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After the fall of Troy the chiefs with their followers sailed for home. But in those days even the comparatively short voyage from Asia Minor to Greece was filled with danger; moreover, some of the heroes in the course of that long war had incurred the enmity of one or another of the gods, who, therefore, cut off altogether or delayed their return home. Certain of the Trojans after long wanderings founded new cities on strange shores; many of both nations met their death by drowning or by the violence of savage men and monsters; one returned only to be foully murdered. "The much enduring Odysseus" (more familiarly known by his Latin name, Ulysses) added ten years of wanderings and of marvelous adventures to the ten years of the war, and returned home to his faithful wife Penelope after an absence of twenty years. Homer tells his story in the Odyssey,

When he had set sail from Troy with his men and ships, Odysseus made a fairly prosperous voyage as far as the southern point of Greece and was within a few days' sail of Ithaca, his home, when a great wind arose and drove him from his course. After nine days the ships came to land in the Lotus-eaters' country, and the men were kindly entertained and given to eat of the lotus. This plant had the strange power of taking from him who ate of it all remembrance of the past and all ambition for the future and making him desire only to live on in a dreamy and effortless present. Those of Odysseus' men, therefore, who had tasted the lotus could be forced to continue on their voyage only by being bound in the ships until the effect of the food had worn off.

The next land reached by the voyagers was very different, a rough and rocky island inhabited by a tribe of savage giants, called Cy clo’pes, whose peculiarity it was that each had but one great eye, set in the middle of his forehead. Leaving the rest of his companions on another island, Odysseus beached his own ship on the shore of the Cyclopes, and as none of the terrible inhabitants was about at the time, he and his men disembarked and trustfully wandered about the island until they chanced upon a great cave where a plentiful supply of milk and cheese tempted their appetites. While they were eating, the Cyclops Polyphe’mus returned, driving his sheep before him, and coming into the cave closed its entrance with a huge rock. Though his natural craftiness and caution led Odysseus to conceal his true name and give, when asked, the name Noman, with apparent confidence he requested of his monstrous host hospitality and the gifts that Greek courtesy usually gave a guest as his due. But Zeus and his law of hospitality were not recognized by this savage giant, and his only answer was to seize two of his guests and devour them raw. Then he lay down to sleep. In the morning, after breakfasting on two more of the men, he drove his sheep out of the cave, and rolling the stone against the opening, left Odysseus and those of his company who remained uneaten to sit and wait for their fiendish host to return for his next meal. But Odysseus was not the man to sit and expect his fate at the hands of a stupid and barbarous Cyclops. He planned escape and vengeance. At the fall of evening, when Polyphemus returned with his flocks, the wily hero talked pleasantly with him and offered him some particularly fine and strong wine that he happened to have with him. In high good humor Polyphemus washed down his dinner of two Greeks with this drink — a pleasant change to one accustomed only to sheep's milk — and stretched himself out to sleep. Then Odysseus and his men seized a great long pole which, during the day, they had sharpened to a point and hardened in the fire, and using all their strength, drove it deep into the Cyclops' one eye. Polyphemus sprang up, bellowing with pain, and madly called on his brother Cyclopes for help. But when hurrying to the mouth of the cave, they asked him who was troubling him, he could only answer: "Noman is slaying me by guile, nor at all by force." So they went away, telling him to pray to his father Poseidon, since, if no man was killing him, it must be by the will of the gods, whom no one can resist. It was now morning and time to let the sheep out, so the Cyclops, still groaning with pain, rolled away the stone from the door and sat down by it, stretching out his hands to feel if any man passed out. Odysseus took the sheep and fastened them three together; he ordered one of his men to stretch himself flat on the middle one of each group, and so all but he passed out safely. Then he himself clung firmly to the under side of the great thick-fleeced ram, and the blind Cyclops, though he felt over the ram's back and wondered that he should be behind his flock, failed to detect the hero. So the men escaped to their boat. Although they had been saved by their leader's wits, they were a second time endangered by his rashness, for when they were once afloat Odysseus could not resist calling back tauntingly to his enemy, and the Cyclops, dashing down to the shore, hurled immense rocks after the departing ship. If his aim had not been poor because of his blindness, the ship would surely have been sunk. Failing in this, Polyphemus called aloud upon Poseidon for vengeance, and from that time on the sea-god turned against the heroes and relentlessly kept them wandering over the waters.

Some time after this adventure the heroes came to the floating island of Æ’o lus, the king of the winds. Here Odysseus was kindly received and entertained, and on his departure was presented by Æolus with a huge bag in which were imprisoned all the winds except the favorable west wind. So after nine days' fair sailing they had actually come so near to Ithaca that they could see men moving on the rocks, and Odysseus, for the first time feeling free from his anxieties, lay down in the boat to rest. Then the men conspired to rob him, and supposing that the bag contained precious treasure they eagerly opened it. In an instant all the contrary winds rushed out together and drove the ships far off their -course straight back to the island of Æolus. But Æolus, thinking that one so unfortunate as Odysseus must for his sins be under the disfavor of the gods, sent him angrily away, refusing to give him any more help.

Next they came to the land of a people named Læs try go’ni ans, who fell upon the strangers and destroyed eleven of the ships with their companies. Only the twelfth, with Odysseus on board, got off in safety. In great grief over the loss of their companions, the remnant of Odysseus' company sailed on until they came to the island of the sorceress Circe. Having learned discretion from his previous misfortunes, Odysseus did not risk all his men at once, but sent half, under a trustworthy leader, to explores the country while the other half remained by the shore. The scouting party, as they went through the woods, were alarmed by meeting great numbers of lions and wolves, but as these beasts instead of attacking them came and fawned upon them appealingly, they took heart and continued on their way until they came to a palace. The peacefulness of the place and the reassuring sound of a woman singing emboldened the adventurers to enter. Circe turned from her weaving to greet the strangers and hastened to set before them food and drink. The thirsty men did not see the magic drops their hostess mingled with their wine. At a touch of her wand the lordly Greeks dropped down and trotted, grunting reproachfully, to the sties. But one man, their leader, had not gone into the house with them. At their prolonged absence he became uneasy and returned in haste to the ship to tell what he feared. So Odysseus set out alone to rescue his men. As he went, Hermes met him and warned him of the danger that lay before him and gave him an herb to protect him against Circe's spells. When, therefore, Circe received him as she had his followers, and after giving him the potion, raised her wand and ordered him to the sties, the hero grappled with her and threatened to kill her unless she at once restored his men to their proper forms. Recognizing in this successful resistance to her magic the hand of a god, and charmed by her new guest's cleverness and strength, the sorceress yielded to all his demands and sending for the rest of the company from the ship entertained them all royally for a whole year. But at the end of that time, when they all began to long for the return home, Circe told Odysseus of a terrible ordeal that lay before him before he could reach Ithaca. He, a living man, must go to the realm of the dead to consult the seer Ti re’si as.

With dread at his heart Odysseus followed out the sorceress' directions and sailed on to the very edge of the world, where the stream of Ocean rolls by the land of the Cim mer’i ans, a land always shrouded in mist and darkness, for the sun never rises upon it. From there he proceeded along the shore of the Ocean until he came to the grove of Persephone, where was the entrance to Hades. By the place where the rivers of the lower world, fiery Phleg’e thon, and Co cy’tus, the river of wailing, flow into gloomy Ach’e ron, he dug a trench, as Circe had directed him, and poured a libation to the dead. Then he sacrificed black sheep and let their blood run into the trench. And the shades of the dead crowded around with ghostly cries, eager to drink of the blood,— boys and maidens, and warriors that had fallen in battle. But Odysseus kept them off with his sword that the shade of the seer Tiresias might first drink and tell him what he wished to know. So Tiresias came and drank, and prophesied to the hero his safe home-coming and how he should find violent men wasting his substance and should kill them all and so live to an old age in peace and plenty among a happy people. But then he told him, too, of Poseidon's anger at the mutilation of his son Polyphemus, and that yet for many years he would keep Odysseus away from Ithaca, and he warned him especially that destruction would overtake them all if they should injure the cattle of the sun when they came to the island of Trinacria. When the seer had finished, Odysseus' mother came, and when she had drunk of the blood she knew her son and told him of her own death, caused by grief at his long absence, and of his old father, and of his wife Pe nel’o pe, and his little son Telem’a chus. But when he tried to embrace her, like a shadow or a dream she faded away. Then there came about him many of the women famous in story — Leda, the mother of Helen and of Castor and Polydeuces; Alcmena, Heracles’ mother; Ariadne, whom Theseus had deserted on Naxos, and many others. He saw and talked with the heroes who had fought with him at Troy — Agamemnon, who told him of his treacherous murder, and Achilles, preéminent here as in the world above. There were the heroes of ancient times, even the shade of great Heracles — the shade only, for he himself was now a god in Olympus. There he saw Minos sitting as judge, and those who had sinned against the gods suffering eternal punishment, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and others.

Returning safely from that land that so few Tue sirena. living men have ever visited, the company stopped once more at Circe's island. There they were entertained for a day while Circe told Odysseus of the dangers that next confronted him and how he might win safely through them. From there they sailed on until they saw on the shore at a distance the meadow of the Sirens, who bewitch men by their songs. But Odysseus stuffed his companions' ears with wax and had himself bound hand and foot to the mast, as Circe had told him. And when the ship came near, the Sirens called to him to leap from the deck and come to them, for they had knowledge of past and future and could give him happiness. So he tried to break away and go to them, and he made signs to the others to loose him, but they pulled steadily on and so escaped that danger.

Fig. 93. Odysseus and the Sirens.

Soon two cliffs appeared, rising one on either side of the course between Italy and Sicily; in the one crouched Scylla, her twelve feet dangling down from the cave, and her six heads turning in every direction in search of ships. On the other side was a lower cliff with a fig tree at the top, and below it Char yb’dis, who three times a day sucked in the water and cast it out again. As the ship passed through, keeping, as Circe had told them, well away from Charybdis, Scylla stretched her long necks forward and seized a man in each of her terrible jaws. As they were drawn up, squirming like fishes caught on a hook, they cried out in anguish to Odysseus, and all that were left of that company shuddered as they passed on.

Towards nightfall Odysseus saw before them the island of the Sun, Trinacria, and he ordered his men to row on, remembering the warnings of Tiresias and Circe. But they were exhausted with hard rowing and the strain of the terrible meeting with Scylla and insisted upon landing for the night. The next morning unfavorable winds were blowing, and continued for a whole month, until all the food and wine was exhausted. Then while Odysseus was sleeping, his companions preferring any other form of death to starvation, killed some of the sacred cattle that grazed on that island and made a feast. When Odysseus awoke and saw it, he knew that destruction had come upon them, for the empty hides crept mysteriously, and the flesh on the spits bellowed. At last favorable winds blew, and they put out to sea. But the sun-god had complained to Zeus of the loss of his cattle, threatening that if his wrong were not avenged he would leave the world in darkness and go to shine among the dead. So Zeus sent a storm to overtake the ship, and all the men were swept into the sea and drowned, and only Odysseus clung to the boat. He was carried straight back to Charybdis, who, as she threw out the water, shattered and then swallowed down the ship; Odysseus escaped only by grasping hold of the fig tree when the water cast him up. There he hung suspended until Charybdis heaved up the wreckage of the ship again. Then he dropped upon one of its timbers and rowed with his hands until he was out of reach of the whirlpool.

After this hairbreadth escape the hero, now quite without companions, was washed ashore on the island of Ca l yp’so, the daughter of Atlas. There he lived for eight years in the company of the charming nymph, eating and drinking of the best and living the most peaceful and luxurious of lives on that beautiful island. Yet he did not forget, his home and his wife, but sat day after day by the sea eating out his heart with homesickness. For, as he himself said:

Surely there is naught sweeter than a man’s own country and his parents, even though he dwell far off in a rich house, in a strange land, far from them that begat him. (Odyssey, IX. 34 ff.)

At last, at the complaint of Athena that her favorite was kept too long away from home, Zeus sent Hermes to command Calypso to let him go. Yielding unwillingly, she gave him the tools and material to construct a raft and a sail, and when it was ready, she stocked it with food and wine and gave him clothes and rich gifts and so sent him away. For eighteen days he had sailed prosperously along on his raft before Poseidon caught sight of him, and still brooding over the injury to Polyphemus, sent a furious storm against him. The sail was carried away and the raft itself was swept and torn by the waves. To the solitary adventurer out on those wide waters it seemed that his own gods had deserted him and that death was close upon him. But a sea-goddess saw and pitied him, and rising in the foam beside him held out to him her filmy scarf and spoke wisely and reassuringly. Borne up by the new courage she inspired and by the mysterious power of the scarf, Odysseus struck bravely out when the raft finally parted, and swimming continuously for two days and two nights, came at last in sight of land. But the waves were breaking high on the rocky coast, and the exhausted swimmer was beaten against the rocks and again sucked back by the undertow until it seemed he must go under. At one point a back current offered possible landing; there Tie managed to come to land and drew his bruised and soaked limbs up on the shore. Among the bushes on the bank he lay down and fell into the sleep of exhaustion.

The shore on which Odysseus had landed was that of the Phae a’ci ans, a good and prosperous people at peace with all the world and in great favor with the gods. On the night of the hero's perilous landing the king's daughter Nau sic'a a had been bidden by Athena in a dream to go down to the shore to wash her clothes in preparation for her coming wedding day. As her father had not yet even decided upon any one of her suitors as her husband, the princess felt shy about suggesting wedding preparations, but not wishing to displease the goddess, she modestly asked for the ox-cart that she and her maidens might carry down her brothers' clothes to wash them in the sea. The cart was brought around, the queen packed a basket with bread and honey and wine, and the young girls drove off for the shore. When the clothes had all been washed and spread out in the sun to bleach, they sat down on the grass to eat the food the queen had provided, and then, tucking up their skirts, they joined in a game of ball. It happened that the spot they had chosen for their noisy fun was close to the place where Odysseus had all this time been lying asleep. What was the astonishment and terror of the girls when suddenly a strange and wild-looking man appeared in their midst! Only Nausicaa stood her ground with dignity, and when the hero approached and begged for help and hospitable treatment, she showed him every kindness. She gave him oil to anoint his lame and battered limbs and some of her brothers' newly washed clothes to put on, and bade him follow her to the city, where her father would entertain him. Being a prudent girl and fearing gossip if she appeared in company with a handsome stranger (for the oil and the fresh clothes had restored Odysseus' fine appearance), she thought it best not to take him with her in the ox-cart.

Fig. 94. Odysseus appearing before Nausicaa.

As Odysseus, so long an exile from civilized human life, approached the king's palace, he wondered at the great wharves thronged with ships and at the beautiful city with its fine streets and houses and its busy and prosperous people, and more than ever a longing came over him for his own well-ordered land. The considerate and gentle treatment he received when he presented himself as a stranger before the king and queen proved that the reputation of the Phæacians was not undeserved. For they provided him with warm baths and entertained him royally with a feast and music, dancing and athletic sports, nor did they so forget the courtesy of hosts as ever to show curiosity about who the stranger was or on what business he was bent. When, however, the proper time had come, Odysseus told them all his story since the day that Troy fell, and he ended with earnest entreaties that his hosts would provide him with a ship and oarsmen to set him across the sea to Ithaca. So they gave him all that he asked and added splendid gifts, more valuable than all. the booty he had gathered at Troy and then lost in his wanderings. While he slept, for he was still overcome with weariness, he was set ashore on the island of Ithaca. Then those generous Phæacians received a poor reward for their hospitality, for as the ship returned, Poseidon rooted it fast in the sea and turned it to stone, to a little rocky island that still lies there off the island of Corfu and by its name, "The Island of Ulysses," witnesses to the truth of the story.

The twenty long years of the hero's absence had brought anxiety and distress to his people and to his wife and son. For after the news of the fall of Troy had reached Ithaca, and the other Greek princes who were still alive had returned to Greece, and still no word came of Odysseus, it came to be commonly believed that he was dead, and a great number of suitors from Ithaca and elsewhere began to demand Penelope in marriage. Telemachus was still too young successfully to defend his mother from their insolent insistence or his house from their greedy violence, and year after year saw them living riotously and extravagantly on their absent host's hospitality. The faithful Penelope, still hoping against hope for her noble husband's return, put them all off from day to day with a device that was worthy of her crafty husband. Promising that she would make a decision so soon as she had completed a shroud she was weaving for her old father against his death, she spent her days in the chambers among her maidens, weaving her great web, and at night when no one was by to see, she unraveled all that she had done the day before. For three years the suitors had been deceived, but at last they had learned of the trick and were now pressing more insistently than ever for a decision.

Meanwhile, as Telemachus grew to be a young man, more and more he chafed at the wasting of his inheritance and the arrogant behavior of the suitors, yet he was unable either to turn them out of his house or to protect his mother from their persistency. Shortly before Odysseus' landing at Ithaca, however, the goddess Athena, extending to his son the favor she had always shown to Odysseus, roused him to brave the anger of the suitors and go in search of his father. With the goddess as guide he came first to the court of Nestor and afterwards to that of Menelaüs. Both heroes received the son of their old comrade with cordial kindness, but the aged Nestor could tell him nothing of his father. Menelaüs, however, had heard from Proteus, the prophetic old man of the sea, that Odysseus was held captive on an island by the nymph Calypso. Strengthened in his resistance to the suitors by the knowledge that his father was still living, Telemachus started on his return voyage. But the suitors, made anxious by the increased courage and determination the young man had displayed in equipping a ship and venturing across the seas, planned to catch him on his return and take his life.

When Odysseus awoke on the shore of his own herd's hut. island, Athena appeared to him and warned him of the dangers that still awaited him. To secure him further she changed his appearance to that of an old and ragged beggar. It was in this disguise that he presented himself at the hut of the faithful old swineherd Eumæ’us and asked for food and shelter. True to the hospitable custom of his absent master, the swineherd received the old stranger with kindness, and while he set before him the best he could provide, entertained him with an account of the sorry state of affairs on the island, speaking always of his lord Odysseus with loyal and affectionate regret. As they talked, Telemachus, just landed and happily escaped from the ambush set for him, appeared at the hut. His father's heart rejoiced to see the boy grown so strong and confident, and to receive at his hands the fine courtesy and respect for age that distinguished noble Greeks. But he restrained his feelings, and not until Eumæus was called away, leaving father and son alone together, did he reveal himself to Telemachus. So the two planned together the destruction of the troublesome suitors, and before the swineherd returned Odysseus had resumed his disguise.

Fig. 95. Odysseus makes himself known to Telemachus.

Not as an honored hero returning from the war did Odysseus reënter his home after his twenty years of absence, but as an old and wretched beggar asking for charity. Yet even so two faithful friends knew him. His old hunting-dog, lying neglected in the dirt outside the door, knew his master as he passed by means of that strange dog's sense that humans cannot understand, and with one last pricking of the ears and feeble wagging of his tail, died happy. The second friend who knew him was not his wife, who, though she had him brought to her to ask him for any news of her husband he might have learned on his travels, gave him only that attention she gave to every stranger. It was his old nurse Eu rycle’a who, as at- Penelope's command she washed the old stranger's feet, saw a scar he had had since he was a boy and at once knew him. In the great hall where the arrogant suitors sat all day and feasted none knew that despised old man, and all with one accord joined in scornful and ungenerous treatment of him. For how could Zeus's law of hospitality bind men who so dishonored an absent hero's house and so persecuted the unprotected? It was only by the spirited interference of Telemachus, supported by the less shameless of the princes, that Odysseus was saved from violence. At last Athena put it into Penelope's mind to appear among the suitors with the great bow her lord had left behind him, and announce that she would keep them waiting no longer, but that to him who was man enough to bend that bow and shoot through the holes in nine ax-heads set up before them she would give herself as wife. All tried, boastfully and hopefully, and all failed even to bend the bow. Then the old beggar rose and demanded that he be allowed to make the trial. Amid the jeers and disgusted protests of the princes he received the bow from Penelope's hand. The tough wood bent, the arrow whizzing from the string pierced through the nine axes. Then his disguise fell from him, and standing revealed the hero turned his arrows now this way, now that, upon those wretched suitors. By order of Telemachus all the weapons had been removed from the hall the night before, and the faithful swineherd and an equally faithful keeper of cattle had been posted at the exits. So the men were slaughtered like sheep, and Odysseus and his son would have met with no resistance had not a disloyal slave smuggled in some swords and shields for those who had not yet fallen. Even against these odds the father and son, aided by their protectress Athena, were victorious, and not one of the suitors or their followers lived to leave that hall of death. At the end of this bloody act Odysseus made himself known to his wife; the house was cleansed of its murderous stains, and a period of peace and prosperity followed the hardships of those twenty years.

Fig. 96. Odysseus avenging himself upon the Suitors.