spirit.

It is very difficult, by any process of criticism, to define the impression of greatness and glory which the character of Achilles Achilles a world leaves upon the mind. There is in him a kind of magnetic fascination, something indescribable. They are not always the most noble or the most admirable natures which exert this influence over their fellow-creatures. The Emperor Napoleon and our own Byron had each, perhaps, a portion of this Achilleian personality. Men of their stamp sway the soul by their prestige, by their personal beauty and grandeur, by the concentrated intensity of their character, and by the fatality which seems to follow them. To Achilles, to Alexander, to Napoleon, we cannot apply the rules of our morality. It is, therefore, impossible for us, who must aim first at being good citizens, careful in our generation, and subordinate to the laws of society around us, to admire them without a reservation. Yet, after all is said, a great and terrible glory does rest upon their heads; and though our sentiments of propriety may be offended by some of their actions, our sense of what is awful and sublime is satisfied by the contemplation of them. No one should delude us into thinking that true culture does not come from the impassioned study of everything that is truly great, however eccentric and at variance with our own mode of life. Greatness, of whatever species it may be, is always elevating and spirit-stirring. When we listen to the Eroica Symphony, and remember that that master-work of music was produced by the genius of Beethoven, brooding over the thoughts of Achilles in the Iliad, and of Napoleon on the battlefields of Lombardy, we may feel how abyss cries to abyss, and how all forms of human majesty meet and sustain each other."

CHAPTER IX.

The Character of Ulysses and the Story of the Odyssey.

Ulysses compared with Achilles.

"Since Achilles seems everywhere to tread upon the bounds of the preterhuman," says Gladstone, "it might seem impossible to produce another leading character, who must as such be more or less his rival. But the Ulysses is drawn with such incomparable art, that at no one point does he seem like an inferior Achilles. Achilles always, Ulysses never, touches on the superhuman. He is always thoroughly human. Colossal grandeur is the basis of one character, a boundless diversity and many-sidedness, is the spell that gives the other its 'fascinating power. The adjective potus, many or manifold, is the basis of nearly all the characteristic words appropriated to the character of Ulysses; it is curious that no single epithet containing that word is ever applied to Achilles. The variety of Achilles was in a magnificent and profuse display of gifts, whether of taste, fancy, intellect or emotion. In Ulysses an equally powerful and more versatile intellect works with the strictest reference to a practical end, and works in the precise way best fitted to attain it. The splendor of the reply of Achilles to the Envoys could not be meant to convert them; the stinging and compressed oration of Ulysses in Scheriè, so marvellous in force and so exact in justice, utterly extinguishes his adversary, who afterwards makes his apology and reparation. The vast power of Achilles runs to waste in punishing his countrymen, by his withdrawal, for a sin, which at worst they only tolerated. The power of Ulysses never runs to waste, never fails to reach its mark. Largeness of range marks each alike; but while Achilles exults in arms and in ornaments, Ulysses unites to the highest qualities of a statesman and a warrior, not only extraordinary excellence in the race, the quoit, the boxing and the wrestling match, but he is ready to mow, or to plough a field, against a leader of the suitors. The character of Achilles is rich as a museum; that of Ulysses as a toolshop."

"The subject of the Odyssey gives Homer the opportunity of setting forth the domestic character of Ulysses, in his profound attachment to wife, child, and home, in such a way as to adorn not only the hero, but his age and race. To personal beauty he does not lay special claim, and he is denounced by Polyphemus as a poor creature to look at, though when he sate, he was more majestic than Meneläus. A combination of daring with prudence forms the staple of his action. The Greek, in general, was with Homer what we term 'a man of business.' Ulysses was a little more. His prudence, so commended by Athenè, leans toward craft, though not so as to impair his general integrity of aim."

Ulysses was the king of Ithaca, a small and rugged island on the western coast of Greece. He departed from home while his son Telemachus was yet a babe. When Troy was taken, ten years afterward, he started for Ithaca, but being pursued with unceasing hatred by Neptune, he wandered about ten years before reaching his home. His first adventure was in Thrace where he attacked and plundered a city, being at last repulsed. Then he sailed to the southern point of Greece, but in attempting to double Cape Malea was met by malicious winds which drove his ships about for ten days, and on the tenth they touched the land of the Lotus Eaters, whose food was of flowers which cause forgetfulness. From this country Ulysses rescued his companions and they went on till they came to the land of the Cyclops, a people of giants living near Mount Etna in Sicily. Here Ulysses destroyed the eye of Polyphemus, the most famous of those giants, the son of Poseidon (or Neptune), God of the Sea. On this event hinged all of his subsequent fortunes. To avenge the act, Neptune drove him about for ten years. The story of the blinding of the giant exists in the shape of a fairy tale among races who never heard of Homer, which seems to prove that the author of the Odyssey composed his epic out of a great store of tradition already existing. From the land of the Cyclops Ulysses and his companions sailed to the Isle of Eolus, where they abode a month. The king of the island then gave Ulysses a bag in which were all the winds except the one which was to waft the heroes

The plot of the
Odyssey as de-
termined by
Butcher and
Lang in their
Introduction

to their trans-
lation.

home. The comrades of Ulysses opened the bag while he slept, and the winds rushing out, they were all blown back to the island whence they were dismissed with severe rebukes. Their next adventure was in No-Man's-Land also, where all the fleet was destroyed save one ship with which they escaped to the island of Circé. This enchantress turned part of the crew into swine, but they were redeemed by Ulysses aided by Hermes. A year was spent at the isle of Circé, when Ulysses prayed to be sent home, and Circé commanded them to go to Hades to consult the ghost of an old prophet concerning the route to Ithaca. From this prophet, Teiresias, Ulysses learned that he must avoid injuring the sacred cattle of the sun as he passed the island of Thrinacia. Returning to Circé, Ulysses was warned by the goddess of the dangers to be met, and he set forth with his friends. They evaded the Sirens, and the Clashing Rocks, but being overcome with hunger at the island of Thrinacia, devoured several of the sacred cattle, for which offence they were all shipwrecked except Ulysses. Ulysses floated about on a raft for ten days, and then reached the island of the goddess Calypso, who detained him eight years. In Ithaca, matters went on well enough for a few years after the fall of Troy, when the younger men of the island began to woo Penelope, the wife of the absent hero, and to vex Telemachus, his son. The wooers grew so importunate that they took up their abode at her palace, devouring her substance and commanding her to choose a husband from their number, and Penelope to gain time, promised to make her choice when she had finished weaving a web which she secretly unraveled every night.

At the end of these events the action of the Odyssey begins and occupies about six weeks.

The last six weeks of Ulys

The time had come when Ulysses was to free his home, recover his kingdom, and avenge himself on the wooers. The first book of the Odyssey opens with a prayer to Zeus by Athenè, that Ulysses may be delivered. For this purpose Hermes is to be sent to Calypso to bid her release him, while Athenè, in the form of Mentor, shall cause Telemachus to go in search of his father. The first four books of the Odyssey and the first six days of its action cover the

ses' adventures as given in the last twelve books of the Odyssey.

adventures of the youth. The fifth book (seventh day) witnesses the departure of Ulysses from Calypso's isle. He sails about for eighteen days, and on the twenty-ninth from the beginning of the action lands in Scheria, where he is kindly entertained until the thirty-fifth day. The meeting of Ulysses on this island with Nausicaa, the king's daughter, is one of the most artistic points in the poem. It is here that Ulysses recounts to the king and queen the adventures he had passed through during the first two years of his wanderings. On the thirty-fifth day he is conveyed to Ithaca, where he learns that his wife is beset with suitors. Six days more are spent in meeting the emergencies of the case, getting rid of the suitors and settling down once more to home life. This requires twelve books, or a half of the whole poem, and is replete with vivid scenes, the transformation of Ulysses into an old man, so that he can study the situation unrecognized, his revealing himself to his son, his recognition by the dog Argus, his combat with a beggar, his bending of the great bow, and his attack on the suitors at the last banquet. The poem closes with the recognition of his wife and father.