1 |
PREFACE. |
2 |
|
3 |
There would have been less controversy about the proper |
4 |
method of Homeric translation, if critics bad recognised |
5 |
that the question is a purely relative one, that of Homer |
6 |
there can be no final translation. The taste and the |
7 |
literary habits of each age demand different qualities in |
8 |
poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of |
9 |
Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would |
10 |
have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if |
11 |
he had been presented in his antique simplicity. For the |
12 |
Elizabethan age, Chapman supplied what was then necessary, |
13 |
and the mannerisms that were then deemed of the essence of |
14 |
poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. Thus in |
15 |
Chapman's verse Troy must 'shed her towers for tears of |
16 |
overthrow,' and when the winds toss Odysseus about, their |
17 |
sport must be called 'the horrid tennis.' |
18 |
|
19 |
In the age of Anne, 'dignity' and 'correctness' had to be |
20 |
given to Homer, and Pope gave them by aid of his dazzling |
21 |
rhetoric, his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every |
22 |
conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman's |
23 |
conceits, Homer's poems would hardly have been what the |
24 |
Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope's smoothness, |
25 |
and Pope's points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed |
26 |
rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great |
27 |
translations must always live as English poems. As |
28 |
transcripts of Homer they are like pictures drawn from a |
29 |
lost point of view. Chaque siecle depuis le xvi a ue de ce |
30 |
cote son belveder different. Again, when Europe woke to a |
31 |
sense, an almost exaggerated and certainly uncritical |
32 |
sense, of the value of her songs of the people, of all the |
33 |
ballads that Herder, Scott, Lonnrot, and the rest |
34 |
collected, it was commonly said that Homer was a |
35 |
ballad-minstrel, that the translator must imitate the |
36 |
simplicity, and even adopt the formulae of the ballad. |
37 |
Hence came the renderings of Maginn, the experiments of Mr. |
38 |
Gladstone, and others. There was some excuse for the error |
39 |
of critics who asked for a Homer in ballad rhyme. The Epic |
40 |
poet, the poet of gods and heroes, did indeed inherit some |
41 |
of the formulae of the earlier Volks-lied. Homer, like the |
42 |
author of The Song of Roland, like the singers of the |
43 |
Kalevala, uses constantly recurring epithets, and repeats, |
44 |
word for word, certain emphatic passages, messages, and so |
45 |
on. That custom is essential in the ballad, it is an |
46 |
accident not the essence of the epic. The epic is a poem of |
47 |
complete and elaborate art, but it still bears some |
48 |
birthmarks, some signs of the early popular chant, out of |
49 |
which it sprung, as the garden-rose springs from the wild |
50 |
stock, When this is recognised the demand for ballad-like |
51 |
simplicity and 'ballad-slang' ceases to exist, and then all |
52 |
Homeric translations in the ballad manner cease to |
53 |
represent our conception of Homer. After the belief in the |
54 |
ballad manner follows the recognition of the romantic vein |
55 |
in Homer, and, as a result, came Mr. Worsley's admirable |
56 |
Odyssey. This masterly translation does all that can be |
57 |
done for the Odyssey in the romantic style. The smoothness |
58 |
of the verse, the wonderful closeness to the original, |
59 |
reproduce all of Homer, in music and in meaning, that can |
60 |
be rendered in English verse. There still, however, seems |
61 |
an aspect Homeric poems, and a demand in connection with |
62 |
Homer to be recognised, and to be satisfied. |
63 |
|
64 |
Sainte-Beuve says, with reference probably to M. Leconte de |
65 |
Lisle's prose version of the epics, that some people treat |
66 |
the epics too much as if the were sagas. Now the Homeric |
67 |
epics are sagas, but then they are the sagas of the divine |
68 |
heroic age of Greece, and thus are told with an art which |
69 |
is not the art of the Northern poets. The epics are stories |
70 |
about the adventures of men living in most respects like |
71 |
the men of our own race who dwelt in Iceland, Norway, |
72 |
Denmark, and Sweden. The epics are, in a way, and as far as |
73 |
manners and institutions are concerned, historical |
74 |
documents. Whoever regards them in this way, must wish to |
75 |
read them exactly as they have reached us, without modern |
76 |
ornament, with nothing added or omitted. He must recognise, |
77 |
with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that what he now wants, namely, |
78 |
the simple truth about the matter of the poem, can only be |
79 |
given in prose, 'for in a verse translation no original |
80 |
work is any longer recognisable.' It is for this reason |
81 |
that we have attempted to tell once more, in simple prose, |
82 |
the story of Odysseus. We have tried to transfer, not all |
83 |
the truth about the poem, but the historical truth, into |
84 |
English. In this process Homer must lose at least half his |
85 |
charm, his bright and equable speed, the musical current of |
86 |
that narrative, which, like the river of Egypt, flows from |
87 |
an indiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the |
88 |
palaces of unforgotten gods and kings. Without this music |
89 |
of verse, only a half truth about Homer can be told, but |
90 |
then it is that half of the truth which, at this moment, it |
91 |
seems most necessary to tell. This is the half of the truth |
92 |
that the translators who use verse cannot easily tell. They |
93 |
MUST be adding to Homer, talking with Pope about 'tracing |
94 |
the mazy lev'ret o'er the lawn,' or with Mr. Worsley about |
95 |
the islands that are 'stars of the blue Aegaean,' or with |
96 |
Dr. Hawtrey about 'the earth's soft arms,' when Homer says |
97 |
nothing at all about the 'mazy lev'ret,' or the 'stars of |
98 |
the blue Aegaean,' or the 'soft arms' of earth. It would be |
99 |
impertinent indeed to blame any of these translations in |
100 |
their place. They give that which the romantic reader of |
101 |
poetry, or the student of the age of Anne, looks for in |
102 |
verse; and without tags of this sort, a translation of |
103 |
Homer in verse cannot well be made to hold together. |
104 |
|
105 |
There can be then, it appears, no final English translation |
106 |
of Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is |
107 |
Greek and eternal, the element of what is modern, personal, |
108 |
and fleeting. Thus we trust that there may be room for 'the |
109 |
pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation,' of which |
110 |
the aim is limited and humble. A prose translation cannot |
111 |
give the movement and the fire of a successful translation |
112 |
in verse; it only gathers, as it were, the crumbs which |
113 |
fall from the richer table, only tells the story, without |
114 |
the song. Yet to a prose translation is permitted, perhaps, |
115 |
that close adherence to the archaisms of the epic, which in |
116 |
verse become mere oddities. The double epithets, the |
117 |
recurring epithets of Homer, if rendered into verse, delay |
118 |
and puzzle the reader, as the Greek does not delay or |
119 |
puzzle him. In prose he may endure them, or even care to |
120 |
study them as the survivals of a stage of taste, which is |
121 |
to be found in its prime in the sagas. These double and |
122 |
recurring epithets of Homer are a softer form of the quaint |
123 |
Northern periphrases, which make the sea the 'swan's bath,' |
124 |
gold, the 'dragon's hoard,' men, the 'ring-givers,' and so |
125 |
on. We do not know whether it is necessary to defend our |
126 |
choice of a somewhat antiquated prose. Homer has no ideas |
127 |
which cannot be expressed in words that are 'old and |
128 |
plain,' and to words that are old and plain, and, as a |
129 |
rule, to such terms as, being used by the Translators of |
130 |
the Bible, are still not unfamiliar, we have tried to |
131 |
restrict ourselves. It may be objected, that the employment |
132 |
of language which does not come spontaneously to the lips, |
133 |
is an affectation out of place in a version of the Odyssey. |
134 |
To this we may answer that the Greek Epic dialect, like the |
135 |
English of our Bible, was a thing of slow growth and |
136 |
composite nature, that it was never a spoken language, nor, |
137 |
except for certain poetical purposes, a written language. |
138 |
Thus the Biblical English seems as nearly analogous to the |
139 |
Epic Greek, as anything that our tongue has to offer. |
140 |
|
141 |
The few foot-notes in this book are chiefly intended to |
142 |
make clear some passages where there is a choice of |
143 |
reading. The notes at the end, which we would like to have |
144 |
written in the form of essays, and in company with more |
145 |
complete philological and archaeological studies, are |
146 |
chiefly meant to elucidate the life of Homer's men. We have |
147 |
received much help from many friends, and especially from |
148 |
Mr. R. W. Raper, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and Mr. |
149 |
Gerald Balfour, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who |
150 |
has aided us with many suggestions while the book was |
151 |
passing through the press. |
152 |
|
153 |
In the interpretation of B. i.411, ii.191, v.90, and 471, |
154 |
we have departed from the received view, and followed Mr. |
155 |
Raper, who, however, has not been able to read through the |
156 |
proof-sheets further than Book xii. |
157 |
|
158 |
We have adopted La Roche's text (Homeri Odyssea, J. La |
159 |
Roche, Leipzig, 1867), except in a few cases where we |
160 |
mention our reading in a foot-note. |
161 |
|
162 |
The Arguments prefixed to the Books are taken, with very |
163 |
slight alterations, from Hobbes' Translation of the |
164 |
Odyssey. |
165 |
|
166 |
It is hoped that the Introduction added to the second |
167 |
edition may illustrate the growth of those national legends |
168 |
on which Homer worked, and may elucidate the plot of the |
169 |
Odyssey. |
170 |
|
171 |
|
172 |
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. |
173 |
|
174 |
Wet owe our thanks to the Rev. E. Warre, of Eton College, |
175 |
for certain corrections on nautical points. In particular, |
176 |
he has convinced us that the raft of Odysseus in B. v. is a |
177 |
raft strictly so called, and that it is not, under the |
178 |
poet's description, elaborated into a ship, as has been |
179 |
commonly supposed. The translation of the passage (B. |
180 |
v.246-261) is accordingly altered. |
181 |
|
182 |
|
183 |
INTRODUCTION |
184 |
|
185 |
COMPOSITION AND PLOT OF THE ODYSSEY. |
186 |
|
187 |
The Odyssey is generally supposed to be somewhat the later |
188 |
in date of the two most ancient Greek poems which are |
189 |
concerned with the events and consequences of the Trojan |
190 |
war. As to the actual history of that war, it may be said |
191 |
that nothing is known. We may conjecture that some contest |
192 |
between peoples of more or less kindred stocks, who |
193 |
occupied the isles and the eastern and western shores of |
194 |
the Aegean, left a strong impression on the popular fancy. |
195 |
Round the memories of this contest would gather many older |
196 |
legends, myths, and stories, not peculiarly Greek or even |
197 |
'Aryan,' which previously floated unattached, or were |
198 |
connected with heroes whose fame was swallowed up by that |
199 |
of a newer generation. It would be the work of minstrels, |
200 |
priests, and poets, as the national spirit grew conscious |
201 |
of itself, to shape all these materials into a definite |
202 |
body of tradition. This is the rule of development--first |
203 |
scattered stories, then the union of these into a NATIONAL |
204 |
legend. The growth of later national legends, which we are |
205 |
able to trace, historically, has generally come about in |
206 |
this fashion. To take the best known example, we are able |
207 |
to compare the real history of Charlemagne with the old |
208 |
epic poems on his life and exploits. In these poems we find |
209 |
that facts are strangely exaggerated, and distorted; that |
210 |
purely fanciful additions are made to the true records, |
211 |
that the more striking events of earlier history are |
212 |
crowded into the legend of Charles, that mere fairy tales, |
213 |
current among African as well as European peoples, are |
214 |
transmuted into false history, and that the anonymous |
215 |
characters of fairy tales are converted into historical |
216 |
personages. We can also watch the process by which feigned |
217 |
genealogies were constructed, which connected the princely |
218 |
houses of France with the imaginary heroes of the epics. |
219 |
The conclusion is that the poetical history of Charlemagne |
220 |
has only the faintest relations to the true history. And we |
221 |
are justified in supposing that, quite as little of the |
222 |
real history of events can be extracted from the tale of |
223 |
Troy, as from the Chansons de Geste. |
224 |
|
225 |
By the time the Odyssey was composed, it is certain that a |
226 |
poet had before him a well-arranged mass of legends and |
227 |
traditions from which he might select his materials. The |
228 |
author of the Iliad has an extremely full and curiously |
229 |
consistent knowledge of the local traditions of Greece, the |
230 |
memories which were cherished by Thebans, Pylians, people |
231 |
of Mycenae, of Argos, and so on. The Iliad and the Odyssey |
232 |
assume this knowledge in the hearers of the poems, and take |
233 |
for granted some acquaintance with other legends, as with |
234 |
the story of the Argonautic Expedition. Now that story |
235 |
itself is a tissue of popular tales,--still current in many |
236 |
distant lands,--but all woven by the Greek genius into the |
237 |
history of Iason. |
238 |
|
239 |
The history of the return of Odysseus as told in the |
240 |
Odyssey, is in the same way, a tissue of old marchen. |
241 |
These must have existed for an unknown length of time |
242 |
before they gravitated into the cycle of the tale of Troy. |
243 |
|
244 |
The extraordinary artistic skill with which legends and |
245 |
myths, originally unconnected with each other, are woven |
246 |
into the plot of the Odyssey, so that the marvels of savage |
247 |
and barbaric fancy become indispensable parts of an |
248 |
artistic whole, is one of the chief proofs of the unity of |
249 |
authorship of that poem. We now go on to sketch the plot, |
250 |
which is a marvel of construction. |
251 |
|
252 |
Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, a small and rugged island |
253 |
on the western coast of Greece. When he was but lately |
254 |
married to Penelope, and while his only son Telemachus was |
255 |
still an infant, the Trojan war began. It is scarcely |
256 |
necessary to say that the object of this war, as conceived |
257 |
of by the poets, was to win back Helen, the wife of |
258 |
Menelaus, from Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy. As |
259 |
Menelaus was the brother of Agamemnon, the Emperor, so to |
260 |
speak, or recognised chief of the petty kingdoms of |
261 |
'Greece, the whole force of these kingdoms was at his |
262 |
disposal. No prince came to the leaguer of Troy from a home |
263 |
more remote than that of Odysseus. When Troy was taken, in |
264 |
the tenth year of the war, his homeward voyage was the |
265 |
longest and most perilous. |
266 |
|
267 |
The action of the Odyssey occupies but the last six weeks |
268 |
of the ten years during which Odysseus was wandering. Two |
269 |
nights in these six weeks are taken up, however, by his own |
270 |
narrative of his adventures (to the Phaeacians, p. xx) in |
271 |
the previous ten years. With this explanatory narrative we |
272 |
must begin, before coming to the regular action of the |
273 |
poem. |
274 |
|
275 |
After the fall of Troy, Odysseus touched at Ismarus, the |
276 |
city of a Thracian people, whom he attacked and plundered, |
277 |
but by whom he was at last repulsed. The north wind then |
278 |
carried his ships to Malea, the extreme southern point of |
279 |
Greece. Had he doubled Malea safely, he would probably have |
280 |
reached Ithaca in a few days, would have found Penelope |
281 |
unvexed by wooers, and Telemachus a boy of ten years old. |
282 |
But this was not to be. |
283 |
|
284 |
The 'ruinous winds' drove Odysseus and his ships for ten |
285 |
days, and on the tenth they touched the land of the Lotus- |
286 |
Eaters, whose flowery food causes sweet forgetfulness. |
287 |
Lotus-land was possibly in Western Libya, but it is more |
288 |
probable that ten days' voyage from the southern point of |
289 |
Greece, brought Odysseus into an unexplored region of |
290 |
fairy-land. Egypt, of which Homer had some knowledge, was |
291 |
but five days' sail from Crete. |
292 |
|
293 |
Lotus-land, therefore, being ten days' sail from Malea, was |
294 |
well over the limit of the discovered world. From this |
295 |
country Odysseus went on till he reached the land of the |
296 |
lawless Cyclopes, a pastoral people of giants. Later Greece |
297 |
feigned that the Cyclopes dwelt near Mount Etna, in Sicily. |
298 |
Homer leaves their place of abode in the vague. Among the |
299 |
Cyclopes, Odysseus had the adventure on which his whole |
300 |
fortunes hinged. He destroyed the eye of the cannibal |
301 |
giant, Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea. |
302 |
To avenge this act, Poseidon drove Odysseus wandering for |
303 |
ten long years, and only suffered him to land in Ithaca, |
304 |
'alone, in evil case, to find troubles in his house.' This |
305 |
is a very remarkable point in the plot. The story of the |
306 |
crafty adventurer and the blinding of the giant, with the |
307 |
punning device by which the hero escaped, exists in the |
308 |
shape of a detached marchen or fairy-tale among races who |
309 |
never heard of Homer. And when we find the story among |
310 |
Oghuzians, Esthonians, Basques, and Celts, it seems natural |
311 |
to suppose that these people did not break a fragment out |
312 |
of the Odyssey, but that the author of the Odyssey took |
313 |
possession of a legend out of the great traditional store |
314 |
of fiction. From the wide distribution of the tale, there |
315 |
is reason to suppose that it is older than Homer, and that |
316 |
it was not originally told of Odysseus, but was attached to |
317 |
his legend, as floating jests of unknown authorship are |
318 |
attributed to eminent wits. It has been remarked with truth |
319 |
that in this episode Odysseus acts out of character, that |
320 |
he is foolhardy as well as cunning. Yet the author of the |
321 |
Odyssey, so far from merely dove-tailing this story at |
322 |
random into his narrative, has made his whole plot turn on |
323 |
the injury to the Cyclops. Had he not foolishly exposed |
324 |
himself and his companions, by his visit to the Cyclops, |
325 |
Odysseus would never have been driven wandering for ten |
326 |
weary years. The prayers of the blinded Cyclops were heard |
327 |
and fulfilled by Poseidon. |
328 |
|
329 |
From the land of the Cyclops, Odysseus and his company |
330 |
sailed to the Isle of Aeolus, the king of the winds. This |
331 |
place too is undefined; we only learn that, even with the |
332 |
most favourable gale, it was ten days' sail from Ithaca. In |
333 |
the Isle of Aeolus Odysseus abode for a month, and then |
334 |
received from the king a bag in which all the winds were |
335 |
bound, except that which was to waft the hero to his home. |
336 |
This sort of bag was probably not unfamiliar to |
337 |
superstitious Greek sailors who had dealings with witches, |
338 |
like the modern wise women of the Lapps. The companions of |
339 |
the hero opened the bag when Ithaca was in sight, the winds |
340 |
rushed out, the ships were borne back to the Aeolian Isle, |
341 |
and thence the hero was roughly dismissed by Aeolus. Seven |
342 |
days' sail brought him to Lamos, a city of the cannibal |
343 |
Laestrygonians. Their country, too, is in No-man's-land, |
344 |
and nothing can be inferred from the fact that their |
345 |
fountain was called Artacia, and that there was an Artacia |
346 |
in Cyzicus. In Lamos a very important adventure befel |
347 |
Odysseus. The cannibals destroyed all his fleet, save one |
348 |
ship, with which he made his escape to the Isle of Circe. |
349 |
Here the enchantress turned part of the crew into swine, |
350 |
but Odysseus, by aid of the god Hermes, redeemed them, and |
351 |
became the lover of Circe. This adventure, like the story |
352 |
of the Cyclops, is a fairy tale of great antiquity. Dr. |
353 |
Gerland, in his Alt Griechische Marchen in der Odyssee, his |
354 |
shown that the story makes part of the collection of |
355 |
Somadeva, a store of Indian tales, of which 1200 A.D. is |
356 |
the approximate date. Circe appears as a Yackshini, and is |
357 |
conquered when an adventurer seizes her flute whose magic |
358 |
music turns men into beasts. The Indian Circe had the habit |
359 |
of eating the animals into which she transformed men. |
360 |
|
361 |
We must suppose that the affairs with the Cicones, the |
362 |
Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus, and the Laestrygonians, |
363 |
occupied most of the first year after the fall of Troy. A |
364 |
year was then spent in the Isle of Circe, after which the |
365 |
sailors were eager to make for home. Circe commanded them |
366 |
to go down to Hades, to learn the homeward way from the |
367 |
ghost of the Theban prophet Teiresias. The descent into |
368 |
hell, for some similar purpose, is common in the epics of |
369 |
other races, such as the Finns, and the South-Sea |
370 |
Islanders. The narrative of Odysseus's visit to the dead |
371 |
(book xi) is one of the most moving passages in the whole |
372 |
poem. |
373 |
|
374 |
From Teiresias Odysseus learned that, if he would bring his |
375 |
companions home, he must avoid injuring the sacred cattle |
376 |
of the Sun, which pastured in the Isle of Thrinacia. If |
377 |
these were harmed, he would arrive in Ithaca alone, or in |
378 |
the words of the Cyclops's prayer, I in evil plight, with |
379 |
loss of all his company, on board the ship of strangers, to |
380 |
find sorrow in his house.' On returning to the Isle Aeaean, |
381 |
Odysseus was warned by Circe of the dangers he would |
382 |
encounter. He and his friends set forth, escaped the Sirens |
383 |
(a sort of mermaidens), evaded the Clashing Rocks, which |
384 |
close on ships (a fable known to the Aztecs), passed Scylla |
385 |
(the pieuvre of antiquity) with loss of some of the |
386 |
company, and reached Thrinacia, the Isle of the Sun. Here |
387 |
the company of Odysseus, constrained by hunger, devoured |
388 |
the sacred kine of the Sun, for which offence they were |
389 |
punished by a shipwreck, when all were lost save Odysseus. |
390 |
He floated ten days on a raft, and then reached the isle of |
391 |
the goddess Calypso, who kept him as her lover for eight |
392 |
years. |
393 |
|
394 |
The first two years after the fall of Troy are now |
395 |
accounted for. They were occupied, as we have seen, by |
396 |
adventures with the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, |
397 |
Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, by a year's residence with |
398 |
Circe, by the descent into Hades, the encounters with the |
399 |
Sirens, and Scylla, and the fatal sojourn in the isle of |
400 |
Thrinacia. We leave Odysseus alone, for eight years, |
401 |
consuming his own heart, in the island paradise of Calypso. |
402 |
|
403 |
In Ithaca, the hero's home, things seem to have passed |
404 |
smoothly till about the sixth year after the fall of Troy. |
405 |
Then the men of the younger generation, the island chiefs, |
406 |
began to woo Penelope, and to vex her son Telemachus. |
407 |
Laertes, the father of Odysseus, was too old to help, and |
408 |
Penelope only gained time by her famous device of weaving |
409 |
and unweaving the web. The wooers began to put compulsion |
410 |
on the Queen, quartering themselves upon her, devouring her |
411 |
substance, and insulting her by their relations with her |
412 |
handmaids. Thus Penelope pined at home, amidst her wasting |
413 |
possessions. Telemachus fretted in vain, and Odysseus was |
414 |
devoured by grief and home-sickness in the isle of Calypso. |
415 |
When he had lain there for nigh eight years, the action of |
416 |
the Odyssey begins, and occupies about six weeks. |
417 |
|
418 |
DAY 1 (Book i). |
419 |
|
420 |
The ordained time has now arrived, when by the counsels of |
421 |
the Gods, Odysseus is to be brought home to free his house, |
422 |
to avenge himself on the wooers, and recover his kingdom. |
423 |
The chief agent in his restoration is Pallas Athene; the |
424 |
first book opens with her prayer to Zeus that Odysseus may |
425 |
be delivered. For this purpose Hermes is to be sent to |
426 |
Calypso to bid her release Odysseus, while Pallas Athene in |
427 |
the shape of Mentor, a friend of Odysseus, visits |
428 |
Telemachus in Ithaca. She bids him call an assembly of the |
429 |
people, dismiss the wooers to their homes, and his mother |
430 |
to her father's house, and go in quest of his own father, |
431 |
in Pylos, the city of Nestor, and Sparta, the home of |
432 |
Menelaus. Telemachus recognises the Goddess, and the first |
433 |
day closes. |
434 |
|
435 |
DAY 2 (Book ii). |
436 |
|
437 |
Telemachus assembles the people, but he has not the heart |
438 |
to carry out Athene's advice. He cannot send the wooers |
439 |
away, nor turn his mother out of her house. He rather |
440 |
weakly appeals to the wooers' consciences, and announces |
441 |
his intention of going to seek his father. They answer with |
442 |
scorn, but are warned of their fate, which is even at the |
443 |
doors, by Halitherses. His prophecy (first made when |
444 |
Odysseus set out for Troy) tallies with the prophecy of |
445 |
Teiresias, and the prayer of the Cyclops. The reader will |
446 |
observe a series of portents, prophecies, and omens, which |
447 |
grow more numerous and admonishing as their doom draws |
448 |
nearer to the wooers. Their hearts, however, are hardened, |
449 |
and they mock at Telemachus, who, after an interview with |
450 |
Athene, borrows a ship and secretly sets out for Pylos. |
451 |
Athene accompanies him, and his friends man his galley. |
452 |
|
453 |
DAY 3 (Book iii). |
454 |
|
455 |
They reach Pylos, and are kindly received by the aged |
456 |
Nestor, who has no news about Odysseus. After sacrifice, |
457 |
Athene disappears. |
458 |
|
459 |
DAY 4 (Book iii). |
460 |
|
461 |
The fourth day is occupied with sacrifice, and the talk of |
462 |
Nestor. In the evening Telemachus (leaving his ship and |
463 |
friends at Pylos) drives his chariot into Pherae, half way |
464 |
to Sparta; Peisistratus, the soil of Nestor, accompanies |
465 |
him. |
466 |
|
467 |
DAY 5 (Book iv). |
468 |
|
469 |
Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive at Sparta, where |
470 |
Menelaus and Helen receive them kindly. |
471 |
|
472 |
DAY 6 (Book iv). |
473 |
|
474 |
Menelaus tells how he himself came home in the eighth year |
475 |
after the fall of Troy. He had heard from Proteus, the Old |
476 |
Man of the Sea, that Odysseus was alive, and a captive on |
477 |
an island of the deep. Menelaus invites Telemachus to Stay |
478 |
with him for eleven days or twelve, which Telemachus |
479 |
declines to do. it will later appear that he made an even |
480 |
longer stay at Sparta, though whether he changed his mind, |
481 |
or whether we have here an inadvertence of the poet's it is |
482 |
hard to determine. This blemish has been used as an |
483 |
argument against the unity of authorship, but writers of |
484 |
all ages have made graver mistakes. |
485 |
|
486 |
On this same day (the sixth) the wooers in Ithaca learned |
487 |
that Telemachus had really set out to I cruise after his |
488 |
father.' They sent some of their number to lie in ambush |
489 |
for him, in a certain strait which he was likely to pass on |
490 |
his return to Ithaca. Penelope also heard of her son's |
491 |
departure, but was consoled by a dream. |
492 |
|
493 |
DAY 7 (Book v). |
494 |
|
495 |
The seventh day finds us again in Olympus. Athene again |
496 |
urges the release of Odysseus; and Hermes is sent to bid |
497 |
Calypso let the hero go. Zeus prophecies that after twenty |
498 |
days sailing, Odysseus will reach Scheria, and the |
499 |
hospitable Phaeacians, a people akin to the Gods, who will |
500 |
convey him to Ithaca. Hermes accomplishes the message to |
501 |
Calypso. |
502 |
|
503 |
DAYS 8-12-32 (Book v). |
504 |
|
505 |
These days are occupied by Odysseus in making and launching |
506 |
a raft; on the twelfth day from the beginning of the action |
507 |
he leaves Calypso's isle. He sails for eighteen days, and |
508 |
on the eighteenth day of his voyage (the twenty- ninth from |
509 |
the beginning of the action), he sees Scheria. Poseidon |
510 |
raises a storm against him, and it is not till the |
511 |
thirty-second day from that in which Athene visited |
512 |
Telemachus, that he lands in Scheria, the country of the |
513 |
Phaeacians. Here be is again in fairy land. A rough, but |
514 |
perfectly recognisable form of the Phaeacian myth, is found |
515 |
in an Indian collection of marchen (already referred to) of |
516 |
the twelfth century A.D. Here the Phaeacians are the |
517 |
Vidyidhiris, and their old enemies the Cyclopes, are the |
518 |
Rakshashas, a sort of giants. The Indian Odysseus, who |
519 |
seeks the city of gold, passes by the home of an Indian |
520 |
Aeolus, Satyavrata. His later adventures are confused, and |
521 |
the Greek version retains only the more graceful fancies of |
522 |
the marchen. |
523 |
|
524 |
DAY 33 (Book vi). |
525 |
|
526 |
Odysseus meets Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, the |
527 |
Phaeacian King, and by her aid, and that of Athene, is |
528 |
favourably received at the palace, and tells how he came |
529 |
from Calypso's island. His name is still unknown to his |
530 |
hosts. |
531 |
|
532 |
DAY 34 (Books vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii). |
533 |
|
534 |
The Phaeacians and Odysseus display their skill in sports. |
535 |
Nausicaa bids Odysseus farewell. Odysseus recounts to |
536 |
Alcinous, and Arete, the Queen, those adventures in the two |
537 |
years between the fall of Troy and his captivity in the |
538 |
island of Calypso, which we have already described (pp. |
539 |
xiii-xvii). |
540 |
|
541 |
DAY 35 (Book xiii). |
542 |
|
543 |
Odysseus is conveyed to Ithaca, in the evening, on one of |
544 |
the magical barques of the Phaeacians. |
545 |
|
546 |
DAY 36 (Books xiii, xiv, xv). |
547 |
|
548 |
He wakens in Ithaca, which be does not at first recognise |
549 |
He learns from Athene, for the first time, that the wooers |
550 |
beset his house. She disguises him as an old man, and bids |
551 |
him go to the hut of the swineherd Eumaeus, who is loyal to |
552 |
his absent lord. Athene then goes to Lacedaemon, to bring |
553 |
back Telemachus, who bas now resided there for a month. |
554 |
Odysseus won the heart of Eumaeus, who of course did not |
555 |
recognise him, and slept in the swineherd's hut, while |
556 |
Athene was waking Telemachus, in Lacedaemon, and bidding |
557 |
him 'be mindful of his return.' |
558 |
|
559 |
DAY 37 (Book xv). |
560 |
|
561 |
Is spent by Odysseus in the swineherd's hut. Telemachus |
562 |
reaches Pherae, half-way to Pylos. |
563 |
|
564 |
|
565 |
DAY 38 (Book xv). |
566 |
|
567 |
Telemachus reaches Pylos, but does not visit Nestor. To |
568 |
save time he goes at once on board ship, taking with him an |
569 |
unfortunate outlaw, Theoclymenus, a second-sighted man, or |
570 |
the family of Melampus, in which the gift of prophecy was |
571 |
hereditary. The ship passed the Elian coast at night, and |
572 |
evaded the ambush of the wooers. Meanwhile Odysseus was |
573 |
sitting up almost till dawn, listening to the history of |
574 |
Eumaeus, the swineherd. |
575 |
|
576 |
DAY 39 (Books xv, xvi). |
577 |
|
578 |
Telemachus reaches the Isle of Ithaca, sends his ship to |
579 |
the city, but himself, by advice of Athene, makes for the |
580 |
hut of Eumaeus, where he meets, but naturally does not |
581 |
recognise, his disguised father. He sends Eumaeus to |
582 |
Penelope with news of his arrival, and then Athene reveals |
583 |
Odysseus to Telemachus. The two plot the death of the |
584 |
wooers. Odysseus bids Telemachus remove, on a favourable |
585 |
opportunity, the arms which were disposed as trophies on |
586 |
the walls of the hall at home. (There is a slight |
587 |
discrepancy between the words of this advice and the manner |
588 |
in which it is afterwards executed.) During this interview, |
589 |
the ship of Telemachus, the wooers who had been in ambush, |
590 |
and Eumaeus, all reached the town of Ithaca. In the evening |
591 |
Eumaeus returned to his hut, where Athene had again |
592 |
disguised Odysseus. |
593 |
|
594 |
DAY 40 (Books xvii, xviii, xix, xx). |
595 |
|
596 |
The story is now hastening to its close, and many events |
597 |
are crowded into the fortieth day. Telemachus goes from the |
598 |
swineherd's hut to the city, and calls his guest, |
599 |
Theoclymenus, to the palace. The second-sighted man |
600 |
prophesies of the near revenge of Odysseus. In the |
601 |
afternoon, Odysseus (still disguised) and Eumaeus reach the |
602 |
city, the dog Argos recognises the hero, and dies. Odysseus |
603 |
goes begging through his own hall, and is struck by |
604 |
Antinous, the proudest of the wooers. Late in the day |
605 |
Eumaeus goes home, and Odysseus fights with the braggart |
606 |
beggar Irus. Still later, Penelope appears among the |
607 |
wooers, and receives presents from them. When the wooers |
608 |
have withdrawn, Odysseus and Telemachus remove the weapons |
609 |
from the hall to the armoury. Afterwards Odysseus has an |
610 |
interview with Penelope (who does not recognise him), but |
611 |
he is recognised by his old nurse Eurycleia. Penelope |
612 |
mentions her purpose to wed the man who on the following |
613 |
day, the feast of the Archer-god Apollo, shall draw the bow |
614 |
of Odysseus, and send an arrow through the holes in twelve |
615 |
axe-blades, set up in a row. Thus the poet shows that |
616 |
Odysseus has arrived in Ithaca not a day too soon. Odysseus |
617 |
is comforted by a vision of Athene, and |
618 |
|
619 |
DAY 41 (Books xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii). |
620 |
|
621 |
by the ominous prayer uttered by a weary woman grinding at |
622 |
the mill. The swineherd and the disloyal Melanthius arrive |
623 |
at the palace. The wooers defer the plot to kill |
624 |
Telemachus, as the day is holy to Apollo. Odysseus is led |
625 |
up from his seat near the door to a place beside Telemachus |
626 |
at the chief 's table. The wooers mock Telemachus, and the |
627 |
second- sighted Theoclymenus sees the ominous shroud of |
628 |
death covering their bodies, and the walls dripping with |
629 |
blood. He leaves the doomed company. In the trial of the |
630 |
bow, none of the wooers can draw it; meanwhile Odysseus has |
631 |
declared himself to the neatherd and the swineherd. The |
632 |
former bars and fastens the outer gates of the court, the |
633 |
latter bids Eurycleia bar the doors of the womens' chambers |
634 |
which lead out of the hall. Odysseus now gets the bow into |
635 |
his hands, strings it, sends the arrow through the |
636 |
axe-blades, and then leaping on the threshold of stone, |
637 |
deals his shafts among the wooers. Telemachus, the |
638 |
neatherd, and Eumaeus, aiding him, he slaughters all the |
639 |
crew, despite the treachery of Melanthius. The paramours of |
640 |
the wooers are hanged, and Odysseus, after some delay, is |
641 |
recognised by Penelope. |
642 |
|
643 |
DAY 42 (Books xxiii, xxiv). |
644 |
|
645 |
This day is occupied with the recognition of Odysseus by |
646 |
his aged father Laertes, and with the futile attempt of the |
647 |
kinsfolk of the wooers to avenge them on Odysseus. Athene |
648 |
reconciles the feud, and the toils of Odysseus are |
649 |
accomplished. |
650 |
|
651 |
The reader has now before him a chronologically arranged |
652 |
sketch of the action of the Odyssey. It is, perhaps, |
653 |
apparent, even from this bare outline, that the composition |
654 |
is elaborate and artistic, that the threads of the plot are |
655 |
skilfully separated and combined. The germ of the whole |
656 |
epic is probably the popular tale, known all over the |
657 |
world, of the warrior who, on his return from a long |
658 |
expedition, has great difficulty in making his prudent wife |
659 |
recognise him. The incident occurs as a detached story in |
660 |
China, and in most European countries it is told of a |
661 |
crusader. 'We may suppose it to be older than the legend of |
662 |
Troy, and to have gravitated into the cycle of that legend. |
663 |
The years of the hero's absence are then filled up with |
664 |
adventures (the Cyclops, Circe, the Phaeacians, the Sirens, |
665 |
the descent into hell) which exist as scattered tales, or |
666 |
are woven into the more elaborate epics of Gaels, Aztecs, |
667 |
Hindoos, Tartars, South-Sea Islanders, Finns, Russians, |
668 |
Scandinavians, and Eskimo. The whole is surrounded with the |
669 |
atmosphere of the kingly age of Greece, and the result is |
670 |
the Odyssey, with that unity of plot and variety of |
671 |
character which must have been given by one masterly |
672 |
constructive genius. The date at which the poet of the |
673 |
Odyssey lived may be approximately determined by his |
674 |
consistent descriptions of a peculiar and definite |
675 |
condition of society, which had ceased to exist in the |
676 |
ninth century B.C., and of a stage of art in which |
677 |
Phoenician and Assyrian influences predominated. (Die Kunst |
678 |
bei Homer. Brunn.) As to the mode of composition, it would |
679 |
not be difficult to show that at least the a priori Wolfian |
680 |
arguments against the early use of writing for literary |
681 |
purposes have no longer the cogency which they were once |
682 |
thought to possess. But this is matter for a separate |
683 |
investigation. |
684 |
|
685 |
|
686 |
|
687 |
|
688 |
|
689 |
The Odyssey |
690 |
|
691 |
|
692 |
|