BOOK
II.

The Lotoseaters, and Kirkê.

Kirke and
Kalypso.

Antiphates himself they are necessarily treated like their comrades in the Kyklôps' island, and Odysseus escapes after losing many of his men only by cutting the mooring-ropes of his ship and hastening out to sea.

In the land of the Lotos-eaters Odysseus encounters dangers of another kind. The myth carries us to the many emblems of the reproductive powers of nature, of which the Lotos is one of the most prominent. It here becomes the forbidden fruit, and the eating of it so poisons the blood as to take away all memory and care for home and kinsfolk, for law, right, and duty. The sensual inducements held out by the Lotophagoi are, in short, those by which Venus tempts Tanhaüser into her home in the Horselberg; and the degradation of the bard answers to the dreamy indolence of the groups who make life one long holiday in the Lotos land. The Venus of the medieval story is but another form of Kirkê, the queen of Aiaia; but the sloth and sensuality of the Lotos-eaters here turns its victims into actual swine, while the spell is a tangible poison poured by Kirkê into their cups. The rod which she uses as the instrument of transformation gives a further significance to the story. From these swinish pleasures they are awakened only through the interference of Odysseus, who has received from Hermes an antidote which deprives the charms of Kirkê of all power to hurt him. The Herakles of Prodikos is after all the Herakles whom we see in the myths of Echidna or of the daughters of Thestios, and thus Odysseus dallies with Kirke as he listens also to the song of the Seirens. True, he has not forgotten his home or his wife, but he is ready to avail himself of all enjoyments which will not hinder him from reaching home at last. So he tarries with Kirkê and with the fairer Kalypso, whose beautiful abode is the palace of Tara Bai in the Hindu legend, while she herself is Ursula, the moon, wandering, like Asterodia, among the myriad stars, the lovely being who throws a veil over the Sun while he sojourns in her peaceful home.

From the abode of Kirkê Odysseus betakes himself to the regions of Hades, where from Teiresias he learns that he may yet escape from the anger of Poseidôn, if he and his

ODYSSEUS IN ITHAKA.

comrades will but abstain from hurting the cattle of Helios
in the island of Thrinakia or in other words, as we have
seen, if they will not waste time by the way. Coming back
to Kirkê he is further warned against other foes in the air
and the waters in the Seirens and Skylla and Charybdis.
Worse than all, however, is the fate which awaits him in
Thrinakia. The storm which is sent after the death of the
oxen of Helios destroys all his ships and all his comrades,
and Odysseus alone reaches the island of Kalypso, who, like
Eôs, promises him immortality if he will but tarry with her
for ever.
But it may not be. The yearning for his home
and his wife may be repressed for a time, but it cannot be
extinguished; and Athênê has exacted from Zeus an oath
that Odysseus shall assuredly be avenged of all who have
wronged him. So at the bidding of Hermes Kalypso helps
Odysseus to build a raft, which bears him towards Scheria,
until Poseidon again hurls him from it. But Ino Leukothea
is at hand to save him, and he is at last thrown up almost
dead on the shore of the Phaiakian land, where Athênê brings
Nausikaa to his rescue. He is now in the true cloudland of
his friends, where everything is beautiful and radiant; and
in one of the magic ships of Alkinoös he is wafted to Ithaka,
and landed on his native soil, buried in a profound slumber.
Here the wanderer of twenty years, who finds himself an
outcast from his own home, where the suitors have been
wasting his substance with riotous living, prepares for his
last great work of vengeance, and for a battle which answers
to the fatal conflict between Achilleus and Hektor. He is
himself but just returned from the search and the recovery
of a stolen treasure; but before he can rest in peace, there
remains yet another woman whom he must rescue, and
another treasure on which he must lay his hands. Of the
incidents of this struggle it is unnecessary here to say more
than that they exhibit the victory of the poor despised out-
cast, whether it be Boots, or Cinderella, or Jack the Giant
Killer, over those who pride themselves on their grandeur
and their strength. He stands a beggar in his own hall.
Athênê herself has taken all beauty from his face, all colour
from his golden hair; but there remains yet the bow which

179

CHAP.

III.

BOOK
II.

The expulsion of the Herakleids.

he alone can bend, the gleaming slipper which Cinderella alone can put on. The whole picture is wonderfully true to the phenomena of the earth and the heavens, but as a portrait of human character, it is not more happy than that of Achilleus. There is the same complete disproportion between the offence committed and the vengeance taken, the same frightful delight in blood and torture-the mutilation of Melanthios and the deliberate slaughter of the handmaidens answering to the insults offered by Achilleus to the body of Hektor, and the cold-blooded murder of the twelve Trojan youths on the funeral pyre of Patroklos. How completely the incidents of the decisive conflict answer to those of the battle of Achilleus, we have seen already. All that we need now say is that Odysseus is united with his wife, to whom Athênê imparts all the radiant beauty of youth in which she shone when Odysseus had left her twenty years ago. The splendid scene with which the narrative ends answers to the benignant aspect in which Achilleus appears when Hektor is dead and his great toil against Ilion is over.

SECTION III. THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.

We have thus far traced the second return of the treasureseekers. In each case the work to which they had devoted themselves is accomplished. The golden fleece and Helen are each brought back to the land from which they had been taken; and though Odysseus may have suffered many and grievous disasters on the way, still even with him the destruction of the suitors is followed by a season of serene repose. But the poet who here leaves him with the bride of his youth restored to all her ancient beauty, tells us nevertheless that the chieftain and his wife must again be parted; and myths might be framed from this point of view as readily as from the other. It was as natural to speak of the sun as conquered in the evening by the powers of darkness as it was to speak of him as victorious over these same foes in the morning-as natural to describe the approach of night under the guise of an expulsion of the children of Helios or Herakles, as to represent the reappearance of the sunset hues in

HYLLOS AND EURYSTHEUS.

181

III.

the west by a myth relating their triumphant return. Such CHAP. myths are in fact the germs of those recurring expulsions, and those attempted or successful restorations which form what is commonly called the history of the Herakleidai. The extent to which an element of actual history may be traced in these mythical narratives is a question on which something has been said already, and probably it will not be disputed that even if many of the names may be those of real local chieftains (and some of the incidents may possibly be traditions of real local events), yet the narratives in their main features closely resemble the other epical myths with which they are connected. These stories were altered at will by later poets and mythographers in accordance with local or tribal prejudices or fancies, and forced into arrangements which were regarded as chronological. Thus, some speak of the Trojan war as taking place in the interval between the death of Hyllos and the return of his son Kleodaios; but the historical character of all these events has been swept away, and we are left free to reduce the narratives to the simple elements of which they are composed. Thus the story ran that when Herakles died, his tyrant and tormentor Eurystheus insisted on the surrender of his sons, and that Hyllos, the son of Dêianeira, with his brothers, hastily fled, and after wandering to many other places at last found a refuge in Athens. This was only saying in other words that on the death of the sun the golden hues of evening were soon banished from the western sky, but that after many weary hours they are seen again in the country of the Dawn, as indeed they could be seen nowhere else. Athens is the only possible refuge for the children of Herakles; but their enemies will not allow them to slip from their hands without a struggle. The Gorgon sisters almost seize Perseus as he hurries away after the slaughter of Medousa; and thus Eurystheus marches with his hosts against Athens. But the dawn must discomfit the dark beings. The Athenians are led on by Theseus, the great solar hero of the land, by Iolaos, the son of Iphikles, the twin brother of Herakles, and by the banished Hyllos. Eurystheus is slain, and Hyllos carries his head to Alkmênê.

BOOK

II.

The return of

kleids.

If we choose now to follow the ordinary arrangement of these stories, we shall see in them a series which might be indefinitely extended, but of whose mythical origin we can the Hera- scarcely feel a doubt. If after the defeat of Eurystheus the Herakleids return to the Peloponnesos, we find that they cannot maintain their footing there for more than a year, and that then by an irresistible necessity they find their way back to Athens; and these alternations, which represent simply the succession of day and night, might and would have been repeated any number of times, if the myths had not at length become mixed up with traditions of the local settlement of the country-in other words, if certain names found in the myths had not become associated with particular spots or districts in the Peloponnesos. To follow all the versions and variations of these legends is a task perhaps not much more profitable than threading the mazes of a labyrinth; but we may trace in some, probably in most of them, the working of the same ideas. Thus the version which after the death of Eurystheus takes Hyllos to Thebes makes him dwell by the Elektrian or amber-gates. The next stage in the history is another return of the children of Herakles, which ends in the slaughter of Hyllos in single combat with Echemos-a name connected perhaps with that of Echidna, Ahi, the throttling snake. The night is once more victorious, and the Herakleidai are bound by a compact to forego all attempts at return for fifty or a hundred years, periods which are mere multiples of the ten years of the Trojan war, and of the Nostoi or homeward wanderings of the Achaian chiefs. Once more the children of the dawn goddess give them shelter in Trikorythos, a region answering to the Hypereia or upper land, in which the Phaiakians dwelt before they were driven from it by the Kyklôpes. The subsequent fortunes of Kleodaios and Aristomachos the son and grandson of Herakles simply repeat those of Hyllos; but at length in the next generation the myth pauses, as in the case of Odysseus and Achilleus in the Iliad and the Odyssey, at the moment of victory, and the repetition of the old drama is prevented by the gradual awakening of the historical sense in the Hellenic tribes. For this last return