
this poem of the Odyssey to a different author from the writer or
writers of the Iliad, and to a much later date than that commonly given
to Homer, have thought that in the good-humoured boastfulness of the
Phæacian character, their love of pleasure and novelty, and their
attachment to the sea, some Ionian poet was showing up, under fictitious
names, the weaknesses of his own countrymen. Others take the Phæacians
to be only another name for the Phœnicians, the sailors of all seas, who
had probably in their character somewhat of the egotism and exaggeration
which have been commonly reputed faults of men who have travelled far
and seen much. Whatever may be the true interpretation of the story, or
whether there be any interpretation at all, this curious episode in the
adventures of Ulysses is unquestionably rather comic than serious. The
names are all significant, somewhat after the fashion of those assumed
by the Red men. The king (Alcinous) is “Strong-mind,” son of “The Swift
Seaman,” and he has a brother called “Crusher of Men.” The nautical
names of his courtiers--“Prow-man” and “Stern-man,” and the rest--are as
palpably conventional as our own Tom Bowline and Captain Crosstree. The
hero’s introduction to his new hosts presents, nevertheless, one of the
most beautiful scenes in the poem. The patriarchal simplicity of the
tale cannot fail to remind the reader, as Homer so often does, of the
narratives of the earlier Scriptures.
The princess Nausicaa, daughter of the king of the Phæacians, has had a
dream. The dream--which comes as naturally to princesses, no doubt, as
to other young people--is of marriage; and in this case it could be no
possible reproach to the dreamer, since the goddess of wisdom is
represented as having herself suggested it. Nor is the dream of any
bridegroom in particular, but simply of what seems to us the very
prosaic fact that a wedding outfit, which must soon come to be thought
of, required household stores of good linen; and that the family stock
in the palace, from long disuse, stood much in need of washing. Nausicaa
awakes in the morning, and begs of her father to lend her a chariot and
a yoke of mules, that she and her maidens may go down to the shore,
where the river joins the sea, to perform this domestic duty. The
pastoral simplicity of the whole scene is charming. It has all the
freshness of those earlier ages when the business of life was so
leisurely and jovially conducted, that much of it wore the features of a
holiday. The princess and her maidens plunge the linen in the stream,
and stamp it clean with their pretty bare feet (a process which will
remind an English reader of Arlette and Robert of Normandy, and which
may be seen in operation still at many a burn-side in Scotland), and
then go themselves to bathe. An outdoor banquet forms part of the day’s
enjoyment; for the good queen, Nausicaa’s mother, has stored the wain
with delicate viands and a goat-skin of sweet wine. When this is over,
the girls begin to play at ball. Ulysses, be it remembered, is all this
while lying fast asleep under his heap of leaves, and, as it happens,
close by the spot where this merry party are disporting themselves. By
chance Nausicaa, too eager in her game, throws the ball out into the
sea; whereupon the whole chorus of handmaidens raise a cry of dismay,
which at once awakens the sleeper. He is puzzled, when he comes to
himself, to make out where he is; and still more confounded, when he
peers out from his hiding-place, to find himself in the close
neighbourhood of this bevy of joyous damsels, especially when he
bethinks himself of the very primitive style of his present costume; for
the scarf which the sea-nymph gave him us a talisman he had cast into
the sea upon his landing, as she had especially charged him. But Ulysses
is far too old a traveller to allow an over-punctilious modesty to stand
in his way when he is in danger of starving. He has no idea of missing
this opportunity of supplying his wants merely because he has lost his
wardrobe. He extemporises some very slight covering out of an
olive-bough, and, in this strange attire, makes his sudden appearance
before the party. Nausicaa’s maidens all scream and take to flight--very
excusably; but the king’s daughter, with a true nobility, stands firm.
She sees only a shipwrecked man, and “to the pure all things are pure.”
Ulysses is a courtier as well as a traveller, and knows much of “cities
and men;” and it is not the flattery of a suppliant, but the quick
discernment of a man of the world, which makes him at once assign her
true rank to the fair stranger who stands before him. He remains at a
respectful distance, while, in the language of Eastern compliment, he
compares her to the young palm-tree for grace and beauty, and invokes
the blessing of the gods upon her marriage-hour, if she will take pity
on his miserable case. Nausicaa recalls her fugitive attendants, and
rebukes them for their folly, reminding them that “the stranger and the
poor are the messengers of the gods.” The shipwrecked hero is supplied
at once with food and drink and raiment; and when he reappears, after
having bathed and clothed himself, it is with a mien and stature more
majestic than his wont, with the “hyacinthine locks” of immortal youth
flowing round his stately shoulders--such grace does his guardian
goddess bestow upon him, that he may find favour in the sight of the
Phæacian princess. She looks upon him now with simple and undisguised
admiration, confessing aside to her handmaidens that, when her time for
marriage _does_ come, she should wish for just such a husband as this
godlike stranger. There is nothing unmaidenly in such language from the
lips of Nausicaa. To remain unmarried was a reproach in her day,
whatever it may be in ours, and a reproach not likely to fall upon a
king’s daughter; so, looking upon the marriage state as inevitable, and
at her age very near at hand, she thinks and speaks of it unreservedly
to her companions. Our modern conventional silence on such topics arises
in great degree from the fact that a perpetual maidenhood is the
inevitable lot of far too many in our over-civilised society, and, being
inevitable, is no reproach. It does not consort, therefore, with
maidenly dignity to express any interest about marriage, for which an
opportunity may never be offered.
But Nausicaa is at least as careful to observe the proprieties,
according to her own view of them, as any modern young lady. She will
promise the shipwrecked stranger a welcome at her father’s court; but he
must by no means ride home in the wain with her, or even be seen
entering the city in her company. So Ulysses runs by the side of her
mules, and waits in a sacred grove near the city gates, until the
princess and her party have re-entered the palace. When they have
disappeared, he issues forth, and meets a girl carrying a pitcher. It is
once more his guardian goddess in disguise. She veils him in a mist, so
that he passes the streets unquestioned by the natives (who have no love
for strangers), and stands at last in the presence of King Alcinous.
The king of the Phæacians, as well as his queen, boast to be descended
from Neptune. His subjects therefore, are, as has been said,
emphatically a seagoing people. Ulysses has already seen with
admiration, as he passed,
“The smooth wide havens, and the glorious fleet,
Wherewith those mariners the great deep tire.”
Their galleys, moreover, are unlike any barks that ever walked the seas
except in a poet’s imagination. King Alcinous himself describes them:--
“For unto us no pilots appertain,
Rudder nor helm which other barks obey.
These, ruled by reason, their own course essay
Sharing men’s mind. Cities and climes they know,
And through the deep sea-gorges cleaving way,
Wrapt in an ambient vapour, to and fro
Sail in a fearless scorn of scathe or overthrow.”
The wondrous art of navigation might well seem nothing less than
miraculous in an age when all the forces of nature were personified as
gods. So, when the great ship Argo carried out her crew of ancient
heroes on what was the first voyage of discovery, the fable ran that in
her prow was set a beam cut from the oak of Dodona, which had the gift
of speech, and gave the voyagers oracles in their distress. Our English
Spenser must have had these Phæacian ships in mind when he describes the
“gondelay” which bears the enchantress Phædria:--
“Eftsoone her shallow ship away did slide,
More swift than swallow sheres the liquid sky,
Withouten oar or pilot it to guide,
Or winged canvass with the wind to fly;
Only she turned a pin, and by-and-by
It cut a way upon the yielding wave,
(Ne cared she her course for to apply)
For it was taught the way which she would have,
And both from rocks and flats itself could wisely save.”
As the men of Phæacia excel all others in seamanship, so also do the
women in the feminine accomplishments of weaving and embroidery. But
they are not, as they freely confess, a nation of warriors: they love
the feast and the dance and the song, and care little for what other men
call glory. The palace of Alcinous and its environs are all in
accordance with this luxurious type of character. All round the palace
lie gardens and orchards, which rejoice in an enchanted climate, under
whose influence their luscious products ripen in an unfailing
succession:--
“There in full prime the orchard-trees grow tall,
Sweet fig, pomegranate, apple fruited fair,
Pear and the healthful olive. Each and all
Both summer droughts and chills of winter spare;
All the year round they flourish. Some the air
Of Zephyr warms to life, some doth mature.
Apple grows old on apple, pear on pear,
Fig follows fig, vintage doth vintage lure;
Thus the rich revolution doth for aye endure.”
When the traveller enters within the palace itself, he finds himself
surrounded with equal wonders.
“For, like the sun’s fire or the moon’s, a light
Far streaming through the high-roofed house did pass
From the long basement to the topmost height.
There on each side ran walls of flaming brass,
Zoned on the summit with a blue bright mass
Of cornice; and the doors were framed of gold;
Where, underneath, the brazen floor doth glass
Silver pilasters, which with grace uphold
Lintel of silver framed; the ring was burnished gold.
“And dogs on each side of the doors there stand,
Silver and gold, the which in ancient day
Hephæstus wrought with cunning brain and hand,
And set for sentinels to hold the way.
Death cannot tame them, nor the years decay.
And from the shining threshold thrones were set,
Skirting the walls in lustrous long array,
On to the far room, where the women met,
With many a rich robe strewn and woven coverlet.
“There the Phæacian chieftains eat and drink,
While golden youths on pedestals upbear
Each in his outstretched hand a lighted link,
Which nightly on the royal feast doth flare.
And in the house are fifty handmaids fair;
Some in the mill the yellow corn grind small;
Some ply the looms, and shuttles twirl, which there
Flash like the quivering leaves of aspen tall;
And from the close-spun weft the trickling oil will fall.”
King Alcinous sits on his golden throne, “quaffing his wine like a god.”
His queen, Arete, sits beside him, weaving yarn of the royal purple.
Warned by his kind friend the princess, Ulysses passes by the king’s
seat, and falls at the feet of the queen. In the court of
Phæacia--whether the story be disguised fact or pure fiction, whether
the poet was satiric or serious--the ruling influence lies with the
women. The mist in which Minerva had enveloped his person melts away;
and while all gaze in astonishment at his sudden appearance, he claims
hospitality as a shipwrecked wanderer, and then, after the fashion of
suppliants, seats himself on the hearth-stone. The hospitality of
Alcinous is prompt and magnificent. He bids one of his sons rise up and
cede the place of honour to the stranger. If he be mortal man, the boon
he asks shall be granted; but it may be that he is one of the immortals,
who, as he gravely assures his guest, often condescend to come down and
share the banquets of the Phæacians, and make themselves known to them
face to face. Ulysses assures his royal host, in a passage which is in
itself sufficient to mark the subdued comedy of the episode, that far
from having any claim to divinity, he is very mortal indeed, and wholly
taken up at present with one of the most inglorious of mortal
cravings:--
“Nothing more shameless is than Appetite,
Who still, whatever anguish load our breast,
Makes us remember, in our own despite,
Both food and drink. Thus I, thrice wretched wight,
Carry of inward grief surpassing store,
Yet she constrains me with superior might,
Wipes clean away the memory-written score,
And takes whate’er I give, and taking, craveth more.”[33]
There is every appliance to satisfy appetite, however, in the luxurious
halls of Alcinous. While Ulysses is seated at table, Queen Arete,
careful housewife as she is with all her royalty, marks with some
curiosity that the raiment which their strange guest wears must have
come from her own household stores--so well does she know the work of
herself and her handmaidens. This leads to a confession on Ulysses’ part
of his previous interview with Nausicaa, whom he praises, as he had good
right to do, as wise beyond her years. So charmed is the king with his
guest’s taste and discernment, that he at once declares that nothing
would please him better than to retain him at his court in the
character of a son-in-law. Ulysses (whose fate it is throughout his
wanderings to make himself only too interesting to the fair sex
generally) is by this time too much accustomed to such proposals to show
any embarrassment. With his usual diplomacy he puts the question
aside--bowing his acknowledgments only, it may be, though Homer does not
tell us even so much as this. The one point to which he addresses
himself is the king’s promise to send him safe home, which he accepts
with thankfulness. Before they retire for the night, the queen herself
does not disdain to give special orders for their guest’s accommodation.
She bids her maidens prepare
“A couch beneath the echoing corridor,
And thereon spread the crimson carpets fair,
Then the wide coverlets of richness rare,
And to arrange the blankets warm and white,
Wherein who sleepeth straight forgets his care.
They then, each holding in her hand a light,
From the great hall pass forth, and spread the robes aright.”
The combination of magnificence with simplicity is of a wholly Oriental
character. The appliances of the court might be those of a modern
Eastern potentate; yet the queen is a thrifty housekeeper, the
princess-royal superintends the family wash, and the five sons of the
royal family, when their sister comes home, themselves come forward and
unyoke her mules from the wain which has brought home the linen.
The next day is devoted to feasting and games in honour of the stranger.
Amongst the company sits the blind minstrel Demodocus, in whose person
it has been thought that the poet describes himself--
“Whom the Muse loved, and gave him good and ill;
Ill, that of light she did his eyes deprive,
Good, that sweet minstrelsies divine at will
She lent him, and a voice men’s ears to thrill.
For him Pontonous silver-studded chair
Set with the feasters, leaning it with skill
Against the column, and with tender care
Made the blind fingers feel the harp suspended there.”
Such honour has the bard in all lands. The king’s son does not disdain
to guide “the blind fingers;” and when the song is over, the herald
leads him carefully to his place at the banquet, where his portion is of
the choicest--“the chine of the white-tusked boar.” The subject of his
lay is the tale which charms all hearers--Phæacian, Greek, or Roman,
ancient or modern, then as now--the tale of Troy. Touched with the
remembrances which the song awakens, Ulysses wraps his face in his
mantle to hide his rising tears. The king marks his guest’s emotion: too
courteous to allude to it, he contents himself with rising at once from
the banquet-table, and giving order for the sports to begin. Foot-race,
wrestling, quoit-throwing, and boxing, all have their turn; and in all
the king’s’ sons take their part, not unsuccessfully. It is suggested at
last that the stranger, who stands silently looking on, should exhibit
some feat of strength or skill. Ulysses declines--he has no heart just
now for pastimes. Then one of the young Phæacians, Euryalus, who has
just won the wrestling-match, gives vent to an ungracious taunt. Their
guest, he says, is plainly no hero, nor versed in the noble science of
athletics; he must be some skipper of a merchantman, “whose talk is all
of cargoes.” He brings down upon himself a grand rebuke from Ulysses:--
“Man, thou hast not said well; a fool thou art.
Not all fair gifts to all doth God divide,
Eloquence, beauty, and a noble heart.
One seems in mien poor, but his feebler part
God crowns with language, that men learn to love
The form, so feelingly the sweet words dart
Within them. First in councils he doth prove,
And, ’mid the crowd observant, like a god doth move.
“Another, though in mould of form and face
Like the immortal gods he seems to be,
Hath no wise word to crown the outward grace
So is thine aspect fair exceedingly,
Wherein no blemish even a god might see;
Yet is thine understanding wholly vain.”
Then the hero who has thrown the mighty Ajax in the wrestling-ring, who
is swifter of foot than any Greek except Achilles, and who has been
awarded that matchless hero’s arms as the prize of valour against all
competitors,--rises in his wrath, and gives his gay entertainers a taste
of his quality. Not deigning even to throw off his mantle, he seizes a
huge stone quoit, and hurls it, after a single swing, far beyond the
point reached by any of the late competitors. The astonished islanders
crouch to the ground as it sings through the air above their heads. Once
roused, Ulysses launches out into the self-assertion which has been
remarked as being common to all the heroes of Homeric story. He
challenges the whole circle of bystanders to engage with him in
whatsoever contest they will--
“All feats I know that are beneath the sun.”
He will not, indeed, compare himself with some of the heroes of old,
such as were Hercules and Eurytus;
“But of all else I swear that I stand first,
Such men as now upon the earth eat bread.”
None of the Phæacians will accept the challenge. The king commends the
spirit in which the stranger has repelled the insult of Euryalus, and
with the gay good-humour which marks the Phæacian character, confesses
that in feats of strength his nation can claim no real excellence, but
only in speed of foot and in seamanship; or, above all, in the dance--in
this no men can surpass them. His guest shall see and judge. Nine grave
elders, by the king’s command (and here the satire is evident, even if
we have lost the application) stand forth as masters of the ceremonies,
and clear the lists for dancing. A band of selected youths perform an
elaborate ballet, while the minstrel Demodocus sings to his harp a
sportive lay, not over-delicate, of the stolen loves of Mars and Venus,
and their capture in the cunning net of Vulcan. If it must be granted
that this song forms a strong exception to the purity of Homer’s muse,
it has also been fairly pleaded for him, that it is introduced as
characteristic of an unwarlike nation and an effeminate society. But
even in his lightest mood the poet has no sort of sympathy with a
wife’s unfaithfulness. He takes his gods and goddesses as he found them
in the popular creed; bad enough, and far worse than the mortal men and
women of his own poetical creation. But his own morals are far higher
than those of Olympus. Even in this questionable ballad of the Phæacian
minstrel the point of the jest is in strong contrast to some of the
comedies of a more modern school. It is on the detected culprits, not on
the injured husband, that the ridicule of gods and men is mercilessly
showered. When the ballet is concluded, two of the king’s sons, at their
father’s bidding, perform a sort of minuet, in which ball-play is
introduced. Ulysses expresses his admiration of the whole performance in
words which sound like solemn irony:--
“O king, pre-eminent in word and deed,
Of late thy lips the threatening vaunt did make
That these thy dancers all the world exceed--
Now have I seen fulfilment of thy rede;
Yea, wonder holds me while I gaze thereon.”
So all passes off with pleasant compliments between hosts and guest. The
king and his twelve peers present Ulysses with costly gifts, and
Euryalus, in pledge of regret for his late unseemly speech, offers his
own silver-hilted sword with its ivory scabbard.
From the games they pass again to the banquet; and one more glimpse is
given us of the gentle Nausicaa, perfectly in keeping with the maiden
guilelessness of her character. Ulysses--still radiant with the more
than human beauty which the goddess has bestowed upon him--moves to his
place in the hall.
“He from the bath, cleansed from the dust of toil,
Passed to the drinkers; and Nausicaa there
Stood, moulded by the gods exceeding fair.
She on the roof-tree pillar leaning, heard
Odysseus; turning, she beheld him near.
Deep in her breast admiring wonder stirred,
And in a low sweet voice she spake this winged word.
“‘Hail, stranger-guest! when fatherland and wife
Thou shalt revisit, then remember me,
Since to me first thou owest the price of life.’
And to the royal virgin answered he:
‘Child of a generous sire, if willed it be
By Thunderer Zeus, who all dominion hath,
That I my home and dear return yet see,
There at thy shrine will I devote my breath,
There worship thee, dear maid, my saviour from dark death.’”
It is not easy to discover, with any certainty, what the Greek poet
meant us to understand as to the feelings of Nausicaa towards Ulysses.
It has been said that Love, in the complex modern acceptation of the
term, is unknown to the Greek poets. Nor is there, in this passage, any
approach to the expression of such a feeling on the part of the
princess. Yet, had the scene found place in the work of a modern poet,
we should have understood at once that, without any kind of reproach to
the perfect maidenly delicacy of Nausicaa, it was meant to show us the
dawn of a tender sentiment--nothing more--towards the stranger-guest
whom the gods had endowed with such majestic graces of person, who stood
so high above all rivals in feats of strength and skill, whose
misfortunes surrounded him with a double interest, and, above all, in
whom she felt a kind of personal property as his deliverer.
The Greek historian Plutarch chivalrously defends the young princess
from the charge of forwardness, which ungallant critics brought against
her as early as his day. It was no marvel, he says, that she knew and
valued a hero when she saw him, and preferred him to the carpet-knights
of her own country, who were good only at the dance and the banquet. But
with her it was, after all, a sentiment, and no more; but which might
have ripened into love, under other circumstances, had the hero of her
maiden fancy been as free to choose as she was.
So vanishes from the page one of the sweetest creations of Greek
fiction--the more charming to us, as coming nearest, perhaps, of all to
the modern type of feeling. The farewell to Nausicaa is briefly said;
and Ulysses, sitting by King Alcinous at the banquet, pays a high
compliment to the blind minstrel, and gives him a new theme for song.
Since he knows so well the story of the great Siege, let him now take
his lyre, and sing to them of the wondrous Horse. Demodocus obeys. He
sings how the Greeks, hopeless of taking Troy by force of arms, had
recourse at last to stratagem: how they constructed a huge framework in
the shape of a horse, ostensibly an offering to the gods, and then set
fire to their sea-camp, and sailed away--for home, to all
appearance--leaving an armed company hidden in the womb of the wooden
monster; how the Trojans, after much doubt, dragged it inside their
walls, and how, in the night-time, the Greeks issued from their strange
ambush, and spread fire and sword through the devoted city. And all
along Ulysses is the hero of the lay. He is the leader of the venturous
band who thus carried their lives in their hands into the midst of their
enemies: he it is who, “like unto Mars,” storms the house of Deiphobus,
who had taken Helen to wife after the death of his brother Paris, and
restores the Spartan princess to her rightful lord. Tears of emotion
again fill the listener’s eyes; and again the courteous king bids the
minstrel cease, when he sees that some chord of mournful remembrance is
struck in the heart of his guest. But he now implores him, as he has
good right to do, to tell them who he really is. Why does the Tale of
Troy so move him? The answer, replies the stranger, will be a long tale,
and sad to tell; but his very name, he proudly says, is a history--“I am
Ulysses, son of Laertes!”