This is a reproduction of a book from 
 the McGill University Library collection. 
 
 Title: The adventures of 
 
 Ulysses 
 
 Author: Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834 
 
 Publisher, year: London : Printed by T. 
 
 Davison for the Juvenile 
 Library, 1808 
 
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 and other marginalia present in the 
 original volume may also appear. 
 
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 ISBN of reproduction: 978-1-926846-07-1 
 
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THE 
 
 ADVENTURES 
 
 OF 
 
 ULYSSES. 
 
 BY CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 LONDOYt 
 
 Printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars, 
 
 IOR THE JUVENILE LIBRARY - , NO. 41, SKINNER* 
 STREET, SNOW-HILL. 
 
 1808. 
 
Note on this digitized version produced by McGill University Library. 
 
 This is a digitized version of a book from the collections of McGill University Library. The 
 pages were digitized as they were. The original book may have contained pages with poor 
 print. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume may also appear. 
 For wider or heavier books, a slight curvature to the text on the inside of pages may be 
 noticeable. 
 
 McGill University Library: 
 http:/ /www.mcgill.ca/library 
 
 ISBN: 978-1-926846-06-4 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This work is designed as a supplement 
 to the Adventures of Telemachus. It 
 treats of the conduct and sufferings of 
 Ulysses, the father of Telemachus. The 
 picture which it exhibits is that of a brav« 
 man struggling with adversity; by a wise 
 use of events, and with an inimitable pre- 
 sence of mind under difficulties, forcing- 
 out a way for himself through the severest 
 trials to which human life can he exposed ; 
 with enemies natural and preternatural sur- 
 rounding him on all sides. The agents in 
 this tale, besides men and women, are 
 giants, enchanters, sirens : things which 
 denote external force or internal tempta- 
 tions, the twofold danger which a wise 
 fortitude must expect to encounter in its 
 course through this world. The fictions 
 contained in it will be found to compre- 
 hend some of the most admired inventions 
 of Grecian mythology. 
 
i-» preface. 
 
 The ground-work of the story is as old 
 as the Odyssey, but the moral and the 
 colouring are comparatively modern. By 
 avoiding the prolixity which marks the 
 speeches and the descriptions in Homer, I 
 have gained a rapidity to the narration, 
 which I hope will make it more attractive 
 and give it more the air of a romance to 
 young readers, though I am sensible that 
 by the curtailment I have sacrificed in 
 many places the manners to the passion, the 
 subordinate characteristics to the essential 
 interest of the story. The attempt is not to 
 he considered as seeking a comparison with 
 any of the direct translations of the 
 Odyssey, either in prose or verse, though 
 if I were to state the obligations which I 
 have had to one obsolete version*, I should 
 run the hazard of depriving myself of the 
 very slender degree of reputation which I 
 could hope to acquire from a trifle like the 
 present undertaking. 
 
 * The translation of Homer by Chapman in the reign 
 ef James I. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The Cicons. — The fruit of the lotos tree. — 
 Polyphemus and the Cyclops. — The kingdom 
 of the winds, and god ^Eolus’s fatal pre- 
 sent. — The Lsestrygonian man-eaters. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The house of Circe.— Men changed into 
 beasts. — The voyage to hell.— The banquet 
 of the dead. - 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 The song of the Sirens. — Scylla and Charybdis. 
 — The oxen of the Sun. — The judgment. 
 — The crew killed by lightning. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 The island of Calypso. — Immortality refused. 
 
 Pag® 
 
 1 
 
 27 
 
 57 
 
 78 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 vi 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Page 
 
 The tempest. — The sea-bird’s gift. — The 
 escape by swimming. — The sleep in the 
 woods. - - - - 88 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 The princess Nausicaa. — The washing. — The 
 game with the ball. — The court of Phxacia 
 and king Alcinous. - - - - 101 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 The songs of Demodocus. — The convoy home. 
 
 — I ll e mariners transformed to stone. — The 
 young shepherd. - - - - -115 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 The change from a king to a beggar. — Eumaeus 
 and the herdsmen. — Telemachus. - - 134 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 The queen’s suitors. — The battle of the beg- 
 gars. — The armour taken down. — The meet- 
 ing with Penelope. - 164 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The madness from above.— — The bow of Ulysses. 
 —The slaughter.— The conclusion. 
 
 18.3 
 
THE 
 
 ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The Cicons. — The fruit of the lotos tree.— 
 Polyphemus and the Cyclops. — The kingdom 
 of the winds, and god /Eohts's fatal present. 
 — The Lcestrygonian man-eaters. 
 
 This history tells of the wanderings of 
 Ulysses and his followers in their return 
 from Troy, after the destruction of that 
 famous city of Asia by the Grecians. He 
 was inflamed with a desire of seeing again, 
 after a ten years absence, his wife and na- 
 tive country Ithaca. He was king of a 
 
2 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 barren spot, and a poor country, in com- 
 parison of the fruitful plains of Asia which 
 he was leaving, or the wealthy kingdoms 
 which he touched upon in his return ; yet 
 w herever he came, he could never see a soil 
 which appeared in his eyes half so sweet or 
 desirable as his country earth. This made 
 him refuse the offers of the goddess Calypso 
 to stay with her, and partake of her im- 
 mortality, in the delightful island ; and 
 this gave him strength to break from the 
 enchantments of Circe the daughter of the 
 Sun. 
 
 From Troy ill winds cast Ulysses and his 
 fleet upon the coast of the Cicons, a people 
 hostile to the Grecians. Landing his 
 forces, he laid siege to their chief city 
 Ismarus, which he took, and with it much 
 spoil, and slew many people. But success 
 proved fatal to him; for his soldiers elated 
 with the spoil, and the good store of pro- 
 visions which they found in that place, fell 
 to eating and drinking, forgetful of their 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 S 
 
 safety, till the Cicons, who inhabited the 
 coast, had time to assemble their friends and 
 allies from the interior, who mustering in 
 prodigious force, set upon the Grecians, 
 while they negligently revelled and feasted, 
 and slew many of them, and recovered the 
 spoil. They dispirited, and thinned in 
 their numbers, with difficulty made their 
 retreat good to the ships. 
 
 Thence they set sail, sad at heart, yet 
 something cheered that with such fearful 
 odds against them they had not all been 
 utterly destroyed. A dreadful tempest en- 
 sued, which for two nights and two days 
 tossed them about, but the third day the 
 weather cleared, and they had hopes of a 
 favourable gale to carry them to Ithaca; 
 but as they doubled the Cape of Malea, 
 suddenly a north wind arising, drove them 
 back as far as Cythera. After that, for the 
 space of nine days, contrary winds con- 
 tinued to drive them in an opposite direc- 
 tion to the point to which they were bound, 
 b 2 
 
* 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 and the tenth day they put in at a shore, 
 where a race of men dwell that are sustain- 
 ed by the fruit of the lotos tree. Here 
 Ulysses sent some of his men to land for 
 fresh water, who were met by certain of the 
 inhabitants, that gave them some of their 
 country food to eat; not with any ill inten- 
 tion towards them, though in the event it 
 proved pernicious ; for having eaten of this 
 fruit, so pleasant it proved to their appetite, 
 that they in a minute quite forgot all 
 thoughts of home, or of their countrymen, 
 or of ever returning back to the ships to 
 give an account of what sort of inhabitants 
 dwelt there, but they would needs stay, 
 and live there among them, and eat of that 
 precious food for ever ; and when Ulysses 
 sent other of his men to look for them, and 
 to bring them hack by force, they strove, 
 and wept, and would not leave their food 
 for heaven itself, so much the pleasure of 
 that enchanting fruit had bewitched them. 
 But Ulysses caused them to be bound hand 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 5 
 
 and foot, and cast under the hatches • and 
 set sail with all possible speed from that 
 baneful coast, lest others after them might 
 
 O 
 
 taste the lotos, which had such strange 
 qualities to make men forget their native 
 country, and the thoughts of home. 
 
 Coasting on all that night by unknown 
 and out of the way shores, they came by 
 day- break to the land where the Cyclops 
 dwell, a sort of giant shepherds, that neither 
 sow nor plough, but the earth untilled pro- 
 duces for them rich wheat and barley and 
 grapes, yet they have neither bread nor 
 wine, nor know the arts of cultivation, nor 
 care to know them : for they live each man 
 to himself, without laws, or government, 
 or any thing like a state or kingdom, 
 but their dwellings are in caves, on the 
 steep heads of mountains, every man’s 
 household governed by his own caprice, or 
 not governed at all, their wives and children 
 as lawless as themselves, none caring for 
 others, but each doing as he or she thinks 
 
6 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 good. Ships or boats they have none, nor 
 artificers to make them, no trade or com- 
 merce, or wish to visit other shores ; yet 
 they have convenient places for harbours 
 and for shipping. Here Ulysses with a 
 chosen party of twelve followers landed, 
 to explore what sort of men dwelt there, 
 whether hospitable and friendly to stran- 
 gers, or altogether wild and savage, for as 
 yet no dwellers appeared in sight. 
 
 The first sign of habitation which they 
 came to was a giant’s cave rudely fashioned, 
 but of a size which betokened the vast pro- 
 portions of its owner, the pillars which sup- 
 ported it being the bodies of huge oaks or 
 pines, in the natural state of the tree, and 
 all about shewed more marks of strength 
 than skill in whoever built it. Ulysses 
 entering in, admired the savage contri- 
 vances and artless structure of the place, 
 and longed to see the tenant of so out- 
 landish a mansion ; but well conjecturing 
 that gifts would have more avail in extract- 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 7 
 
 ing courtesy, than strength could succeed 
 in forcing it, from such a one as he ex- 
 pected to find the inhabitant, he resolved 
 to flatter his hospitality with a present of 
 Greek wine, of which he had store in twelve 
 great vessels; so strong that no one ever 
 drank it without an infusion of twenty 
 parts of water to one of wine, yet the fra- 
 grance of it even then so delicious, that it 
 would have vexed a man who smelled it 
 to abstain from tasting it, but whoever 
 tasted it, it was able to raise his courage to 
 the height of heroic deeds. Taking with 
 them a goat-skin flagon full of this precious 
 liquor, they ventured into the recesses of 
 the cave. Here they pleased themselves a 
 whole day with beholding the giant’s 
 kitchen, where the flesh of sheep and goats 
 lay strewed, his dairy where goat-milk stood 
 ranged in troughs and pails, his pens where 
 he kept his live animals; but those he had 
 driven forth to pasture with him when be 
 went out in the morning. While they 
 
8 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 were feasting their eyes with a sight ot 
 these curiosities, their ears were suddenly 
 deafened with a noise like the falling of a 
 house. It was the owner of the cave who 
 had been abroad all day feeding his flock, 
 as his custom was, in the mountains, and 
 now drove them home in the evening from 
 pasture. He threw down a pile of five- 
 wood, which he had been gathering against 
 supper-time, before the mouth of the cave, 
 which occasioned the crash they heard. 
 The Grecians hid themselves in the remote 
 parts of the cave, at sight of the uncouth 
 monster. It was Polyphemus, the largest 
 and savagest of the Cyclops, who boasted 
 himself to be the son of Neptune. He 
 looked more like a mountain crag than a 
 man, and to his brutal body he had a brutish 
 mind answerable. He drove his flock, all 
 that gave milk, to the interior of the cave, 
 but left the rams and the he-goats without. 
 Then taking up a stone so massy that twenty 
 oxen could not have drawn it, he placed 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 9 
 
 it at tlie mouth of the cave, to defend the 
 entrance, and sat him down to milk his 
 ewes and his goats ; which done, he lastly 
 kindled a fire, and throwing his great eye 
 round the cave (for the Cyclops have no 
 more than one eye, and that placed in the 
 midst of their forehead) by the glimmer- 
 ing light he discerned some of Ulysses’s 
 men. 
 
 “Ho! guests, what are you? merchants 
 or wandering thieves?” he bellowed out in 
 a voice which took from them all power of 
 reply, it was so astounding. 
 
 Only Ulysses summoned resolution to 
 answer, that they came neither for plunder 
 nor traffick, but were Grecians who’ had 
 lost their way, returning from Troy ; which 
 famous city, under the conduct of Aga- 
 memnon, the renowned son of Atreus, they 
 had sacked, and laid level with the ground. 
 Yet now they prostrated themselves humbly 
 before his feet, whom they acknowledged to 
 be mightier than they, and besought him 
 b 5 
 
10 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 that he would bestow the rites of hospi- 
 tality upon them, for that Jove was the 
 avenger of wrongs done to strangers, and 
 would fiercely resent any injury which they 
 might suffer. 
 
 “ Fool,” said the Cyclop, “ to come so 
 far to preach to me the fear of the gods. 
 We Cyclops care not for your Jove, whom 
 you fable to be nursed by a goat, nor any of 
 your blessed ones. We are stronger than 
 they, and dare bid open battle to Jove 
 himself, though you and all your fellows 
 of the earth join with him.” And he bade 
 them tell him where their' ship was, in 
 which they came, and whether they had 
 any companions. But Ulysses with a wise 
 caution, made answer, that they had no 
 ship, or companions, but were unfortunate 
 men whom the sea, splitting their ship in 
 pieces, had dashed upon his coast, and they 
 alone had escaped. He replied nothing, 
 but griping two of the nearest of them, as 
 if they had beep no more than children, he 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 11 
 
 dashed their brains out against the earth, 
 and (shocking to relate) tore in pieces their 
 limbs, and devoured them, yet warm and 
 trembling, making a lion’s meal of them, 
 lapping the blood : for the Cyclops are 
 man-eaters, and esteem human flesh to be a 
 delicacy far above goat’s or kid’s; though by 
 reason of their abhorred customs few men 
 approach their coast, except some stragglers, 
 or now and then a ship-wrecked mariner. 
 At a sight so horrid Ulysses and his men 
 were like distracted people. He, when he 
 had made an end of his wicked supper, 
 drained a draught of goat’s milk down his 
 prodigious throat, and lay down and slept 
 among his goats. Then Ulysses drew his 
 sword, and half resolved to thrust it with 
 all his might in at the bosom of the sleep- 
 ing monster; but wiser thoughts restrained 
 him, else they had there without help all 
 perished, for none but Polyphemus himself 
 could have removed that mass of stone 
 which he had placed to guard the entrance. 
 
12 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 So they were constrained to abide all that 
 night in fear. 
 
 When day came the Cyclop awoke, and 
 kindling a fire, made his breakfast of two 
 other of his unfortunate prisoners, then 
 milked his goats as he was accustomed, 
 and pushing aside the vast stone, and shut- 
 ting it again when he had done, upon the 
 prisoners, with as much ease as a man 
 opens and shuts a quiver’s lid, he let out 
 his flock, and drove them before him v'ith 
 whistlings (as sharp as winds in storms) to 
 the mountains. 
 
 Then Ulysses, of whose strength or cun- 
 ning the Cyclop seems to have had as little 
 heed as of an infant’s, being left alone, 
 With the remnant of his men which the 
 Cyclop had not devoured, gave manifest 
 proof how far manly wisdom excels brutish 
 force. He chose a stake from among the 
 wood which the Cyclop had piled , up for 
 firing, in length and thickness like a mast, 
 which he sharpened and hardened in the 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 13 
 
 fire, and selected four men, and instructed 
 them what they should do with this stake, 
 and made them perfect in their parts. 
 
 When the evening was come, the Cyclop 
 drove home his sheep, and as fortune di- 
 rected it, either of purpose, or that his 
 memory was overruled by the gods to his 
 hurt (as in the issue it proved), he drove 
 the males of his flock, contrary to his cus- 
 tom, along with the dams into the pens. 
 Then shutting to the stone of the cave, he 
 fell to his horrible supper. When he had 
 dispatched two more of the Grecians, 
 Ulysses waxed bold with the contempla- 
 tion of his project, and took a bowl of 
 Greek wine, and merrily dared the Cyclop 
 to drink. 
 
 “Cyclop,” he said, “take a bowl of 
 wine from the hand of your guest : it may 
 serve to digest the- man’s flesh that you 
 have eaten, and shew what drink our ship 
 held before it went down. All I ask in 
 recompence, if you find it good, is to be 
 
14 , 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 dismissed in a whole skin. Truly you must 
 look to have few visitors, if you observe 
 this new custom of eating your guests.” 
 The brute took and drank, and vehe- 
 mently enjoyed the taste of wine, which was 
 new to him, and swilled again at the flagon, 
 and entreated for more, and prayed Ulysses 
 to tell him his name, that he might bestow a 
 gift upon the man who had given him such 
 brave liquor. The Cyclops (he said) had 
 grapes, but this rich juice (he swore) was 
 simply divine. Again Ulysses plied him 
 with the wine, and the fool drank it as fast 
 as he poured out, and again he asked the 
 name of his benefactor, which Ulysses cun- 
 ningly dissembling, said, “ My name is 
 Noman : my kindred and friends in my own 
 country call me Noman.” “ Then,” said 
 the Cyclop, “ this is the kindness I will 
 shew thee, Noman: I will eat thee last of 
 all thy friends.” He had scarce expressed 
 his savage kindness, when the fumes of the 
 strong wine overcame him, and he reeled 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 15 
 
 flown upon the floor, and sank into a dead 
 sleep. 
 
 Ulysses watched his time, while the 
 monster lay insensible, and heartening up 
 his men, they placed the sharp end of the 
 stake in the fire till it was heated red-hot, 
 and some god gave them a courage beyond 
 that which they were used to have, and 
 the four men with difficulty bored the sharp 
 end of the huge stake which they had 
 heated red-hot right into the eye of the 
 drunken cannibal, and Ulj'sses helped to 
 thrust it in with all his might, still further 
 and further, with effort, as men bore with 
 an augre, till the scalded blood gushed 
 out, and the eye-ball snroaked, and the 
 strings of the eye cracked, as the burning 
 rafter broke in it, and the eye hissed, as 
 hot iron hisses when it is plunged into 
 water. 
 
 lie waking, roared with the pain so loud 
 that all the cavern broke into claps like 
 thunder. They fled, and dispersed into 
 
IS THE ADVENTURES 
 
 corners. lie plucked the burning stake 
 from his eye, and hurled the wood madly 
 about the cave. Then he cried out with 
 a might}’ voice for his brethren the Cyclops, 
 that dwelt hard by in caverns upon hills; 
 they hearing the terrible shout came flock- 
 ing from all parts to enquire what ailed 
 Polyphemus? and what cause he had for 
 making such horrid clamours in the rnght- 
 time to break their sleeps? if his fright 
 proceeded from any mortal ? if strength 
 or craft had given him his death's blow ? 
 He made answer from within that Noman 
 had hurt him, Noman had killed him, No- 
 man was with him in the cave. They re- 
 plied, “ If no man has hurt thee, and no 
 man is with thee, then thou art alone, and 
 the evil that afflicts thee is from the hand 
 ef heaven, which none can resist or help.” 
 So they left him and went their way, think- 
 ing that some disease troubled him. He 
 blind and ready to split with the anguish 
 of the pain, went groaning up and down 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 in the dark, to find the door-way, which 
 when lie found, he removed the stone, 
 and sat in the threshold, feeling if he 
 could lay hold on any man, going out 
 with the sheep, which (the day now break- 
 ing) were beginning to issue forth to their 
 accustomed pastures. But Ulysses, whose 
 first artifice in giving himself that ambigu- 
 ous name, had succeeded so well with the 
 Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be 
 caught by that palpable device. But cast- 
 ing about in his mind all the ways which 
 he could contrive for escape (no less than 
 all their lives depending on the success) at 
 last he thought of this expedient. He 
 made knots of the osier twigs upon which 
 the Cyclop commonly slept, with which lie 
 tied the fattest and fleeciest of the rams 
 together, three in a rank, and under the 
 belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and 
 himself last, wrapping himself fast with 
 both his hands in the rich wool of one, the 
 fairest of the flock. 
 
18 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 And now the sheep began to issue forth 
 very fast, the males went first, the females 
 unmilked stood by, bleating and requiring 
 the hand of their shepherd in vain to milk 
 them, their full bags sore with being un- 
 emptied, but he much sorer with the loss 
 of sight. Still as the males passed, he felt 
 the backs of those fleecy fools, never dream- 
 ing that they carried his enemies under 
 their bellies: so they passed on till the last 
 ram came loaded with his wool and Ulys- 
 ses together. He stopped that ram and 
 felt him, and had his hand once in the hair 
 of Ulysses, yet knew it not, and he chid 
 the ram for being last, and spoke to it as 
 if it understood him, and asked it whether 
 it did not w’ish that its master had his eye 
 again, which that abominable Noman with 
 his execrable rout had put out, when they 
 had got him down with wine; and he 
 willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in 
 the cave his enemy lurked, that he might 
 dash his brains and strew them about. 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 19 
 
 to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge 
 which rankled iii it. After a deal of such 
 foolish talk to the beast, he let it go. 
 
 When Ulysses found himself free, lie let 
 go his hold, and assisted in disengaging 
 his friends. The rams which had befriended 
 them they carried off with them to the 
 ships, where their companions with tears 
 in their eyes received them, as men escaped 
 from death. They plied their oars, and set 
 their sails, and when they were got as far 
 off from the shore as a voice would reach, 
 Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop : “ Cyclop, 
 thou should’st not have so much abused 
 thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy 
 guests. Jove by my hand sends thee re- 
 quital to pay thy savage inhumanity.” The 
 Cyclop heard, and came forth enraged, 
 and in his anger he plucked a fragment 
 of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at 
 the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting 
 upon the bark in which Ulysses sat, but 
 with the fall it raised so fierce an ebb, as 
 
20 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 bore back the ship till it almost touched 
 the shore. “Cyclop,” said Ulysses, “if 
 any ask thee who imposed on thee that un- 
 sightly blemish in thine eye, say it Was 
 Ulysses, son of Laertes : the kipg of Ithaca 
 am I called, the waster of cities.” Then 
 they crowded .sail, and beat the old sea, 
 and forth they went with a forward gale; 
 sad for fore-past losses, yet glad to have 
 escaped at any rate; till they came to the 
 isle where /Eolus reigned, who is god of 
 the winds. 
 
 Here Ulysses and his men were courte- 
 ously received by the monarch, who shewed 
 him his twelve children, which have rule 
 over the twelve winds. A month they 
 staid and feasted with him, and at the end 
 of the month he dismissed them with many 
 presents, and gave to Ulysses at parting 
 an ox’s hide, in which were inclosed all 
 the muds: only he left abroad the western 
 wind, to play upon their sails and waft 
 them gently home to Ithaca. This bag 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 21 
 
 bound in a glittering- silver band, so close 
 that no breath could escape, Ulysses hung 
 up at the mast. His companions did not 
 know its contents, but guessed that the 
 monarch bad given to him some treasures 
 of gold or silver. 
 
 Nine days they sailed smoothly, favoured 
 by the western wind, and by the tenth they 
 approached so nigh as to discern lights 
 kindled on the shores of their country 
 earth: when by ill fortune, Ulysses, over- 
 come with fatigue of watching the helm, 
 fell asleep. The mariners seized the op- 
 portunity, and one of them said to the rest : 
 
 A fine time has this leader of ours: 
 ■wherever he goes, he is sure of presents, 
 when we come away empty-handed ; and 
 see, what king jEolus has given him, store 
 no doubt of gold and silver.” A word 
 was enough to those covetous wretches, 
 who quick as thought untied the bag, and 
 instead of gold, out rushed with might's- 
 
22 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 noise all the winds. Ulysses with the noise 
 awoke, and saw their mistake, but too late, 
 for the ship was driving with all the winds 
 back far from Ithaca, far as to the island 
 of iEolus from which they had parted, in 
 one hour measuring back what in nine days 
 they had scarcely tracked, and in sight of 
 home too ! up he flew amazed, and raving 
 doubted whether he should not fling him- 
 self into the sea for grief of his bitter dis- 
 appointment. At last he hid himself under 
 the hatches for shame. And scarce could 
 he be prevailed upon, when he was told 
 that he was arrived again in the har- 
 bour of king yEolus, to go himself or 
 send to that monarch for a second succour; 
 so much the disgrace of having misused 
 his royal bounty (though it was the crime 
 of his followers and not his own) weighed 
 upon him: and when at last he rvent, and 
 took a herald with him, and came where 
 the god sat on his throne, feasting with his 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 children, he would not thrust in among 
 them at their meat, but sat himself down, 
 like one unworthy, in the threshold. 
 
 Indignation seized -.Eolus to behold him 
 in that manner returned, and he said, 
 “Ulysses, what has brought you back? 
 are you so soon tired of your country ? or did 
 not our present please you? we thought 
 we had given you a kingly passport.” 
 Ulysses made answer ; “ My men have 
 done this ill mischief to me: they did it 
 while I slept.” “ Wretch,” said iEolus, 
 “ avaunt, and quit our shores: it fits not 
 us to convoy men whom the gods hate, 
 and will have perish.” 
 
 Forth they sailed, but with far different 
 hopes than when they left the same harbour 
 the first time with all the winds confined, 
 only the west-wind suffered to play upon 
 their sails to waft them in gentle murmurs 
 to Ithaca. They were now the sport of 
 every gale that blew, and despaired of ever 
 seeing home more. Now those covetous 
 
24 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 mariners were cured of their surfeit for 
 gold, and would not have touched it if it 
 had lain in untold heaps before them. 
 
 Six days and nights they drove along, 
 and on the seventh day they put into 
 Lamos, a port of the Lrestrygonians. So 
 spacious this harbour was, that it held with 
 ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor, 
 safe from any storms, all but the ship in 
 which Ulysses was embarked. He, as if 
 prophetic of the mischance which followed, 
 kept still without the harbour, making fast 
 bis bark to a rock at the land’s point, 
 which he climbed with purpose to survey 
 the country. He saw a city with smoke 
 ascending from the roofs, but neither 
 ploughs going,- nor oxen yoked, nor any 
 sign of agricultural works. Making choice 
 of two men, he sent them to the city to 
 explore what sort of inhabitants dwelt there. 
 His messengers had not gone far before 
 they met a damsel, of stature surpassing 
 human, who was coming to draw water 
 
from a spring. They asked her who dwelt 
 in that land. She made no reply, but led 
 them in silence to her father’s palace; He 
 was a monarch, and named Antiphas. He 
 and all his people were giants. When they 
 entered the palace, a woman, the mother 
 of the damsel, but far taller than she, rush- 
 ed abroad and called for Antiphas. He 
 came, and snatching up one of the two 
 men, made as if he would devour him. 
 The other fled. Antiphas raised a mighty 
 shout, and instantly, this w’ay and that, 
 multitudes of gigantic people issued out at 
 the gates, and making for the harbour, 
 tore up huge pieces of the rocks, and flung 
 them at the ships which lay there, all which 
 they utterly overwhelmed and sank ; and 
 the unfortunate bodies of men which float- 
 ed, and which the sea did not devour, these 
 cannibals thrust through with harpoons, 
 like fishes, and bore them off to their dire 
 feast. Ulysses with his single bark that 
 had never entered the harbour escaped; 
 
26 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 that bark which was now the only vessel 
 left of all the gallant navy that hacl set sail 
 with him from Troy. He pushed off from 
 the shore, cheering the sad remnant of his 
 men, whom horror at the sight of their 
 countrymen’s fate had almost turned to 
 marble. 
 
OF ULYSSES, 
 
 Chapter II, 
 
 The house of Circe. — Men changed into beasts, 
 — The voyage to hell. — The banquet of the 
 dead. 
 
 Ox went the single ship till it came to 
 the island of iEsea, where Circe the dread- 
 ful daughter of the Sun dwelt. She was 
 deeply skilled in magic, a haughty Beauty, 
 and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was 
 her parent, and begot her and her brother 
 JEastes (such another as herself) upon Perse, 
 daughter to Oceanus. 
 
 Here a dispute arose among Ulysses’s 
 men, which of them should go ashore and 
 explore the country; for there was a neces- 
 sity that some should go to procure water 
 and provisions, their stock of both being 
 c <2 
 
28 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 nigli spent: but their hearts failed them 
 when they called to mind the shocking 
 fate of their fellows whom the Laestrygo- 
 nians had eaten, and those which the foul 
 Cyclop Polyphemus had crushed between 
 his jaws; which moved them so tenderly 
 in the recollection that they wept. But 
 tears never yet supplied any man’s wants; 
 this Ulysses knew full well, and dividing his 
 men (all that were left) into two companies, 
 at the bead of one of which was himself, 
 and at the head of the other Eurylochus, a 
 man of tried courage, he cast lots which of 
 them should go up into the country, and 
 the lot fell upon Eurylochus and his com- 
 pany, two and twenty in number; who 
 took their leave, with tears, of Ulysses and 
 his men that staid, whose eyes wore the 
 same wet badges of weak humanity, for 
 they surely thought never to see these 
 their companions again, but that on every 
 coast where they should come, they should 
 find nothing but savages and cannibals. 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 29 
 
 Eurylochus and his party proceeded up 
 the country, till in a dale they descried 
 the house of Circe, built of bright stone, 
 by the road’s side. Before her gate lay 
 many beasts, as wolves, lions, leopards, 
 which, by her art, of wild she had ren- 
 dered tame. These arose when they saw 
 strangers, and ramped upon their hinder 
 paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and 
 his men, who dreaded the effects of such 
 monstrous kindness; and staying at the 
 gate they heard the enchantress within, 
 sitting at her loom, singing such strains as 
 suspended all mortal faculties, rvhile she 
 wove a web, subtle and glorious, and of 
 texture inimitable on earth, as all the house- 
 wiferies of the deities are. Strains so 
 ravishingly sweet, provoked even the sagest 
 and prudentest heads among the party to 
 knock and call at the gate. The shining 
 gate the enchantress opened, and bad them 
 come in and feast. They unw ise followed, 
 all but Eurylochus, who staid without the 
 
30 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 gate, suspicious that some train was laid for 
 them. Being- entered, she placed them in 
 chairs of state, and set before them meal 
 and honey, and Smyrna wine; but mixed 
 with baneful drugs of powerful enchant- 
 ment. When they had eaten of these, and 
 drunk of her cup, she touched them with 
 her charming-rod, and straight they were 
 transformed into swine, having the bodies 
 of swine, the bristles, snout, and grunting 
 noise of that animal; only they still re- 
 tained the minds of men, which made them 
 the more to lament their brutish trans- 
 formation. Having changed them, she shut 
 them up in her sty with many more whom 
 her wicked sorceries had formerly changed, 
 and gave them swine’s food, mast, and 
 acorns, and chesnuts, to eat. 
 
 Eurylochus who beheld nothing of these 
 sad changes from where he was stationed 
 without the gate, only instead of his com- 
 panions that entered (who he thought had 
 all vanished by witchcraft) beheld a herd 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 31 
 
 of swine, hurried back to the ship, to give 
 an account of what he had seen : but so 
 frighted and perplexed, that he could give 
 no distinct report of any thing, only he 
 remembered a palace, and a woman singing 
 at her work, and gates guarded by lions. 
 But his companions, he said, were all 
 vanished. 
 
 Then Ulysses suspecting some foul witch- 
 craft, snatched his sword, and his bow, 
 and commanded Eurylochus instantly to 
 lead him to the place. But Eurylochus 
 fell down, and embracing his knees, be- 
 sought him by the name of a man whom 
 the gods had in their protection, not to 
 expose his safety, and the safety of them 
 oat to certain destruction. 
 
 “ Do thou then stay, Eurylochus,'’ 
 answered Ulysses: “eat thou and drink 
 in the ship in safety; while I go alone upon 
 this adventure: necessity, from whose law 
 is no appeal, compels me.” 
 
 So saying, he quitted the ship and 'vent 
 
32 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 on shore, accompanied by none ; none had 
 the hardihood to offer to partake that peril- 
 ous adventure with him, so much they 
 dreaded the enchantments of the witch. 
 Singly he pursued his journey till he came 
 to the shining gates which stood before 
 her mansion : but when he essayed to put 
 his foot over her threshold, he was sud- 
 denly stopt by the apparition of a young 
 man, bearing a golden rod in his hand, 
 who was the god Mercury. He held 
 Ulysses by the wrist, to stay his entrance ; 
 and “ Whither wouldest thou go,” he said, 
 “ O thou most erring of the sons of men ? 
 knowest thou not that this is the house of 
 great Circe, where she keeps thy friety'd, 
 in a loathsome sty, changed from the .->• . 
 forms of men into’ the detestable and ugly 
 shapes of swine ? art thou prepared to share 
 their fate, from which nothing can ransom 
 thee But neither his words, nor his com- 
 ing from heaven, could stop the daring foot 
 of Ulysses, whom compassion for the mis- 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 33 
 
 fortune of his friends had rendered careless 
 of danger : which, when the god perceived, 
 he had pity to see valour so misplaced, and 
 gave him the flower of the herb moly, which 
 is sovereign against enchantments. The 
 moly is a small unsightly root, its virtues 
 but little known, and in low estimation ; 
 the dull shepherd treads on it every day 
 with his clouted shoes: but it bears a small 
 white flower, which is medicinal against 
 charms, blights, mildews, and damps. — 
 “ Take this in thy hand,” said Mercury, 
 “ and with it boldly enter her gates: when 
 she shall strike thee with her rod, thinking 
 to change thee, as she has changed thy 
 friends, boldly rush in upon her with thy 
 sword, and extort from her the dreadful 
 oath of the gods, that she will use no en- 
 chantments against thee: then force her 
 to restore thy abused companions.” He 
 gave Ulvsses the little white flower, and 
 instructing him how to use it, vanished. 
 
 When the god was departed, Ulysses 
 
34 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 with loud knockings beat at the gate of 
 the palace. The shining gates were opened, 
 as before, and great Circe with hospitable 
 cheer invited in her guest. She placed him 
 on a throne with more distinction than she 
 had used to his fellows, she mingled wine 
 in a costly bowl, and he drunk of it, mixed 
 with those poisonous drugs. When he had 
 drunk, she struck him with her charming- 
 rod, and “ To your sty,” she cried, “out, 
 swine; mingle 'with your companions.” 
 But those powerful words were not proof 
 against the preservative which Mercury had 
 given to Ulysses; he remained unchanged, 
 and as the god had directed him, boldly 
 charged the witch with his sword, as if he 
 meant to take her life: which when she saw, 
 and perceived that her charms were weak 
 against the antidote which Ulysses bore 
 about him, she cried out and bent her knees 
 beneath his sword, embracing his, and said, 
 “ Who or what manner of man art thou? 
 Never drank any man before thee of this 
 
OF ULYSSLS. 
 
 cup, but he repented it in some brute’s 
 form. Tby shape remains unaltered as thy 
 mind. Thou canst be none other than 
 Ulysses, renowned above all the world for 
 wisdom, whom the fates have long since 
 decreed that I must love. This haughty 
 bosom bends to thee. O Ithacan, a god- 
 dess wooes thee to her bed.” 
 
 “ O Circe,” he replied, “ how canst then 
 treat of love or marriage with one whose 
 friends thou hast turned into beasts? and 
 now offerest him tby hand in wedlock, 
 only that thou mightest have him in thy 
 power, to live the life of a beast with thee, 
 naked, effeminate, subject to thy will, per- 
 haps to be advanced in time to the honour 
 of a place in thy sty. What pleasure 
 canst thou promise, which may tempt the 
 soul of a reasonable man ? thy meats, spiced 
 with poison ; or thy wines, drugged with 
 death? Thou must swear to me, that thou 
 wilt never attempt against me the treasons 
 which thou hast practised upon my friends.” 
 
96 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 The enchantress, won by the terror of his 
 threats, or by the violence of that new love 
 which she felt kindling in her veins for 
 him, swore by Styx, the great oath of the 
 gods, that she meditated no injury to him. 
 Then Ulysses made shew of gentler treat- 
 ment, which gave her hopes of inspiring 
 him with a passion equal to that which she 
 felt. She called her handmaids, four that 
 served her in chief, who were daughters to 
 her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers, 
 and to her consecrated woods, to deck her 
 apartments, to spread rich carpets, and set 
 out her silver tables with dishes of the 
 purest gold, and meat as precious as that 
 which the gods eat, to entertain her guest. 
 One brought water to wash his feet, and 
 one brought wine to chase away, with a 
 refreshing sweetness, the sorrows that had 
 come of late so thick upon him, and hurt 
 his noble mind. They strewed perfumes 
 on his head, and after he had bathed in a 
 bath of the choicest aromatics they 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 S7 
 
 brought him rich and costly apparel to 
 put on. Then he was conducted to a 
 throne of massy silver, and a regale, fit for 
 Jove when he banquets, was placed before 
 him. But the feast which Ulysses desired 
 was to see his friends (the partners of his 
 voyage) once more in the shapes of men ; 
 and the food which could give him nourish- 
 ment must be taken in at his eyes. Be- 
 cause he missed this sight, he sat melan- 
 choly and thoughtful, and would taste of 
 none of the rich delicacies placed before 
 him. Which when Circe noted, she easily 
 divined the cause of his sadness, and leav- 
 ing the seat in which she sat throned, went 
 to her sty, and let abroad his men, who 
 came in like swine, and filled the ample hall, 
 where Ulysses sat, with grantings. Hardly 
 had he time to let his sad eye run over their 
 altered forms and brutal metamorphosis, 
 when with an ointment which she smeared 
 over them, suddenly their bristles fell off, 
 and they started up in their own shapes 
 men as before, They knew their leader 
 
38 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 again, and clung about him, with joy of 
 their late restoration, and some shame for 
 their late change; and wept so loud, blub- 
 bering out their joy in broken accents, 
 that the palace was filled with a sound of 
 pfeasing mourning, and the witch herself, 
 great Circe, was not unmoved at the sight. 
 To make her atonement complete, she sent 
 for the remnant of Ulysses’s men who staid 
 behind at the ship, giving up their great 
 commander for lost; who when they came, 
 and saw him again alive, circled with their 
 fellows, no expression can tell what joy 
 they felt ; they even cried out with rapture, 
 and to have seen their frantic expressions 
 of mirth, a man might have supposed that 
 they were just in sight of their country 
 earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only 
 Eurylochus would hardly be persuaded 
 to enter that palace of wonders, for he 
 remembered with a kind of horror how 
 his companions had vanished from his 
 sight. 
 
 Then great Circe spake, and gave order, 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 39 
 
 that there should be no more sadness 
 among them, nor remembering of past suf- 
 ferings. For as yet they fared like men 
 that are exiles from their country, and if 
 a gleam of mirth shot among them, it was 
 suddenly quenched with the thought of 
 their helpless and homeless condition. Her 
 kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses 
 and the rest, that they spent twelve months 
 in all manner of delight with her in her 
 palace. For Circe was a powerful magician, 
 and could command the moon from her 
 sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its 
 place to make it dance for their diversion, 
 and by the help of her illusions she could 
 vary the taste of pleasures, and contrive 
 delights, recreations, and jolly pastimes, to 
 “fetch the day about from sun to sun, and 
 rock the tedious year as in a delightful 
 dream.” 
 
 At length Ulysses awoke from the trance 
 of the faculties into which her charms had 
 thrown him, and the thought of home re- 
 
40 
 
 THE ADVENTURE9 
 
 turned with tenfold vigour to goad and 
 sting him; that home where he had left his 
 virtuous wife Penelope, and his young son 
 Ttlemachus. One day when Circe had 
 been lavish of her caresses, and was in her 
 kindest humour, he moved to her subtilly, 
 and as it were afar off, the question of his 
 home-return; to which she answered 
 firmly, “ O Ulysses, it is not in my power 
 to detain one whom the gods have destined 
 to further trials. But leaving me, before 
 you pursue your journey home, you must 
 visit the house of Ades, or Death, to con- 
 sult the shade of Tiresias the Theban pro- 
 phet; to whom alone, of all the dead, Pro- 
 serpine, queen of hell, has committed the 
 secret of future events: it is he that must 
 inform you whether you shall ever see again 
 your wife and country.” “ O Circe,” he 
 cried; “ that is impossible : who shall steer 
 my course to Pluto's kingdom ? .Never 
 ship had strength to make that voyage.” 
 “ Seek no guide,” she replied ; “ but raise 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 41 
 
 you your mast, and hoist your white sails, 
 and sit in your ship in peace: the north 
 wind shall waft you through the seas, till 
 you shall c^oss the expanse of the ocean, 
 and come to where grow the poplar groves, 
 and willows pale, of Proserpine: where 
 Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Ache- 
 ron mingle their waves. Cocytus is an 
 arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig 
 a pit, and make it a cubit broad and a 
 cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, 
 and wine, and the blood of a ram, and the 
 blood of a black ewe, and turn away thy 
 face while thou pourest in, and the dead 
 shall come flocking to taste the milk and 
 the blood: but suffer none to approach thy 
 offering till thou hast enquired of Tiresias 
 all which thou wishest to know.” 
 
 He did as great Circe had appointed. 
 He raised his mast, and hoisted his white 
 sails, and sat in his ship in peace. The 
 north wind wafted him through the seas, 
 till he crossed the ocean, and came to the 
 
i: 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 sacred woods of Proserpine. He stood at 
 tlie confluence of the three floods, and 
 digged a pit, as she had given directions, 
 and poured in his offering; the blood of a 
 ram, and the blood of a black ewe, milk, and 
 honey, and wine ; and the dead came to his 
 banquet: aged men, and women, and youths, 
 and children whodied in infancy. But none 
 of them would he suffer to approach, and dip 
 their thin lips in the offering, till Tireaias was 
 served, not though his own mother was 
 among the number, whom now for the first 
 time he knew to be dead, for he had left her 
 living when he went to Troy, and she had 
 died since his departure, and the tidings 
 never reached him : though it irked his soul 
 to use constraint upon her, yet in compli- 
 ance with the injunction of great Circe, 
 he forced her to retire along with the other 
 ghosts. Then Tiresias, who bore a golden 
 sceptre, came and lapped of the offering, 
 and immediately he knew Ulysses, and 
 began to prophesy : he denounced woe to 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 43 
 
 i Uysses,xvoe, xeoe, and many sufferings, through 
 the anger of Neptune for the putting out of 
 the eye of the sea-god's son. Yet there was 
 safety after suffering, if they coidd abstain 
 from slaughtering the oxen of the Sun after 
 they landed in the Triangular island. For 
 V lyases i the gods had destined him from a king 
 to become a beggar, and to perish by his own 
 gnats, unless he slew those xvho knew him 
 not. 
 
 This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, 
 was all that Tiresias was empowered to un- 
 fold, or else there was no longer place for 
 him ; for now the souls of the other dead 
 came flocking in such numbers, tumultu- 
 ously demanding the blood, that freezing 
 horror seized the limbs of the living 
 Ulysses, to see so many, and all dead, and 
 he the only one alive in that region. Now 
 his mother came and lapped the blood, 
 without restraint from her son, and now 
 she knew him to be her son, and enquired 
 of him why he had come alive to their 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 U 
 
 comfortless habitations. And siie said, 
 that affliction for Ulysses’s long absence 
 had preyed upon her spirits, and brought 
 her to the grave. 
 
 Ulysses’s soul melted at her moving 
 narration, and forgetting the state of the 
 dead, and that the airy texture of disem- 
 bodied spirits do not admit of the embraces 
 of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about 
 her to clasp her : the poor ghost melted 
 from his embrace, and looking mournfully 
 upon him vanished away. 
 
 Then saw he other females. — Tyro, who 
 when she lived was the paramour of Nep- 
 tune, and by him had Pelias, and Neleus, 
 Antiope, who bore two like sons to Jove, 
 Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes. 
 Alcmcna, the mother of Hercules, with 
 her fair daughter, afterwards her daughter- 
 in-law, Megara. There also Ulysses saw 
 Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and wife 
 of CEdipus; who ignorant of kin wedded 
 with her sou, and v hen she had discovered 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 45 
 
 the unnatural alliance, for shame and grief 
 hanged herself. lie continued to drag a 
 wretched life above the earth, haunted by 
 the dreadful Furies. — There was Leda, the 
 wife of Tyndarus, the mother of the 
 beautiful Helen, and of the two brave bro- 
 thers, Castor and Pollux, who obtained 
 this grace from Jove, that being dead, they 
 should enjoy life alternately, living in 
 pleasant places under the earth. For Pol- 
 lux had prayed that his brother Castor, 
 who was subject to death, as the son of 
 Tyndarus, should partake of his own im- 
 mortality’, which he derived from an im- 
 mortal sire: this the Fates denied ; there- 
 fore Pollux was permitted to divide his 
 immortality with his brother Castor, dy- 
 ing and living alternately. — There was 
 Iphimedeia, who bore two sons to Neptune 
 that were giants, Otus and Ephialtes : 
 Earth in her prodigality never nourished 
 bodies to such portentous size and beauty 
 as these two children were of, except 
 
46 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Orion. At nine years old they had ima 
 ginations of climbing to Heaven to see 
 what the gods were doing ; they thought 
 to make stairs of mountains, and were for 
 piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting 
 Pelion upon that, and had perhaps per- 
 formed it, if they had lived till they were 
 striplings ; but they were cut off by death 
 in the infancy of their ambitious project. — 
 Phoedra was there, and Procris, and 
 Ariadne, mournful for Theseus’s deser- 
 tion, and Maera, and Clymene, and Ery- 
 phile, who preferred gold before wedlock- 
 faith. 
 
 But now came a mournful ghost, that 
 late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, the 
 mighty' leader of all the host of Greece 
 and their confederate kings that warred 
 against Troy. He came with the rest to 
 sip a little of the blood at that uncomfort- 
 able banquet. Ulysses was moved with 
 compassion to see him among them, and 
 asked him what untimely fate had brought 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 47 
 
 him there, if storms had overwhelmed him 
 coming from Troy, or if he had perished 
 in some mutiny by his own soldiers at a 
 division of the prey. 
 
 “ By none of these,” he replied, “did I 
 come to my death ; but slain at a banquet 
 to which I was invited by iEgisthus after 
 my return home. He conspiring with my 
 adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my 
 destruction, training me forth to a ban- 
 quet as an ox goes to the slaughter, and 
 there surrounding me they slew me with 
 all my friends about me. 
 
 “ Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, for- 
 getting the vows which she swore to me 
 in wedlock, would not lend a hand to close 
 my eyes in death. But nothing is so 
 heaped with impieties as such a woman, 
 who would kill her spouse that married 
 her a maid. When I brought her home 
 to my house a bride, I hoped in my heart 
 that she would be loving to me and to my 
 children. Now, her black treacheries 
 
48 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 have east a foul aspersion on her whole 
 sex. Blest husbands will have their loving 
 wives in suspicion for her bad deeds.” 
 
 “Alas!” said Ulysses, “ there seems to 
 be a fatality in your royal house of Atreus, 
 and that they are hated of Jove for their 
 wives. For Helen’s sake, your brother 
 Menelaus’s wife, what multitudes fell in 
 the wars of Troy !” 
 
 Agamemnon replied, “For this cause 
 he not'thou more kind than wise to any 
 woman. Let not thy words express to 
 her at any time all that ts in thy mind, 
 keep still some secrets to thyself. But 
 thou by any bloody contrivances of thy 
 wife never needst fear to fall. Exceeding 
 wise she is, and to her wisdom she has a 
 goodness as eminent; Icarius’s daughter, 
 Penelope the chaste : we left her a young 
 bride when we parted from our wives to 
 go to the wars, her first child suckling at 
 her breast, the young Telemac.hus, whom 
 you shall see grown up to manhood on 
 
OB ULYSSES* 
 
 4* 
 
 your return, and he shall greet his father 
 with befitting welcomes. My Orestes, my 
 dear son, I shall never see again. His mo- 
 ther has deprived his father of the sight of 
 him, and perhaps will slay him as she slew 
 his sire. It is now no world to trust a 
 woman in. — But what says fame ? is my 
 son yet alive ? lives he in Orchomen, or 
 in Pylus, or is he resident in Sparta, in his 
 uncle’s court? as yet, I see, divine Orestes 
 is not here with me.” 
 
 To this Ulysses replied that he had re- 
 ceived no certain tidings where Orestes 
 abode, only some uncertain rumours which 
 he could not report for truth. 
 
 While they held this sad conference, 
 with kind tears striving to render unkind 
 fortunes more palatable, the soul of great 
 Achilles joined them. “ What desperate 
 adventure has brought Ulysses to these 
 regions, ” said Achilles, “ to see the end of 
 dead men, and their foolish shades r” 
 Ulysses answered him that he had come 
 
 D 
 
.50 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 to consult Tiresias respecting liis voyage 
 home. “But thou, O son of Thetis,” said 
 he, “ whj' dost thou disparage the state of 
 the dead ? seeing that as alive thou didst 
 surpass all men in glory, thou must needs 
 retain thy pre-eminence here below: so 
 great Achilles triumphs over death.” 
 
 But Achilles made reply, that he had 
 much rather be a peasant-slave upon the 
 earth, than reign over all the dead. So 
 much did the inactivity and slothful con- 
 dition of that state displease his unquench- 
 able and restless spirit. Only he enquired 
 of Ulysses if his father Peleus were living, 
 and how his son Neoptolemus conducted 
 himself. 
 
 Of Peleus Ulysses could tell him nothing; 
 but of Neoptolemus he thus bore witness: 
 “ From Scyros I convoyed your son by sea 
 to the Greeks : where I can speak of him, 
 for I knew him. He was chief in council, 
 and in the field. When any question was 
 proposed, so quick was his conceit in the 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 El 
 
 forward apprehension of any case, that he 
 ever spoke first, and was heard with more 
 attention than the older heads. Only my- 
 self and aged Nestor could compare with 
 him in giving advice. In battle I cannot 
 speak his praise, unless I could count all 
 that fell by liis sword. I will only men- 
 tion one instance of his manhood. When 
 we sat hid in the belly of the wooden 
 horse, in the ambush which deceived the 
 Trojans to their destruction, I, who had 
 the management of that stratagem, still 
 shifted my place from side to side to note 
 the behaviour of our men. In some I 
 marked their hearts trembling, through 
 all the pains which they took to appear 
 valiant, and in others tears, that in spite 
 of manly courage would gush forth. And 
 to say truth, it was an adventure of high 
 enterprise, and as perilous a stake as was 
 ever played in war’s game. But in him I 
 could not observe the least sign of weak- 
 ness, no tears nor tremblings, but his hand 
 
 p 2 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 m 
 
 still on his good sword, and ever urging 
 me to set open the machine and let us out 
 before the time was come for doing it; 
 and when we sallied out he was still first 
 in that fieife destruction and bloody mid- 
 night desolation of king Priam’s city.” 
 
 This made the soul of Achilles to tread 
 a swifter pace, with high-raised feet, as he 
 vanished away, for the joy which he took 
 in his son being applauded by Ulysses. 
 
 A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses 
 knew to be the ghost of Ajax, his op- 
 ponent, when living, in that famous dis- 
 pute about the right of succeeding to the 
 arms of the deceased Achilles. They be- 
 ing adjudged by the Greeks to Ulysses, 
 as the prize of wisdom above bodily 
 strength, the noble Ajax in despite went 
 mad, and slew himself. The sight of his 
 rival turned to a shade by his dispute, so 
 subdued the passion of emulation in Ulys- 
 ses, that for his sake he wished that judg- 
 ment in that controversy had been given 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 53 
 
 against himself, rather than so illustrious 
 a chief should have perished for the desire 
 of those arms, which his prowess (second 
 only to Achilles in fight) so eminently had 
 deserved. “Ajax,” he cried, “ all the' 
 Greeks mourn for thee as much as they 
 lamented for Achilles. Let not thy wrath 
 burn for ever, great son of Telamon. 
 Ulysses seeks peace with thee, and will 
 make any atonement to thee that can ap- 
 pease thy hurt spirit.” But the shade 
 stalked on, and would not exchange a 
 word with Ulysses, though he prayed it 
 with many tears and many earnest en- 
 treaties.. “ He might have spoke to me,” 
 said Ulysses, “since I spoke to him; but 
 I see the resentments of the dead are 
 eternal.” 
 
 Then Ulysses saw a throne on which 
 was placed a judge distributing sentence., 
 He that sat on the throne was Minos, and 
 he was dealing out just judgments to the 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 dead. He it is that assigns them their 
 place in bliss or woe. 
 
 Then came by a thundering ghost, the. 
 large-limbed Orion, the mighty hunter, who 
 was hunting there the ghosts of the beasts 
 which he had slaughtered in desart hills 
 upon the earth. For the dead delight in 
 the occupations which pleased them in 
 the time of their living upon the earth. 
 
 There was Tityus suffering eternal pains 
 because he had sought to violate the 
 honour of Latona as she passed from Pytho 
 into Panopeus. Two vultures sat perpe- 
 tually preying upon his liver with their 
 crooked beaks ; which as fast as they de- 
 voured, is for ever renewed ; nor can he 
 fray them away with his great hands. 
 
 There was Tantalus, plagued for his 
 great sins, standing up to the chin in 
 water, which he can never taste, but still 
 as he bows his head, thinking to quench 
 his burning thirst, instead of water ho 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 55 
 
 ficks up unsavory dust. All fruits plea- 
 sant to the sight, and of delicious flavour, 
 hang in ripe clusters about his head, seem- 
 ing as though they offered themselves to 
 he plucked by him, but when he reaches 
 out his hand, some wind carries them far 
 out of his sight into the clouds : so he is 
 starved in the midst of plenty by the righte- 
 ous doom of Jove, in memory of that ir.- 
 human banquet at which the sun turned 
 pale, when the unnatural father served up 
 the limbs of his little son in a dish, as meat 
 <for his divine guests- 
 
 There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to 
 his labours. His punishment is, to be for 
 ever rolling up a vast stone to the top of a 
 mountain, which when it gets to the top, 
 falls down with a crushing weight, and 
 all his work is to be Jregun again. He 
 was bathed all over in sweat, that reeked 
 out a smoke which covered his head like 
 a mist. His crime had been the revealing’ 
 of state secrets. 
 
THE ADVENTURES- 
 
 5 $ 
 
 There Ulysses saw Hercules : not that 
 Hercules who enjoys immortal life in hea- 
 ven among the gods, and is married to 
 Hebe or Youth ; but his shadow which 
 remains below. About him the dead- 
 flocked as thick as bats, hovering around, 
 and cuffing at his head : he stands with 
 his dreadful bow, ever in the act to 
 shoot. 
 
 There also might Ulysses have seen and 
 spoken with the shades of Theseus, and 
 Pirithous, and the old heroes : but he 
 had conversed enough with horrors : there- 
 fore covering his face with his hands, 
 that he might see no more spectres, he 
 resumed his seat in his ship, and pushed 
 off. The bark moved of itself without 
 the help of any oar, and soon brought 
 him out of the regions of death into the 
 cheerful quarters of the living, and to the 
 island of iEea, whence he had set forth. 
 
Of ULYSSES. 
 
 57 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 The song of the Sirens. — Scylla and Chary b* 
 dis. — The oxen of the Sun. — The judg~ 
 ment. — The crew killed by lightning . 
 
 “Unhappy man, who at thy birth wash 
 appointed twice to die ! others shall die 
 once ; but thou, besides that death that 
 remains for thee, common to all men, hast 
 in thy life-time visited the shades of death. 
 Thee Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect. Thee 
 the deathful Sirens lie in wait for, that 
 taint the minds of whoever listen to them 
 with their sweet singing. Whosoever shall 
 but hear the call of any Siren, he will so 
 despise both wife and children through 
 their sorceries, that the stream of his af-- 
 D 5 
 
5 8 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 fection never again shall set homewards, 
 nor shall he take joy in wife or children 
 thereafter, or they in him.” 
 
 With these prophetic greetings great 
 Circe met Ulysses on his return. He be- 
 sought her to instruct him in the nature 
 of the Sirens, and by what method their 
 baneful allurements were to be resisted.. 
 
 “ They are sisters three,” she replied, 
 “ that sit in a mead (by which your ship 
 must needs pass) circled with dead men’s 
 bones. These are the bones of men whom 
 they have slain, after with fawning invite- 
 ments they have enticed them into their 
 fen. Yet such is the celestial harmony of 
 their voice accompanying the persuasive 
 magic of their words, that knowing this, 
 you shall not be able to withstand their 
 enticements. Therefore when you are to 
 sail by them, you shall stop the ears of 
 your companions with wax, that they may 
 hear no note of that dangerous music ; 
 but for yourself, that you may hear, and 
 
OF ULYSSES. 5 $ 
 
 yet live, give them strict command to bind 
 you hand and foot to the mast, and in no 
 case to set you free, till you are out of the 
 danger of the temptation, though you 
 should entreat it, and implore it ever so 
 much, but to bind you rather the more 
 for your requesting to be loosed. So shall 
 you escape that snare.” 
 
 Ulysses then prayed her that she would 
 inform him what Scylla and Charybdis 
 were, which she had taught him by name 
 to fear. She replied : “ Sailing from fEea 
 to Trinacria, you must pass at an equal 
 distance between two fatal rocks. Incline 
 never so little either to the one side or the 
 other, and your ship must meet with cer- 
 tain destruction. No vessel ever yet tried 
 that pass without being lost, but the Argo, 
 which owed her safety to the sacred freight 
 she bore, the fleece of the golden-backed 
 ram, which could not perish. The biggest 
 of these rocks which you shall come to 
 Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep, 
 
60 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 whirlpool at the foot of the roek the ab- 
 horred monster shrouds her face; who if she 
 were to shew her full form, no eye of man 
 or god could endure the sight : thence she 
 stretches out all her six long necks peering 
 and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog- 
 fish, and whales, whole ships, and their 
 men, whatever comes within her raging 
 gulf. The other rock is lesser, and of less 
 ominous aspect; but there dreadful Charyb- 
 dis sits, supping the black deeps. Thrice 
 a day she drinks her pits dry,, and thrice 
 a day again she belches them all up : but 
 when she is drinking, come not nigh, for 
 being once caught, the force of Neptune 
 cannot redeem you from her swallow.. 
 Better trust to Scylla, for she will but have 
 for her six necks six men : Charybdis in 
 her insatiate draught will ask all.” 
 
 Then Ulysses enquired, in case he should 
 escape Charybdis, whether he might not 
 assail that other monster with his sword : 
 to which she replied that he must not 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 61 
 
 think that he had an enemy subject to 
 death, or wounds, to contend with : for 
 Scylla could never die. Therefore, his 
 best safety was in fight, and to invoke 
 none of the gods but Gratis, who is Scylla’s 
 mother, and might perhaps forbid her 
 daughter to devour them. For his con- 
 duct after he arrived at Trinacria she re- 
 ferred him to the admonitions which had 
 been given him by Tiresias. 
 
 Ulysses having communicated her in- 
 structions, as far as related to the Sirens,, 
 to his companions, who had not been pre- 
 sent at that interview ; but concealing 
 from them the rest, as he had done the 
 terrible predictions of Tiresias, that they 
 might not be deterred by fear from pur- 
 suing their voyage : the time for departure 
 being come, they set their sails, and took 
 a final leave of great Circe ; who by her 
 art calmed the heavens, and gave them 
 smooth sea's,, and a right fore wind (the 
 
62 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 seaman’s friend) to bear them on their way 
 to Ithaca. 
 
 They had not sailed past an hundred 
 leagues before the breeze which Circe had 
 lent them suddenly stopped. It was 
 stricken dead. All the sea lay in prostrate 
 slumber. Not a gasp of air could be felt. 
 The ship stood still. Ulysses guessed that 
 the island of the Sirens was not far off, 
 and that they had charmed the air so with 
 their devilish singing. Therefore he made 
 him cakes of wax, as Circe had instructed 
 him, and stopped the ears of his men 
 with them : then causing himself to be 
 hound hand and foot, he commanded the 
 rowers to ply their oars and row as fast as- 
 speed could carry them past that fatal 
 shore. They soon came within sight of 
 the Sirens, who sang in Ulysses’s hearing : 
 
 Come here, thou, worthy of a world of praise. 
 
 That dost so high the-Grecian glory raise j 
 
OF ULYSSES, 
 
 6$ 
 
 Ulysses!- stay thy ship j and that song hear 
 That none past ever, but it bent his ear. 
 
 But left him ravish’d, and instructed more 
 By us, than any, ever heard before. 
 
 For we know all things, whatsoever were 
 In wide Troy labour’d ; whatsoever there 
 The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain’d. 
 
 By those high issues that the gods ordain’d : 
 
 And whatsoever all the earth can show 
 To inform a knowledge of desert, we know. 
 
 These were the words, but the celestial 
 harmony of the voices which sang them 
 no tongue can describe : it took the ear 
 of Ulysses with ravishment. He would 
 have broke his bouds to rush after them; 
 and threatened, wept, sued, entreated, 
 commanded, crying out with tears and 
 passionate imprecations, conjuring his men 
 by all the ties of perils past which they had 
 endured in common, by fellowship and 
 love, and the authority which he retained 
 among them, to let him loose ; but at no 
 rate would they obey him. And still the 
 Sirens-sang. Ulysses made signs, motions, 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 64 * 
 
 gestures, promising mountains of gold if 
 they would set him free ; but their oars 
 only moved faster. And still the Sirens- 
 sung. And still the more he adjured them 
 to set him free, the faster with cords ancf 
 ropes they bound him ; till they were quite 
 out of hearing of the Sirens’ notes, whose 
 effect great Circe had so truly predicted. 
 And well she might speak of them, for 
 often she had joined her own enchanting 
 voice to theirs, while she has sat in the 
 flowery meads, mingled with the Sirens- 
 and the Water Nymphs, gathering their 
 potent herbs and drugs of magic quality : 
 their singing all together has made the 
 gods stoop, and “ heaven drowsy with the 
 harmony. ” 
 
 Escaped that peril, they had not sailed 
 yet an hundred leagues further, when they 
 heard a roar afar off, which Ulysses knew 
 to be the barking of Scylla’s dogs, 
 which surround her waist, arid bark inces- 
 santly. Coming nearer they beheld a 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 65 
 
 smoke ascend, with a horrid murmur, 
 which arose from that other whirlpool, to 
 which they made nigher approaches than 
 to Scylla. Through the furious eddy, 
 which is in that place, the ship stood still 
 as a stone, for there was no man to lend 
 his hand to an oar, the dismal roar of 
 Scylla’s dogs at a distance, and the nearer 
 clamours of Charybdis, where every thing: 
 made an echo, quite taking from them the 
 power of exertion. Ulysses went up and 
 down encouraging his mep, one by one, 
 giving them good words, telling them that 
 they were in greater perils when they were 
 blocked up in the Cyclop’s cave, yet, hea- 
 ven assisting his counsels, he had delivered 
 them out of that extremity. That he 
 could not believe but they remembered it; 
 and wished them to give the same trust to 
 the same care which he had now for their 
 welfare. That they must exert all the 
 strength and wit which they had, and try* 
 if Jove would not grant them an escape 
 
THE ADVENTSRE5 
 
 £6 
 
 even out of this peril. In particular h«r 
 cheered up the pilot who sat at the helm* 
 and told him that he must shew more firm- 
 ness than other men, as he had more trust 
 committed to him, and had the sole ma- 
 nagement by his skill of the vessel in which 
 all their safeties were embarked. That a 
 rock lay hid within those boiling whirl- 
 pools which he saw, on the outside of 
 which he must steer, if he would avoid his 
 own destruction, and the destruction of 
 them. all. 
 
 They heard him, and like men took to 
 the oars: but little knew what opposite 
 danger, ia shunning that rock,, they must 
 be thrown upon. For Ulysses had con- 
 cealed from them the wounds, never to be 
 healed, which Scylla was to open: their 
 terror would else have robbed them all of 
 all care to steer, or move an oar, and have 
 made them hide under the hatches, for 
 fear of seeing her, where he and they must 
 have died an idle death. But even then 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 61 
 
 lie forgot the precautions which Circe had 
 given him to prevent harm to his person ; 
 who had willed him not to arm, or shew 
 himself once to Scylla : but disdaining not 
 to venture life for his brave companions, 
 he could not contain, but armed in all 
 points, and taking a lance in either hand, 
 he went up to the fore deck, and looked 
 when Scylla would appear. 
 
 She did not shew herself as yet, and still 
 the vessel steered closer by her rock, as it 
 sought to shun that other more dreaded : 
 for they saw how 'horribly Charybdis’s 
 black throat drew into her all the whirling 
 deep, which she disgorged again, that all 
 about her boiled like a kettle, and the rock 
 roared with troubled waters ; which when 
 she supped in again, all the bottom turned 
 up, and disclosed far under shore the 
 swart sands naked, whose whole stern sight 
 frayed the startled blood from their faces,, 
 and made Ulysses turn his to view the 
 wonder of whirlpools. Which when Scylla 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 saw, from out her black den, she darted 
 out her six long necks, and swoopt up as- 
 many of his friends: whose cries Ulysses- 
 heard, and saw them too late, with their 
 heels turned up, and their hands thrown to 
 him for succour, who had been their help 
 in all extremities, but Could not deliver' 
 them now; and he heard them shriek out, 
 L. she tore them,, and to the last they con- 
 tinued to throw their hands out to him for 
 sweet life. In all his sufferings he never' 
 had beheld a sight so full of miseries.. 
 
 Escaped from Scylla and Charybdis, but 
 with a diminished crew, Ulysses and the 
 sad remains of his followers reached the 
 Trinacrian shore. Here landing he beheld 
 oxen grazing of such surpassing size and 
 beauty, that both from them, and from; 
 the shape of the island (having three pro- 
 montories jutting into the sea) he judged 
 rightly that he was come to the Triangular 
 island, and the oxen of the Sun, of which* 
 Tiresias had forewarned him. 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 69 
 
 So great was his terror lest through his 
 own fault, or that of his men, any violence 
 or profanation should be offered to the holy 
 oxen, that even then, tired as they were 
 with the perils and fatigues of the day past, 
 and unable to stir an oar, or use any exer- 
 tion, and though night was fast coming on, 
 he would have had them re-embark im- 
 mediately, and make the best of their way 
 from that dangerous station; but his men 
 with one voice resolutely opposed it, and 
 even the too cautious Eurylochus himself 
 withstood the proposal ; so much did the 
 temptation of a little ease and refreshment 
 (ease tenfold sweetafter such labours) prevail 
 above the sagest counsels, and the appre- 
 hension of certain evil outweigh the pros- 
 pect of contingent danger. They expos- 
 tulated, that the nerves of Ulysses seemed 
 to be made of steel, and his limbs not liable 
 to lassitude like other men’s ; that waking 
 or sleeping seemed indifferent to him ; but 
 that they were men, not gods, and felt the 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 common appetites for food and sleep. 
 That in the night-time all the winds most 
 destructive to ships are generated. That 
 black night still required to be served with 
 meat, and sleep, and quiet havens, and 
 ease. That the best sacrifice to the sea was 
 in the morning. With such sailor-like 
 sayings and mutinous arguments, which 
 the majority have always ready to justify 
 disobedience to their betters, they forced 
 Ulysses to comply with their requisition, 
 and against his will to take up his night- 
 quarters on shore. But he first exacted 
 from them an oath that they would neither 
 maim nor kill any of the cattle which they 
 saw grazing, but content themselves with 
 such food as Circe had stowed their vessel 
 with when they parted from JEe a. This 
 they man by man severally promised, im- 
 precating the heaviest curses on whoever 
 should break it ; and mooring their bark 
 within a creek, they went to supper, con- 
 tenting themselves that night with such 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 7! 
 
 food as Circe had given them, not without 
 many sad thoughts of their friends whom 
 Scylla had devoured, the grief of which 
 kept them great part of the night wak- 
 ing. 
 
 In the morning Ulysses urged them 
 again to a religious observance of the oath 
 that they had sworn, not in any case to 
 attempt the blood of those fair herds which 
 they saw grazing, but to content them- 
 selves with the ship’s food ; for the god 
 who owned those cattle sees and hears 
 all. 
 
 They faithfully obeyed, and remained 
 in that good mind for a month, during 
 which they were confined to that station 
 by contrary winds, till all the wine and 
 the bread was gone, which they had brought 
 with them. When their victuals were gone, 
 necessity compelled them to stray in quest 
 of whatever fish or fowl they could snare, 
 which that coast did not yield in any great 
 abundance. Then Ulysses prayed to all 
 
72 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 the gods that dwell in bountiful heaven, 
 that they would be pleased to yield them 
 some means to stay their hunger with- 
 out having recourse to profane and for- 
 bidden violations ; but the ears of heaven 
 ■seemed to be shut, or some god incensed 
 plotted his ruin ; for at mid-day, when he 
 should chiefly have been vigilant and 
 watchful to prevent mischief, a deep sleep 
 fell upon the eyes of Ulysses, during which 
 he lay totally insensible of all that passed 
 in the world, and what his friends or what 
 his enemies might do, for his welfare or 
 destruction. Then Eurylochus took his 
 advantage. He was the man of most 
 authority with them after Ulysses. He 
 represented to them all the misery of their 
 condition ; how that every death is hateful 
 and grievous to mortality, but that of all 
 deaths famine is attended with the most 
 painful, loathsome, and humiliating cir- 
 cumstances ; that the subsistence which 
 they could hope to draw from fowling or 
 
OF OLTSSKS. 
 
 75 
 
 fishing was too precarious to be depended 
 upon ; that there did not seem to be any 
 chance of the winds changing to favour 
 their escape, but that they must inevitably 
 stay there and perish, if they let an irra- 
 tional superstition deter them from the 
 means which nature offered to their hands; 
 that Ulysses might be deceived in his 
 belief that these oxen had any sacred 
 qualities above other oxen ; and even ad- 
 mitting that they were the property of the 
 god of the Sun, as he said they were, the 
 Sun did neither eat nor drink, and the gods 
 were best served not by a scrupulous con- 
 science, but by a thankful heart, which 
 took freely what they as freely offered : 
 with these and such like persuasions he 
 prevailed on his half-famished and half- 
 mutinous companions, to begin the impious 
 violation of their oath by the slaughter of 
 seven of the fairest of these oxen which 
 were grazing. Part they roasted and ate, 
 and part they offered in sacrifice to the 
 E 
 
T4 the adventures 
 
 gods, particularly to Apollo, god of the 
 Sun, vowing to build a temple to his god- 
 head, when they should arrive in Ithaca, 
 and deck it with magnificent and numerous 
 gifts : Vain men ! and superstition worse 
 than that which they so lately derided ! to 
 imagine that prospective penitence can ex- 
 cuse a present violation of duty, and that 
 the pure natures of the heavenly powers 
 will admit of compromise or dispensation 
 for sin. 
 
 But to their feast they fell, dividing the 
 roasted portions of the flesh, savoury and 
 pleasant meat to them, but a sad sight to 
 the eyes, and a savour of death in the nos- 
 trils, of the waking Ulysses; who just woke 
 in time to witness, but not soon enough to 
 prevent, their rash and sacrilegious banquet. 
 He had scarce time to ask what great mis- 
 chief was this which they had done unto 
 him: when behold, a prodigy ! the ox-hides 
 which they had stripped, began to creep, as 
 if they had life; and the roasted flesh bel- 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 75 
 
 lowed as the ox used to do when he was 
 living. The hair of Ulysses stood up an 
 end with affright at these omens ; but his 
 companions, like men whom the gods had 
 infatuated to their destruction, persisted in 
 their horrible banquet. 
 
 The Sun from his burning chariot saw 
 how Ulysses’s men had slain his oxen, and 
 he cried to his father Jove, “ Revenge me 
 upon these impious men who have slain my 
 oxen, which it did me good to look upon 
 when I walked my heavenly round. In 
 all my daily course I never saw such bright 
 and beautiful creatures as those my oxen 
 were.” The father promised that ample 
 retribution should be taken of those ac- 
 cursed men : which was fulfilled shortly 
 after, when they took their leaves of the 
 fatal island. 
 
 Six days they feasted in spite of the 
 signs of heaven, and on the seventh, the 
 w ind changing, they set their sails and left 
 
 e : 2 
 
76 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 the island ; and their hearts were cheerful 
 with the banquets they had held ; all but 
 the heart of Ulysses, which sank within 
 him, as with wet eyes he beheld bis friends, 
 and gave them for lost, as. men devoted to 
 divine vengeance. Which soon overtook 
 them : for they had not gone many leagues 
 before a dreadful tempest arose, which 
 burst their cables ; down came their mast, 
 crushing the scull of the pilot in its fall; 
 off he fell from the stern into the water, 
 and the bark wanting his management 
 drove along at the wind’s mercy : thunders 
 roared, and terrible lightnings of Jove came 
 down : first a bolt struck Eurylochus, then 
 another, and thefi another, till all the crew 
 were killed, and their bodies swam about 
 like sea-mews; and the ship was split in 
 pieces : only Ulysses survived ; and he had 
 no hope of safety but in tying himself to 
 the mast, where he sat riding upon the 
 waves, like one that in no extremity would 
 
OF ULYSSKS. 
 
 TY 
 
 yield to fortune. Nine clays was be float- 
 ing about with all the motions of the sea, 
 with no other support than the slender 
 mast under him, till the tenth night cast 
 him, all spent and weary with toil, upon 
 the friendly shores of the island Ogygia. 
 
78 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 The Island of Calypso. — Immortality re- 
 fused . 
 
 Henceforth the adventures of the 
 single Ulysses must be pursued. Of all 
 those faithful partakers of his toil, who 
 with him left Asia, laden with the spoils of 
 Troy, now not one remains, but all a prey 
 to the remorseless waves, and food for 
 some great fish : their gallant navy reduced 
 to one ship, and that finally swallowed up 
 and lost. Where now are all their anxious 
 thoughts of home ? that perseverance with 
 which they went through the severest suf- 
 ferings and the hardest labours to which 
 poor sea-farers were ever exposed, that 
 their toils at last might be crowned with the 
 
OF ULYSSCS. 
 
 79 
 
 sight of their native shores anti wives at 
 Ithaca ! — Ulysses is now in the isle Ogygia ; 
 called the Delightful Island. The poor ship- 
 wrecked chief’, the slave of all the elements, 
 is once again raised by the caprice of for- 
 tune into a shadow of prosperity. He 
 that was cast naked upon the shore, bereft 
 of all bis companions, has now a goddess 
 to attend upon him, 'and his companions 
 are the nymphs which never die. — Who 
 has not heard of Calypso? her grove 
 crowned with alders and poplars? her 
 grotto, against which the luxuriant vine 
 laid forth his purple grapes? her ever 
 new delights, chrystal fountains, running 
 brooks, meadows flowering with sweet 
 balm-gentle and with violet: blue violets 
 which like veins enameled the smooth 
 breasts of each fragrant mead ! It were use- 
 less to describe over again what has been 
 so well told already: or to relate those 
 soft arts of courtship which the goddess 
 used to detain Ulysses ; the same in kind 
 
80 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 which she afterwards practised upon hi.-> 
 less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape 
 Of Mentor, hardly preserved from her 
 snares, when they came to the Delightful 
 Island together in search of the scarce de- 
 parted Ulysses. 
 
 A memorable example of married love, 
 and a worthy instance how dear to every 
 good man his country is, was exhibited by 
 Ulysses. If Circe loved him sincerely, 
 Calypso loves him with tenfold more 
 warmth and passion: she can deny him 
 nothing, but his departure; she offers him 
 every thing, even to a participation of her 
 immortality: if he will stay and share in 
 her pleasures, he shall never die. But 
 death with glory has greater charms for a 
 mind heroic, than a life that shall never die 
 with shame; and when he pledged his 
 vows to his Penelope, he reserved no stipu- 
 lation that he would forsake her whenever 
 a goddess should think him worthy of her 
 bed, but they had sworn to live and grow 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 8l 
 
 old together: and he would not survive 
 her if he could, nor meanly share in im- 
 mortality itself, from which she was ex- 
 cluded. 
 
 These thoughts kept him pensive and 
 melancholy in the midst of pleasure. His 
 heart was on the seas, making voyages to 
 Ithaca. Twelve months had worn away, 
 when Minerva from heaven saw her fa- 
 vorite, how he sat still pining on the sea 
 shores (his daily custom), wishing for a- 
 ship to carry him home. She (who is w’is- 
 dom herself) was indignant that so wise 
 and brave a man as Ulysses should be held 
 in effeminate bondage by an unworthy 
 goddess : and at her request, her father 
 Jove ordered Mercury to go down to the 
 earth to command Calypso to dismiss her 
 guest. The divine messenger tied fast to 
 his feet his winged shoes-, which, bear him 
 over land and seas, and took in his hand 
 his golden rod, the ensign of his authority. 
 Then wheeling in many an airy round, he 
 e 5 
 
82 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 stayed not till he alighted on the firm top 
 of the mountain Pieria : thence he fetched 
 a second circuit over the seas, kissing the 
 waves in his flight with his feet, as light 
 as any sea-mew fishing dips her wings, till 
 he touched the isle Ogygia, and soared up 
 from the blue sea to the grotto of the god- 
 dess, to whom his errand was ordained. 
 
 His message struck a horror, checked 
 by love, through all the faculties of Calypso. 
 She replied to it, incensed: “You gods 
 are insatiate, past all that live, in all things 
 which you affect ; which makes you so 
 envious and grudging. It afflicts you to 
 the heart, when any goddess seeks the 
 love of a mortal man in marriage, though 
 you yourselves without scruple link your- 
 selves to women of the earth. So it fared 
 with you, when the delicious-fingered 
 Morning shared Orion’s bed ; you could 
 never satisfy your hate and your jealousy, 
 till you had incensed the chastity-loving 
 dame, Diana, who leads the precise life , to 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 83 
 
 come upon him by stealtli in Ortygia, and 
 pierce him through with her arrows. And 
 when rich-haired Ceres gave the reins to her 
 affections, and took Iasion (well worthy) 
 to her arms, the secret was not so cun- 
 ningly kept but Jove had soon notice of it, 
 and the poor mortal paid for his felicity 
 with death, struck through with light- 
 nings. And now you envy me the pos- 
 session of a wretched man, whom tempests 
 have cast upon my shores, making him 
 lawfully mine; whose ship Jove rent in. 
 pieces with his hot thunderbolts, killing 
 all his friends. Him I have preserved, 
 loved, nourished, made him mine by pro- 
 tection, iny creature, by every tie of gra- 
 titude mine ; have vowed to make him 
 deathless like myself; him you will take 
 from me. But I know your power, and 
 that it is vain for me to resist. Tell your 
 king that I obey his mandates.” 
 
 With an ill grace Calypso promised to 
 fulfil the commands of Jove ; and, Mercury 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 81 
 
 departing, she went to find Ulysses, where 
 he sat outside the grotto, not knowing of 
 the heavenly message, drowned in discon- 
 tent, not seeing any human probability of 
 his ever returning home. 
 
 She said to him: “Unhappy man, no 
 longer afflict yourself with pining after 
 your country, but build you a ship, with 
 which you may return home; since it is 
 the will of the gods : who doubtless as they 
 are greater in power than I, are greater in 
 skill, and best can tell what is fittest for 
 man. But I call the gods, and my in- 
 ward conscience, to witness, that I had no 
 thought but what stood with thy safety, 
 nor would have done or counselled any 
 thing against thy good. I persuaded thee 
 to nothing which I should not have fol- 
 lowed myself in thy extremity : for my 
 mind is innocent and simple. O, if thou 
 knewest what dreadful sufferings thou 
 must yet endure, before ever thou reachest 
 thy native laud, thou wouldest not esteem 
 
OF ULTSSES. 85 
 
 so hardly of a goddesses offer to share her 
 immortality with thee; nor, for a few 
 years enjoyment of a perishing Penelope, 
 refuse an imperishable and never-dying 
 life with Calypso.” 
 
 He replied: “ Ever- honoured, great 
 Calypso, let it not displease thee, that I 
 a mortal man desire to see and converse 
 again with a wife that is mortal: hr, man 
 objects are best fitted to human infirmities. 
 I well know how far in wisdom, in feature, 
 in stature, proportion, beauty, in all the 
 gifts of the mind, thou exceedest my Pe- 
 nelope : she a mortal, and subject to decay ; 
 thou immortal, ever growing, yet never 
 old : .yet in her sight all my desires termi- 
 nate, all my wishes ; in the sight of her, 
 and of my country earth. If any god, 
 envious of my return, shall lay his dread- 
 ful hand upon me as I pass the seas, I sub- 
 mit : for the same powers have given me 
 a mind not to sink under oppression. In 
 
86 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 wars and waves my sufferings have not 
 been small.” 
 
 She heard his pleaded reasons, and of 
 force she must assent ; so to her nymphs 
 she gave in charge from her sacred woods 
 to cut down timber, to make Ulysses a 
 ship. They obeyed, though in a work 
 unsuitable to their soft fingers, yet to 
 obedience no sacrifice is hard : and Ulysses 
 busily bestirred himself, labouring far moj e 
 hard than they, as was fitting, till twenty 
 tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, 
 were felled. Then like a skilful ship- 
 wright, he fell to joining the planks, using 
 the plane, the axe, and the auger, with 
 such expedition, that in four days’ time a 
 ship was made, complete with all her 
 decks, hatches, side-boards, yards. Calypso 
 added linen for the sails, and tackling ; 
 and when she was finished, she was a goodly 
 vessel for a man to sail in alone, or in 
 company, over the wide seas. By the fifth 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 87 
 
 morning she was launched ; and Ulysses, 
 furnished with store of provisions, rich 
 garments, and gold and silver, given him 
 by Calypso, tdok a last leave of her, and 
 of her nymphs, and of the isle Ogygia 
 which had so befriended him. 
 
88 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 The tempest. — The sea-bird's gift. — The 
 escape by stemming. — The sleep in the 
 woods. 
 
 At the stern of his solitary ship Ulysses 
 sat, and steered right artfully. No sleep 
 could seize his eye-lids. He beheld the 
 Pleiads, the Bear which is by some called 
 the Wain, that moves round about Orion, 
 and keeps still above the ocean, and the 
 slow-setting sign Bootes, which some name 
 the Waggoner. Seventeen days he held 
 his course, and on the eighteenth the coast 
 ofPhasacia was in sight. The figure of 
 the land, as seen from the sea, was pretty 
 and circular, and looked something like a 
 shield. 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 89 
 
 Neptune returning from visiting his fa- 
 vourite Ethiopians, from the mountains 
 of the Solymi, descried Ulysses ploughing 
 the waves, his domain. The sight of the 
 man he so much hated for Polyphemus’s 
 sake, his son, whose eye Ulysses had put 
 out, set the god’s heart on fire; and 
 snatching into his hand his horrid sea- 
 sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote 
 the air and the sea, and conjured up all his 
 black storms, calling down night from the 
 cope of heaven, and taking the earth into 
 the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through 
 the darkness and indistinctness which pre- 
 vailed, the bdlows rolling up before the 
 fury of all the winds, that contended to- 
 gether in their mighty sport. 
 
 Then the knees of Ulysses bent with 
 fear, and then all his spirit was spent, and 
 he wished that he had been among the 
 number of his coumrymen who fell before 
 Troy, aud had their funerals celebrated by 
 all the Greeks, rather than to perish thus, 
 
so 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 where no nun could mourn him or know 
 him. 
 
 As he thought these melancholy 
 thoughts, a huge wave took him and 
 washed him overboard, ship and all upset 
 amidst the billows, he struggling afar oft', 
 clinging to her stern broken off which he 
 yet held, her mast cracking in two with 
 the fury of that gust of mixed tvinds that 
 struck it, sails and sail-yards fell into the 
 deep, and he himself was long drowned 
 under water, nor could get his head 
 above, wave so met with wave, as if 
 they strove which should depress him 
 most, and the gorgeous garments given 
 him by Calypso citing about him, and 
 hindered his stvimming: yet neither for 
 this, nor for the overthrow of his ship, nor 
 his own perilous condition, -would he give 
 up his drenched vessel, but, wrestling with 
 Neptune, got at length hold of her again, 
 and then sat iu her bulk, insulting over 
 death, which he had escaped, and the salt 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 91 
 
 ■waves which he gave the sea again to give 
 to other men : his ship, striving to live, 
 floated at random, cuffed from wave to 
 wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds, 
 now Boreas tossed it to Notus, Notus pass- 
 ed it to Eurus, and Eurus to the west wind, 
 who kept up the horrid tennis. 
 
 Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea 
 beheld ; Ino Leucothea, now a sea-goddess, 
 but once a mortal and the daughter of 
 Cadmus ; she with pity beheld Ulysses the 
 mark of their fierce contention, and rising 
 from the waves alighted on the ship, in 
 shape like to the sea-bird which is called a 
 cormorant, and in her beak she held a won- 
 derful girdle made of sea-weeds which grow 
 at the bottom of the ocean, which she dropt 
 at his feet, and the bird Spake to Ulysses, 
 and counselled him not to trust anj' more to 
 that fatal vessel against which god Neptune 
 had levelled his furious wrath, nor to those 
 ill-befriending garments which Calypso 
 had given him, but to quit both it and 
 them and trust for his safety to swimming. 
 
62 THE Adventures 
 
 “ And here,” said the seeming bird, “take 
 this girdle and tie about your middle, 
 which has virtue to protect the wearer at 
 sea, and you shall safely reach the shore;, 
 but when you have landed, cast it far from 
 you back into the sea.” He did as the 
 sea-bird instructed him, he stripped him- 
 self naked, and fastening the wondrous 
 girdle about his middle, cast himself into 
 the seas to swim. The bird dived past his> 
 sight into the fathomless abyss of the 
 ocean. 
 
 Two days and two nights he spent in? 
 struggling with the waves, though sore 
 buffeted, and almost spent, never giving 
 up himself for lost, such confidence he had 
 in that charm which he wore about his 
 middle, and in the words of that divine bird. 
 But the third morning the winds grew 
 calm and all the heav ens were clear. Then 
 he saw himself nigh land, which he knew to 
 be the coast of the Phasacians, a people good 
 to strangers, and abounding in ships, by 
 whose favor he doubted net that he should 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 93 
 
 «oon obtain a passage to his own country. 
 And such joy he conceived in his heart, as 
 good sons have, that esteem their father’s 
 life dear, when long sickness has held him 
 down to his bed, and wasted his body, and 
 they see at length health return to the old 
 man, with restored strength and spirits, in 
 reward of their many prayers to the gods 
 for his safety : so precious was the prospect 
 of home-return to Ulysses, that he might 
 restore health to his country (his better 
 parent), that had long languished as full of 
 distempers in his absence. And then for 
 his own safety’s sake he had joy to see the 
 shores, the woods, so nigh and within his 
 grasp as they seemed, and he laboured 
 with all the might of hands and feet to 
 reach with swimming that nigh-seeming 
 land. 
 
 But when he approached near, a horrid 
 sound of a huge sea beating against rocks 
 informed him that here was no place for 
 landing, nor any harbour for man’s resort, 
 
94. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 but through the weeds and the foam which 
 the sea belched up against the land he could 
 dimly discover the rugged shore all bristled 
 with flints, and all that part of the coast 
 one impending rock that seemed impossible 
 to climb, and the water all about so deep, 
 that not a sand was there for any tired 
 foot to rest upon, and every moment he 
 feared lest some wave more cruel than the 
 rest should crush him against a cliff) ren- 
 dering worse than vain all his landing : 
 and should he swim to seek a more com- 
 modious haven further on, he was fearful 
 lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds 
 would force him back a long way off into 
 the main, where the terrible god Neptune, 
 for wrath that he had so nearly escaped 
 his power, having gotten him again into 
 his domain, would send out some great 
 whale (of which those seas breed a horrid 
 number) to swallow him up alive; with 
 such malignity he still pursued him. 
 
 While these thoughts distracted him 
 
Ot ULTSSES. 
 
 95 
 
 with diversity of dangers, one bigger 
 wave drove against a sharp rock his naked 
 body, which it gashed and tore, and wanted 
 little of breaking all his bones, so rude 
 was the shock. But in this extremity she 
 prompted him that never failed him at 
 need. Minerva (who is wisdom itself) put 
 it into his thoughts no longer to keep 
 swimming off and on, as one dallying 
 with danger, but boldly to force the shore 
 that threatened him, and to hug the rock 
 that had torn him so rudely ; which with 
 both hands he clasped, wrestling with ex- 
 tremity, till the rage of that billow which 
 had driven him upon it was past : but then 
 again the rock drove back that wave so 
 furiously, that it reft him of his hold, suck- 
 ing him with it in its return, and the sharp 
 rock (his cruel friend) to which he dinged 
 for succour, rent the flesh so sore from 
 his hands in parting, that he fell off, and 
 could sustain no longer : quite under water 
 he fell, and, past the help of fate, there 
 
96 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 had the hapless Ulysses lost all portion 
 that he had in this life, if Minerva had not 
 prompted his wisdom in that peril to essay 
 another course, and to explore some other 
 shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing- 
 place. 
 
 She guided his wearied and nigh-ex- 
 hausted limbs to the mouth of the fair 
 river Callicoe, which not far from thence 
 disbursed its watery tribute to the ocean. 
 Here the shores were easy and accessible, 
 and the rocks, which rather adorned than 
 defended its banks, so smooth, that they 
 seemed polished of purpose to invite the 
 landing of our sea-wanderer, and to atone 
 for the uncourteous treatment which those 
 less hospitable cliffs had afforded him. 
 And the god of the river, as if in pity, 
 staid his current and smoothed his waters, 
 to make his landing more easy : for sacred 
 to the ever living deities of the fresh wa- 
 ters, be they mountain-stream, river, or 
 lake, is the cry of erring mortals that seek 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 97 
 
 their aid, by reason that being inlaud-bred 
 they partake more of the gentle humanities 
 of our nature than those marine deities, 
 whom Neptune trains up in tempests in 
 the unpitying recesses of his salt abyss. 
 
 So by the favour of the river’s god 
 Ulysses crept to land half-drowned ; both 
 his knees faltering, his strong hands fall- 
 ing down through weakness from the ex- 
 cessive toils he had endured, his cheek 
 and nostrils flowing with froth of the sea- 
 brine, much of which he had swallowed 
 in that conflict, voice and breath spent, 
 down he sank as in death. Dead weary 
 he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked 
 through his heart, and the pains he felt in 
 all his veins were little less than those 
 which one feels that has endured the tor- 
 ture of the rack. But when his spirits 
 came a little to themselves, and his re- 
 collection by degrees began to return, he 
 rose up, and unloosing from his waist the 
 girdle or charm which that divine bird had 
 
 F 
 
9'3 THE At) VENTURES 
 
 given him, and remembering the charge 
 which he had received with it, he flung it 
 far from him into the river. Back it swam 
 with the course of the ebbing stream till 
 it reached the sea, where the fair hands of 
 Ino Leucothea received it to keep as a 
 pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked 
 mariner, that like Ulysses should wander 
 in those perilous waves. 
 
 Then he kissed the humble earth in 
 token of safety, and on he went by the 
 side of that pleasant river, till he came 
 where a thicker shade of rushes that grew 
 on its banks seemed to point out the place 
 where he might rest his sea-wearied limbs. 
 And here a fresh perplexity divided his 
 mind, whether he should pass the night, 
 which was coming on, in that place, where, 
 though he feared no other enemies, the 
 damps and frost of the chill sea-air in that 
 exposed situation might be death to him 
 in his weak state ; or whether he had bet- 
 ter climb the next hill, and pierce the 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 99 
 
 depth of some shady wood, in which he 
 might find a warm and sheltered though 
 insecure repose, subject to the approach of 
 any wild beast that roamed that way. 
 Best did this last course appear to him, 
 though with some danger, as that which 
 was more honourable and savoured more 
 of strife and self-exertion, than to perish 
 without a struggle the passive victim of 
 cold and the elements. 
 
 So he bent his course to the nearest 
 woods, where, entering in, he found a 
 thicket, mostly of wild olives and such low 
 trees, yet growing so intertwined and knit 
 together, that the moist wind had not leave 
 to play through their branches, nor the 
 sun’s scorching beams to pierce their re- 
 cesses, nor any shower to beat through, they 
 grew so thick and as it were folded each 
 in the other: here creeping in, he made his 
 bed of the leaves which were beginning to 
 fall, of which was such abundance that two 
 or three men might have spread them ample 
 F 2 
 
100 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 coverings, such as might shield them from 
 the winter’s rage, though the air breathed 
 steel and blew as it would burst. Here 
 creeping in, he heaped up store of leaves 
 all about him, as a man would billets upon 
 a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. 
 Rich seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves! 
 Here Minerva soon gave him sound sleep ; 
 and here all his long toils past seemed to 
 be concluded and shut up within the little 
 sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids. 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 101 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 The princess Nausicaa. — The washing. — The 
 game with the ball. — The court of Phceacia 
 and king Alcinous. 
 
 Meantime Minerva designing an inter- 
 view between the king’s daughter of that} 
 country and Ulysses when he should 
 awake, went by night to the palace of 
 king Alcinous, and stood at the bedside 
 of the princess Nausicaa in the shape of 
 one of her favourite attendants, and thus 
 addressed the sleeping princess. 
 
 “ Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping 
 here, and never bestow a thought upon 
 your bridal ornaments*, of which you have 
 many and beautiful, laid up in your ward- 
 robe against the day of your marriage 3 
 
102 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 which cannot be far distant ; when you 
 shall have need of all, not only to deck 
 your own person, but to give away in 
 presents to the virgins that honouring yon 
 shall attend you to the temple? Your re- 
 putation stands much upon the timely care 
 of these things; these things are they which 
 fill father and reverend mother with de- 
 light. Let us arise betimes to wash your 
 fair vestments of linen and silks in the river; 
 and request your sire to lend you mules and 
 a coach, for your wardrobe is heavy, and 
 the place where we must wash is distant, 
 and besides it fits not a great princess like 
 you to go so far on foot.” 
 
 So saying she went away, and Nausicaa 
 awoke, full of pleasing thoughts of her 
 marriage, which the dream had told her 
 was not far distant ; and as soon as it was 
 dawn, she arose and dressed herself, and 
 went to find her parents. 
 
 The queen her mother was already up, 
 and seated among her maids, spinning at 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 103 
 
 her wheel, as the fashion was in those 
 primitive times, when great ladies did not 
 disdain housewifery : and the king her fa- 
 ther was preparing to go abroad at that 
 early hour to council with his grave senate. 
 
 “ My father,” she said, “ will you not 
 order mules and a coach to be got ready, 
 that I may go and wash, I and my maids, 
 at the cisterns that stand without the city?” 
 
 “ What washing does my daughter 
 speak of?” said Alcinous. 
 
 “ Mine and my brothers’ garments,” she 
 replied, “ that have contracted soil by this 
 time with lying by so long in the wardrobe. 
 Five sons have you, that are my brothers ; 
 two of them are married, and three are 
 bachelors ; these last it concerns to have 
 their garments neat and unsoiled-; it may 
 advance their fortunes in marriage : and 
 who but I their sister should have a care 
 of these things ? You yourself, my father, 
 have need of the whitest apparel, when 
 you go, as now, to the council.” 
 
104 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 She used this plea, modestly dissembling 
 her care of her own nuptials to her father 5 
 who was not displeased at this instance of 
 his daughter's discretion : for a seasonable 
 care about marriage may be permitted to a 
 young maiden, provided it he accompanied 
 with modesty and dutiful submission to her 
 parents in the choice of her future hus- 
 band : and there was no fear of Nausicaa 
 chusing wrongly or improper))', for she 
 was as wise as she was beautiful, and the 
 best in all Phasacia were suitors to her for 
 her love. So Alcinous readily gave con- 
 sent that she should go, ordering mules and 
 a coach to be prepared. And Nausicaa 
 brought from her chamber all her vest- 
 ments, and laid them up in the coach, and 
 her mother placed bread and wine in the 
 coach, and oil in a golden cruse, to soften 
 the bright skins of Nausicaa and her maids 
 when they came out of the river. 
 
 Nausicaa making her maids get up into 
 the coach with her, lashed the mules, till 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 105 
 
 they brought her to the cisterns which 
 stood a little on the outside of the town, 
 and were supplied with water from the 
 river Callicoe. 
 
 There her attendants unyoked the mules, 
 took out the clothes, and steeped them in 
 the cisterns, washing them in several wa- 
 ters, and afterwards treading them clean 
 with their feet, venturing wagers who: 
 should have done soonest and cleanest, 
 and using many pretty pastimes to beguile 
 their labour as young maids use, while 
 the princess looked on. When they had 
 laid their clothes to dry, they fell to play- 
 ing again, and Nausicaa joined them in 
 a game with the ball, which is used in 
 that country, which is performed by toss- 
 ing the ball from hand to hand with great 
 expedition, she who begins the pastime 
 singing a song. It chanced that the princess 
 whose turn it became to toss the ball, sent 
 it so far from its mark, that it fell beyond 
 into one of the cisterns of the river ; at 
 e5 
 
106 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 which the whole company, in merry con- 
 sternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked 
 the sleeping Ulysses, who was taking his 
 rest after his long toils, in the woods not 
 far distant from the place where these 
 young maids had come to wash. 
 
 At the sound of female voices Ulysses 
 crept forth from his retirement, making 
 himself a covering with boughs and leaves 
 as well as be could to shroud his naked- 
 ness. The sudden appearance of his wea- 
 ther-beaten and almost naked form, so 
 frighted the maidens that they scudded 
 away into the woods and all about to 
 hide themselves, only Minerva (who had 
 brought about this interview to admirable 
 purposes, by seemingly accidental means) 
 put courage into the breast of Nausicaa, 
 and she stayed where she was, and resolved 
 to know what manner of man he was, and 
 what was the occasion of his strange com- 
 ing to them. 
 
 He not venturing (for delicacy) to ap- 
 
GF ULYSSES. 
 
 107 
 
 proach and clasp her knees, as suppliants 
 should, but standing far off, addressed this 
 speech to the young princess. 
 
 “ Before I presume rudely to press my 
 petitions, I should first ask whether I am 
 addressing a mortal woman, or one of the 
 goddesses. If a goddess, you seem to 
 me to be likest to Diana, the chaste hunt- 
 ress, the daughter of Jove. Like hers are 
 your lineaments, your stature, your fea- 
 tures, and air divine.” 
 
 She making answer that she was no god- 
 dess, but a mortal maid, he continued : 
 
 “ If a woman, thrice blessed are both the 
 authors of your birth, thrice blessed are 
 your brothers, who even to rapture must 
 have joy in your perfections, to see you- 
 grown so like a young tree, and so grace- 
 ful. But most blessed of all that breathe 
 is he that has the gift to engage your 
 young neck in the yoke of marriage. I 
 never saw that man that was worthy of you. 
 I never saw man or woman that at all parts 
 
2 OS 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 equalled you. Lately at Delos (where I 
 touched) I saw a young palm which grew 
 beside Apollo's temple ; it exceeded all the 
 trees which ever I beheld for straitness and 
 beauty : I can compare you only to that. 
 A stupor past admiration strikes me, joined 
 with fear, which keeps me back from ap- 
 proaching you, to embrace your knees. 
 Nor is it strange ; for one of freshest and 
 firmest spirit would falter, approaching 
 near to so bright an object : but I am one 
 whom a cruel habit of calamity has pre- 
 pared to receive strong impressions. Twenty 
 days the unrelenting seas have tossed me 
 up and down coming from Ogygia, and 
 at length cast me ship-wrecked last night 
 upon your coast. I have seen no man or 
 woman since I landed but yourself. All 
 that I crave is clothes, which you may 
 spare me, and to be shown the way to some 
 neighbouring town. The gods, who have 
 care of strangers, will requite you for these 
 courtesies,” 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 109 
 
 She admiring to hear such compliment- 
 ary words proceed out of the mouth of one 
 whose outside looked so rough and un- 
 promising, made answer: “Stranger, I 
 discern neither sloth nor folly in you, and 
 yet I see that you are poor and wretched : 
 from which I gather that neither wisdom 
 nor industry can secure felicity ; only Jove 
 bestows it upon whomsoever he pleases. 
 He perhaps has reduced you to this plight. 
 However, since your wanderings have 
 brought you so near to our city, it lies in 
 our duty to supply your wants. Clothes 
 and what else a human hand should give 
 to one so suppliant, and so tamed with 
 calamity, you shall not want. We will 
 shew you our city and tell you the name 
 of our people. This is the land of the 
 Phceaeians, of which my father Alcinous 
 is king.” 
 
 Then calling her attendants who had 
 dispersed on the first sight of Ulysses, she 
 
110 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 rebuked them for their fear, and said : 
 “ This man is no Cyclop, nor monster of 
 sea or land, that you should fear him; but 
 he seems manly, staid, and discreet, and 
 though decayed in his outward appearance, 
 yet he has the mind’s riches, wit and 
 fortitude, in abundance. Shew him the 
 cisterns where he may wash him from the 
 sea-weeds and foam that hang about him, 
 and let him have garments that fit him 
 out of those which we have brought with 
 us to the cisterns.” 
 
 Ulysses retiring a little out of sight, 
 cleansed him in the cisterns from the soil 
 and impurities with which the rocks and 
 waves had covered all his body, and cloth- 
 ing himself with befitting raiment, which 
 the princesses attendants had given him, 
 he presented himself in more worthy shape 
 to Nausicaa. She admired to see what a 
 comely personage he was, now he was 
 dressed in all parts ; she thought him some 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 king or hero : and secretly wished that the 
 gods would be pleased to give her such a 
 husband. 
 
 Then causing her attendants to yoke her 
 mules, and lay up the vestments, which 
 the sun’s heat had sufficiently dried, in the 
 coach, she ascended with her maids, and 
 drove off to the palace ; bidding Ulysses, 
 as she departed, keep an eye upon the 
 coach, and to follow it on foot at some 
 distance : which she did, because if she 
 had suffered him to have rode in the coach 
 with her, it might have subjected her to 
 some misconstructions of the common peo- 
 ple, who are always ready to vilify and 
 censure their betters, and to suspect that 
 charity is not always pure charity, but that 
 love or some sinister intention lies hid 
 under its disguise. So discreet and atten- 
 tive to appearance in all her actions was 
 this admirable princess. 
 
 Ulysses as he entered the city wondered 
 to see its magnificence, its markets, build- 
 
1*12 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 ings, temples; its Avails and rampires ; its 
 trade, and resort of men ; its harbours for 
 shipping, Avhich is the strength of the 
 Phasacian state. But when he approached 
 the palace, and beheld its riches, the pro- 
 portion of its architecture, its avenues, 
 gardens, statues, fountains, he stood rapt 
 in admiration, and almost forgot his own 
 condition in surveying the flourishing 
 estate of others : but recollecting himself 
 he passed on boldly into the inner apart- 
 ment, where the king and queen Avere sit- 
 ting at dinner Avith their peers ; Nausicaa 
 having prepared them for his approach. 
 
 To them humbly kneeling he made it 
 his request, that since fortune had cast 
 him naked upon their shores, they would 
 take him into their protection, and grant 
 him a conveyance by one of the ships, of 
 which their great Phasacian state had such 
 good store, to carry him to his oAvn coun- 
 try. Having delivered his request, to 
 grace it with more humility he Avent and 
 
OV ULYSSES. 
 
 115 
 
 sat himself clown upon the hearth among 
 the ashes, as the custom was in those days 
 when any would make a petition to the 
 throne. 
 
 He seemed a petitioner of so great state 
 and of so superior a deportment, that Al- 
 cinous himself arose to do him honour, 
 and causing him to leave that abject 
 station which he had assumed, placed him 
 next to his throne, upon a chair of state, 
 and thus he spake to his peers : 
 
 “ Lords and counsellors of Phceacia, 
 ye see this man, who he is we know not, 
 that is come to us in the guise of a peti- 
 tioner : he seems no mean one ; but who- 
 ever he is, it is fit, since the gods have 
 cast him upon our protection, that we 
 grant him the rites of hospitality, while he 
 stays with us, and at his departure, a ship 
 well manned to convey so worth}' a per- 
 sonage as he seems to be, in a manner 
 suitable to his rank, to his own country.” 
 
 This counsel the peers with one consent 
 
114 . 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 approved; and wine and meat being set 
 before Ulysses, he ate and drank, and gave 
 the gods thanks who had stirred up the royal 
 bounty -of Alcinous to aid him in that ex- 
 tremity. But not as yet did he reveal to the 
 king and queen who he was, or whence he 
 had come ; only in brief terms he related his 
 being cast upon their shores, his sleep in 
 the woods, and his meeting with the prin- 
 cess Nausicaa : whose generosity, mingled 
 with discretion, filled her parents with de- 
 light, as Ulysses in eloquent phrases adorn- 
 ed and commended her virtues. But 
 Alcinous, humanely considering that, the 
 troubles which his guest had undergone 
 required rest, as well as refreshment by 
 food, dismissed him early in the evening 
 to his chamber ; where in a magnificent 
 apartment Ulysses found a smoother bed, 
 but not a sounder repose, than he had en- 
 joyed the night before, sleeping upon 
 leaves which he had scraped together in 
 his necessity. 
 
Of ULYSSES, 
 
 IIj 
 
 Chapter V t II. 
 
 The songs of Demodocus.—The convoy home. 
 
 — The mariners transformed to stone . — 
 
 The young shepherd. 
 
 When it was day-light, Alcinous caused 
 it to be proclaimed by the heralds about 
 the town, that there was come to the palace 
 a stranger, shipwrecked on their coast, that 
 in mien and person resembled a god : and 
 inviting all the chief people of the city to 
 come and do honour to the stranger. 
 
 The palace was quickly filled with guests, 
 old and young, for whose cheer, and to 
 grace Ulysses more, Alcinous made a 
 kingly feast with banquetings and music. 
 Then Ulysses being seated at a table next 
 
116 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 the king and queen, in all men’s view; 
 after they had feasted, Alcinous ordered 
 Demodoeus, the court-singer, to be called 
 to sing some song of the deeds of heroes, 
 to charm the ear of his guest. Demodo- 
 cus came and reached his harp, where it 
 hung between two pillars of silver : and 
 then the blind singer, to whom, in recom- 
 pence of his lost sight, the muses had 
 given an inward discernment, a soul and 
 a voice to excite the hearts of men and 
 gods to delight, began in grave and 
 soliemn strains to sing the glories of men 
 liighliest famed. He chose a poem, whose 
 subject was, The stern Strife stirred up 
 between Ulysses and great Achilles, as at 
 a banquet sacred to the gods in dreadful 
 language they expressed their difference; 
 while Agamemnon sat rejoiced in soul to 
 hear those Grecians jar : for the oracle in 
 Pytho had told him, that the period of 
 their wars in Troy should then be, when 
 the kings of Greece, anxious to arrive at 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 117 
 
 the wished conclusion, should fall to strife, 
 and contend which must end the war, force 
 or stratagem. 
 
 This brave contention he expressed so 
 to the life, in the very words which they 
 both used in the quarrel, as brought tears 
 into the eyes of Ulysses at the remem- 
 brance of past passages of his life, and he 
 held his large purple weed before his face 
 to conceal it. Then craving a cup of wine, 
 he poured it out in secret libation to the 
 gods, who had put into the mind of Demo- 
 docus unknowingly to do him so much 
 honour. But when the moving poet began 
 to tell of other occurrences where Ulysses 
 had been present, the memory of his brave 
 followers who had been with him in all dif- 
 ficulties, now swallowed up and lost in the 
 ocean, and of those kings that had fought 
 with him at Troy, some of whom were 
 dead, some exiles like himself, forced itself 
 so strongly upon his mind, that forgetful 
 where he was, he sobbed outright with 
 
118 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 passion ; which yet he restrained, but not 
 so cunningly but Alcinous perceived it, 
 and without taking notice of it to Ulysses, 
 privately gave signs that Demodocus 
 should cease from his singing. 
 
 Next followed dancing in the Phasacian 
 fashion, when they would shew respect to 
 their guests; which was succeeded by 
 trials of skill, games of strength, running, 
 racing, hurling of the quoit, mock fights, 
 hurling of the javelin, shooting with the 
 bow : in some of which Ulysses modestly 
 challenging his entertainers, performed 
 such feats of strength and prowess as gave 
 the admiring Phasacians fresh reason to 
 imagine that he was either some god, or 
 hero of the race of the gods. 
 
 These solemn shows and pageants in 
 honour of his guest, king Alcinous con- 
 tinued for the space of many days, as if he 
 could never be weary of shewing courtesies 
 to so worthy a stranger. In all this time 
 he never asked him his name, nor sought 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 119 
 
 to know more of him than he of his own 
 accord disclosed : till on a day as they 
 were seated feasting, after the feast was 
 ended, Demodocus being called, as was 
 the custom, to sing some grave matter, 
 sang how Ulysses, on that night when Troy 
 was fired, made dreadful proof of his valour, 
 maintaining singly a combat against the 
 whole household of Deiphobus : to which 
 the divine expresser gave both act and pas- 
 sion, and breathed such a fire into Ulysses’s 
 deeds, that it inspired old death with life 
 in the lively expressing of slaughters, 
 and rendered life so sweet and passionate 
 in the hearers, that all who heard felt it 
 fleet from them in the narration: which 
 made Ulysses even pity his own slaughter- 
 ous deeds, and feel touches of remorse, to 
 see how song can revive a dead man from 
 the grave, yet no way can it defend a living 
 man from death; and in imagination he 
 underwent some part of death’s horrors, 
 and felt in his living body a taste of those 
 
120 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 (tying pangs which he had dealt to others; 
 that with the strong conceit, tears (the 
 true interpreters of unutterable emotion) 
 stood in his eyes. 
 
 Which king Alcinous noting, and that 
 this was now the second time that he had 
 perceived him to be moved at the mention 
 of events touching the Trojan wars, he took 
 occasion to ask whether his guest had lost 
 any friend or kinsman at Troy, that De- 
 modocus’s singing had brought into his 
 mind. Then Ulysses, drying the tears with 
 his cloak, and observing that the eyes of all 
 the company were upon him, desirous to 
 give them satisfaction in what he could, 
 and thinking this a fit time to reveal his 
 true name and destination, spake as 
 follows : 
 
 “ The courtesies which ye all have shewn 
 me, and in particular yourself and princely 
 daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from 
 me that I should no longer keep you in 
 ignorance of what or who I am; for to 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 121 
 
 reserve any secret from you, who have 
 with such openness of friendship embraced 
 my love, would argue either a pusillanimous 
 or an ungrateful mind in me. Know then 
 that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive 
 ye have heard something ; who heretofore 
 have filled the world with the renown of 
 my policies. I am he by whose counsels, 
 if Fame is to be believed at all, more than 
 by the united valour of all the Grecians, 
 Troy fell. I am that- unhappy man whom 
 the heavens and angry gods have conspired 
 to keep an exile on the seas, wandering to 
 seek my home which still flies from me. 
 The land which I am in quest of is Ithaca; 
 in whose ports some ship belonging to your 
 navigation-famed Phsacian state may hap'y 
 at some time have found a refuge from 
 tempests. If ever you have experienced 
 such kindness, requite it now; by granting 
 to me, who am the king of that land, a 
 passport to that land.” 
 
 Admiration seized all the court of Alci- 
 
 G 
 
122 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 nous, to behold in their presence one of 
 the number of those heroes who fought at 
 Troy, whose divine story had been made 
 known to them by songs and poems, but 
 of the truth they had little known, or 
 rather they had hitherto accounted those 
 heroic exploits as fictions and exaggera- 
 tions of poets; but having seen and made 
 proof of the real Ulysses, they began to 
 take those supposed inventions to be real 
 verities, and the tale of Troy to be as true 
 as it was delightful. 
 
 Then king Alcinous made answer: 
 “ Thrice fortunate ought we to esteem our 
 lot : in having seen and conversed with a 
 n : i of whom report hath spoken so loudly, 
 but, as it seems, nothing beyond the truth. 
 Though we could desire no felicity greater 
 than to have you always among us, re- 
 nowned Ulysses, yet your desire having 
 been expressed so often and so deeply to 
 return home, we can deny y6u nothing, 
 though to our own loss. Our kingdom of 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 123 
 
 Phasacia, as you know, is chiefly rich in 
 shipping. In all parts of the world, where 
 there are navigable seas, or ships cari pass, 
 our vessels will be found. You cannot 
 name a coast to which they do not resort. 
 Every rock and every quick-sand is known 
 to them that lurks in the vast deep. They 
 pass a bird in flight ^ and with such uner- 
 ring certainty they make to their destina- 
 tion, that seme have said that they have 
 no need of pilot or rudder, but that they 
 move instinctively, self-directed, and know 
 the minds of their voyagers. Thus much 
 that you may not fear to trust yourself in 
 one of our Phasacian ships. To-morrow if 
 you please you shall lanch forth. To-day 
 spend with us in feasting; who never can 
 do enough when the gods send such 
 visitors.” 
 
 Ulysses acknowledged king Alcinous’s 
 bounty; and while these two royal person- 
 ages stood interchanging courteous ex- 
 pressions, the heart of the princess Nausicaa 
 © 2 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 12* 
 
 was overcome : she had .been gazing atten- 
 tively upon lier father’s guest, as he de- 
 livered his speech; but when he came to 
 that part where he declared himself to be 
 Ulysses, she blessed herself, and her for- 
 tune, that in relieving a poor shipwrecked 
 mariner, as he seemed no better, she had 
 conferred a kindness on so divine a hero 
 as he proved: and scarce waiting till her 
 father had done speaking, with a cheerful 
 countenance she addressed Ulysses, bidding 
 him be cheerful, and when he returned 
 home, as by her father’s means she trusted 
 he would shortly, sometimes to remember 
 to whom he owed his life, and who met 
 him in the woods by the river Callicoe. 
 
 “ Fair flower of Phaeacia,” he replied, 
 “ so may all the gods bless me with the 
 strife of joys in that desired day, whenever 
 I shall see it, as I shall always acknowledge 
 to be indebted to your fair hand for the 
 gift of life which I enjoy, and all the bless- 
 ings which shall follow upon my home- 
 
OF UDYSSES# 
 
 las 
 
 return. The gods give thee, Nausicaa, a 
 princely husband ; and from you two spring 
 blessings to this state.” So prayed Ulysses, 
 his heart overflowing with admiration and 
 grateful recollections of king Alcinous’s 
 daughter. 
 
 Then at the king’s request he gave them 
 a brief relation of all the adventures that had 
 befallen him, since he launched forth from 
 Troy : during which the princess Nausicaa 
 took great delight (as ladies are commonly 
 taken with these kind of travellers* stories) 
 to hear of the monster Polyphemus, of the 
 men that devour each other in Lajstry- 
 gonia, of the enchantress Circe, of Scylla, 
 and the rest ; to which she listened with 
 a breathless attention, letting fall a shower 
 of tears from her fair eyes every now and 
 then, when Ulysses told of some more than 
 usual distressful passage in his travels: and 
 all the rest of his auditors, if they had 
 before entertained a high respect for their 
 guest, now felt their veneration increased 
 
126 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 tenfold, when they learned from his own 
 mouth what perils, what sufferance, what 
 endurance, of evils beyond man’s strength 
 to support, this much-sustaining, almost 
 heavenly man, by the greatness of his 
 mind, and by his invincible courage, had 
 struggled through. 
 
 The night was far spent before Ulysses 
 had ended his narrative, and with wishful 
 glances he cast his eyes towards the eastern 
 parts, which the sun had begun to flecker 
 with his first red: for on the morrow 
 Alcinous bad promised that a bark should 
 be in readiness to convoy him to Ithaca. 
 
 In the morning a vessel well manned 
 and appointed was waiting for him ; into 
 which the king and queen heaped presents 
 of gold and silver, massy plate, apparel, 
 armour, and whatsoever things of cost or 
 rarity they judged would be most accept- 
 able to their guest: and the sails being set, 
 Ulysses embarking, with expressions of 
 regret took his leave of his royal enter- 
 
tamers, of the fair princess (who had been 
 his first friend) and of the peers of Phajacia ; 
 ■who crowding down to the beach to have 
 the last sight of their illustrious visitant, 
 beheld the gallant ship with all her canvas- 
 spread, bounding and curvetting over the 
 'waves, like a horse proud of his rider; or 
 as if she knew that in her capacious womb’s 
 r-ich freightage she bore Ulysses. 
 
 He whose life past had been a series of 
 disquiets, in seas among rude waves, in 
 battles amongst ruder foes, now slept se- 
 curely, forgetting all ; his eye-lids bound 
 in such deep sleep, as only yielded to death : 
 and when they reached the nearest Ithacan 
 port by the next morning, he was still 
 asleep. The mariners not willing to awake 
 him, landed him softly, and laid him in a 
 cave at the foot of an olive tree, which 
 made a shady recess in that narrow harbour, 
 the haunt of almost none but the sea- 
 nymphs, which are called Naiads; few ships 
 before this Phaeacian vessel having put into 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 il'S 
 
 that haven, by reason of the difficulty and 
 narrowness of the entrance. Here leaving 
 him asleep, and disposing in safe places 
 near him the presents with which king 
 Alcinous had dismissed him, they departed 
 for Phaeacia ; where these wretched mari- 
 ners never again set foot: but just as they 
 arrived, and thought to salute their country 
 earth ; in sight of their city’s turrets, and 
 in open view of their friends who from the 
 harbour with shouts greeted their return ; 
 their vessel and all' the mariners which 
 v ere in her were turned to stone, and 
 stood transformed and fixed in sight of the 
 whole Phaeaciar. city, where it yet stands, 
 by Neptune’s vindictive wrath; who re- 
 sented thus highly the contempt which 
 those Phaeacians had shewn, in convoying 
 home a man whom the god had destined to 
 destruction. Whence it comes to pass 
 that the Phaeacians at this day will at no 
 price be induced to lend their ships to 
 strangers, or to become the carriers for 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 129 
 
 other nations, so highly do they still dread 
 the displeasure of the sea-god, while they 
 see that terrible monument ever in sight. 
 
 When Ulysses awoke, which was not till 
 some time after the mariners had departed, 
 he did not at first know his country again, 
 either that long absence had made it 
 strange, or that Minerva (which was more 
 likely) had cast a cloud about his eyes, 
 that he should have greater pleasure here- 
 after in discovering his mistake : but like 
 a man suddenly awaking in some desart 
 isle, to which his sea-mates have transported 
 him in his sleep, he looked around, and 
 discerning no known objects, he cast his 
 hands to heaven for pity, and complained 
 on those ruthless men who had beguiled 
 him with a promise of conveying him 
 home to his country, and perfidiously left 
 him to perish in an unknown land. But 
 then the rich presents of gold and silver 
 given him by Alcinous, which he saw care- 
 fully laid up in secure places near him, , 
 G 5 
 
130 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 staggered him ; which seemed not like the 
 act of wrongful or unjust men, such as 
 turn pirates for gain, or land helpless pas- 
 sengers in remote coasts to possess them- 
 selves of their goods. 
 
 While he remained in this suspence, 
 there came up to him a young shepherd, 
 clad in the finer sort of apparel, such as 
 kings’ sons wore in those days when princes 
 did not disdain to tend sheep, who accost- 
 ing him, was saluted again by Ulysses, who 
 asked him what country that was, on which 
 he had been just landed, and whether it 
 were part of a continent, or an island. 
 The young shepherd made show of wonder, 
 to hear any one ask the name of that lafd ; 
 as country people are apt to esteem those 
 for mainly ignorant and barbarous who do 
 not know the names of places which are 
 familiar to them, though perhaps they who 
 ask have had no opportunities of knowing, 
 and may have come from far countries. 
 “ I had thought,” said he, “ that all people 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 Knew our land. It is rocky and barren, to 
 be sure ; but well enough : it feeds a goat 
 or an ox well ; it is not wanting neither in 
 wine nor in wheat ; it has good springs of 
 water, some fair rivers ; and wood enough, 
 as you may see: it is called Ithaca.” 
 
 Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself 
 in his own country, but so prudently ha 
 carried his joy, that dissembling his true 
 name and quality, he pretended to the 
 shepherd that he was only some foreigner 
 who by stress of weather had put into that 
 port ; and framed on the sudden a story 
 to make it plausible, how he had come 
 from Crete in a ship of Phseacia; when 
 the young shepherd laughing, and taking 
 JJlysses’s hand in both his, said to him : 
 “ He must be cunning, I find, who thinks 
 to over-reach you. What, cannot you quit 
 your wiles and your subtleties, now that 
 you are in a state of security? must the 
 first word with which you salute your 
 native earth be an untruth? and think you 
 that you are unknown ?” 
 
132 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 .Ulysses looked again ; and lie saw, not 
 a shepherd,, but a beautiful woman-, whom 
 he immediately knew to be the goddess 
 Minerva, that in the wars of Troy had fre,- 
 quently vouchsafed her sight to him ; and 
 had been with him since in perils, saving' 
 him unseep. 
 
 “ Let not my ignorance offend thee, 
 great Minerva,” he cried, “ or move thy 
 displeasure, that in that shape I knew thee 
 not ; since the skill of discerning of deities 
 is not attainable by wit or study, but hard 
 to be hit by the wisest of mortals. To 
 know thee truly through all thy changes is 
 only given to those whom thou art pleased 
 to grace. To all men thou takest all like- 
 nesses. All men in their, wits think that they 
 know thee, and that they have thee. Thou 
 art wisdom itself. But a semblance of thee, 
 which is false wisdom, often is taken for 
 thee : so thy counterfeit view appears to 
 many, but thy true presence to few : those 
 are they which, loving thee above all, are 
 inspired with light from thee to know 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 133 
 
 thee. But this I surely know, that all the 
 time the sons of Greece waged war against 
 Troy, I was sundry times graced with thy 
 appearance ; but since, I have never been 
 able to set eyes upon thee till now: but 
 have wandered at my own discretion, to 
 myself a blind guide, erring up and down 
 the world, wanting thee.” 
 
 Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he 
 knew the ground on which he stood to be 
 Ithaca, and that cave to be the same which 
 the people of Ithaca had in former times 
 made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where 
 he himself had done sacrifices to them a 
 thousand times ; and full in his view stood 
 Mount Nerytus with all his woods : so that 
 now he knew for a certainty that he was 
 arrived in his own country, and with the 
 delight which he felt he could not forbear 
 stooping down and kissing the soil. 
 
THE ABVENT0RT.5- 
 
 13-U 
 
 Chapter VIIT. 
 
 The change from a king to a beggar . — 
 Eumceus and the herdsmen. — Telemachus. 
 
 Not long did Minerva suffer him to 
 indulge vain transports, but briefly re j 
 counting to him the events which had 
 taken place in Ithaca during his absence, 
 she shewed him that his way to his wife 
 and throne did not lie so open, but that 
 before he were reinstated in the secure 
 possession of them, he must encounter 
 many difficulties. His palace, wanting 
 its king, was become the resort of insolent 
 and imperious men, the chief nobility of 
 Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, 
 in the confidence of Ulysses being dead, 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 135 
 
 came as suitors to Penelope. The queen 
 (it was true) continued single, but was 
 little better than a state-prisoner in the 
 power of these men, who under a pretence 
 of waiting her decision, occupied the king’s 
 house, rather as owners than guests, lord- 
 ing and domineering at their pleasure, pro- 
 faning the palace, and wasting the royal 
 substance, with their feasts and mad riots. 
 Moreover the goddess told him how fearing 
 the attempts of these lawless men upon 
 the person of his young son Telemachus, 
 she herself had put it into the heart of the 
 prince, to go and seek his father in far 
 countries; how in the shape of Mentor she 
 had borne him company in his long search; 
 which, though failing, as she meant it 
 should fail, in its first object, had yet had 
 this effect, that through hardships he had 
 learned endurance, through experience he 
 had gathered wisdom, and wherever his 
 footsteps had been, he had left such me- 
 morials of his worth, as the fame of Ulysses’s 
 
I3G 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 son was already blown throughout tho 
 world. That it was now not many days 
 since Teiemachus had arrived in the island, 
 to the great joy of the queen his mother, 
 who had thought him dead, by reason of 
 his long absence, and bad begun to mourn 
 for him with a grief equal to that which 
 she endured for Ulysses : the goddess her- 
 self having so ordered the course of his 
 adventures, that the time of his return 
 should- correspond with the return of 
 Ulysses, that they might together concert 
 measures how to repress the power and' 
 insolence of those wicked suitors. This 
 the goddess told him, but of the particulars 
 of his son’s adventures, of his having been 
 detained in the Delightful Island, which 
 his father had so lately left, of Calypso, 
 afid her nymphs, and the many strange 
 occurrences which may be read with profit 
 and delight in the history of the prince’s 
 adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, 
 as judging that he would hear them with 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 137 
 
 greater pleasure from the lips of his son, 
 when he should have him in an hour of 
 stillness and safety, when their work should 
 be done, and none of their enemies left 
 alive to trouble them. 
 
 Then they sat down, the goddess and 
 Ulysses, at the foot of a wild olive-tree, 
 consulting how they might with safety 
 bring about his restoration. And when 
 Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his 
 enemies were a multitude, and he single, 
 lie began to despond, and he said : “ I shall 
 die an ill death likje Agamemnon ; in the 
 threshold of my own house I shall perish, 
 like that unfortunate monarch, slain by 
 some one of my wife’s suitors.” But then 
 again calling to mind his ancient courage, 
 he secretly wished that Minerva would but 
 breathe such a spirit into his bosom as she 
 enflamed him with in the hour of Troy’s 
 destruction, that he might encounter with 
 three hundred of those impudent suitors at 
 
138 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 once, and strew the pavements of Iris beau- 
 tiful palace with, their bloods and brains. 
 
 And Minerva knew his thoughts, and 
 she said, “ I will, he strongly with thee, if 
 thou fail not to do thy part. And for a 
 sign between us that I will perform my 
 promise, and for- a token on thy part af 
 obedience, I must change thee, that thy 
 person may not be known of men.” 
 
 Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive 
 the divine impression, and Minerva by her 
 great power changed his person so that it 
 might not be known. She changed him 
 to appearance into a very old man, yet 
 such a one as by his limbs and gait seemed 
 to have been some considerable person in 
 his time, and to retain yet some remains 
 of his once prodigious strength. Also, 
 instead of those rich robes in which king 
 Alcinous had clothed him, she threw over 
 his limbs such old and tattered rags as 
 wandering beggars usually wear. A staff 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 *0S 
 
 supported his steps, and a scrip hung to 
 his back, such as travelling mendicants 
 use, to hold the scraps which are given to 
 them at rich men’s doors. So from a king 
 he became a beggar, as wise Tiresias had 
 predicted to him in the shades. 
 
 To complete his humiliation, and to 
 prove his obedience by suffering, she next 
 directed him in this beggarly attire to go 
 and present himself to his old herdsman 
 Eumaeus, who had the care of his swine and 
 his cattle, and had been a faithful steward 
 to him all the time of his absence. Then 
 strictly charging Ulysses that he should 
 reveal himself to no man, but to his own 
 son, whom she would send to him when 
 she saw occasion, the goddess went her 
 way. 
 
 The transformed Ulysses bent his course 
 to the cottage of the herdsman, and enter- 
 ing in at the front court, the dogs, of 
 which Eumreus kept many fierce ones for 
 the protection of the cattle, flew with open 
 
140 . 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 mouths upon him, as those ignoble animals, 
 have oftentimes an antipathy to the sight 
 of any thing like a beggar, and would have 
 rent him in pieces with their teeth, if 
 Ulysses had not had the prudence to let fall 
 his staff, which had chiefly provoked their- 
 fury, and sat himself down in a careless 
 fashion upon the ground : but for all that 
 some serious hurt had certainly been done 
 to him, so raging the dogs were,, had not 
 the herdsman, whom the barking of the 
 dugs had fetched out of the house, with 
 shouting and with throwing of stone* re- 
 pressed them. 
 
 He said, when he saw Ulysses, £ ‘ Old 
 father, how near you were to being torn 
 in pieces by these rude dogs ! I should 
 never have forgiven myself, if through 
 neglect of mine any hurt had happened 
 to you. But heaven has given me so many 
 cares to my portion, that I might well be 
 excused for not attending to every, thing; 
 while here I lie grieving and mourning for 
 
OF ULYSSES, 
 
 in 
 
 the absence of that majesty which once 
 ruled here, and am forced to fatten his 
 swine and his cattle for food to evil men, 
 who hate him, and who wish his death ; 
 when he perhaps strays up and down the 
 world, and has not wherewith to appease 
 hunger, if indeed he yet lives (which is a 
 question) and enjoys the cheerful light of 
 the sun.” This he said, little thinking 
 that he of whom he spoke now stood be- 
 fore him, and that in that uncouth disguise 
 and beggarly obscurity was present the 
 hidden majesty of Ulysses. 
 
 Then he had his guest into the house, 
 and set meat and drink before him; and 
 Ulysses said, “May Jove and all the other 
 gods requite you for the kind speeches and 
 hospitable usage which you have shewn 
 me!” 
 
 Eumasus made answer, “ My poor guest, 
 if one ki much worse plight than yourself 
 had arrived here, it were a shame to such 
 scanty means as I have, if I had let him 
 
142 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 depart without entertaining him to the 
 best of my ability. Poor men, and such 
 as have no houses of their own, are by Jove 
 himself recommended to our care. But 
 the cheer which we that are servants to 
 other men have to bestow is but sorry at 
 most, yet freely and lovingly I give it you. 
 Indeed there once ruled here a man, whose 
 return the gods have set their faces against, 
 who if be had been suffered to reign in 
 peace and grow old among us, would have 
 been kind to me and mine. But he is 
 gone ; and for his sake would to God that 
 the whole posterity of Helen might perish 
 with her, since in her quarrel so many 
 worthies have perished. But such asyourfare 
 is, eat it, and be welcome; such lean beasts 
 as are food for poor herdsmen. The fattest 
 go to feed the voracious stomachs of the 
 queen’s suitors. Shame on their unworthi- 
 ness, there is no day in which two or three 
 of the noblest of the herd are not slain to 
 support their feasts and their surfeits.” 
 
OF ULYSSES. 1 4S 
 
 TJlysses gave good ear to liis words, and 
 •as he ate his meat, he even tore it and rent 
 it with his teeth, for mere vexation that 
 his fat cattle should be slain to glut the 
 appetites of those godless suitors. And he 
 said, “ What chief or what ruler is this, 
 that thou commendest so highly, and 
 sayest that he perished at Troy? I am 
 but a stranger in these parts. It may be I 
 have heard of some such in my long 
 travels.” 
 
 Eumasus answered, “ Old father, never 
 any one of all the strangers that have come 
 to our coast with news of Ulysses being 
 alive, could gain credit with the queen or 
 her son yet. These travellers, to get rai- 
 ment or a meal will not stick to invent 
 any lie. Truth is not the commodity they 
 deal in. Never did the queen get any 
 thing of them but lies. She receives all 
 that come graciously, hears their stories, 
 enquires all she can, but all ends in tears 
 and dissatisfaction. But in God’s name, 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 H4 
 
 old father, if you have got a tale, make 
 the most on’t, it may gain you a cloak 
 or a' coat from somebody to keep you 
 warm : but for him who is the subject of 
 it, dogs and vultures long since have torn 
 him limb from limb, or some great fish at 
 sea has devoured him, or he lieth with no 
 better monument upon his bones than the 
 sea-sand. But for me past all the race of 
 men were tears created : for I never shall 
 find so kind a royal master more ; not if 
 my father or my mother could come again 
 and visit me from the tomb, would my 
 eyes be so blessed, as they should be with 
 the sight of him again, coming as from 
 the dead. In his last rest my soul shall 
 love him. He is not here, nor do I name 
 him as a flatterer, but because I am thank- 
 ful for his love and care which he had to 
 me a poor man; and if I knew surely that 
 he were past all shores that the sun shines 
 upon, I would invoke him as a deified 
 thing.” 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 145 
 
 For this saying of Eumteus the waters 
 stood in Ulysses’s eyes, and he said, “My 
 friend, to say and to affirm positively that 
 he cannot be alive, is to give too much 
 licence to incredulity. For, not to speak 
 at random, but with as much solemnity as 
 an oath comes to, I say to you that Ulysses 
 shall return, and whenever that day shall 
 be, then shall you give to me a cloak and 
 a coat ; but till then, I will not receive 
 so much as a thread of a garment, but 
 rather go naked ; for no less than the gates 
 of hell do I hate that man, whom poverty 
 can force to tell an untruth. Be Jove then 
 witness to my words, that this very year, 
 nay ere this month be fully ended, your 
 eyes shall beholdUlysses, dealing vengeance 
 in his own palace upon the wrongers of his 
 wife and his son,” 
 
 To give the better credence to his words, 
 he amused Eumaeus with a forged story 
 of his life, feigning of himself that he was 
 a Cretan born, and one that went with 
 
 H 
 
146 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Idomeneus to the wars of Troy. Also he 
 said that he knew Ulysses, and related 
 various passages which he alleged to have 
 happened betwixt Ulysses and himself, 
 which were either true in the main, as 
 having really happened between Ulysses 
 and some other person, or were so like to 
 truth, as corresponding with the known 
 character and actions of Ulysses, that Eu- 
 mreus's incredulity was not a little shaken. 
 Among other things he asserted that he 
 had lately been entertained in the court of 
 Thesprotia, where the king’s son of the 
 country had told him, that Ulysses had 
 been there but just before him, and was 
 gone upon a voyage to the oracle of Jove 
 in Dodona, whence he should shortly re- 
 turn, and a ship would be ready by the 
 bounty of the Thesprotians to convoy him 
 straight to Ithaca. “And in token that 
 what I tell you is true,” said Ulysses, “if 
 your king come not within the period 
 which I have named, you shall have 
 
OF tTLTSSES. 147 
 
 leave to give your servants commandment 
 to take my olcl carcase, and throw.it head- 
 long from some steep rock into the sea, 
 that poor men, taking example by me, 
 may fear to lie.” But Eumaeus made an- 
 swer that that should be small satisfaction 
 or pleasure to him. 
 
 So while they sat discoursing in this 
 manner, supper was served in, and the ser- 
 vants of the herdsman, who had been out 
 all day in the fields, came in to supper, and 
 took their seats at the fire, for the night was 
 bitter and frosty. After supper, Ulysses 
 who had well eaten and drunken, and was 
 refreshed with the herdsman's good cheer, 
 Avas resolved to try whether his host’s hos- 
 pitality would extend to the lending him a 
 good warm mantle or rug to cover him in 
 the night-season ; and framing an artful 
 tale for the purpose, in a merry mood, fill- 
 ing a cup of Greek wine, he thus began. 
 
 “ I will tell you a story of your king 
 Ulysses and myself. If there is ever a 
 h 2 
 
148 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 time when a man may have leave to tell 
 his own stories, it is when he has drunken 
 a little too much. Strong liquor driveth 
 the fool, and moves even the heart of the 
 wise, moves and impels him to sing and 
 to dance, and break forth in pleasant 
 laughters, and perchance to prefer a speech 
 too which were better kept in. When the 
 heart is open, the tongue will be stirring. 
 But you shall hear. We led our powers to 
 ambush once under the walls of Troy.” 
 
 The herdsmen crowded about him eager 
 to hear any thing which related to their 
 king Ulysses and the wars of Troy, and 
 thus he went on : 
 
 “ I remember, Ulysses and Menelaus 
 had the direction of that enterprise, and 
 they were pleased to join me with them in 
 the command. I was at that time in some 
 repute among men, though fortune has 
 played me a trick since, as you may per- 
 ceive. But I was somebody in those times, 
 and could do something. Be that as it 
 
©F ULYSSES. 
 
 149 
 
 may, a bitter freezing night it was, such 
 a night as this, the air cut like steel, and 
 the sleet gathered on our shields like 
 crystal. There was some twenty of us, 
 that lay close couched down among the 
 reeds and bull-rushes that grew in the 
 moat that goes round the city. The rest 
 of us made tolerable shift, for every man 
 had been careful to bring with him a good 
 cloak or mantle to wrap over his armour 
 and keep himself warm, but I, as it chanced, 
 had left my cloak behind me, as not ex- 
 pecting that the night would prove so 
 cool, or rather I believe because I had at 
 that time a brave suit of new armour on, 
 which, being a soldier, and having some of 
 the soldier’s vice about me, vanity, I was not 
 willing should be hidden under a cloak; 
 but I paid for my indiscretion with my suf- 
 ferings, for with the inclement night, and 
 the wet of the ditch in which we lay, I 
 was well nigh frozen to death ; and when 
 I could endure no longer, I jogged Ulys- 
 
150 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 ses who was next to me, and had a nimble 
 ear, and made known my case to him, as- 
 suring him that I must inevitably perish. 
 He answered in a low whisper, “ Hush; 
 least any Greek should hear you, and take 
 notice of your softness.” Not a word more 
 he said, but shewed as if he had no pity 
 for the plight I was in. But he was as 
 considerate as he was brave, and even then, 
 as he lay with his head reposing upon his 
 hand, he was meditating how to relieve 
 me, without exposing my weakness to the 
 soldiers. At last raising up his head, he 
 made as if he had been asleep, and said, 
 
 ‘ ‘ Friends, I have been warned in a dream 
 to send to the fleet to king Agamemnon 
 for a supply, to recruit our numbers, for 
 we are not sufficient for this enterprize 
 and they believing him, one Thoas was 
 dispatched on that errand, who departing, 
 for more speed, as Ulysses had foreseen, 
 left his upper garment behind him, a good 
 warm mantle, to which I succeeded, and 
 
OF UiYSSES. 
 
 151 
 
 by the help of it got through the night 
 with credit. This shift Ulysses made for 
 one in need, and would to heaven that I 
 had now that strength in my limbs, which 
 made me in those days to be accounted fit 
 to be a leader under Ulysses. I should 
 not then want the loan of a cloak or a 
 mantle, to wrap about me and shield my 
 old limits from the night-air.” 
 
 The tale pleased the herdsmen ; and 
 Eumasus, who more than all the rest was 
 gratified to hear tales of Ulysses, true or 
 false, said, that for his story he deserved a 
 mantle, and a night’s lodging, which he 
 should have ; and he spread for him a bed 
 of goat and sheep skins by the fire ; and 
 the seeming beggar, who was indeed the 
 true Ulysses, lay clown and slept under 
 that poor roof, in that abject disguise to 
 which the will of Minerva had subjected 
 him. 
 
 When morning was come, Ulysses made 
 offer to depart, as if he were not willing 
 
152 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 to burthen his host’s hospitality any longer, 
 but said, that he would go and try the 
 humanity of the town’s folk, if any there 
 "would bestow upon him a bit of bread or 
 a cup of drink. Perhaps the queen's 
 suitors (he said) out of their full feasts 
 would bestow a scrap on him : for he could 
 wait at table, if need were, and play the 
 nimble serving-man, he could fetch wood 
 (he said) or build a fire, prepare roast meat 
 or boiled, mix the wine with water, or do 
 any of those offices which recommended 
 poor men like him to services in great 
 men’s houses. 
 
 “ Alas! poor guest,” said Eumteus, “you 
 know not what you speak. What should 
 so poor and old a man as you do at the 
 suitors’ tables? Their light minds are not 
 given to such grave servitors. They must 
 have youths, richly tricked out in flowing 
 vests, with curled hair, like so many of 
 Jove’s cup-bearers, to fill out the wine to 
 them as they sit at table, and to shift 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 153 
 
 their trenchers. Their gorged insolence 
 would but despise and make a mock at thy 
 age. Stay here. Perhaps the queen, or 
 Teleinachus, hearing of thy arrival, may 
 send to thee of their bounty.” 
 
 As he spake these words, the steps of 
 one crossing the front court were heard, 
 and a noise of the dogs fawning and leap- 
 ing about as for joy ; by which token 
 Eumasus guessed that it was the prince, 
 who hearing of a traveller being arrived at 
 Eumasus’s cottage that brought tidings of 
 his father, was come to search the truth, 
 and Eumasus said: “It is the tread of 
 
 Telemachus, the son of king Ulysses.” 
 Before he could well speak the words, the 
 prince was at the door, whom Ulysses ris- 
 ing to receive, Telemachus would not suf- 
 fer that so aged a man, as he- appeared, 
 should rise to do respect to him, but he 
 courteously and reverently took him by 
 the hand, and inclined his head to him, 
 as if he had surely known that it was his 
 n5 
 
154 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 father indeed : but Ulysses covered his 
 eyes with his hands, that he might not 
 shew the waters which stood in them. 
 And Telemachus said “Is this the man 
 who can tell us tidings of the king my 
 father ?” 
 
 “ He brags himself to be a Cretan born,” 
 said Euma;us, “ and that he has been a sol- 
 dier and a traveller, but whether he speak 
 the truth or not, he alone can tell. But 
 whatsoever he has been, what he is now is 
 apparent. Such as he appears, I give him 
 to you ; do what you will with him ; his 
 boast at present is that he is at the very 
 best a supplicant.” 
 
 “ Be he what he may,” said Telemachus, 
 “ I accept him at your hands. But where 
 I should bestow him I know not, seeing 
 that in the palace his age would not ex- 
 empt him from the scorn and contempt 
 which my mother’s suitors in their light 
 minds would be sure to fling upon him. 
 A mercy if he escaped without blows : for 
 
OF ULYSSESv 
 
 155 
 
 they are a company of evil men, whose 
 profession is wrongs and violence.” 
 
 Ulysses answered : “Since it is free for 
 any man to speak in presence of your 
 greatness, I must say that my heart puts 
 on a wolfish inclination to tear and to de- 
 vour, hearing your speech, that these suit- 
 ors should with such injustice rage, where 
 you should have the rule solely. What 
 should the cause be ? do you wilfully give 
 way to their ill manners ? or has your go- 
 vernment been such as has procured ill 
 will towards you from your people, or do 
 you mistrust your kinsfolk and friends in 
 such sort, as without trial to decline their 
 aid ? a man’s kindred are they that he 
 might trust to when extremities ran 
 high.” 
 
 Telemachus replied; “The kindred of 
 Ulysses are few. I have no brothers to 
 assist me in the strife. But the suitors 
 are powerful in kindred and friends. The 
 house of old Arcesius has had this fate 
 
156 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 from the heavens, that from old it still has 
 been supplied with single heirs. To Ar- 
 cesius Laertes onty was born, from Laertes 
 descended only Ulysses, from Ulysses I 
 alone have sprung, whom he left so young, 
 that from me never comfort arose to him. 
 But the end of all rests in the hands of the 
 gods.” 
 
 Then Eumasus departing to see to some 
 necessary business of his herds, Minerva 
 took a woman’s shape, and stood in the 
 entry of the door, and was seen to Ulysses, 
 but by his son she was not seen, for the 
 presences of the gods are invisible save to 
 those tt> whom they will to reveal them- 
 selves. Nevertheless the dogs which were 
 about the door saw the goddess, and durst 
 not bark, but went crouching and licking 
 of the dust for fear. And giving signs to 
 Ulysses that the time was now come in 
 which he should make himself known to 
 his son, by her great power she changed 
 back his shape into the same which it was 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 157 
 
 before sbe transformed him ; and Tele- 
 maclius, who saw the change, but nothing 
 of the manner by which it was effected, 
 only he saw the appearance of a king in 
 the vigour of his age where but just now 
 he had seen a worn and decrepit beggar, 
 was struck with fear, and said, “ Some 
 god has done this house this honour,” and 
 he turned away his eyes, and would have 
 worshipped. But his father permitted not, 
 but said, “ Look better at me ; I am no 
 deity, why put you upon me the reputation 
 of godhead? I am no more but thy father: 
 I am even he; I am that Ulysses, by reason 
 of rvliose absence thy youth has been ex- 
 posed to such wrongs from injurious men.” 
 Then kissed he his son, nor could any 
 longer refrain those tears which he had 
 held under such mighty restraint before, 
 though they would ever be forcing them- 
 selves out in spite of him, but now, as if 
 their sluices had burst, they came out like 
 rivers, pouring upon the warm cheeks of 
 
158 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 his son. Nor yet by all these violent 
 arguments could Telemachus be persuaded 
 to believe that it was bis father, but he 
 said, some deity had taken that shape to 
 mock him ; for he affirmed, that it was 
 not in the power of any man, who is sus- 
 tained by mortal food, to change his 
 shape so in a moment from age to youth : 
 for “ but now,” said he, “you were all 
 wrinkles, and were old, and now you look 
 as the gods are pictured.” 
 
 His father replied: “Admire, but fear 
 not, and know me to be at all parts sub- 
 stantially thy father, who in the inner 
 powers of his mind, and the unseen work- 
 ings of a father’s love to thee, answers to 
 his outward shape and pretence ! There 
 shall no more Ulysseses come here. I am 
 he that after twenty years absence, and 
 suffering a world of ill, have recovered at 
 last the sight of my country earth. It was 
 the will of Minerva that I should be chang- 
 ed as you saw me. She put me thus to- 
 
Of ULYSSES. 
 
 159 
 
 gether; she puts together or takes to pieces 
 whom she pleases. It is in the law of her 
 free power to do it : sometimes to shew 
 her favorites under a cloud, and poor, and 
 again to restore to them their ornaments. 
 The gods raise and throw down men with 
 ease.” 
 
 Then Telemachus could hold out no 
 longer, but he gave way now to a full be- 
 lief and persuasion, of that which for joy 
 at first he could not credit, that it was in- 
 deed his true and very father, that stood 
 before him ; and they embraced, and 
 mingled their tears. 
 
 Then said Ulysses, “Tell me who these 
 suitors are, what are their numbers, and 
 how stands the queen thy mother affected 
 to them ?” 
 
 “She bears them still in expectation,” 
 said Telemachus, “ which she never means 
 to fulfil, that she will accept the hand of 
 some one of them in second nuptials. For 
 
160 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 she fears to displease them by an absolute 
 refusal. So from day to da}' she lingers 
 them on with hope, which they are con- 
 tent to bear the deferring of, while they 
 have entertainment at free cost in our 
 palace.” 
 
 Then said Ulysses, “Reckon up their 
 numbers that we may know their strength 
 and ours, if we having none but ourselves 
 may hope to prevail against them.” 
 
 “O father,” he replied, “I have oft-times 
 heard of your fame for wisdom, and of the 
 great strength of your arm, but the ven- 
 turous mind which your speeches now in- 
 dicate moves me even to amazement; for 
 in no wise can it consist with wisdom or 
 a sound mind, that two should try their 
 strengths against a host. Nor five, or ten, 
 or twice ten strong are these suitors, but 
 many more by much: from Dulichium 
 came there fifty and two, they and their 
 servants, twice twelve crost the seas hither 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 t61 
 
 from Samos, from Zacynthus twice ten, of 
 our native Ithacans, men of chief note, are 
 twelve, who aspire to the bed and crown 
 of Penelope, and all these under one strong 
 roof, a fearful odds against two ! my fa- 
 ther, there is need of caution, lest the cup 
 which your great mind so thirsts to taste 
 of vengeance, prove bitter to yourself in 
 the drinking. And therefore it were well 
 that we should bethink us of some one 
 who might assist us in this undertak- 
 ing.” 
 
 “Thinkest thou,” said his father, “if 
 we had Minerva and the king of skies to 
 be our friends, would their sufficiencies 
 make strong our part; or must we look 
 out for some further aid yet?” 
 
 “ They you speak of are above the 
 clouds,” said Telemachus, “and are sound 
 aids indeed ; as powers that not only ex- 
 ceed human, but bear the chiefest sway 
 among the gods themselves.” 
 
162 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Then Ulysses gave directions to his son, 
 to go and mingle with the suitors, and in 
 no wise to impart his secret to any, not 
 even to the queen his mother, but to hold 
 himself in readiness, and to have his wea- 
 pons and his good armour in preparation. 
 And he charged him, that when he him- 
 self should come to the palace, as he 
 meant to follow shortly after, and pre- 
 sent himself in his beggar’s likeness to the 
 suitors, that whdtever he should see which 
 might grieve his heart, with what foul 
 usage and contumelious language soever 
 the suitors should receive his father, com- 
 ing in that shape, though they should 
 strike and drag him by the heels along 
 the floors, that he should not stir nor 
 make offer to oppose them, further than 
 by mild words to expostulate with them, 
 until Minerva from heaven should give 
 the sign which should be the prelude to 
 their destruction. And Telemachus pro- 
 
01 ULYSSES. 
 
 1G3 
 
 raising to obey his instructions departed ; 
 and the shape of Ulysses fell to what it 
 had been before, and he became to all 
 outward appearance a beggar, in base and 
 beggarly attire. 
 
164 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 The queen's suitors. — The battle of the beg- 
 gars. — The armour taken dozen. — The 
 meeting zcith Penelope, 
 
 From the house of Eumseus the seeming 
 beggar took his way, leaning on his staff, 
 till he reached the palace, entering in at 
 the hall where the suitovs sat at meat. 
 They in the pride of their feasting began 
 to break their jests in mirthful manner, 
 when they saw one looking so poor and so 
 aged approach. He who expected no 
 better entertainment was nothing moved 
 at their behaviour, but as became the 
 character which he had assumed, in a sup- 
 pliant posture crept by turns to every 
 suitor, and held out his hands for some 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 165 
 
 charity, with such a natural and beggar- 
 resembling grace, that he might seem to 
 have practised begging all his life ; yet 
 there was a sort of dignity in his most 
 abject stoopings, that whoever had seen 
 him, would have said, if it had pleased 
 heaven that this poor man had been born 
 a king, he would gracefully have filled a 
 throne. And some pitied him, and some 
 gave him alms, as their present humours 
 inclined them, but the greater part reviled 
 him, and bid him begone, as one that 
 spoiled their feast ; for the presence of 
 misery has this power with it, that while 
 it stays, it can dash and overturn the mirth 
 even of those who feel no pity or wish to 
 relieve it ; nature bearing this witness of 
 herself in the hearts of the most obdurate. 
 
 Now Telemachus sat at meat with 
 the suitors, and knew that it was the 
 king his father, who in that shape begged 
 an alms, and when his father came and 
 presented himself before him in turn, as he 
 
166 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 had done to the suitors one by one, he 
 gave him of his own meat which he had in 
 his dish, and of his own cup to drink. 
 And the suitors were past measure of- 
 fended to see a pitiful beggar, as they 
 esteemed him, to be so choicely regarded 
 by the prince. 
 
 Then Antinous who was a great lord, 
 and of chief note among the suitors, said, 
 “ Pri nee Telemachus does ill to encourage 
 these wandering beggars, who go from 
 place to place, affirming that they have’ 
 been some considerable persons in their 
 time, filling the ears of such as hearken to 
 them with lies, and pressing with their 
 bold feet into kings’ palaces. This is 
 some saucy vagabond, some travelling 
 Egyptian.” 
 
 “ I see,” said Ulysses, “ that a poor man 
 should get but little at your board, scarce 
 should he get salt from your hands, if lie 
 brought his own meat.” 
 
 Lord Antinous, indignant to be answered . 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 167 
 
 with such sharpness by a supposed beggar, 
 snatched up a stool, with which he smote 
 Ul}’sses where the neck and shoulders join. 
 This usage moved not Ulysses, but in his 
 great heart he meditated deep evils to 
 come upon them all, which for a time must 
 be kept close, and he went and sat himself 
 down in the door-way to eat of that which was 
 given him, and he said, “ For life or posses- 
 sions a man will fight, but for his belly this 
 man smites. If a poor man has any god 
 to take his part, my lord Antinous shall 
 not live to be the queen’s husband.” 
 
 Then Antinous raged ihighly, and threat- 
 ened to drag him by the heels, and to rend 
 his rags about his ears, if he spoke another 
 word. 
 
 But the other suitors did in no wise 
 approve of the harsh language, nor of the 
 blow which Antinous had dealt ; and 
 some of them said “ Who knows but one 
 of the deities goes about, hid under that 
 poor disguise ? for in the likeness of poor 
 
168 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 pilgrims the gods have many times de- 
 scended to try the dispositions of men, 
 whether they be humane or impious.” 
 While these things passed, Telemachus 
 sat and observed all, but held his peace, 
 remembering the instructions of his father. 
 But secretly he waited for the sign which 
 Minerva was to send from heaven. 
 
 That day there followed Ulysses to the 
 court one of the common sort of beggars, 
 Irus by name, one that had received alms 
 before-time of the suitors, and was their 
 ordinary sport, when they were inclined 
 (as that day) to give way to mirth, to see 
 him eat and drink ; for he had the appetite 
 of six men ; and was of huge stature and 
 proportions of body: yet had in him no 
 spirit nor courage of a man. This man 
 thinking to curry favor with the suitors, 
 and recommend himself especially to such 
 a great lord as Antinous was, began to 
 revile and scorn Ulysses, putting foul 
 language upon him, and fairly challenging 
 
OF UtYSSES. 
 
 10& 
 
 him to fight with the fist. But Ulysse3 
 deeming his railings to be nothing more 
 than jealousy and that envious disposition 
 which beggars commonly manifest to 
 brothers in their trade, mildly besought 
 him not to trouble him, but to enjoy that 
 portion which the liberality of their enter- 
 tainers gave him, as he did, quietly ; seeing, 
 that, of their bounty, there was sufficient 
 for all. 
 
 But Irus thinking that this forbearance 
 in Ulysses was nothing more than a sign 
 of fear, so much the more highly stormed, 
 and bellowed, and provoked him to fight • 
 and by this time the quarrel had attracted 
 the notice of the suitors, who with loud 
 laughters and shouting egged on the dis- 
 pute, and lord Antinous swore by all the 
 gods it should be a battle, and that in that 
 hall the strife should be determined. To 
 this the rest of the suitors with violent 
 clamours acceded, and a circle was made 
 for the combatants, and a fat goat was 
 
 i 
 
THE ADVENTURES 
 
 170 
 
 proposed as the victor's prize, as at the 
 Olympic or the Pythian games. Then 
 Ulysses seeing no remedy, or being not 
 unwilling that the suitors should behold 
 some proof of that strength which ere long 
 in their own persons they were to taste of, 
 stripped himself, and prepared for the com- 
 bat. But first he demanded that he should 
 have fair play shewn him, that none in 
 that assembly should aid his opponent, or 
 take part against him, for being an old 
 man they might easily crush him with 
 their strengths. And Telemachus passed 
 his word that no foul play should be shewn 
 him, but that each party should be left to 
 their own unassisted strengths, and to this 
 he made Antinous and the rest of the suitors 
 swear. 
 
 But when Ulysses had laid aside his 
 garments, and was bare to the waist, 
 all the beholders admired at the goodly 
 sight of his large shoulders being of such 
 exquisite shape and whiteness, and at his 
 
CF ULYSSES- 371 
 
 great and brawny bosom, and the youthful 
 strength which seemed to remain in a man 
 thought so old, and they said, what limbs 
 and what sinews he has ! and coward fear 
 seized on the mind of that great vast beg- 
 gar, and he dropt his threats, and his big 
 words, and would have fled, but lord 
 Antinous staid him, and threatened him 
 that if he declined the combat, he would 
 put him in a ship, and land him on the 
 shores where king Echetus reigned, the 
 roughest tyrant which at that time the 
 world contained, and who had that anti- 
 pathy to rascal beggars, such as he, that 
 when any landed on his coast, he would 
 crop their ears and noses and give them 
 to the dogs to tear. So Irus, in whom fear 
 of king Echetus prevailed above the fear 
 of Ulysses, addressed himself to fight. But 
 Ulysses, provoked to be engaged in so 
 odious a strife with a fellow of his base con- 
 ditions, and loathing longer to be made a 
 i % 
 
the adventures 
 
 IT 2 
 
 spectacle to entertain the ey^es of his foes, 
 with one blow, which he struck him be- 
 neath the ear, so shattered the teeth and 
 jaw bone of this soon baffled coward, that 
 he laid him sprawling in the dust, with 
 small stomach or ability to renew the con- 
 test. Then raising him on his feet, he led 
 him bleeding and sputtering to the door, 
 and put his staff into his hand, and bid 
 him go use his command upon dogs and 
 swine, but not presume himself to be lord of 
 the guests another time, nor of the beggary ! 
 
 The suitors applauded in their vain 
 minds the issue of the contest, and rioted 
 in mirth at the expence of poor Irus, who 
 they vowed should be forthwith embarked, 
 and sent to king Echetus ; and they be- 
 stowed thanks on Ulysses for ridding the 
 court of that unsavory morsel, as they 
 called him; but in their inward souls they 
 would not have cared if Irus had been 
 victor, and Ulysses had taken the foil, but 
 
it was mirth to them to see the beggars 
 fight. In such pastimes and light enter- 
 tainments the day wore away. 
 
 When evening was come the suitors be- 
 took themselves to music and dancing. 
 And Ulysses leaned his back against a 
 pillar, from which certain lamps hung which 
 gave light to the dancers, and he made 
 show of watching the dancers, but very 
 different thoughts were in his head. And 
 as he stood near the lamps, the light fell 
 upoa his head, which was thin of hair and 
 bald, as an old man’s. And Eurymachus, 
 a suitor, taking occasion from some words 
 which were spoken before, scoffed and 
 said, “ Now I know for a certainty that 
 some god lurks under the poor - and beg- 
 garly appearance of this man, for as he 
 stands by the lamps, his sleek head throws 
 beams around it, like as it were a glory.” 
 And another said, “ He passes bis time too 
 not much unlike the gods, lazily living- 
 exempt from labour, taking offerings of 
 
174 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 men.” " I warrant,” said Eurymachus 
 again, “ he could not raise a fence or dig 
 a ditch for his livelihood, if a man would 
 hire him to work in a garden.” 
 
 “ I wish,” said Ulysses, “ that you who 
 speak this, and myself, were to be tried at 
 any task-work, that I had a good crooked 
 scythe put in my hand, that was sharp and 
 strong, and you such another, where the 
 grass grew longest, to be up by daybreak, 
 mowing the meadows till the sun went 
 down, not tasting of food till we had 
 finished, or that we were set to plough four 
 acres in one day of good glebe land, to see 
 whose furrows were evenest and cleanest, 
 or that we might have one wrestling-bout 
 together, or that in our right hands a 
 good steel-headed lance were placed 
 to try whose blows fell heaviest and 
 thickest upon the adversary’s head-piece. 
 I would cause you such work, as you 
 should have small reason to reproach me 
 with being slack at work. But you would 
 
OF ULYSSES, 
 
 "17 !i 
 
 do well to spare me this reproach, and to 
 save your strength, till the owner of this 
 house shall return, till the day when Ulysses 
 shall return, when returning he shall enter 
 upon his birth-right.” 
 
 This was a galling speech to those suitors, 
 to whom Ulysses’s return Was indeed the 
 thing which they most dreaded ; and a 
 sudden fear fell upon their souls, as if they 
 Were sensible of the real presence of that 
 man who did indeed stand amongst them, 
 but not in that form aS they might know 
 liim; and EurymachuS, incensed, snatched 
 a massy cup which stood on a table near, 
 and hurled it at the head of the Supposed 
 beggar, and but narrowly missed the hit- 
 ting of him ; and all the suitors rose, as at 
 once, to thrust him out of the hall, which 
 they said his beggarly presence and his 
 rude speeches had profaned. But Tele- 
 machuS cried to them to forbear, and not 
 to presume to lay hands upon a wretched 
 man to whom he had*, promised protection. 
 
176 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 He asked if they were mad, to mix such 
 abhorred uproar with his feasts. He bade 
 them take their food and their wine, to sit up 
 or to go to bed at their free pleasures, so long 
 as he should give licence to that freedom ; 
 but why should they abuse his banquet, 
 or let the words which a poor beggar spake 
 have power to move their spleens so 
 fiercely ? 
 
 They bit their lips and frowned for 
 anger, to be checked so by a youth; never- 
 theless for that time they had the grace to ab- 
 stain, either for shame, or that Minerva had 
 infused into them a terror of Ulysses’s son. 
 
 So that day’s feast was concluded with- 
 out bloodshed, and the suitors, tired with 
 their sports, departed severally each man 
 to his apartment. Only Ulysses and 
 Telemachus remained. And now Tele- 
 machus by his father’s direction went and 
 brought down into the ball armour and 
 lances from the armoury : for Ulysses said, 
 “ On the morrow we shall have need of 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 177 
 
 them.” And moreover he said, “If any one 
 shall ask why you have taken them down, 
 say, it is to clean them and scour them from 
 the rust which they have gathered since 
 the owner of this house went for Troy.” 
 And as Telemachus stood by the armour, 
 the lights were all gone out, and it was 
 pitch-dark, and the armour gave out glis- 
 tering beams as of fire, and he said to 
 his father, “ The pillars of the house are on 
 fire.” And his father said, “ It is the gods 
 who sit above the stars, and have power to 
 make the night as light as the day.” And 
 he took it for a good omen. And Tele- 
 machus fell to cleaning and sharpening of 
 the lances. 
 
 Now Ulysses had not seen his wife 
 Penelope in all the time since his return ; 
 for the queen did not care to mingle with 
 the suitors at their banquets, but as became 
 one that had been Ulysses’s wife, kept much 
 in private, spinning and doing her excel- 
 lent housewiveries among her maids in the 
 i 5 
 
178 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 remote apartments of the palace. Only 
 upon solemn days she would come down 
 and shew herself to the suitors. And 
 Ulysses was filled with a longing desire to 
 see his wife again, whom for twenty years he 
 had not beheld, and he softly stole through 
 the known passages of his beautiful house, 
 till he came where the maids were lighting 
 the queen through a stately gallery, that led 
 to the chamber where she slept. And 
 when the maids saw Ulysses, they said, 
 “ It is the beggar, who came to the court 
 to-day, about whom all that uproar was 
 stirred up in the hall : what does he here ?” 
 But Penelope gave commandment that he 
 should be brought before her, for she said. 
 It may be that he has travelled, and has 
 heard something concerning Ulysses.” 
 Then was Ulysses right glad to hear 
 himself named by his queen,i to find him- 
 self in no wise forgotten, nor her great love 
 towards him decayed in all that time that 
 he had been away. And he stood before 
 
OP BliTSSEJ, 
 
 ms 
 
 his queen, and she knew him not to he 
 Ulysses, but supposed that he had been 
 some poor traveller. And she asked him 
 of what country he was. 
 
 He told her (as he had* before told to 
 Eumsfeus) that he was a Cretan born, and 
 however poor and cast down he now 
 seemed, no less a man than brother to Ido* 
 meneus, who was grandson to king Minos, 
 and though he now wanted bread, he had 
 once had it in his power to feast Ulysses. 
 Then he feigned how Ulysses, sailing for 
 Troy, was forced by stress of weather to 
 put his fleet in at a port of Crete, where 
 for twelve days he was his guest, and enter- 
 tained by him with all befitting guest- rites. 
 And he described the very garments which 
 Ulysses had on, by which Penelope knew 
 that he had seen her lord. 
 
 In this manner Ulysses told his wife 
 many tales of himself, at most but painting, 
 but painting so near to the life, that the 
 feeling of that which she took in at her 
 
180 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 ears became so strong, that the kindly 
 tears ran down her fair cheeks, while she 
 thought upon her lord, dead as she thought 
 him, and heavily mourned the loss of him 
 whom she missed, whom she could not find, 
 though in very deed he stood so near her. 
 
 Ulysses was moved to see her weep, but 
 he kept his own eyes as dry as iron or horn 
 in their lids, putting a bridle upon his 
 strong passion that it should not issue to 
 sight. 
 
 Then told he how he had lately been at 
 the court of Thesprotia, and what he had 
 learned concerning Ulysses there, in order 
 as he had delivered to Eummus ; and 
 Penelope was won to believe that there 
 might be a possibility of Ulysses being 
 alive, and she said, “ I dreamed a dream 
 this morning. Methought I had twenty 
 household fowl which did eat wheat steeped 
 in water from my hand, and there came 
 suddenly from the clouds a crook-beaked 
 hawk who soused on them and killed them 
 
OF ULYSSES# 
 
 J81 
 
 all, trussing their necks, then took his 
 flight back up to the clouds. And in my 
 dream metliought that I wept and made 
 great moan for my fowls, and for the de- 
 struction which the hawk bad made ; and 
 my maids came about me to comfort me. 
 And in the height of my griefs the hawk 
 came back, and lighting upon the beam of 
 my chamber, he said to me in a man’s 
 voice, which sounded strangely even in my 
 dream, to hear a hawk to speak : be of good 
 cheer, he said, O daughter of Icarius ! for 
 this is no dream which thou hast seen, but 
 that which shall happen to thee indeed. 
 Those household fowl which. thou'lamen test 
 so without reason, are the suitors, 
 who devour thy substance, even as thou 
 sawest the fowl eat from thy hand, and the 
 hawk is thy husband, who is coming to 
 give death to the suitors. — And_I awoke, 
 and went to see to my fowls if they were 
 alive, whom I found eating wheat from 
 
182 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 their troughs, all well and safe as before 
 my dream.” 
 
 Then said Ulysses, “ This dream can en- 
 dure no other interpretation than that 
 ■Which the hawk gave to it, who is your 
 lord, and who is coming quickly to effect 
 all that his words told you. ” 
 
 “ Y our words, ” she said, ‘ ‘ my old guest, 
 are so sweet, that would you sit and please 
 me with your speech, my ears would never 
 let my eyes close their spheres for very joy 
 of your discourse ; but none that is merely 
 mortal can live without the death of sleep, 
 sO the gods who are without death them- 
 selves have ordained it, to keep the me- 
 jftory of our mortality in our minds, while 
 we experience that as much as we live 
 we die every day : in which consideration 
 I will ascend my bed, which I have nightly 
 watered with my tears since he that was 
 the joy of it departed for that bad city:” 
 she so speaking, because she could not 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 183 
 
 bring her lips to name the name of Troy 
 so much hated. So for that night they 
 parted, Penelope to her bed, and Ulysses 
 to his son, and to the armour and the 
 lances in the hall, where they sat up all 
 night cleaning and watching by the 
 armour. 
 
181 
 
 THE. ADVENTURES 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The madness from above. — The boro of 
 
 Ulysses. — Tbe slaughter. — The conclusion. 
 
 When daylight appeared, a tumultuous 
 concourse of the suitors again filled the 
 hall ; and some wondered, and some en- 
 quired what meant that glittering store of 
 armour and lances which lay on heaps by 
 the entry of the door ; and to all that 
 asked Telemachus made reply, that he had 
 caused them to be taken down to cleanse 
 them of the rust and of the stain which 
 they had contracted by lying so long 
 unused, even ever since his father went for 
 Troy; and with that answer their minds 
 were easily satisfied. So to their feasting 
 and vain rioting again they fell. Ulysses 
 by Telemachus's order had a seat and a 
 
CF ULYSSidS. 
 
 185 
 
 mess assigned him in the door-way, and he 
 had his eye ever on the lances. And it 
 moved gall in some of the great ones there 
 present, to have their feast still dulled with 
 the society of that wretched beggar as they 
 deemed him, and they reviled and spurned 
 at him with their feet. Only there was one 
 Philastius, who had something a better 
 nature than the rest, that spake kindly to 
 him, and had his age in respect. lie 
 coming up to Ulysses, took him by the 
 hand with a kind of fear, as if touched ex- 
 ceedingly with imagination of his great 
 worth, and said thus to him : “ Hail ! 
 father stranger ! my brows have sweat to 
 see the injuries which you have received, 
 and my eyes have broke forth in tears, 
 when I have only thought that such being 
 oftentimes the lot of worthiest men, to this 
 plight Ulysses may be reduced, and that 
 he now may wander from place to place as 
 you do; for such who are compelled by 
 need to range here and there, and have no 
 
586 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 firm home to fix their feet upon, God keeps 
 them in this earth, as under water ; so are 
 they kept down and depressed. And a 
 dark thread is sometimes spun in the fate6 
 of kings.” 
 
 At this bare likening of the beggar to 
 TJIysses, Minerva from heaven made the 
 suitors for foolish joy to go mad, and 
 rbused them to such a laughter as would 
 never stop, they laughed without power 
 of ceasing, their eyes stood full of tears 
 for violent joys; but fears and horrible 
 misgivings succeeded: and one among 
 them stood up and prophesied : “ Ah, 
 wretches !” he said, “ what madness from 
 heaven has seized you, that you can laugh ? 
 see you not that your meat drops blood ? 
 a night, like the night of death, wraps you 
 about, you shriek without knowing it; 
 your eyes thrust forth tears ; the fixed 
 walls, and the beam that bears the whole 
 house up, fall blood ; ghosts choak up the 
 entry ; full is the hall with apparitions of 
 
or Ulysses, 
 
 187 
 
 murdered men ; under your feet is hell ; 
 the sun falls from heaven, and it is mid- 
 night at noon.” But. like men whom the 
 gods had infatuated to their destruction, 
 they mocked at his fears, and Eurymachus 
 said, “ This man is surely mad, conduct 
 him forth into the market-place, set him 
 in the light, for he dreams that 'tis night 
 within the house.” 
 
 But Theoclymenus (for that tVas the 
 prophet’s name) whom Minerva had graced 
 with a prophetic spirit, that he foreseeing 
 might avoid the destruction Which awaited 
 them, answered and said : “Eurymachus, 
 I will not require a guide of thee, for I 
 have eyes and ears, the use of both my feet, 
 and a sane mind within me, and with these 
 I will go forth of the doors, because I 
 know the imminent evils which await all 
 you that stay, by reason of this poor guest 
 who is a favourite with all the gods.” So 
 saying he turned his back upon those in- 
 
18 S 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 hospitable men, and went away home, ancT 
 ■never returned to tlie palace.” 
 
 These words which he spoke were not 
 unheard by Telem.achus, who kept still his 
 eye upon his father, expecting fervently 
 when he would give the sign, which was 
 to precede the slaughter of the suitors. 
 
 They dreaming of no sucli thing, fell 
 sweetly to their dinner, as joying in the 
 great store of banquet which was heaped 
 in full tables about them ; but there reigned 
 not a bitterer banquet planet in all heaven, 
 than that which hung over them this day 
 by secret destination of Minerva. 
 
 There was a bow which Ulysses left when 
 he went for Troy. It had lain by since 
 that time, out of use and unstrung, for no 
 man had strength to draw that bow r , save 
 Ulysses. So it had remained, as a monu- 
 ment of the great strength of its master. 
 This bow, with the quiver of arrows be- 
 longing thereto, Telemachus had brought 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 189 
 
 down from the armoury on the last night 
 along with the lances ; and now Minerva, 
 intending to do Ulysses an honour, put it 
 into the mind of Telemachus, to propose to 
 the suitors to try who was strongest to 
 draw that bow ; and he promised that to 
 the man who should be able to draw that 
 bow, his mother should be given in mar- 
 riage ; Ulysses’s wife the prize to him who 
 should bend the bow of Ulysses. 
 
 There was great strife and emulation 
 stirred up among the suitors at those Words 
 of the prince Telemachus. And to grace 
 her son’s words, and to confirm the promise 
 which he had made, Penelope came and 
 shewed herself that day to the suitors ; and 
 Minerva made her that she appeared never 
 so comely in their sight as that day, and 
 they were inflamed with the beholding of 
 so much beauty, proposed as the price of 
 so great manhood ; and they cried out, 
 that if all those heroes who sailed to Colchos 
 for the rich purchase of the gelden-fleeced 
 
J90 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 ram, had seen earth’s richer prize, Penelope, 
 they would not have made their voyage, 
 but would have vowed their valours and 
 their lives to her, for she was at all parts 
 faultless. 
 
 And she said, “The god9 have taken 
 my beauty from me, since my lord went 
 for Troy. ” But Telemachus willed his mo- 
 ther to depart and not be present at that 
 contest, for he said, “It may be, some 
 rougher strife shall chance of this, than 
 may be expedient for a woman to witness.” 
 And she retired, she and her maids, and 
 left the hall. 
 
 Then the bow was brought into the 
 midst, and a mark was set up by prince 
 Telemachus : and Lord Antinous as the 
 chief among the suitors had the first offer, 
 and he took the bow and fitting an arrow 
 to the string, he strove to bend it, but not 
 with all his might and main could he once 
 draw together the end? of that tough bow; 
 and when he found how vain a thing it 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 191 
 
 was to endeavour to draw Ulysses’s bow, 
 be desisted, blushing for shame and for 
 mere anger. 
 
 Then Eurymachus adventured, but with 
 no better success ; but as it had torn the 
 hands of Antinous, so did the bow tear 
 and strain his hands, and marred his deli* 
 cate fingers, yet could he not once stir the 
 string. Then called he to the attendants 
 to bring fat and unctuous matter, which 
 melting at the fire, he dipped the bow 
 therein, thinking to supple it and make it 
 more pliable, but not with all the helps of 
 art could he succeed in making it to move. 
 After him Liodes, and Amphinoinus, and 
 Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides, 
 essayed their strength, but not any one of 
 them, or of the rest of those aspiring 
 suitors, had any better luck ; yet not the 
 meanest of them there but thought him- 
 self well worthy of Uiysses’s wife, though 
 to shoot with Ulysses’s bow the completes! 
 
J92 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 champion among them was by proof found 
 too feeble. 
 
 Then Ulysses prayed them that he might 
 have leave to try, and immediately a 
 clamour was raised among the suitors, 
 because of his petition, and they scorned 
 and swelled with rage at his presumption, 
 and that a beggar should seek to -contend 
 in a game of such noble mastery. But 
 Telemachus ordered that the bow should 
 be given him, and that he should have 
 leave to try, since they had failed ; “ for,’’ 
 he said, “ the bow is mine, to give or to 
 withhold and none durst gainsay the 
 prince. 
 
 Then Ulysses gave a sign to his son, 
 and he commanded the doors of the hall 
 to be made fast, and all wondered at his 
 words, but none could divine the cause. 
 And Ulysses took the bow into his hands, 
 and before he essayed to bend it, he sur- 
 veyed it at all parts, to see whether, by- 
 
OF ULTSSES. 
 
 193 
 
 long lying by, it had contracted any stiff- 
 ness which hindered the drawing, and as 
 he was busied in the curious surveying of 
 his bow, some of the suitors mocked him 
 and said, “Past doubt this man is a right 
 cunning archer, and knows his craft well. 
 See how he turns it over and over, and 
 looks into it, as if he could see through 
 the wood.” And others said, “We wish 
 some one would tell out gold into our laps 
 but for so long a time as he shall be in 
 drawing of that string.” But when he 
 had spent some little time in making proof 
 of the bow, and had found it to be in good 
 plight, like as an harper in tuning of his 
 harp draws out a string, with such ease or 
 much more did Ulysses draw to the head 
 the string of his own tough bow, and in 
 letting of it go, it twanged with such a 
 shrill noise as a swallow makes when it 
 sings through the air : which so much 
 amazed the suitors, that their colours came 
 
 K 
 
,194 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 and went, and the skies gave out a noise 
 of thunder, which at heart cheered Ulysses, 
 for he knew that now his long labours by 
 the disposal of the fates drew to an end. 
 Then fitted he- an arrow to the bow, and 
 drawing it to the head, he sent it right to 
 the mark which the prince had set up. 
 Which done, he said to Telemachus, “You 
 have got no disgrace yet by your guest, 
 for I have struck the mark I shot at, and 
 gave myself no such trouble in teazing the 
 bow with fat and fire, as these men did, 
 but have made proof that my strength is 
 not impaired, nor my age so weak and 
 contemptible as these were pleased to think 
 it. But come, the day going down calls 
 us to supper, after which succeeds poem 
 and harp, and all delights which use to 
 crown princely banque.ttings.” 
 
 So saying, he beckoaed to his son, who 
 straight girt his sword to his side, and took 
 one of the lances (of which there lay great 
 
store from the armoury) in his hand, and 
 armed at all points, advanced towards his 
 father. 
 
 The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell 
 from his shoulder, and his own kingly 
 likeness returned) when he rushed to the 
 great hall door with bow and quiver full 
 of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, 
 and in bitter words presignified his deadly 
 intent to the suitors. “ Thus far,” he said, 
 “this contest has been decided harmless: 
 now for us there rests another mark? harder 
 to hit, but which my hands shall essay 
 notwithstanding, if Phoebus god of archers 
 be pleased to give me the mastery.” With 
 that he let fly a deadly arrow at Antinous, 
 which pierced him in the throat, as he was in 
 the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. 
 Amazement seized the suitors, as their 
 great champion fell dead, and they raged 
 highly against Ulysses, and said that it 
 should prove the dearest shaft which he 
 ever let fly, for he had slain a man, whose 
 
J96 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 like breathed not in any part of the king- 
 dom : and they flew to their arms, and 
 would have seized the lances, but Mi- 
 nerva struck them with dimness of sight 
 that they went erring up and down the 
 hall, not knowing where to find them. 
 Yet so infatuated were they by the dis- 
 pleasure of heaven, that they did not see 
 the imminent peril which impended over 
 them, but every man believed that this 
 accident had happened beside the intention 
 of the doer. Fools ! to think by shutting 
 their eyes to evade destiny, or that any 
 other cup remained for them, but that 
 which their great Antinous had tasted ! 
 
 Then Ulysses revealed himself to all in 
 that presence, and that he was the man whom 
 they held to be dead at Troy, whose palace 
 they had usurped, whose wife in his life- 
 time they had sought in impious marriage, 
 and that for this reason destruction was 
 come upon them. And he dealt his deadly 
 arrows among them, and there was no 
 
OF ULYSSSS. 
 
 197 
 
 avoiding him, nor escaping from his hor- 
 rid person, and Telemachus by his side 
 plied them thick with those murderous 
 lances from which there was no retreat, 
 till fear itself made them valiant, and dan- 
 ger gave them eyes to understand the 
 peril ; then they which had swords drew 
 them,, and some with shields, that could 
 find them, and some with tables and 
 benches snatched up in haste, rose in a 
 mass- to overwhelm and crush those two j 
 yet they singly bestirred themselves like 
 men, and defended themselves against that 
 great host, and through tables, shields and 
 all, right through the arrows of Ulysses 
 elove, and the irresistible lances of Tele- 
 machus ; and many lay dead, and all had 
 wounds, and Minerva in the likeness of a 
 bird sate upon the beam which went across 
 the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful 
 noise, and sometimes the great bird would 
 fly among them, cuffing at the swords and 
 at the lances, and up and down the hall 
 
198 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 would go, beating her wings, and trou- 
 bling every thing, that it was frightful to 
 behold, and it frayed the blood from the 
 cheeks of those heaven-hated suitors : but 
 to Ulysses and his son she appeared in 
 her own divine similitude, with her snake- 
 fringed shield, a goddess armed, fighting 
 their battles. Nor did that dreadful pair 
 desist, till they had laid all their foes at 
 their feet. At their feet they lay in shoals ; 
 like fishes, when the fishermen break up 
 their nets, so they lay gasping and sprawl- 
 ing at the feet of Ulysses and his son. 
 And Ulysses remembered the prediction of 
 Tiresias, which said that he was to perish 
 by his own guests, unless he slew those 
 who knew him not. 
 
 Then certain of the queen’s household 
 went up and told Penelope what had hap- 
 pened, and how her lord Ulysses was 
 come home, and had slain the suitors. 
 But she gave no heed to their words, but 
 thought that some frenzy possessed them, 
 
OF ULVSSEff. 
 
 199 
 
 or that they mocked her: for it is the 
 property of such extremes of sorrow as she 
 had felt, not to believe when any great joy 
 cometh. And she rated and chid them 
 exceedingly for troubling her. But they 
 the more persisted in their asseverations 
 of the truth of what they had affirmed ; 
 and some of them had seen the slaughtered 
 bodies of the suitors dragged forth of the 
 hall. And they said, “That poor guest 
 whom you talked with last night was Ulys- 
 ses.” Then she was yet more fully per- 
 suaded that they mocked her, and she 
 wept. But they said, “ This thing is true 
 which we have told. We sat within, in 
 an inner room in the palace, and the doors 
 of the hall were shut on us, but we heard 
 the cries and the groans of the men that 
 were killed, but saw nothing, till at length 
 your son called to us to come in, and 
 entering we saw Ulysses standing in the 
 midst of the slaughtered.” But she per- 
 sisting in her unbelief, said, that it was 
 
200 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 some god which had deceived them to 
 think it was the person of Ulysses. 
 
 By this time Telemachus and his father 
 had cleansed their hands from the slaughter, 
 and were come to where the queen was 
 talking with those of her household ; and 
 when she saw Ulysses, she stood motion- 
 less, and had no power to speak, sudden 
 surprise and joy and fear and many pas- 
 sions so strove within her. Sometimes’ 
 she was clear that it was. her husband that 
 she saw, and sometimes the alteration 
 which twenty years had made in his person 
 (yet that was uot much) perplexed her 
 that she knew not what to think, and for 
 joy she could not believe, and yet for joy 
 she would not but believe ; and, above all, 
 that sudden change from a beggar to a 
 king troubled her, anti wrought uneasy 
 scruples in her mind. But Telemachus, 
 seeing her strangeness, blamed her, a l 
 called her an ungentle and tyrannous mo- 
 ther ! and said that she shewed a ton, 
 
OF ULYSSES. 
 
 201 
 
 great curiousness of modesty, to abstain 
 from embracing his father, and to have 
 doubts of his person, when to all present it 
 was evident that he was the very real and 
 true Ulysses. 
 
 Then she mistrusted no longer, but ran 
 and fell upon Ulysses’s neck, and said, 
 “Let not my husband be angry, that I 
 held off so long with strange delays ; it is 
 the gods, who severing us for so long time, 
 have caused this unseemly distance in me. 
 If Menelaus’s wife had used half my cau- 
 tion, she would never have taken so freely 
 to a stranger’s bed ; and she might have 
 spared us all these plagues which have 
 come upon us through her shameless 
 deed. ” 
 
 These words with which Penelope ex- 
 cused herself, wrought more affection in 
 Ulysses than if upon a first sight she had 
 given up herself implicitly to his em- 
 braces ; and he wept for joy to possess a 
 wife so discreet, so answering to his own 
 
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 For the Use of Schools and Young Persons. 
 
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