ULYSSES’ RETURN TO ITHACA.
The hero, at his departure, is loaded with rich presents of honour from
his Phæacian hosts. The twelve princes of the kingdom each contribute
their offering--gold and changes of raiment; the king adds a gold
drinking-cup of his own, and Queen Arete a mantle and tunic. The careful
queen also supplies him with a magnificent chest, in which she packs his
treasures with her own royal hands; and Ulysses secures the whole with a
“seaman’s knot,” whose complications will defy the uninitiated--a secret
which he has learnt from Circe, and which he seems to have handed down
to modern sailors. Thus equipped, he is sent on board one of the magic
galleys, to be conveyed home to his native Ithaca. They embark in the
evening, and early the next morning the crew--apparently in order to
give the adventure the half-ludicrous turn which seems inseparable from
the Phæacians--land their passenger, still sound asleep, and leave him
on shore under an olive-tree, with his store of presents heaped beside
him. When he awakes, he fails to recognise his native island, for
Minerva has spread a mist over it. The goddess herself presently
accosts him, in the form of a shepherd, and listens patiently to a story
which the hero invents, with his usual readiness, to account for his
presence on the island. Then she discovers herself, with a somewhat
ironical compliment on the inveterate craftiness which has led him to
attempt to impose on the wisest of the immortals. She tells him news of
his wife and of his son, and promises him her help against the accursed
suitors. She lays her golden wand upon him, and lo! the majestic
presence which had touched the maiden fancy of Nausicaa, and won him
favour in the eyes of the Phæacian court (to say nothing of Circe and
Calypso) has at once given place to the decrepitude of age. The ruddy
cheeks grow wrinkled, the bright eyes are dimmed, the flowing locks
turned grey, and Ulysses is, to all appearance, an aged beggar, clad in
squalid rags. Thus disguised, so that none shall recognise him till his
hour comes, he seeks shelter, by direction of the goddess, with his own
swineherd Eumæus.
Eumæus is one of the most characteristic personages in the poem, and has
given the most trouble to the poet’s various critics. He occupies a sort
of forester’s lodge in the woods, where the vast herds of swine
belonging to the absent king are fed by day, and carefully lodged at
night. Though he is but a keeper of swine, Homer applies to him
continually the epithets “godlike,” and “chief of men,” which he
commonly uses only of territorial lords such as Ulysses and Menelaus. He
not only has subordinates in his employ, but an attendant slave, whom he
has purchased with his own money; and he so far exercises an
independent right of property in the animals which are under his care as
to kill and dress them--two at a time, such is the lavish hospitality of
the age--to feast the stranger-guest who has now come to him. It may be
straining a point to see in him, as one of the most genial of Homeric
critics does, “a genuine country gentleman of the age of Homer;” but his
position, so far as it is possible to compare it with anything at all in
modern social life, appears something like that of the agricultural
steward of a large landed proprietor, with whom his relations, though
strictly subordinate, are of a highly confidential and friendly
character. The charge of the swine would be a much more important office
in an age when, as is plain from many passages both in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, the flesh of those animals held a place of honour at the
banquets of chiefs and kings: and as we find that even the sons of a
royal household did not think the keeping of sheep beneath their
dignity, so the care of other animals would by no means imply a menial
position. Eumæus, indeed, turns out to be himself of princely
birth--stolen in his childhood by a treacherous nurse from the island
where his father was king, sold by Phœnician merchants to Laertes in
Ithaca, and brought up in his household almost as a son, and regarding
the lost Ulysses “as an elder brother.” Very loyal is he to the house of
his benefactors; prefacing his meal by a prayer that his lord may yet
return in safety, and grieving specially that the lady Penelope, in her
present troubles, has seldom the opportunity to see or speak with him in
the kindly intercourse of old. The cordial and simple relations between
master and servant--even though the servant was commonly nothing more or
less than a purchased slave--are a striking feature, very pleasant to
dwell upon, in these Homeric poems. They remind us, as Homer does so
often, of similar pictures in the sacred narrative of the gentler
affections which redeemed so often the curse of slavery--of the little
captive Israelite maiden whose concern for her Syrian master led to his
cure, and of the faithful steward, “born in the house” of Abraham, whom
the childless patriarch once thought to make his heir.
Eumæus entertains the stranger right hospitably--warning him, at the
same time, not to pretend, as others have often done in the hope of
reward, to bring tidings of the lost Ulysses. His guest’s own story he
will be glad to hear. The hero is always ready at narrative, whether the
tale is to be fact or fiction. At present he chooses fiction; he gives
his listener an imaginary history of his past life, as a Cretan chief
who had seen much good service in many lands, especially under King
Idomeneus at Troy, but who had met with a succession of disasters since.
Of course he had seen and known Ulysses; had heard of him since the fall
of Troy; and he offers his host a wager that he will yet return. Eumæus
will hear nothing of such flattering hopes; by this time his men are
coming in from the field, and when the swine are safely housed, supper
and bedtime follow. But the night is bitter cold, and Ulysses has
nothing but his beggar’s rags. He indirectly begs a covering from his
host by an ingenious story, very characteristic of the style of the
lighter episodes of the Odyssey. He relates an adventure of his own
while lying in ambush, one winter night, under the walls of Troy. Dr
Maginn’s translation of this passage, in the old English ballad style,
though somewhat free, preserves fairly the spirit and humour of the
original:--
“Oh! were I as young and as fresh and as strong
As when under Troy, brother soldiers among,
In ambush as captains were chosen to lie
Odysseus and King Menelaus and I!
“They called me as third, and I came at the word,
And reached the high walls that the citadel gird;
When under the town we in armour lay down
By a brake in the marshes with weeds overgrown.
The night came on sharp, bleak the north wind did blow,
And frostily cold fell a thick shower of snow.
“Soon with icicles hoar every shield was frozen o’er;
But they who their cloaks and their body-clothes wore
The night lightly passed, secure from the blast,
Asleep with their shields o’er their broad shoulders cast;
But I, like a fool, had my cloak left behind,
Not expecting to shake in so piercing a wind.
“My buckler and zone--nothing more--had I on;
But when the third part of the night-watch was gone,
And the stars left the sky, with my elbow then I
Touched Odysseus, and spoke to him, lying close by--
Noble son of Laertes, Odysseus the wise,
I fear that alive I shall never arise.
“‘In this night so severe but one doublet I wear--
Deceived by a god--and my cloak is not here,
And no way I see from destruction to flee.’
But soon to relieve me a project had he.
In combat or council still prompt was his head,
And into my ear thus low whisp’ring he said:--
“‘Let none of the band this your need understand;
Keep silent.’ Then, resting his head on his hand,--
‘Friends and comrades of mine,’ he exclaimed, ‘as a sign,
While I slept has come o’er me a dream all divine.
It has warned me how far from the vessels we lie,
And that some one should go for fresh force to apply;
“‘And his footsteps should lead, disclosing our need,
To King Agamemnon, our chieftain, with speed.’
Thoas rose as he spoke, flung off his red cloak,
And running, his way with the message he took;
While, wrapt in his garment, I pleasantly lay
Till the rise of the golden-throned queen of the day.
“‘If I now were as young, and as fresh, and as strong,
Perhaps here in the stables you swine-herds among
Some a mantle would lend, as the act of a friend,
Or from the respect that on worth should attend;
But small is the honour, I find, that is paid
To one who, like me, is so meanly arrayed.’”
--(Maginn’s ‘Homeric Ballads.’)
The self-laudation which the hero, speaking in another person, takes the
opportunity to introduce, is in perfect keeping with his character
throughout.
The hint so broadly given is quite successful, and Eumæus provides his
guest with some warm coverings and a place near the fire; but he himself
will not sleep so far from his charge. Wrapped in a mighty wind-proof
cloak, he takes up his quarters for the night under the shelter of a
rock, hard by the lair of his swine.