Homer: The Odyssey/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
ULYSSES TELLS HIS STORY TO ALCINOUS.
The narrative, which Ulysses proceeds to relate to his host, takes back his story to the departure of the Greek fleet from Troy. First, on his homeward course, he and his comrades had landed on the coast of Thrace, and laid waste the town of the Ciconians. Instead of putting to sea again with their plunder, the crews stayed to feast on the captured beeves and the red wine. "Wrapt in the morning mist," large bodies of the natives surprised them at this disadvantage, and they had to re-embark with considerable loss. This was the beginning of their troubles. They were rounding the southern point of Greece, when a storm bore them out far to sea, and not until sunset on the tenth day did they reach an unknown shore—the land of the Lotus-eaters—
Seemed ever with sweet food their lips to entertain."
To determine the geography of the place is as difficult as to ascertain the natural history of the lotus, though critics have been very confident in doing both.[1] The effect of the seductive food on the companions of Ulysses is thus described:—
Cared not with tidings to return, but clave
Fast to that tribe, for ever fain to eat,
Reckless of home-return, the tender Lotus sweet."
Those who ate of it had to be dragged back by main force to their galleys, and bound fast with thongs, so loath were they to leave that shore of peaceful rest and forgetfulness. In the words of our own poet, who has founded one of the most imaginative of his poems on this incident of Ulysses' voyage, so briefly told by Homer—
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said—'We will return no more:'
And all at once they sang—'Our island-home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"[2]
It has been thought that here we have possibly the bread-fruit tree of the South Sea Islands, with some hint of the effect produced by their soft and enervating climate, and that the voyage of Ulysses anticipated in some degree the discoveries of Anson and Cook. It is curious that, in Cook's case, the seductions of those islands gave him the same trouble as they did Ulysses; for several of his crew thought, like the Greek sailors, that they had found an earthly paradise for which they determined to forget home and country, and had to be brought back to their ship by force. But the lotus-land of the poet is an ideal shore, to which some of us moderns may have travelled as well as Ulysses. Its deepest recesses will have been reached by the Buddhist who attains his coveted state of perfect beatitude, the "Nirvâna," in which a man has found out that all having and being, and more especially doing, are a mistake. It is the dolce far niente of the Italian; the region free from all cares and responsibilities—"beyond the domain of conscience"—which Charles Lamb, half in jest and half in earnest, sighed for.
Bearing away from the shore of the Lotus-eaters, Ulysses and his crew next reached the island where the Cyclops dwell—a gigantic tribe of rude shepherds, monsters in form, having but one eye planted in the centre of their foreheads, who know neither laws, nor arts, nor commerce. Adventure and discovery have always a charm for Ulysses; and it was with no other motive, as he pretty plainly confesses, that he landed with his own ship's crew to explore these unknown regions. The present adventure had a horrible conclusion for some of his companions. Alone, in a vast cave near the shore, dwelt the giant Polyphemus, a son of Neptune the sea-god, and folded his flocks in its deep recesses. They did not find the monster within: but the pails of brimming milk, and huge piles of cheese, stood ranged in order round the walls of the cavern. Nothing would satisfy Ulysses but to await the owner's return. At evening he came, driving his flocks before him; and, as was his wont, began to busy himself in his dairy operations. By the red glow of the firelight he soon discovered the intruders, as they crouched in a corner. In vain they made appeal to his hospitality, reminding him that strangers were under the special care of Jupiter. What care the Cyclops race for the gods? So he seized two of the unhappy Greeks, dashed them on the ground—"like puppies"—devoured them, blood, bones, and all, after the manner of giants, and washed down his horrible supper with huge bowls of milk. Two more furnished him with breakfast in the morning. But the craft of Ulysses was more than a match for the savage. He had carried with him on his dangerous expedition (having a kind of presentiment that it would prove useful) a skin of wine of rare quality and potency, and of this he gave Polyphemus to drink after his last cannibal meal. Charmed with the delicious draught, the giant begged to know his benefactor's name. The answer of Ulysses is the oldest specimen on record of the art of punning.
My father, mother, these my comrades bold,
Give me this title.' So I spake, and he
Answered at once with mind of ruthless mould:
'This shall fit largess unto Noman be—
Last, after all thy peers, I promise to eat thee."
Then, overcome by the potent drink, the savage lay down to sleep. Ulysses had prepared the thin end of a huge club of olive-wood, and this, pointed and well hardened in the fire, he and his comrades thrust into his single eye-ball, boring it deep in, "as the shipwright doth an auger." Roaring with pain, and now fairly sobered, Polyphemus awoke, and shouted for help to his brother-Cyclops who dwelt in the neighbouring valleys. They came; but to all their questions as to what was the matter, or who had injured him, he only answered "Noman!"—and his friends turned away in disgust. After groping vainly round the cave in search of his tormentors, Polyphemus rolled the huge stone from the mouth of his den, and let his sheep go out, feeling among them for his captives, who would probably try thus to escape. But again the wit of the Ithacan chief proved too subtle for his enemy. The great sheep had been cunningly linked together three abreast, and every middle sheep carried a Greek tied under his belly; Ulysses, after tying the last of his companions, clinging fast to the wool of a huge ram, the king of the flock. So did they all escape to rejoin their anxious comrades. But when all had embarked, and rowed to a safe distance, then Ulysses stood high upon his deck, and shouted a taunting defiance to his enemy. The answer of Polyphemus was a huge rock hurled with all his might towards the voice, which fell just short of the vessel. Again Ulysses shouted, and bade him tell those who should hereafter ask him who did the deed, that it was even Ulysses the Ithacan. The Cyclops groaned with rage and grief—an ancient oracle had forewarned him of the name; but will the great Ulysses please to return, that he may entertain such a hero handsomely? He would have shown himself more simple than his enemy if he had. Then the blind monster lifted his cry to his great father the Sea-god, and implored his vengeance on his destroyer.
The one-eyed giant of Homer's story became a very popular comic character in classical fiction. The only specimen of the old Greek satyric drama, as it was called—a peculiar kind of comedy, in which satyrs were largely introduced—is a play by Euripides, 'The Cyclops,' in which the principal incident is the blinding of Polyphemus by Ulysses. The monster rushes out of his cave, with his eye-socket burnt and bleeding, and stretches his arms across the entrance to intercept the escape of Ulysses, who creeps out between his legs. He roars out with pain, and is taunted by the "Chorus,"—a party of satyrs whom he has made his slaves, and who now rejoice in their deliverance.
Cyclops.I am lost!
Ch. Thou'rt dirty, anyhow.
Cyc.Yea, and wretched too!
Ch. What! hast got drunk, and fallen into the fire?
Cyc. Noman hath slain me!
Ch. Then thou'rt wronged by no man.
Cyc. Noman hath blinded me!
Ch.Then thou'rt not blind.
Cyc. Would ye were so!—
Ch.Why, how could no man blind thee?
Cyc. Ye mock me.—Where is Noman?
Ch.Nowhere, Cyclops.
Cyc. O friends, if ye would know the truth, yon wretch
Hath been my ruin—gave me drink, and drowned me!
Ch. Ay—wine is strong, we know, and hard to deal with.
The poet Theocritus, in one of his Idylls, gives us Polyphemus, before his blindness, in love with the beautiful nymph Galatæa, who, having another lover with two eyes in the young shepherd Acis, does not encourage the addresses of the Cyclops. This is part of his remonstrance:—
Shaggy and huge, a single eyebrow spans
From ear to ear my forehead, whence one eye
Gleams, and an o'er-broad nostril o'er my lip.
Yet I—this monster—feed a thousand sheep,
That yield me sweetest draughts at milking-tide.
••••••
But thou mistik'st my hair?—Well, oaken logs
Are here, and embers yet a-glow with fire;
Burn, if thou wilt, my heart out, and my eye—
My lonely eye, wherein is my delight."
—Theocritus, Idyll xi. (Calverley's transl.)
This love-story of the Cyclops is better known, perhaps, to English readers, through Handel's Pastoral, 'Acis and Galatæa.'
The imprecation of Polyphemus was heard, and Ulysses was long to suffer the penalty of his bold deed. Yet, but for the weakness of his comrades, he might perhaps have escaped it. For, as they sailed on over unknown seas, they won the friendship of the King of the Winds. He feasted them a whole month on his brass-bound island; and he, too, like all the world of gods and men, asked eagerly for the last news of the heroes of Troy. So charmed was Æolus with his guest, that on his departure he presented Ulysses with an ox-hide tied with a silver cord, in which all the winds were safely confined, save only Zephyr, who was left loose to waft the voyagers safely home. So for nine days and nights they ran straight for Ithaca, Ulysses himself at the helm, for he would trust it to no other hand. And now they had come in sight of the rocks of their beloved island—so near that they could see the smoke go up from the herdsmen's camp-fires; when, overcome with long watching, the chief fell asleep upon the deck. Then the greed and curiosity of his companions tempted them to examine the ox-hide bag. It must be some rich treasure, surely, thus carefully tied up and stowed away. They opened it; out rushed the imprisoned blasts, and drove them back in miserable plight to the island of Æolus,—much to that monarch's astonishment. In vain did Ulysses tell his unlucky story, and beg further help from the ruler of the storms; Æolus would have nothing more to do with such an ill-starred wretch, upon whom there rested so manifestly the curse of heaven, but drove him and his companions out to sea again with ignominy.
A second time the voyagers fell into the hands of cannibals. They moored their ships in the harbour of the Læstrygonians,—in the description of which there has been lately traced a strong likeness to the bay of Balaclava—
Whence fronting headlands at the mouth outrun,
Leaving a little narrow entrance-way,
Wherethrough they drive the vessels one by one."
These Læstrygonians were a giant race, like the Cyclops, and of an equally barbarous character. One of the exploring party, whom Ulysses sent to reconnoitre, they seized and devoured on the spot, and then hurled rocks down on the ships as they lay moored in the land-locked harbour, and speared the unfortunate crews, "like fish," as they swam from the wrecks. Ulysses only had moored outside, and escaped with his single ship by cutting his cable.
Pursuing his sad voyage, he had reached the island of Ææa, where dwelt the enchantress Circe "of the bright hair," daughter of the Sun. Here he divided his small remaining force into two bands, one of which, under his lieutenant, Eurylochus, explored the interior of the island, while Ulysses and the rest kept guard by their ship. Hidden deep in the woods, they came upon the palace of Circe.
And lions, softened by the spells divine,
As each her philters had partaken, lay.
These cluster round the men's advancing line
Fawning like dogs, who, when their lord doth dine,
Wait till he issues from the banquet-hall,
And for the choice gifts which his hands assign
Fawn, for he ne'er forgets them—so these all
Fawn on our friends, whom much the unwonted sights appal.
A voice of singing from a lovely place,
Where Circe weaves her great web year by year,
So shining, slender, and instinct with grace
As weave the daughters of immortal race."
The abode of Circe presents quite a different picture from the grotto of Calypso.[3] There, all the beauties were those of nature in her untouched luxuriance; here we have all the splendour of an Oriental interior, enriched with elaborate art—wide halls of polished marble, silver-studded couches, and vessels of gold.
Throwing wide the shining doors, the enchantress gaily bade them enter; and all, save only the more prudent Eurylochus, accepted the invitation. They drank of her drugged cup; then she struck them with her wand, and lo! they became swine in form, yet retaining their human senses. Eurylochus, after long watching in vain for the reappearance of his comrades, returned alone with his strange tale to his chief, who at once set forth to the rescue. On his way through the forest, he was suddenly accosted by a fair youth, bearing a wand of gold—none other than the god Mercury—who gave him a root of wondrous virtue—
Armed with this, he can defy all Circe's enchantments. She mixed for him the same draught, struck him with her wand, and bid him "go herd with his companions;" but potion and spell had lost their power. Circe had found her master, and knew it could be no other than "the many-wiled Ulysses," of whose visit she had been forewarned. Not even the magic virtues of the herb Moly, however, enable him to resist her proffered love; and Ulysses, by his own confession, forgot Penelope in the halls of Circe, as afterwards in the island of Calypso. It may be offered as his apology, that it was absolutely necessary for him to make himself agreeable to his hostess, in order to obtain from her (as he does at once) the deliverance of his companions from her toils; but this does not explain his sending for the rest of his crew from the ship, and spending a whole year in her society. The ingenious critics who insist on shaping a moral allegory out of the story of the Odyssey confess to having found a stumbling-block in this point of the narrative. It sounds very plausible to say that in Circe is personified sensual pleasure; that those who partake of her cup, and are turned into swine, are those who brutalise themselves by such indulgences; that the herb Moly—black at the root, but white and beautiful in the blossom—symbolises "instruction" or "temperance," by which the temptations of sense are to be resisted. But Ulysses' victory over the enchantress, and his subsequent relations to her, fall in but awkwardly with any moral of any kind. To say that Ulysses knows how to indulge his appetites with moderation, and therefore escapes the penalties of excess—that he is the master of Pleasure, while his companions become its slaves—is to make the parable teach a very questionable form of morality indeed, since it represents self-indulgence as praiseworthy, if we can only manage to escape the consequences.
But it was not until Ulysses had been reminded by his companions that he was forgetting his fatherland, that he besought his fair entertainer to let him go. Reluctantly she consented, bound by her oath—warning him, as they parted, that toil and peril lay before him, and that if he would learn his future fate, he must visit the Regions of the Dead, and there consult the shade of the great prophet Tiresias.
Ulysses goes on to describe to the king of the Phæacians his voyage on from the island of Ææa, under the favouring gales which Circe sends him:—
Wind in the well-stretched canvas following free,
Till the sun stooped beneath the western wave,
And darkness veiled the spaces of the sea.
Then to the limitary land came we
Of the sea-river, streaming deep, where dwell,
Shrouded in mist and gloom continually,
That people, from sweet light secluded well,
The dark Cimmerian tribe, who skirt the realms of hell."
Who these Cimmerians were is not easily discoverable. Their name was held by the Greeks a synonym for all that was dark and barbarous in the mists of antiquity. It appears, nevertheless, in the earlier historians as the appellation of a real people; some rash ethnologists, tempted chiefly by the similarity of name, have tried to identify them with the Cymry—the early settlers of Wales. The Welsh are notoriously proud of their ancient origin, but it is doubtful how far they would accept the poet's description of their ancestral darkness, or the neighbourhood to which he here assigns them.
- ↑ The Greek historian Herodotus places a tribe of lotus eaters, "who live by eating nothing but the fruit of the lotus," on the coast of Africa, somewhere near Tripoli. Pliny and other ancient writers on natural history speak of this fruit as in shape like an olive, with a flavour like that of figs or dates, not only pleasant to eat fresh, but which, when dry, was made into a kind of meal. The English travellers Shaw and Park found (in the close neighbourhood of Herodotus' lotus-eaters) what they thought to be the true lotus—a shrub bearing "small farinaceous berries, of a yellow colour and delicious taste." Park says—"An army may very well have been fed with the bread I have tasted made of the meal of the fruit, as is said by Pliny to have been done in Libya." There is also a water-plant in Egypt mentioned by Herodotus under the name of lotus—probably Nymphæa lotus of Linnæus.
- ↑ Tennyson, "The Lotus-Eaters."
- ↑ So sensible was Fénélon of this contrast that, in his romance already mentioned, when he describes Calypso's cave, he thinks it necessary, like a true Frenchman of the days of the great Louis, almost to apologise for the rude simplicity of nature, as hardly befitting so enchanting a personage. There were no statues, he says, no pictures, no painted ceilings, but the roof was set with shells and pebbles, and the want of tapestry was supplied by the tendrils of a vine.
- ↑ So the Spirit, in Milton's "Comus," gives to the brother of the Lady a sure antidote to the spell of the enchanter (himself represented as a son of Circe):—"Among the rest a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he culled me out;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on't,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave."