http://wv NAUSLCAA. (See J\efac'e), {Frontispkce.) THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY, WHERE AND WHEN SHE WROTE, WHO SHE WAS, THE USE SHE MADE OF THE ILIAD, AND HOW THE POEM GREW UNDER HER HANDS, SAMUEL BUTLER AUTHOR OF " EREWHON," "LIFE AND HABIT," "ALPS AND SANCTUAIUES,' "THE LIFE AND LETTEUS OF DR SAMUEL BUTLER," ETC. "There is no single fact to justify a conviction," said Mr. Cock; whereon the Solicitor General replied that he did not rely upon any single fact, but upon a chain of facts, which taken all together left no possible means of escape. Times, Leader, Nov. 16, 1894. (The prisoner was convicted). London: A. C. F I FIELD. YAH rights reserved] AL PROFESSORE CAV. BIAGIO INGROIA, PREZIOSO ALLEATO LAUTORE RICONOSCENTE. 334324 PREFACE. The following work consists in some measure of matter already pnblislied in England and Italy during tlie last six years. The original publications were in tlie Aihenceum^ Jan. 30 and Feb. 20, 1892, and in the Eagle for the Lent Term, 1892, and for the October Term, 1892. Both these last two articles were re-published by Messrs. Metcalfe & Co. of Cambridge, with prefaces, in the second case of considerable length. I have also drawn from sundry letters and articles that appeared in II Larniruschim] a journal published at Trapani and edited by Prof. Giacalone-Patti, in 1892 and succeeding years, as also from two articles that appeared in the Rassegna della Letter atur a Siciliana^ published at Acireale in the autumn of 1893 and of 1894, and from some articles published in the Italian Gazette (then edited by Miss Helen Zimmern) in the spring of 1895. Each of the publications above referred to con- tained some matter which did not appear in the others, and by the help of local students in Sicily, among whom I would name the late Signer E. Biaggini of Trapani, Signer Sugameli of Trapani, and Cavaliere Professore Ingroia of Calatafimi, I have yi PREFACE. been able to correct some errors and become possessed of new matter bearing on my subject. I liave now entirely re-cast and re-stated tlie wliole argmnent, adding miicli that lias not appeared hitherto, and dealing for the first time fully with the question of the writer's sex. No reply appeared to either of my letters to the Athenceum nor to my Italian pamphlets. It is idle to suj)pose that the leading Iliadic and Odyssean ►scholars in England and the continent do not know what I have said. I have taken ample care that they should be informed concerning it. It is equally idle to suppose that not one of them should have brought forward a serious argument against me, if there were any such argument to bring. Had they brought one it must have reached me, and I should have welcomed it with great pleasure ; for, as I have said in my concluding Chapter, I do not care whether the Odyssey was written by man or by woman, nor yet where the poet or poetess lived who wrote it ; all I care about is the knowing as much as I can about the poem ; rind I believe that scholars both in England and on I he continent would have helped me to fuller under- standing if they had seen their way to doing so. A new edition, for example, of Professor Jebb's Introduction to Homer was published some six weeks after the first and more important of my letters to 'he Athenmim had appeared. It was advertised as PREFACE. VU ^^ this day " in the Athenceum of March 12, 1892 ; so that if Professor Jebb had wished to say anything against what had appeared in the Athenceum^ he had ample time to do so by way of postscript. I know very well what I shonld have thought it incumbent upon me to do had I been in his place, and found his silence more eloquent on my behalf than any words would have been which he is at all likely to have written, or, I may add, to write. I repeat that nothing deserving serious answer has reached me from any source during the six years, or so, that my Odyssean theories have been before the public. The principal notices of them that have appeared so far will be found in the Spectator^ April 23, 1892 ; the Cambridge Observer, May 31, 1892 ; the Classical Remev) for November, 1892, June, 1893, and February, 1895, and LongmarHs Magazine (see At the Sign of the Ship) for June, 1892. My frontispiece is taken by the kind permission of the Messrs. Alinari of Florence, from their photo- graph of a work in the museum at Cortona called La Musa Polinnia, It is on slate and burnt, is a little more than half life size, and is believed to be Greek, presumably of about the Christian era, but no more precise date can be assigned to it. I was assured at Cortona that it was found by a man who was ploughing his field, and who happened to be a baker. The size being suitable he used it for some time as VIU PIIEFACE. a door for liis oven, whence it was happily rescued and placed in the museimi where it now rests. As regards the Greek text from which I have taken my abridged translation, I have borne in mind throughout the admirable canons laid down by Mr. Gladstone in his Studies in Horner^ Oxford University Press, 1858, Vol. I., p. 43. He holds :— L That we sliould adopt the text itself as the basis of all Homeric enquiry, and not any preconceived theory nor any arbitrary standard of criticism, referable to any -particular X>eriods, schools, or persons. 2. That as we proceed in any work of construction drawn fuom the text, w^e should avoid the temptation to solve diffi- culties that lie in our way by denouncing particular portions of it as corrupt or interpolated ; should never set it aside except on the closest examination of the particular passage questioned ; should use sparingly the liberty of even arraying presumptions against it ; and should always let the reader understand both when and why it is questioned. The only emendation I have ventured to make in the text is to read Nrjplro) instead of Niyt'o) in i. 186 and vTrovrjpirov for vTTovrjiov in iii. 81. A more speculative emendation in iv. 606, 607 I forbear even to suggest. I know of none others that I have any wish to make. As for interpolations I have called attention to three or four which I believe to have been made at a later -period by the writer herself, but have seen no passage which I have been tempted to regard as the work of pLiiother hand. PREFACE. IX I have followed Mr. Gladstone, Lord Derby, Colonel Mure, and I may add the late Professor Kennedy and the Eev. Richard Shilleto, men who taught me what little Greek I know, in retaining the usual Latin renderings of Greek proper names. What was good enough for the scholars whom I have named is good enough for me, and I should think also for the greater number of my readers. The public whom I am addressing know the Odyssey chiefly through Pope's translation, and will not, I believe, take kindly to Odysseus for Ulysses, Aias for Ajax, and Polydeukes for Pollux. Neither do I think that Hekabe will supersede Hecuba, till "What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?" is out of date. I infer that the authorities of the British Museum are with me in this matter, for on looking out Odysseus in the catalogue of the library I find ^^See Ulysses." Moreover the authors of this new nomencla- ture are not consistent. Why not call Penelope Penelopeia ? She is never called anything else in the Odyssey, Why not Achilleus ? Why not Belle- rophontes ? Why Hades, when 'A/67;9 has no aspirate ? Why Helios instead of Eelios ? Why insist on Achaians and Aitolians, but never on Aithiopians ? Why not Athenians rather than Athenians ? Why not x\pollon ? Why not either PREFACE. Odusseus, or else Odysseys ? and why not call him Oduseus or Odyseys whenever the Odyssey does so ? Admitting that the Greek names for gods and heroes may one day become as familiar as the Latin ones, they have not become so yet, nor shall I believe that they have done so, till I have seen Odysseus supplant Ulysses on railway engines, steam tugs, and boats or ships. Jove, Mercury, Minerva, Juno, and Venus convey a sufficiently accurate idea to people who would have no ready made idea in connection with Zeus, Hermes, Athene, Here, and Aphrodite. The personalities of the Latin gods do not differ so much from those of the Greek, as, for example, the Athene of the Iliad does from the Athene of the Odyssey. The personality of every god varies more or less with that of every writer, and what little difference may exist between Greek and Roman ideas of Jove, Juno, &c., is not sufficient to warrant the disturb- ance of a nomenclature that has long since taken an established place in literature. Furthermore, the people who are most shocked by the use of Latin names for Greek gods and heroes, and who most insist on the many small innovations which any one who opens a volume of the Classical Review may discover for himself, are the very ones who have done most to foist Wolf and German criticism upon us, and who are PREFACE. XI most tainted with that affectation of higher critical taste and insight, which men o£ the world distrust, and which has brought the word '' academic " into use as expressive of everything which sensible people will avoid. I dare not, therefore, follow these men till time has shown whether they are faddists or no. Nevertheless, if I find the opinion of those whom I respect goes against me in this matter, I shall adopt the Greek names in any new edition of my book that may be asked for. I need hardly say that I have consulted many excellent scholars as to which course I should take, and have found them generally, though not always, approve of my keeping to the names with which Pope and others have already familiarised the pu.blic. Since Chapter xiv. was beyond reach of modi- fication, I have asked the authorities of the British Museum to accept a copy of the Odyssey with all the Iliadic passages underlined and referred to in M.S. I have every reason to believe that this will very shortly be indexed under my name, and (I regret to say) also under that of Homer. It is my intention within the next few weeks to offer the Museum an Iliad with all passages borrowed by the writer of the Odyssey underlined — reference being given to the Odyssean passage in which *'' they occur. Lastly, I would express my great obligations to XU rREFACE. my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones, who in two succes- sive years has verified all topographical details on the ground itself, and to whom I have referred throughout my work whenever I have been in doubt or difficulty. September 21tK 1897. CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY — THE STEPS WHEREBY I WAS LED TO MY CONCLUSIONS — THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK POETESSES REMOVES ANY a priori DIFFICULTY — THE MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS OP LITERATURE— MAN, RATHER THAN WOMAN, THE IMTERLOPER THE STORY Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book Book CHAPTER IL OF THE ODYSSEY 14 i. The council of the gods — Telemachus and the suitors in the house of Ulysses 18 ii. Assembly of the people of Ithaca — Telemachus starts for Pylos 21 iii. Telemachus at the house of Nestor 23 iv. Telemachus at the house of Menelaus — The suitors resolve to lie in wait for him as he returns, and murder him 24 V. Ulysses in the island of Calypso— He leaves the island on a raft, and after great suffering reaches the land of the Phseacians 28 vi. The meeting between Ulysses and Nausicaa ... 30 vii. The splendours of the house of King Alcinous — Queen Arete wants to know how Ulysses got his shirt and cloak, for she knows them as her own work. Ulysses explains 34 viii. The Phseacian games and banquet in honour of Ulysses . 37 ix. The voyages of Ulysses — The Cicons, Lotus-eaters, and the Cyclops Polyphemus 41 X. ^olus — The Lsestrygonians — Circe 46 xi. Ulysses in the house of Hades 49 xii. The Sirens— Scylla and Charybdis — The cattle of the Sun 53 xiii. Ulysses is taken back to Ithaca by the Phaeacians . . 57 viv. Ulysses in the hut of Eumseus 60 XV. Telemachus returns from Pylos, and on landing goes to the hut of Eumgeus 63 xvi. Ulysses and Telemachus become known to one another . ^^^ xvii. Telemachus goes to the town, and is followed by Eumseus and Ulysses, who is maltreated by the suitors . . 70 xviii. The fight between Ulysses and Irus — The suitors make presents to Penelope— and ill-treat Ulysses ... 75 -A XIV CONTENTS. THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY (continued). PAGE Book xix. Ulysses converses with Penelope, and is recognised by Euiyclea 78 Book XX. Ulysses converses with Eumseus, and with his herdsman Philoetins— The suitors again maltreat him — Theocly- menus foretells their doom and leaves the house . 83 Book xxi. The trial of the bow and of the axes 87 Book xxii. The killing of the suitors !)0 Book xxiii. Penelope comes down to see Ulysses, and being at last con- vinced that he is her husband, retires with him to their own old room — In the morning Ulysses, Telemachus, Philoetius, and Eumseus go to the house of Laertes . 96 Book xxiv. The Ghosts of the suitors in Hades — Ulysses sees his father — is attacked by the friends of the suitors — Laertes kills Eupeithes — Peace is made between him and the people of Ithaca • . . . 99 CHAPTER IIL THE PREPONDERANCE OF WOMAN IN THE ODYSSEY 105 CHAPTER IV. JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF WOMAN— SEVERITY AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE DISGRACED THEIR SEX— LOVE OF SMALL RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES— OF PREACHING— OF WHITE LIES AND SMALL PLAY- ACTING—OF HAVING THINGS BOTH WAYS— AND OF MONEY . . .115 CHAPTER V. ON THE QUESTION WHETHER OR NO PENELOPE IS BEING WHITEWASHED . 125 CHAPTER VL FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE CHARACTER OF PENELOPE— THE JOURNEY OF TELEMACHUS TO LACED.EMON 134 CHAPTER VII. FURTHER INDICATIONS THAT THE WRITER IS A WOMAN— YOUNG— HEAD- STRONG—AND UNMARRIED , ... 142 CHAPTER VIII'. THAT ITHACA AND SCHERIA ARE BOTH OF THEM DRATVN FROM TRAPAKI AND ITS IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURHOOD 158 CHAPTER IX. THE IONIAN AND THE ^GADEAN ISLANDS— THE VOYAGES OP ULYSSES SHOWN TO BE PRACTICALLY A SAIL ROUND SICILY FROM TRAPANI TO TRAPANI 174 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER X. FURTHER DETAILS REGARDING THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES, TO CONFIRM THE VIEW THAT THEY WERE A SAIL ROUND SICILY, BEGINNING AND ENDING WITH MT. ERYX AND TRAFANI . 188 CHAPTER XI. WHO WAS THE WRITER ? 200 CHAPTER XII. THE DATE OP THE POEM, AND A COMPARISON OF THE STATE OF THE NORTH WESTERN PART OF SICILY AS REVEALED TO US IN THE ODYSSEY, WITH THE ACCOUNT GIVEN BY THUCYDIDES OP THE SAME TERRITORY IN THE EARLIEST KNOWN TIMES 210 CHAPTER XIII. FURTHER EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF AN EARLY IONIAN SETTLEMENT AT OR CLOSE TO TRAPANI 225 CHAPTER XIV. THAT THE ILIAD WHICH THE WRITER OF THE ODYSSEY KNEW WAS THE SAME AS WHAT WE NOW HAVE 232 CHAPTER XV. THE ODYSSEY IN ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER POEMS OF THE TROJAN CYCLE, AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE HANDS OP THE AUTHORESS . 249 CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION 262 CORRIGENDA. Page 2, line 11, /or " fnrnished " read "furnishes." Page 10, third line from bottom of page, and also in note, for " Mont Rosa " read "Monte Rosa." Page 160, line 10, between "as he" and "sure," supple "is." Page 164, line 4, for " Lilyboean " read " Lilybsean." Page 184, in note twice, for "./Enotria" read "CEnotria." LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece, Nausicaa. The house of Ulysses to face p. 17 The cave of Polyphemus to face p. 4B Signor Sugameli and the author in the cave of Polyphemus . to face p. 43 Map of Trapani and Mt. Eryx . . . p. 1(U The harbour Rheithron, now salt works of S. Cusumano . . to face p. 106 Mouth of the harbour Rheithron, now silted up ... . to face p. 16G Map of the Ionian Islands p. 175 Map of the JEgadean Islands p. 177 Trapani from Mt. Eryx, showing Marettimo (Ithaca) " all highest up in the sea'^ p. 178 Map of the voyage of Ulysses to face p. 181 Wall at Cefalii, rising from the sea to face p. 185 Megalithic remains on the mountain behind Cefalii ... to face p. 185 H. Festing Jones, Esq., in flute of column at Selinunte . . to face p. 193 Remains of megalithic wall on Mt. Eryx to face p. 193 Wall at Hissarlik, showing the effects of weathering . . to face p. 217 The lliadic wall to face p. 217 A coin bearing the legend lakin, and also showing the brooch of Ulysses . p. 227 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. CHAPTER L IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY — THE STEPS WHKIIEBY I WAS LED TO MY CONCLUSIONS — THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK 1>0ETESSES REMOVES ANY A PRIORI DIFFICULTY THE MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS OF LITERATURE — MAN, RATHER tHAN WOMAN, THE INTERLOPER. If the questions whether the Odyssey was written by ai man or a woman, and whether or no it is of exchisively Sicilian origin, were pregnant with no larger issues than the deter- mination of the sex and abode of the writer, it might be enough merely to suggest the answers and refer the reader to the work itself. Obviously, however, they have an important bearing on the whole Homeric controversy ; for if we find a woman's hand omnipresent throughout the Odyssey^ and if we also find so large a number of local details, taken so exclusively and so faithfully from a single Sicilian town as to warrant the belief that the writer must have lived and written there, the pre- sumption seems irresistible that the poem was written by a single person. For there can hardly have been more than one woman in the same place able to write such — and such homogeneous — poetry as we find throughout the Odyssey. Many questions will become thus simplified. Among others we can limit the date of the poem to the lifetime of a single person, and if we find, as I believe we shall, that this person in all probability flourished, roughly between 1050 and 1000 b.c.,^ if, moreover, we can show, as we assuredly can, that she had B 2 THB A^TEORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. tlie Iliad before lier mncli as we have it now, qnotiog, con- sciously or unconsciously, as freely from the most suspected parts as from those that are admittedly Homer's, we shall have done much towards settling the question whether the Iliad also is by one hand or by many. Not that this question ought to want much settling. The theory that the Iliad and Odyssey were written each of them by various hands, and pieced together in various centuries by various editors, is not one which it is easy to treat respectfully. It does not rest on the well established case of any other poem so constructed ; literature furnished us with no poem whose genesis Ib known to have been such as that which we are asked to foist upon the Iliad and Odyssey, The theory is founded on a supposi|iio:a as to the date when writing became possible, which has long since been shown to be untenable ; not only , occupied either with fighting or hunting, the arts of peace, and among them all kinds of literary accomplishment, would be more naturally left to women. If the truth were known, we might very likely find that it was man rather than woman who has been the interloper in the domain of literature. Nausicaa was more probably a survival than an interloper, but most probably of all she was in the height of the fashion. ♦ Iliad, III. 126. ( 14 ) CHAPTER 11. THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. It will help the reader to follow the arguments by which I shall sustain the female authorship of the Odyssey^ the fact of its being written at Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, and its development in the hands of the writer, if I lay before him an abridgement of the complete translation that I have made, but not yet published. If space peniiitted I should print my translatian in full, but thas is obviously impossible, for what I give here is only about a fourth of the whole poem. I have^ therefore, selected those parts that throw most ligbt upon the subjects above referred to, with just somnch connecting matter - as may serve to make the whole read^ible and intelligible. I am aware that the beauty of the poem is thus fatally marred, for it is often tlie loveliest passages that serve my purpose least. The abridgement, therefore, that I here give is not to be regarded otherwise than as the tey-sketch which we so- often see under an engraving of a picture that contains many portraits. It is intended not as a work of art, but as an elucidatory diagram. As regards its closeness to the text, the references to the poem which will be found at the beginning of each paragraph will show where the abridgement has been greatest, and will also enable the reader to verify the fidelity of the rendering either with the Greek or with Messrs. Butcher and Lang'a translation. I affirm with confidence that if the reader is good enough to thus verify any passages that may strike him as impossibly modera, he will find that I have adhered as severely to the intention of the original as it was possible for me to do while telling the story in my own words and abridging it. One of my critics, a very friendly one, has told me that I have " distorted the simplicity of the Odyssey in order to put MY ABRIDGEMENT— HOUSE OF ULYSSES. 15 it in a ludicrous light." I do not think this. I have revealed, but I have not distorted. I should be shocked to believe for one moment that I bad done so. True, I have nothing ex- tenuated, but neither have I set down aught in malice. Where the writer is trying to make us believe imj^ossibilities, I have shown that she is doing so, and have also shown why she wanted us to believe them ; but until a single passage is pointed out to me in which I have altered the intention of the original, I »hall continue to hold that the conception of the poem which I lay before the reader in the following pages is a juster one than any that, so far as I know, has been made public hitherto ; and, moreaver, that it makes both the work and the writer a hundred times more interesting^ than any other conception can do. I preface my abridgement with a plan of Ulysses' house, so far as I have been able to make it out from the poem. The reader will find that be understands the story much better if he will study the plan of the house here given with some attention. I have read wbat Prof. Jebb has written on this subject,* as also Mr. Andrew Lang's Note 18 at the end of Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of the Odyssey, I bave also read Mr. Arthur Piatt's article on the slaying of the suitors,! and find myself in far closer agreement with Mr. Lang thant with either of the other writers whom I have named. The only points on which I differ from Mr. Lang are in respect of the. inner court, which he sees as a roofed hall, but which I hold to have been open to the sky, except the covered cloister or [xe^apa aKioevia^ an arrangement which is still very common in Sicilian houses, especially at Trapani and Palermo. . I also differ from him in so far as I see no reason to think that the "stone pavement" was raised, and as believing the opaodvpa to have been at the top of Telemachus's tower, and called " in the wall " because the tower abutted on the wall. * Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. vii. 170-88, and Introduction to Horner^ 8rd edit. 1888, pp. 57-62, and Appendix, Note 1. t Journal of Philology, Vol, IXIV. p. 39, ifec. lo THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY, These are details : substantially my view of the action and scene during the killing of the suitors agrees with Mr. Lang's. I will not give the reasons which compel me to differ from Prof. Jehb and Mr. Piatt, but will leave my plan of the house and the abridged translation to the judgement of the reader. A was the body of the house, containing the women's apartments and other rooms. It had an upper story, in which was Penelope's room overlooking the court wh^re the suitors passed the greater part of their time. It also contained the store-room, which seem^ to have been- j)laced at the far end of the house, perhaps in a basement. The store-room could be reached by a passage' from a doorway A\ and also by back-passages from a side-entrance A\ which I sup2)ose to have been the back door of the house. The women's apartments opened on to the j)assage leading from A' to the store-room. B and B' were the Megaron or Megara, that is to say inner court, of which i^'was a covered cloister with a roof supported by bearing-posts with cross-beams and rafters. The open part of the court had no flooring but the natural soil. Animals seem to have been flayed and dressed here, for Medon, who was certainly in the inner court while the suitors were being killed, concealed himself under a freshly-flayed ox (or heifer's) hide (xxii. 363). B' was called the fxiyapa GKLoevra or " shaded" part of the court, to distinguish it from that which was open to the sun. The end nearest the house was paved with stone, while that nearest the outer court (and probably the other two sides) were floored with ash. The part of the cloister that was paved with stone does not appear to have been raised above the level of tlie rest ; at one end of the stone pavement there was a door ^, opening on to a narrow passage ; this door, though mentioned immediately after the opaoOvpa or trap door (xxii. 126), which we shall come to presently, has no connection with it. About the middle of the pavement, during the trial of the axes, there was a seat b, from which Ulysses shot through the axes, and from which he sprang when he began to shoot the suitors ; Store Room Side Entrance from the narrow passage or \avpa, by means of which the pcoyes or bach passages, and also the Store-room, could be reached. THE HOUSE OF ULYSSIilS. {To face p. 17.) HOUSE OF ULYSSES. 17 against one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloister, there was plished thief and perjurer in the whole world, for he was very fond of him. She immediately dropped the leg, which 4<38 made a loud noise against the side of th« bath and upset all the water. Her eyes filled with tears, and she caught Ulysses by the beard and told him that she knew him. She looked towards Penelope to tell her ; but Minerva 476 had directed Penelope's attention elsewhere, so that she had observed nothing of what had been going on* Ulysses gri]3ped Euryclea's throat, and swore he would kill her, nurse to him though she had been, unless she kept his return secret — which she promised to do. She also said that if heaven delivered the suitors into his hands, she would give him a list of all the women in the house who had misconducted themselves. "' You have no need," said Ulysses, " I shall find that out 499 for myself. See that you keep my counsel and leave the rest to heaven." a 82 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. 603 Euryclea now went to fetch some more water, for the first had been all spilt. When she had brought it, and had washed Ulysses, he turned his seat round to the fire to dry himself, and drew his rags over the scar that Penelope might not see it. 508 Then Penelope detailed her sorrows to Ulysses. Others, she said, could sleep, but she could not do so, neither night nor day. She could not rest for thinking what her duty might be. Ought she to stay where she was and stand guard over her son's estate, or ought she to marry one of the suitors and 530 go elsewhere ? Her son, while he was a boy, would not hear of her doing this, but now that he was grown up and realised the havoc that the suitors were making of his pr.operty, he was continually urging her to go. Besides, she had had a strange 538 dream about an eagle that had come from a mountain and swooped down on her favourite geese as they were eating mash out of a tub,* and had killed them all. Then the eagle came back and told her he was Ulysses, while the geese were the suitors ; but when she woke the geese were still feeding at the mash tub. Now, what did all this mean ? 554 Ulysses said it could only mean the immediate return of her husband, and his revenge upon the suitors. 559 But Penelope would not believe him. " Dreams," she said, " are very curious things. They come through two gates, one of horn, and the other of ivory. Those that come through the gate of ivory have no significance. It is the others that alone are true, and my dream came through the gate of ivory^ To- morrow, therefore, I shall set Ulysses' bow before the suitors, and I will leave this house with him who can draw it most easily and send an arrow through the twelve holes whereby twelve axeheads are fitted into their handles." 582 " You need not defer this competition," said Ulysses, " for your husband will be here before any one of them can draw the bow and shoot through the axes." 538 " Stranger," replied Penelope, " I could stay talking with you the whole night through, but there is a time for every- * I have repeatedly seen geese so feeding at Trapani and in the neighbourhood. In Bummer the grass is all burned up so that they cannot graze as in England. STOKY OF THE ODYSSEY. 83 thing, and I will now go to lie down upon that couch which I have never ceased to water with my tears from the day my husband set out for the city with an ill-omened name. You can sleep within the house, either on the ground or on a bedstead, whichever you may prefer." Then she went upstairs and mourned her dear husband till 600 Minerva shed sweet sleep over her eyes. BOOK XX. Ulysses converses with Eumceus^ and with his herdsman Philoetius — The suitors again maltreat him — Theoclyrnenus foretells their doom and leaves the house. Ulysses made himself a bed of an untanned ox-hide in the vestibule and covered himself with sheep skins ; then Eurynome threw a cloak over him. He saw the women who misbehaved themselves with the suitors go giggling out of the house, and 6 was sorely tempted to kill them then and there, but he restrained himself. He kejDt turning round and round, as a man turns a paunch full of blood and fat before a hot fire to cook it, and could get no rest till Minerva came to him and comforted him, by reminding him that he was now in Ithaca. " That is all very well," replied Ulysses, " but suppose I do S6 kill these suitors, pray consider what is to become of me then ? Where am I to fly to from the revenge their friends will take upon me ? " "One would think," answered Minerva, "that you might 4i trust even a feebler aid than mine; go to sleep; your troubles shall end shortly." Ulysses then slept, but Penelope was still wakeful, and 54 lamented her impending marriage, and her inability to sleep, in such loud tones that Ulysses heard her, and thought she was close by him. It was now morning and Ulysses rose, praying the while to 91 Jove. " Grant me," he cried, " a sign from one of the people who are now waking in the house, and another sign from outside it." g2 84 THE AUTHORESS GF THE ODYSSEY. 102 Forthwith Jove thundered from a clear sky. There came also a miller woman from the mill-room, who, being weakly, no had not finished her appointed task as soon as the others had done ; as she passed Ulysses he heard her curse the suitors and pray for their immediate death. Ulysses was thus assured that he should kill them. 122 The other women of the house now lit the fire, and Tele- machus came down from his room. 129 " Nurse," said he, " I hope you have seen that the stranger has been duly fed and lodged. My mother, in spite of her many virtues, is apt to be too much impressed by inferior people, and to neglect those who are more deserving." 134 " Do not find fault, child," said Euryclea, " when there is no one to find fault with. The stranger sat and drank as much wine as he liked. Your mother asked him if he would take any more bread, but he said he did not want any. As for his bed, he would not have one, but slept in the vestibule on an untanned hide, and I threw a cloak over him myself." 144 Telemachus then went out to the place of assembly, and his two dogs with him. "Now, you women," said Euryclea, "be quick and clean the house down. Put the cloths on the seats, sponge down the tables ; wash the cups and mixing bowls, and go at once, some of you, to fetch water from the fountain. It is a feast day, and the suitors will be here directly." So twenty of them went for water, and others busied themselves setting things straight about the house. 160 The men servants then came and choj^ped wood. The women came back from the fountain, and Eum^us with them, bringing three fine pigs, which he let feed about the yards. When he saw Ulysses he asked him how he was getting on, and Ulysses prayed that heaven might avenge him uj^on the suitors. 172 Then Melanthius came with the best goats he had, and made them fast in the gate-house. When he had done this he gibed at Ulysses, but Ulysses made him no answer. 185 Thirdly came Philoetius with a barren heifer and some fat goats for the suitors. These had been brought over for him by the boatmen who plied for all comers. When he saw STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 85 Ulysses, he asked Eumaeus who^^he was, and said he was very like his lost master. Then he told Ulysses how well his old master had treated him, and how well also he had served his old master. Alas ! that he was no longer living. " We are fallen," said he, " on evil times, and I often think that though it would not be right of me to drive my cattle off, and put both myself and them -under some other master while Telemachus is still alive, yet even thi^ would be better than leading the life I have to lead at present. Indeed I should have gone off with them long ago, if I did not cling to the hope that Ulysses may still return," " I can see," said Ulysses, " that you are a very honest and 226 sensible person. Therefore I will swear you a solemn oath that Ulysses will be here immediately, and if you like you shall see him with your own eyes kill the suitors." While they were thus conversing the suitors were again 240 plotting the murder of Telemachus, but there appeared an unfavourable omen, so Amphinomus said they had better go to the house and get dinner ready, which they accordingly did. When they were at table, Eumeeus gave them their cups, Philoetius handed round the bread and Melantheus poured them out their wine, Telemachus purposely set Ulysses at a little table on the part of the cloister that was paved with stone, and told the suitors that it should be worse for any of them who molested him. '-This," he said, "is not a public house, but it is mine, for it has come to me from Ulysses." The suitors were very angry but Antinous checked them. 268 *' Let us put up with it," said he ; " if Jove had permitted, we should have been the death of him ere now." Meanwhile, it being the festival of Apollo, the people of the town were bearing his holy hecatomb about the streets. The servants gave Ulysses an equal portion with what they 279 gave the others, for Telemachus had so bidden them. Presently one of the suitors named Ctesippus observed this and said, "I see the stranger has as good a portion as any one else. I will give him a better, that he may have something to give 296 the bath-woman or some other of the servants in the house " — ixnd with this he flung a cow's heel at Ulysses' head. bb THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. £02 Ulysses smiled with a grim Sardinian* smile, and bowed his head so that the heel passed over it and hit the wall. Telemachus rebuked Ctesippus very fiercely, and all were silent till Agelaus tried to calm them saying, '"What Tele- machus has said is just : let us not answer. Nevertheless I would urge him to talk quietly with his mother and tell her that as long as there was any chance of Ulysses coming back there was nothing unreasonable in her deferring a second marriage ; but there is now no hope of his return, and if you would enjoy your own in peace, tell her to marry the best man among us and the one who will make her the most advan- tageous oifer." 338 " Nay," answered Telemachus, " it is not I that delay her marriage. I urge her to it, but I cannot and will not force her." 345 Then Minerva made the suitors break out into a forced hysterical laughter, and the meats which they were eating became all smirched with blood. Their eyes were filled with tears and their hearts were oppressed with terrible forebodings. Theoclymenus saw that all was wrong, and said, " Unhappy men, what is it that ails you ? There is a shroud of darkness drawn over you from head to foot, your cheeks are wet with tears ; the air is alive with wailing voices ; the walls and roof beams drip blood ; the gate of the cloisters, and the yard beyond them are full of ghosts trooping down into the night of hell ; the sun is blotted out from heaven, and a blighting gloom is over all the land." 358 The suitors laughed at him, and Eurymachus said, "If you find it so dark here, we had better send a man with you to take you out into the open." 363 " I have eyes," he answered, " that can guide, and feet that can take me from the doom that 1 ^see overhanging every single one of you." On this he left them and went back to the house of Pira3U3. 375 Then one of the suitors said, "Telemachus, you are very unfortunate in your guests. You had better ship both the * This is the only rcfLrence to Sardinia in either Iliad or Odyssei/, STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 87 stranger and this man off to the Sicels and sell tliem.'* Telemachus made no answer, but kept his eye on his father for any signal that he might make him. Penelope had had a seat placed for her overlooking the 387 cloister, and heard all that had passed. The dinner had been good and plentiful and there had been much laughter, for they had slaughtered many victims, but little did they guess the terrible supper which the goddess and a strong man were preparing for them, BOOK XXI. The trial of the how and of the axes. Then Minerva put it in Penelope's mind to let the suitors compete for the bow and for a prize of iron. So she went upstairs and got the key of the store room, where Ulysses' treasures of gold, copper, and iron were kept, as also the mighty bow which Iphitus son of Eurytus had given him, and which had been in common use by Eurytus as long as he was alive. Hither she went attended by her women, and when she had unlocked the door she took the bow down from its peg and carried it, with its quiverfuU of deadly arrows, to the suitors, while her maids brought the chest in which were the many prizes of iron that Ulysses had won. Then, still attended by her two maidens, she stood by one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloister, and told the suitors she would marry the man among them who could string Ulysses' bow most easily, and send an arrow through the twelve holes by which twelve axe-heads were fastened on to their handles. So saying she gave the bow into the hands of Euma3us and so bade him let the suitors compete as she had said. Euma3us wept as he took it, and so did Philoetius who was looking on, whereon Antinous scolded them for a couple of country bumpkins. Telemachus said that he too should compete, and that if he ns was successful he should certainly not allow his mother to leave her home with a second husband, while he remained alone. So saying he dug a long trench quite straight, set the 88 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. axes in a line within it, and* stamped the earth about them to keep them steady ; every one was surprised to see how accurately he fixed them, considering that he had never seen anything of the kind before.* Having set the axes duly, he stood on the stone pavement, and tried to string the bow, but failed three times. He would, however, have succeeded the fourth time, if Ulysses had not made him a sign that he was not to try any more. So he laid both bow and arrow down and took his seat. HO ^' Then," said Antinous, " begin at the place where the cup- bearer begins, and let each take his turn, going from left to right." On this Leiodes came forward. He was their sacri- ficial priest, and sat in tlie angle of the wall hard by the mixing bowl ; but he had always set his face against the wicked conduct of the suitors. When he had failed to string . the bow he said it was so hard to string that it would rob many a man among them of life and heart— for which saying Antinous rebuked him bitterly. 17,5 "Bring some fire, Melantheus, and a wheel of fat from inside the house," said he to Melanthius, [siol " that we may warm the bow and grease it." So they did this, but though many tried they could none of them string it. There remained only Antinous and Eurymachus who were their ring leaders. 188 The swineherd and the stockman Phila^tius then went out-, side the forecourt, and Ulysses followed them ; when they had got beyond the outer yard Ulysses sounded them, and having satisfied himself that they were loyal he revealed himself and shewed them the scar on his leg. They were overjoyed, and Ulysses said, " Go buck one by one after me, and follow these instructions. The other suitors will not be for letting me have the bow, but do you, Eumseus, when you have got it in your hands, bring it to me, and tell the women to shut themselves * If Telemachus had never seen anything of the kind before, so probably, neither had the writer of the Odyssey — at any rate no commentator has yet been able to under- stand her description, and I doubt whether she understood it herself. It looks as though the axe heads must hare been wedged into the handles or so bound on to them as tQ let the hole be visible through which the handle would go when the axe was in use. The trial is evidently a double one, of strength as regards the bending of the bow, anc^ accuracy of aim as regards shooting through a row of rings. STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 89 into their room. If the sound of groaning or uproar reaches any of them when they are inside, tell them to stick to their work and not come out. I leave it to you, Philoetius, to fasten the gate of the outer court securely." He then went inside, and resumed the seat that he had left. Eurymachus now tried to string the bow but failed. " I do 245 not so much mind," he said, " about not marrying Penelope, for there are plenty of other women in Ithaca and elsewhere. What grieves me is the fact of our being such a feeble folk as compared with our forefathers." Antinous reminded him that it was the festival of Apollo. 256 " Who," said he, " can shoot on such a day as this ? Let us leave the axes where they are — no one will take them ; let us also sacrifice to Apollo the best goats Melanthius can bring us, and resume the contest tomorrow." Ulysses then cunningly urged that he might be allowed to 274 try whether he was as strong a man as he used to be, and that the bow should be placed in his hands for this purpose. The suitors were very angry, but Penelope insisted that Ulysses should have the bow ; if he succeeded in stringing it she said it was absurd to suppose that she would marry him ; but she would give him a shirt and cloak, a javelin, sword, and a pair of sandals, and she would send him wherever he might want to go. " The bow, mother, is mine," said Telemachus, " and if I 343 choose to give it this man out and out I shall give it him. Go within the house and mind your own proper duties." Penelope went back, with her women, wondering into the 354 house, and going upstairs into her room she wept for her dear husband till Minerva shed sweet sleep over her eyes. Eum^eus was about to take the bow to Ulysses, but the 359 suitors frightened him and he was for putting it down, till Telemachus threatened to stone him back to his farm if he did not bring it on at once ; he therefore gave the bow to Ulysses. Then he called Euryclea aside and told her to shut the women np, and not to let them out if they heard any groans or uproar. Bhe therefore shut them up. At this point Philoetius slipped out and secured the main 388 90 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. gate of the outer court with a ship's cable of Byblus fibr(5 that happened to be lying beside it. This done, he returned to his seat and kept his eye on Ulysses, who was examining the bow with great care to see whether it was sound in all its parts. 397 " This man," said the suitors, " is some old bow-fancier ; perhaps he has got one like it at home, or wants to make one, so cunningly does the old rascal handle it." 404 Ulysses, having finished his scrutiny, strung the bow as easily as a bard puts a new string on to his lyre. He tried the string and it sang under his hand like the cry of a swallow. He took an arrow that was lying out of its quiver by his table, placed the notch on the string, and from his seat sent the arrow through the handle-holes of all the axes and outside into the yard. 424 " Telemachus," said he, "your guest has not disgraced you. It is now time for the suitors to have their supper, and to take their pleasure afterwards with song and playing on the lyre." So saying he made a sign to Telemachus, who girded on his sword, grasped his spear, and stood armed beside his father's seat. BOOK XXII. The hilling of the suitors. Ulysses tore off his rags, and sprang on the broad pave- ment,* with his bow and his quiver full of arrows. He shed the arrows on to the ground at his feet and said, " The contest is at an end. I will now see whether Apollo will vouchsafe me to hit another mark which no man has yet aimed at." ; He took aim at Antinous as he spoke. The arrow struck him in the throat, so that he fell over and a thick stream of blood gushed from his nostrils. He kicked his table from him and upset the things on it, whereby the bread and meats were * It is not expressly stated that the "stone pavement" is here intended. The Greek has simply u\to d' ettI fxiyav ovdou, but I do not doubt that the stone pave- ment is intended. STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 91 all soiled as tliey fell over on to the ground. The suitors, were instantly in an uproar, and looked towards the walls for armour, but there was none. " Stranger," they cried, " you shall pay dearly for shooting people down in this way. You are a doomed man." But they did not yet understand that Ulysses had killed Antinous on purpose. Ulysses glared at them and said, " Dogs, did you think that 34 I should not return from Troy ? You have wasted my sub- stance, you have violated the women of my house, you have wooed my wife while I was still alive, you have feared neither god nor man, and now you shall die." Eurymachus alone answered. " If you are Ulysses," said 44 he, "we have done you great wrong. It was all Antinous's doing. He never really wanted to marry Penelope : he wanted to kill your son and to be chief man in Ithaca. He is no more; then spare the lives of your people and we will pay you all," Ulysses again glared at him and said, " I will not stay my eo hand till I have slain one and all of you. You must fight, or fly as you can, or die — and fly you neither can nor shall." Eurymachus then said, " My friends, this man will give us 68 no quarter. Let us show fight. Draw your swords and hold the tables up in front of you as shields. Have at him with a rush, and drive him from the pavement and from the door. We could then get through into the town and call for help." While he spoke and was springing forward, Ulysses sent an 79 arrow into his heart and he fell doubled up over his table. The cup and all the meats went over on to the ground as he smote the earth with his forehead in the agonies of death. Amphinomus then made for Ulysses to try and dislodge 89 him from the door, but Telemachus got behind him, and struck him through. He left his spear in the body and flew back to his father's side ; " Father," said he, " let me bring armour for you and me, as well as for Eumaeus and Philoetius." "Eun and fetch it," answered Ulysses, " while my arrows hold out ; be quick, or they may get me away from the door when I am single-handed." Telemachus w6nt to the store-room and brought four 108 shields, eight spears, and four helmets* He armed himself, as 92 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. did also Bam^us and Philoetius, who then placed themselves beside Ulysses. As long as his arrows held out Ulysses shot the suitors down thick and threefold, but when they failed him he stood the bow against the end wall of the house hard by the door way, and armed himself. 126 jNTow there was a trap-door (se^ plan, and yon p. 17) on the wall, while at one end of the pavement there was an exit, closed by a good strong door and leading out into a narrow passage ; Ulysses told Philoetius to stand by this door and keep it, for only one person could attack it at a time. Then Agelaus shouted out, " Go up, somebody, to th« trap-door and tell the peo]3le what is going on ; they would come in and helj) us." 135 "This may not be," answered Melanthius, "the mouth of the narrow passage is dangerously near the entrance from the street into the outer court. One brave man could prevent any number from getting in, b-ut I will bring you arms from the store-room, for I am sure it is there that tli^y have put them."' 143 As he spoke he went by back passages to the store-room, and brought the suitors twelve shields and the same number of helmets ; when Ulysses saw the suitors arming his heart began to fail him, and he said to Telemachus, " Some of the women inside are helping the suitors — or else it is Melanthius." 153 Telemachus said that it was his fault, for he had left the store-room door open. " Go, Euukbus," he added, " and close it; see whether it is one of the wom^n, or Melanthius, son of Dolius." 160 Melanthius was now going back for more armour when Eumaeus saw him and told Ulysses, who said, "Follow him, you and Philoetius ; bind his hands and feet behind him, and throw him into the store-room ; then string him up to a bearing-post till he is close to the rafters, that he may lingei: on in agony." 178 The men went to the store-room and caught Melanthius-., They bound him in a painful bond and strung him up as Ulysses had told them. Eumseus wished him a good night and the two men returned to the side of Ulysses. Minerva 205 also joined them, having assumed the form of Mentor ; but STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 93 Ulysses felt sure it was Minerva. The suitors were very angry when they saw her ; " Mentor," they cried, " you shall pay for this with your life, and we will confiscate all you have in the world." This made Minerva furious, and she rated Ulysses roundly. 224 " Your prowess," said she, " is no longer what it was at Troy. How comes it that you are less valiant now that you are on your own ground? Come on, my good fellow, and see how Mentor will fight for you and requite you for your many kindnesses." But she did not mean to give him the victory just yet, so she flew up to one of the rafters and sat there in the form of a swallow.* The struggle still continued. " My friends," said Agelaus, 241 " he will soon have to leave off. See how Mentor has left him after doing nothing for him except brag. Do not aim at him all at once, but six of you throw your spears first." They did so, but Minerva made all their spears take no 265 effect. Ulysses and the other three then threw, and each killed his man. The suitors drew back in fear into a corner, whereon the four sprang forward and regained their weapons. The suitors again threw, and this time Amphimedon really did take a piece of the top skin from Telemachus's wrist, and Ctesippus just grazed Eumseus's shoulder above his shield. It was now the turn of Ulysses and his men, and each of their spears killed a man. Then Minerva from high on the roof held up her deadly 297 £Bgis, and struck the suitors with panic, whereon Ulysses and his men fell upon them and smote them on every side. They made a horrible groaning as their brains were being battered in, and the ground seethed with their blood. Leiodes implored Ulysses to spare his life, but Ulysses would give him no quarter. The minstrel Phemius now begged for mercy. He was 330 * This again suggests, though it does not prove, that we are in an open court surrounded by a cloister, on the rafters of which swallows would often perch. Line 297 suggests this even more i»trongly, "the roof" being, no doubt, the roof of the cloister, on to which Minerva flew from the rafter, that her aegis might better command the whole court. 94 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. standing near towards the trap-door, and resolving to embrace Ulysses' knees, he laid his lyre on the ground between the mixing-bowl and the high silver-studded seat. " Spare me," he cried, " you will be sorry for it afterwards if yon kill such a bard as I am. I am an original composer, and heaven visits me with every kind of insj^iration. Do not be in such a hurry to cut my head off* Telemachus will tell you that I only sang to the suitors because they forced me." 351 " Hold," cried Telemachus to his father, " do him no hurt, he is guiltless ; and we will spare Medon, too, who was always good to me when I was a boy, unless Eum^eus or Philoetius has already killed him, or you happened to fall in with him yourself." 361 "Here I am, my dear Sir," said Medon, coming out from under a freshly flayed heifer's hide* which had concealed him ; • "tell your father, or he will kill me in his rage against the suitors for having wasted his substance and been so dis- respectful to yourself." Ulysses smiled, and told them to go outside into the outer court till the killing should be over. So they went, but they were still very much frightened. Ulysses then went all over the court to see if there were any who had concealed themselves, or were not yet killed, but there was no one ; they were all as dead as fish lying in a hot sun upon the beach. 390 Then he told Telemachus to call Euryclea, who came at once, and found him all covered with blood. When she saw the corpses she was beginning to raise a shout of triumph, but 411 Ulysses checked her: "Old woman," said he, "rejoice in silence ; it is an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men. And now tell me which of the women of the house are innocent and which guilty." 419 "There are fifty women in the house," said Euryclea; " twelve of these have misbehaved, and have been wanting in respect to me and to Penelope. They showed no disrespect to Telemachus, for he has only lately grown uj), and his mother * Probably the hide of the heifer that Philoetius had brought in that morning (xx. 18G). STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 95 never permitted him to give orders to the female servants. And now let me go upstairs and tell your wife." " Do not wake her yet," answered Ulysses, " but send the 430 guilty women to me." Then he called Telemachus, Eumaaus, and Philoetius. 435 " Begin," he said, " to remove the dead bodies, and make the women help you. Also get sponges and clean water to swill down the tables and the seats. When you have thoroughly cleansed the cloisters take the women outside and run them through with your swords." The women came down weeping and wailing bitterly. 446 First they carried the dead bodies out, and propped them against one another in the gatehouse of the outer court. Ulysses ordered them about and saw that they lost no time. When they had carried the bodies out they cleaned all the tables and seats with sponges and water, while Telemachus and the two others shovelled up the blood and dirt from the ground and the women carried it all outside. W^hen they had thus thoroughly cleaned the whole court, they took the women out and hemmed them up in the narrow space between the vaulted room and the wall of the outer yard. Here Telemachus deter- mined to hang them, as a more dishonourable death than 462 stabbing. He therefore made a ship's rope fast to a strong bearing-post supporting the roof of the vaulted room, and threw it round, making the women put their heads in the nooses oue after another. He then drew the rope high up, so that noue of their feet might touch the .ground. They kicked convulsively for a while, but not for very long. As for Melanthius they took him through the cloisters into 474 the outer court. There they cut off his nose and ears ; they drew out his vitals and gave them to the dogs, raw ; then they cut off his hands and feet. When they had done this they washed their hands and feet, and went back into the house. " Go," said Ulysses, to Euryclea, " and bring me sulphur that I may burn it and purify the cloisters. Go, moreover, and bid Penelope come here with her gentlewomen and the women of the house." " Let me first bring you a clean shirt and cloak," said 485 yo THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Euryclea, ''do not keep those rags on an}^ longer, it is not right." 490 " Liglit me a fire," answered Ulysses, and she obeyed and brought him sulphur, wherewith he thoroughly purified both the inner and outer court, as well as the cloisters. Then Euryclea brought the women from their apartment, and they pressed round Ulysses, kissing his head and shoulders, and taking hold of his hands. It made him feel as if he should like to weep, for he remembered every one of them. BOOK xxiiL Pe7ielope comes down to see Ulysses^ and being at last con- vinced that he is her husband^ retires with him to their own old room — In the morning Ulysses^ Telemachus^ PhilcetiuSy and Eumceus go to the house of Laertes. Euryclea now went upstairs and told Penelope what had happened. " Wake up, my dear child," said she, " Ulysses is come home at last and has killed the suitors who were giving so much trouble in the house, eating up his estate and ill- treating his son." 10 "My good nurse," answered Penelope, "you must be mad. The gods sometimes send very sensible people out of their minds, and make foolish people sensible. This is what they must have been doing to you. Moreover, you have waked me from the soundest sleep that I have enjoyed since my husband left me. Go back into the women's room ; if it had been any one but you, I should have given her a severe scolding." 25 Euryclea still maintained that what she had said was true, and in answer to Penelope's further questions told her as much as she knew about the killing of the suitors. " When 1 came down," she said, " I found Ulysses standing over the corpses ; you would have enjoyed it, if you had seen him all besi^attered with blood and filth, and looking just like a lion. But the corpses are now piled up in the gatehouse, and he has sent me to bring you to him." STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 97 Penelope said that it could not be Ulysses, but must be 58 some god wlio had resolved to punish the suitors for their great wickedness. Then Euryclea told her about the scar. " My dear nurse," answered Penelope, " however wise you 80 may be, you can hardly fathom the counsels of the gods. Still I will go and find my son that I may see the corpses of the suitors, and the man who has killed them." On this she came down into the cloister and took her seat 85 opposite Ulysses, in the fire-light, by the wall at right angles to that by which she had entered, while her husband sat by one of the bearing-posts of the cloister, looking down and waiting to hear what she would say. For a long time she sat as one lost in amazement and said nothing, till Telemachus upbraided her for her coldness. " Your heart," he said, i' was always hard as a stone." " My son," said his mother, " I am stupefied ; nevertheless lOi if this man is really Ulysses, I shall find it out ; for there are tokens which we two alone know of." Ulysses smiled at this, and said to Telemachus, "Let your lu mother prove me as she will, she will make up her mind about it presently. Meanwhile let us think what we shall do, for we have been killing all the picked youth of Ithaca." *'We will do," answered Telemachus, "whatever you may 123 think best," "Then," said Ulysses, "wash, and put your shirts on. Bid 129 the maids also go to their own room and dress. Phemius shall strike up a dance tune, so that any who are passing in the street may think there is a wedding in the house, and we can get away into the woods before the death of the suitors is noised abroad. Once there, we will do as heaven shall direct." They did as he had said. The house echoed with the sound of I4i men and women dancing, and the people outside said, " So the queen has been getting married at last. She ought to be ashamed of herself, for not staying to protect her husband's property." Eurynome washed and anointed Ulysses ; Minerva also 152 beautified him, making the hair grow thick on the top of his head and flow down in hvacinthine curls. He came from the 98 THB AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. bath looking like an immortal god, and sat down opposite his wife. Finding, however, that he could not move her, he said to Euryclea, "Nurse, get a bed ready for me. I will sleep alone, for this woman has a heart as hard as iron." 1^3 "My dear," said Penelope, "I have no wish to set myself up, nor to depreciate you, but I am not struck by your appear- ance, for I well remember what kind of a man you were when you left Ithaca. Nevertheless, Euryclea, take his bed out of the room he built for it, and make it ready for him." 181 Ulysses knew that the bed could not be moved without cutting down the stem of a growing olive tree on the stump of which he had built it. He was very angry, and desired to know who had ventured on doing this, at the same time describing the bed fully to Penelope. 205 Then Penelope was convinced that he really was Ulysses, and fairly broke down. She flung her arms about his neck, and said she had only held aloof so long because she had been shuddering at the bare thought of any one deceiving her. Ulysses in his turn melted and embraced her, and they would have gone on indulging their sorrow till morning came, had not Minerva miraculously prolonged the night. 247 Ulysses then began to tell her of the voyages which Tiresias had told him he must now undertake, but soon broke oif by saying that they had better go to bed. To which Penelope rejoined that as she should certainly have to be told about it sooner or later, she had perhaps better hear it at once. 2G3 Thus pressed Ulysses told her. " In the end," said he, " Tiresias told me that death should come to me from the sea. He said my life should ebb away very gently when I was full of years and peace of mind, and that my people should bless me." 288 Meanwhile Eurynome and Euryclea' made the room ready,* * This room was apparently not within the body of the house. It was certainly on the ground floor, for the bed was fixed on to the stump of a tree; I strongly suspect it to be the vaulted room, round the outside of which the bodies of the guilty maids were still hanging, and I also suspect it was in oider to thus festoon the room that Tele- machus hanged the women instead of stabbing them, but this is treading on that perilous kind of speculation which I so strongly deprecate in others. If it were not for the gruesome horror of the dance, in lines 129 — 151, I should not have entertained it. STORY or THE ODYSSEY. 99 and Euryclea went inside tlie house, leaving Eurynome to light Penelope and Ulysses to their bed-room. Telemachns, Philoetius, and Eiimasus now left off dancing, and made the women leave off also. Then they laid themselves down to sleep in the cloisters. When they were in bed together, Penelope told Ulysses how 300 much she had had to bear in seeing the house filled with wicked suitors who had killed so many oxen and sheep on her account, and had drunk so many casks of wine. Ulysses in his turn told her the whole story of his adventures, touching 3io briefly upon every point, and detailing not only his own sufferings but those he had inflicted upon other people. She was delighted to listen, and never went to sleep till he ended his story and dropped off into a profound slumber. When Miuerva thought that Ulysses had slept long enough 344 she permitted Dawn to rise from the waters of Oceanus, and Ulysses got up. " Wife," said he to Penelope, " Now that we have at last come together again, take care of the property that is in my house. As for the sheep and goats that the wicked suitors have eaten, I will take many by force from other people, and will compel the men of the place to make good the rest. I will now go out to my father's house in the country. At sunrise it will get noised about that I have been killing the suitors. Go upstairs, therefore, and stay there with your waiting women. See nobody, and ask no questions." As he spoke he girded on his armour ; he roused the others 366 also and bade them arm. He then undid the gate, and they all sallied forth. It was now daylight, but Minerva enshrouded them in darkness, and led them quickly out of the town* BOOK XXIV. The Ghosts of the suitors in Hades — Ulysses sees his father — is attacked by the friends of the suitors — Laertes kills Eupeithes — Peace is made between him and the people of Ithaca, Then Mercury took the fair golden wand with which he seals men's eyes in sleep or wakes them just as he pleases, and 100 THE AUTHOBESS OF THE ODYSSEY. led tlie ghosts of the suitors to the house of Hades whining and gibbering as they followed. As bats fly squealing about the hollow of a great cave when one of them has fallen from the cluster in which they hang — even so did they whine and squeal as Mercury the healer of sorrow led them down into the dark abode of death. When they had passed the waters of Oceanus and the rock Leucas, they came to the gates of the Sun and the land of dreams, whereon they reached the meadow of asphodel where dwell the souls and shadows of men that can labour no more. 15 Here they came upon the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax, and that of Agamemnon joined them. As these were conversing. Mercury came up with the ghosts of the suitors, and Agamemnon's ghost recognised that of Amphi- medon who had been his host when he was in Ithaca ; so he asked him what this sudden arrival of fine young men — all of an age too — might mean, and Amj)himedon told him the whole story from first to last. 203 Thus did they converse in the house of Hades deep within the bowels of the earth. Meanwhile Ulysses and the others passed out of the city and soon reached the farm of Laertes, which he had reclaimed with infinite labour. Here was his house with a lean-to running all round it, where the slaves y/ho worked for him ate and slept, while inside the house there was an old Sicel woman, who looked after him in this his country farm. 2U "Go," said Ulysses to the others, "to the house, and kill the best pig you have for dinner ; I wish to make trial of my father and see whether he will know me." 219 So saying he gave his armour to Euma3us and Philoetius, and turned off into the vineyard, where he found his father alone, hoeing a vine. He had on a dirty old shirt, patched and very shabby ; his legs were bound round with thongs of oxhide to keep out the brambles, and he wore sleeves of leather against the thorns. He had a goatskin cap on his his head and was looking very woebegone. 232 When Ulysses saw him so worn, so old and full of sorrow, he stood still under a tall pear tree and began to weep. He STORY OF THE OLNYSSSY- " lOi, doubted whether to embrace him, kiss him, and tell him all about his having come home, or whether he should first question him and see what he would saj. On the whole he decided that he would be crafty with him, so he went up to his father who was bending down and digging about a plant. " I see. Sir," said Ulysses, " that you are an excellent 244 gardener — what pains you take with it to be sure. There is not a single plant, not a fig-tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower- bed, but bears the traces of your attention. I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I say that you take better care of your garden than of yourself. You are old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad. It cannot be because you are idle that your master takes such poor care of you ; indeed, your face and figure have nothing of the slave about them, but proclaim you of noble birth. I should have said you were one of those who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night as old men have a right to do. But tell me, and tell me true, whose bondsman are you, and in whose garden are you working ? Tell me also about another matter — is this place that I have come to really Ithaca ? I met a man just now who said so, but he was a dull fellow, and had not the patience to hear my story out when I was asking whether an old friend of mine who used to live here was still alive. My friend said he was the son of Laertes son of Arceisius, and I made him large presents on his leaving me." Laertes wept and answered that in this case he would never 280 see his presents back again, though he would have been amply requited if Ulysses had been alive. " But tell me," he said, " who and whence are you ? Where is your ship ? or did you come as passenger on some other man's vessel ? " " I will tell you every thing," answered Ulysses, " quite 302 truly. I come from Alybas, and am son to king Apheides. My name is Eperitus ; heaven drove me off my course as I was leaving Sicania, and I have been carried here against my will. 307 As for my ship, it is lying over yonder off the open country outside the town. It is five years since Ulysses left me — 308 Poor fellow! we had every hope that we should meet again and exchange presents." ,tO:^: THii:. auteohess of the odyssey. 315 Laertes was overcome with grief, and Ulysses was so mncli tonched that he revealed himself. When his father asked for proof, he shewed him the scar on his leg. " Furthermore," he added, " I will point out to you the trees in the vineyard which you gave me, and I asked you all about them as I followed you round the garden. We went over them all, and you told me their names and what they all were. You gave me thirteen j)ear trees, ten apple trees, and forty fig trees, and you also said you would give me fifty rows of vines ; there was corn planted between each row, and the vines yield grapes of every kind when the heat of heaven has beaten upon them." He also told his father that he had killed the suitors. 345 Laertes was now convinced, but said he feared he should have all the people of Ithaca coming to attack them. Ulysses answered that he need not trouble about this, and that they had better go and get their dinner, which would be ready by the time they got to the house. 361 When they reached the house the old Sicel woman took Laertes inside, washed him, and anointed him. Minerva also gave him a more imposing presence and made him look taller and stronger than before. When he came back, Ulysses said, " My dear father, some god has been making you much taller and better looking." To which Laertes answered that if he was as young and hearty as when he took the stronghold Nericum on the foreland, he should have been a great help to him on the preceding day, and would have killed many suitors. 383 Dolius and his sons, who had been working hard by, now came up, for the old Sicel woman, who was Dolius's wife, had been to fetch them. When they were satisfied that Ulysses was really there, they were overjoyed and embraced him one after the other. " But tell me," said Dolius, " does Penelope know, or shall we send and tell her ? " " Old man," answered Ulysses, "she knows already. What business is that of yours ? " Then they all took their seats at table. 412 Meanwhile the news of the slaughter of the suitors had got noised abroad, and the people gathered hooting and groaning before the house of Ulysses. They took their dead, buried every man his own, and put the bodies of those who came STORY OF THE ODYSSEY. 103. from elsewhere on board the fishing vessels, for the fishermen to take them every man to his own place. Then they met in assembly and Eupeithes urged them to pursue Ulysses and the others before they could escape over to the main land. Medon, however, and Phemius had now woke up, and came 439 to the assembly. Medon dissuaded the people from doing as Eupeithes advised, inasmuch as he had seen a god going ^bout killing the suitors, and it would be dangerous to oppose the will of heaven. Halitherses also spoke in the same sense, and half the people were pursuaded by him. The other half armed themselves and followed Eupeithes in pursuit of Ulysses. Minerva then consulted Jove as to the course events should 472 take. Jove told her that she had had everything her own way so far, and might continue to do as she pleased. He should, however, advise that both sides should now be reconciled under the continued rule of Ulysses, Minerva approved of this and darted down, to Ithaca. Laertes and his household had now done dinner, and 489 Eupeithes with his band of men were seen to be near at hand. Ulysses and the others put on their armour, and Minerva joined them. " Telemachus," said Ulysses, " now that you are about to fight in a decisive engagement, see that you do no discredit to your ancestors, who were eminent all the world over for their strength and valour." "You shall see, my dear father," replied Telemachus, "if 5io you choose, that I am in no mind, as you say, to disgrace your family." "Good heavens," exclaimed Laertes, "what a day I am 513 enjoying. My son and grandson are vying with one another in the matter of valour." Minerva then came up to him, and bade him pray to her. She infused fresh vigour into him, and when he had prayed to her he aimed his spear at Eupeithes and killed him. Ulysses and his men fell upon the others, routed them, and would have killed one and all of them had not Minerva raised her voice and made every one pause. " Men of Ithaca," she cried, " cease this dreadful war, and settle the matter without fm^ther bloodshed." On this they turned pale with fear, dropped their armour, 533 104 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. and fled every man towards the city. Ulysses was swooping down upon them like an eagle, but Jove sent a thunderbolt of fire that fell just in front of Minerva. Whereon she said, " Ulysses, stay this strife, or Jove will be angry with you." 545 Ulysses obeyed her gladly. Minerva then assumed the voice and form of Mentor, and presently made a covenant of peace between the two contending parties. ( 103 ) CHAPTER III THE PKEPONDERANCE OF WOMAN IN THE ODYSSEY. Having in my first chapter met the only h priori objections to my views concerning the sex of the writer which have yet been presented to me, I now turn to the evidence of female authorship which is furnished by the story which I have just laid before the reader. What, let me ask, is the most unerring test of female authorship ? Surely a preponderance of female interest, and a fuller knowledge of those things which a woman generally has ^ to deal with, than of those that fall more commonly within the province of man. People always write by preference of what they know best, and they know best what they most are, and have most to do with. This extends to ways of thought and to character, even more than to action. If man thinks the noblest study for mankind to be man, woman not less certainly believes it to be woman. Hence if in any work the women are found to be well and sympathetically drawn, while the men are mechanical and by / comparison perfunctorily treated, it is, I imagine, safe to infer that the writer is a woman ; and the converse holds good with man. Man and woman never fully understand one another save, perhaps, during courtship and honeymoon, and as a man understands man more fully than a woman can do, so does a woman, woman. Granted, it is the deliglit of either sex to understand the other as fully as it can, and those who succeed most in this respect are the best and happiest whether men or women ; but do what we may the barriers can never be broken down completely, and each sex will dwell mainly, though not, of course, exclusively, within its own separate world. When, moreover, we come to think of it, it is not desirable that they should be broken down, for it is on their existence that much of the attraction of either sex to the other depends. 106 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Men seem unable to draw women at all witliont either laughing at them ox^ caricaturing them ; and so, perhaps, a woman never draws a man so felicitously as when she is making him ridiculous. If she means to make him so she is certain to succeed; if she does not mean it she will succeed more surely still. Either sex, in fact, can caricature the other delightfully, and certainly no writer has ever shown more completely than the writer of the Odyssey, has done that, next to ^ the glorification of woman, she considers man's little ways and weaknesses to bo the fittest theme on which her genius can be displayed. But I doubt whether any writer in the whole range of literature (excepting, I suppose, Shakspeare) has succeeded in drawing a full length, life-sized, serious portrait of a member of the sex opposite to the writer's own. It is admitted on all hands that the preponderance of interest in the Iliad is on the side of man, and in the Odyssey on that of woman. Women in the Iliad are few in number and rarely occupy the stage. True, the goddesses play important parts, but they are never taken seriously. Shelley, again, speaking of the "perpetually increasing magnificence of the last seven books " of the Iliad^ says, " The Odyssey is sweet, but there is nothing like this."* The writer of the Odyssey is fierce as a tigress at times, but the feeling of the jioem is on the whole exactly what Shelley says it is. Strength is felt everywhere even in the tenderest passages of Xthe Iliad^ but it is sweetness rather than strength that fascinates us throughout the Odyssey, It is the charm of a woman not of a man. So, again, to quote a more recent authority, Mr. Gladstone in his work on Homer already referred to, says (p. 28) It is rarely in the Iliad that grandeur or force give way ta allow the exhibition of domestic aflection^ Conversely, in the Odyssey the family life supplies the tissue into which is woven tho; thread of the poem. Any one who is familiar with the two poems must know that * Select Latters of Percy Bysshe Shelley^ edited by Richaj'd Garnett, Kegan Paul Trench & Co., 1882, p. 149. GLADSTONE ON ILIAD AND ODYSSEY. 107 what Mr. Gladstone lias said is true ; and he might have added, not less truly, that when there is any exhibition of domestic life and affection in the Iliad the men are dominant, -^ and the women are under their protection, whereas throughout the Odyssey it is the women who are directing, counselling, X" and protecting the men. Who are the women in the Odyssey ? There is Minerva,v omnipresent at the elbows of Ulysses and Telemachus to keep them straight and alternately scold and flatter them. In the Iliad she is a great warrior but she is no woman : in the Odyssey she is a great woman but no warrior ; we have, of t course, Fenelope — masterful nearly to the last and tossed oif to the wings almost from the moment that she has ceased to be so ; Euryclea, the old servant, is quite a match for Tele- machus, " do not find fault, child," she says to him, " when there is no one to find fault with" (xx. 135). Who can doubt that Helen is master in the house of Menelaus — of whom all ^ she can say in praise is that he is "not deficient either in person or understanding" (iv. 264)? Idothea in Book iv. treats Menelaus de haiit en bas^ all through the Proteus episode. She is good to him and his men, but they must do exactly what she tells them, and she evidently enjoys "running" them, — for I can think of no apter word. Calypso is the master mind, ^ not Ulysses ; and, be it noted, that neither she nor Circe seem to have a manservant on their premises. I was at an inn once and asked the stately landlady if I could see the landlord. She bridled up and answered, " We have no landlord, sir, in this house ; I cannot see what use a man is in a hotel except to clean boots and windows." There spoke Circe and Calypso, but neither of them seem to have made even this much excep- tion in man's favour. Let the reader ask any single ladies of his acquaintance, who live in a house of their own, whether they prefer beiug )( waited upon by men or by women, and 1 shall be much sur- prised if he does not find that they generally avoid having a man about the house at all — gardeners of course excepted. But then the gardener generally has a wife, and a house of his own. 108 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Take Nansicaa again, delightful as she is, it would not be ^ wise to contradict her ; she knows what is good for Ulysses, and all will go well with him so long as he obeys her, but she must be master and he man. I see I have passed over Ino in Book V. She is Idothea over again, just as Circe is Calypso, with very little variation. Who again is master — Queen Arete X or King Alcinous ? Nausicaa knows well enough how to answer this question. When giving her instructions to Ulysses she says : K *' Never mind my father, but go up to my mother and embrace her knees ; if she is well disposed towards you there is some chance of your getting home to see your friends again" (vi. 310-315). Throughout the Phaeaeian episode Arete (whose name, by the way, I take to be one of the writer's tolerably transparent disguises, and to be intended to suggest Arete, or " Goodness") is a more important person than Alcinous. I do not believe in her myself ; I believe Penelope would have been made more amiable if Arete had been as nice a person as the writer says she was ; leaving her, however, on one side, so much more important are wives than husbands in the eyes of the author of the Odyssey that when Ulysses makes his farewell speech • to the Pli{«acians, she makes him say that he hopes they may 1 continue to give satisfaction to their wives and children (xiii. 44, 45), instead of hoping that their wives and children will continue to give satisfaction to them. A little lower down he wishes Queen Arete all happiness with her children, her people, and lastly with King Alcinous. As for King Alcinous, \ it does not matter whether he is happy or no, provided he gives satisfaction to Queen Arete ; but he was bound to be happy as the husband of such an admirable woman. So when the Duke of York was being married I heard women over and over again say they hoped the Princess May would be very happy with him, but 1 never heard one say that she hoped the Duke would be very happy with the Princess May. Men said they hoped the pair would be very happy, without naming one more than the other. I have touched briefly on all the more prominent female MEN DO NOT HELP ULYSSES. 109 characters of the Odyssey, The moral in every case seems to be that man knows very little, and cannot be trusted not to make a fool of himself even about the little that lie does know, unless he has a woman at hand to tell him what he ought to do. There is not a single case in which a man comes Y to the rescue of female beauty in distress ; it is invariably the other way about. The only males who give Ulysses any help while he is on his wanderings are ^olus, who does him no real service and refuses to help him a second time, and Mercury, who gives him the herb Moly (x. 305) to protect him against the spells of Circe. In this last case, however, I do not doubt that the writer was tempted by the lovely passage of 11. xxiv., where Mercury meets Priam to conduct him to the Achf^an camp ; one pretty line, indeed (and rather more), of the Iliadic passage above referred to is taken bodily by the writer of the Odyssey to describe the youth and beauty of the god.* With these exceptions, throughout the poem Andromeda rescues Perseus, not Perseus Andromeda — Christiana is guide and guardian to Mr. Greatheart, not Mr. Greatheart to Christiana. The case of Penelope may seem to be an exception. It may y be urged that Ulysses came to her rescue, and that the whole poem turns on his doing so. But this is not true. Ulysses kills the suitors, firstly, because they had wasted his substance >^ — this from the first to last is the main grievance; secondly, because they had violated the female servants of his house f and only, thirdly, because they had offered marriage to his wife^ while he was still alive (xxii. 36-38). Never yet was woman better able to hold her own when she chose, and I will show at full length shortly that when she did not hold it it was because she preferred not to do so. I have dealt so far with the writer's attitude towards women when in the world of the living. Let us now see what her instinct prompts her to consider most interesting in the kingdom of the dead. When Ulysses has reached the abode of Hades, the first ghost he meets is that of his comrade * Od. X. 278, 279 ; cf. 11 XXIV. t347, 318. 110 THE AUTHOKESS OF THE ODYSSEV. Elpenor, who had got drunk and fallen off the roof of Circe's house just as Ulysses and his men were about to set sail. We are exjiressly told that he was a person of no importance, being remarkable neither for sense nor courage, so that it does not matter about killing him, and it is trans- parent that the accident is only allowed to happen in order to enable Ulysses to make his little joke when he greets the ghost in Hades to the effect that Elpenor has gOt there more quickly by land than Ulysses had done by water. Elpenor therefore, does not count. The order, however, in which the crowd of ghosts approach Ulysses, is noticeable. After the blood of the victims sacrificed by Ulysses had flowed into the trench which he had dug to receive it, the writer says :— **The ghosts came trooping up from Erebus — brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle, with their armour still smirched with blood ; they came from every quarter, and flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear'^ (xi. 36-43). 1 do not think a male writer would have put the brides )ftrst, nor yet the young bachelors second. He would have begun with kings or great warriors or poets, nor do I believe he would make Ulysses turn pale with fear merely because the /^ghosts screamed a little ; they would have had to menace him more seriously. What does Bunyan do ? When Christian tells Pliable what kind of company he will meet in Paradise, he says : — *' There we shall see elders with their golden crowns; there we shall see holy virgins with their golden harps ; there we shall see men that by the world were cut in pieces, burnt in flames, eaten of beasts, drowned in the seas, for the loVe they bore to the Lord of that place; all well and cloathed with immortality as with a garment." Men present themselves to him instinctively in the first instance, and though he quits them for a moment, he returns to them immediately without even recognising the existence of women among the martyrs. WOMEN IN HADES. Ill Moreover, when Christian and Hopeful have passed through the river of death and reached the eternal city, it is none but men who greet them. True, after having taken Christian to the Eternal City, Bunyan conducts Christiana also, and her children, in his Second Part ; but surely if he had been an inspired woman and not an inspired man, and if this woman had been writing as it was borne in upon her by her own instinct, neither aping man nor fearing him, she would have taken Christiana first, and Christian, if she took him at all, in her appendix. Next to Elpenor the first ghost that Ulysses sees is that of his mother Anticlea, and he is sorely grieved that he may not, by Circe's instructions, speak to her till he has heard what the Theban prophet Tiresias had got to tell him. As soon as he has heard this, he enquires how he can make his mother recognise him, and converse with him. This point being answered there follows the incomparably beautiful scene between him and Anticlea, which occupies some seventy or eighty lines, and concludes by his mother's telling him to get home as fast as he can that he may tell of his adventures in Hades — to whom ? To the world at large ? To his kinsmen and countrymen ? No : it is to his wife that he is to recount X them and apparently to nobody else (xi. 223, 224). Very right and proper ; but more characteristic of a female than of a male writer. Who follow immediately on the departure of Anticlea ? Proserpine sends up " all the wives and daughters of great princes " — Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, Antiope daughter of Asopus, Alcmena, Epicaste (better known as Jocasta), Chloris wife of Neleus, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phaedra, Procrie, Ariadne, Masra, Clymene, and Eriphyle. Ulysses says that there were many more wives and daughters of heroes whom he conversed ^ with, but that time would not allow him to detail them further; in deference, however, to the urgent request of King Alcinous, he goes on to say how he met Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax (who would not speak to himj ; he touched lightly also on Minos, Orion, Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Hercules. 1 have heard women say that nothing can be made out of the 112 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. > fact that the women in Hades are introduced before the men, inasmuch as they would themselves have been more likely to put the men before the women, and can understand that a male writer would be attracted in the first instance by the female shades. When women know what I am driving at, they generally tell me this, but when I have got another woman to sound them for me, or when I have stalked them warily, I find that they would rather meet the Virgin Mary, Eve, Queen Elizabeth, Cleopatra, Sappho, Jane Austen, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Helen of Troy, Zenobia, and other great women than even Homer and Shakspeare. One comfortable homely woman with whom I had taken great pains said she could not think what I meant by asking such questions, but if I wanted to know, she would as lief meet Mrs. Elizabeth Lazenby as Queen Elizabeth or any one of them. For my own part, had I to choose a number of shades whom I would meet, I should include Sappho, Jane Austen, and the authoress of the Odyssey in my list, but 1 should probably ask first for Homer, Shakspeare, Handel, Schubert, Arcangelo Corelli, Purcell, Giovanni Bellini, llembrandt, Holbein, De Hooghe, Donatello, Jean de Wespin and many another man — yet the writer of the Odyssey interests me so profoundly that I am not sure I should not ask to see her before any of the others. I know of no other women writers w^ho have sent their heroes down to Hades, but when men have done so they deal X with men first and women afterwards. Let us turn to Dante. When Virgil tells him whom Christ first saved when he "^ descended into Hell, we find that he first rescued Adam. Not a word is there about Eve. Then are rescued Abel, Noah, Abraham, David, Jacob and his sons — and lastly, just before the et ceteri — one woman, Rachel. When Virgil has finished, Dante begins meeting ]3eople on his own account. First come Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan ; when these have been dis- posed of we have Electra, Hector, ^neas, Ca3sar, Camilla, Penthesilea, Latinus, Lavinia, Brutus, Cato's wife Marcia, Julia, Cornelia, Saladin, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Thales, Zeno, Dioscorides, Orj^heus, Linus, Cicero, Seneca, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, DANTE— YIRGIL — FIELDING. 113 Galen, Avicen, and Averroes. Seven women to twenty-six men. This list reminds me of Sir John Lnbbock's hnndred books, I shall therefore pnrsne ' Dante no further ; I have given it in full because I do not like him. So far as I can see the Italians themselves are beginning to have their doubts about him ; " Dante b un falso idolo," has been said to me more than once lately by highly competent critics. Let us now look to the ^neicL When iEneas and the Sibyl approach the river Styx, we read : — Hue omnis turba ad ripas efTusa f uebat Matres at que Viri, defunctaque corpora vit^ Magnanimum heroum, piieri, innuptseque puell^, Impositique rogis juvenes ante era parentuin. ylj:7i. vi. 305-308. The women indeed come first, but the i in viri being short Virgil could not help himself, and the first persons whom he recognises as individuals are men — namely two of his captains who had been drowned, Leucaspis and Orontes— and Palinurus. After crossing the Styx he first passes through the region inhabited by those who have died as infants ; then that by those who have been unjustly condemned to die ; then that by suicides ; then that of those who have died for love, where he sees several women, and among them Dido, who treats him as Ajax treated Ulysses. The rest of those whom iEneas sees or converses with in Hades are all men. Lucian is still more ungallant, for in his dialogues of the dead he does not introduce a single woman. One other case alone occurs to me among the many that ought to do so ; I refer to Fielding's Journejj to the next Wo?'lcL The three first ghosts whom he speaks to in the coach are men. When he gets to his journey's end, after a short but most touching scene with his own little daughter who had died a mere child oidy a few months before Fielding wrote, and who is therefore nothing to the point, he continues: " The first spirit with whom I entered into discourse, was the famous Leonidas of Sparta." Of course ; soldier will greet soldier first. In the next paragraph one line is given to I 114 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Sappho, wlio we are told was singing to tlie accom|)animent of Orpheus. Then we go on to Homer,* Virgil, Addison, (Shakspeare, Betterton, Booth, and Milton. Defoe, again, being an elderly married man, and wanting to comfort Eobinson Crusoe, can think of nothing better for him than the comjianionship of another man, whereon he sends him Friday. A woman would have sent him an amiable and good- looking white girl whom the cannibals had taken prisoner from some shipwrecked vessel. This she would have held as likely to be far more usefid to him. So much to show that the mind of man, unless when he is 3^oung and lovesick, turns more instinctively to .man than to woman. And I am convinced, as indeed every one else is whether he or she knows it or no, that with the above exception, woman is more interested in woman. This is how the Virgin Mary has come to be Queen of Heaven, and practically of more importance than the Trinity itself in the eyes of the common people in Roman Catholic countries. For the women support the theologians more than the men do. The male Jews, again, so I am told, have a prayer in which the men thank God that they were not born women, and the women, that they were not born men. Each sex believes most firmly in itself, nor till we have done away with individualism altogether can we find the smallest reason to complain of this arrangement. A woman if she attempts an Epic is almost compelled to have a man for her central figure, but she will minimise him, and will maxi- mise his wife and daughters, drawing them with subtler hand. That the writer of the Odyssey has done this is obvious : and this fact alone should make us incline strongly towards think- ing that we are in the hands not of a man but of a woman. * Talking of Ucmier Fielding says, '' I had the curiosity to ask him whether he had really writ that poem [the Iliad] in detached pieces and flung it about all over Greece, according to the report that went of liira. He smiled at my question, and asked me whether there appeared any connection in the poem ; for if there did he thought I might answer for myself." This was first published in 1743, and is no doubt intended as a reply to Bentley, See Jebb's Introduction to Homer, ed. 1888, note 1 on p. 106. ( 115 ) CHAPTER IV. JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF WOMAN — SEVERITY AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE DISGRACED THEIR SEX — LOVE OF SMALL RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES — -OF PREACHING — OF WHITE LIES AND SMALL PLAY-ACTING — OF HAVING THINGS BOTH WAYS — AND OF MONEY. Not only does the writer shew a markedly greater both interest and knowledge when dealing with women, but she makes it plain that she is exceedingly jealous for the honour of her sex, and by consequence inexorable in her severity ^ against those women who have disgraced it. Goddesses may do what they like, they are not to be judged by mortal codes ; but a mortal woman who has fallen must die. No woman throughout the Odyssey is ever laughed at. Women may be hanged but they must not be laughed at. Men ^ may be laughed at, indeed Alcinous is hardly mentioned at all except to be made more or less ridiculous. One cannot say that Menelaus in Books iv. and xv. is being deliberately made ridiculous, but made ridiculous he certainly is, and he is treated as a person of far less interest and importance than his wife is. Indeed Ulysses, Alcinous, Menelaus, and Nestor are all so like one another that I do not doubt they were drawn from X the same person, just as Ithaca and Scheria are from the same place. Who that person was we shall never know; nevertheless I would point out that unless a girl adores her father he is generally, to her, a mysterious powerful being whose ways are not as her ways He is feared as a dark room is feared by children ; and if his wife is at all given to laughing at him, his daughter will not spare him, however much she may cajole and in a way love him. But, as I have said, though men may be laughed at, the women are never taken other than quite seriously. Venus is, indeed, made a little ridiculous in one passage, but she was a i2 116 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. goddess, SO it does not matter ; besides, the brunt of the ridicule was borne by Mars, and Venus was instantly re- adorned and comforted by the Graces. I cannot remember a single instance of a woman's being made to do anything which she could not do without loss of dignity — I except, of course, slaves, and am speaking of the higher social classes. It has often been observed that the Messenger of the Gods in the Iliad is always Iris, while in the Odyssey he is no less invariably Mercury. I incline to attribute this to the author's ' dislike of the idea that so noble a lady as Iris should be made to fetch and carry for anybody. For it is evident Iris was still generally held to have been the messenger of the gods. This appears from the beginning of Book xviii., where we are told that Irus's real name was Arnasus, but that he was called Irus (which is nothing but Iris with a masculine termination) " because he used to carry messages when any one would send him." "Writers do not fly in the face of current versions unless for some special reasons of their own. If, however, a woman has misconducted herself she is to 1)6 shewn no mercy. There are only three cases in point, and one of these hardly counts inasmuch as the punishment of the guilty woman, Clytemnestra, was not meted out to her by the authoress herself. The hold, however, which the story of Olytemnestra's guilt has upon her, the manner in which she repeatedly recurs to it, her horror at it, but at the same time her desire to remove as much of the blame as possible from Olytemnestra's shoulders, convinces me that she acutely feels . the disgrace which Olytemnestra's treachery has inflicted upon all women " even on the good ones." Why should she be at such pains to tell us that Olytemnestra was a person of good natural disposition (iii. 266), and was irrej^roachable until death had removed the bard under whose protection Aga- memnon had placed her ?* When she was left alone — without either husband or guardian, and with an insidious wretch like iEgisthus beguiling her wilh his incessant flattery, she yielded, and there is no more to be said, excejit that it was very dread- * The part about the bard is omitted in mj abridgement. JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR OF WOMAN. 117 fill and she must be abandoned to her fate. I see Mr. Gladstone has wondered what should have induced Homer (whom he holds to have written the Odyssey as well as the Iliad) to tell us that Clytemnestra was a good woman to start with,* but >^ with all my respect for his great services to Homeric literature, I cannot think that he has hit upon the right explanation. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that this extenuation of Clytemnestra's guilt belongs to a part of the Odyssey that was engrafted on to the original design — a part in which, as I shall show later, there was another wopaan's guilt, which was only not extenuated because it was absolutely denied in the face of overwhelming evidence — 1 mean Penelope's. The second case in point is that of the woman who stole > Eumasus when he was a child. A few days after she has done this, and has gone on board the ship with the Phoenician traders, she is killed by Diana, and thrown overboard to the*^ seals and fishes (xv. 403-484). The third case is that of the women of Ulysses' household who had misconducted themselves with the suitors during his < absence. We are told that there were fifty women servants in the house, of whom twelve alone were guilty. It is curious that the number of servants should be exactly the same as that of the maidservants in the house of king Alcinous, and it should be also noted that twelve is a very small number for the guilty servants, considering that there were over a hundred suitors, and that the maids seem to have been able to leave the house by night when they chose to do so (xx. 6-8) — true, we are elsewhere told that the women had been violated and only yielded under compulsion, but this makes it more wonder- ful that they should be so few — and I may add, more terribly /^ severe to hang them. I think the laxity of prehistoric times would have prompted a writer who was not particularly Jealous for the honour of woman, to have said that there were thirty-eight, or even more, guilty, and only twelve innocent/ We must bear in mind on the other hand that when Euryclea brought' out the thirty-eight innocent women to see Ulysses * Studies on Homer and the Homeric age.— Oxford University Press 1858, p. 28. 118 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. after lie had killed the suitors, Ulysses recognised them all (xxii. 501). The youngest of them therefore can hardly have been under forty, and some no doubt were older — for Ulysses had been gone twenty years. Kow how are the guilty ones treated ? A man who was speaking of njy theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman as a mere maiivaise plaisanterie^ once told me it was absurd, for the first thing a woman would have thought of ^ after the suitors had been killed was the dining room carpet. I said that mutatis mutandis this was the very thing she did think of. As soon as Ulysses has satisfied himself that not a single suitor is left alive, he tells Euryclea to send him the guilty maidservants, and on their arrival he says to Telemachus, Euma3us and Philoetius (xxii. 437-443) : — ** Begin to bear away the corpses, and make the women help you. When you have done this, sponge down the seats and tables, till you have set the whole house in order ; then take the maids outside .... and thrust them through with your swords.'' These orders are fiiithfally obeyed ; the maids helj) in the work of removing the bodies and they sponge the chairs and tables till they are clean — Ulysses standing over them and seeing that they lose no time. This done, Telemachus (whose mother, we are told (xxii. 426-427) had never yet permitted bim to give orders to the female servants) takes them outside and hangs them (xxii, 462), as a more dishonourable death than the one his father had prescribed for them— perhaps also he may have thought he should have less blood to clean up than if he stabbed them— but see note on p. 98. The writer tells us in a line which she borrows in great part from the Iliad* that their feet move convulsively for a short time though not for very long, but her ideas of the way in which Telemachus Ranged them are of the vaguest. No commentator has ever yet been able to understand it ; the oidy explanation seems to be that the writer did not understand it herself, and did not care to do so. Let it suffice that the women were obviously hanged. * Od. xxii. 473, cf. II ijll. 673. HAS NO MEKCY ON THE FALLEN. 119 No man writing in pre-Christian times would have con- sidered the guilt of the women to require so horrible a ^ punishment. He might have ordered them to be killed, but he would not have carried his indignation to the point of making them first clean up the blood of their paramours.^ Fierce as the writer is against the suitors, she is far more so against the women. When the suitors are all killed, Euryclea begins to raise a cry of triumph over them, but Ulysses checks her. " Hold your tongue, woman," he says, " it is ill bragging over the bodies of dead men" (xxii. 411). So also it is ill getting the most hideous service out of women up to the very moment when they are to be executed ; but the writer seems to have no sense of this ; where female honour has been violated by those of woman's own sex, no punishment is too )t bad for them. The other chief characteristics of the Odyssey which in- cline me to ascribe it to a woman are a kind of art for art's sake love of a small lie, and a determination to have things both ways whenever it suits her purpose. This never seems to trouble her. There the story is, and the reader may take it or leave it. She loves flimsy disguises and mystifications that^ stultify themselves, and mystify nobody. To go no further than books i. and iii., Minerva in each of these tells plausible y stories fall of circumstantial details, about her being on her way to Temesa with a cargo of iron and how she meant to bring back copper (i. 184), and again how she was going to the Cauconians on the following morning to recover a large debt that had been long owing to her (iii. 366), and then, before the lies she had been at such pains to concoct are well out of her mouth she reveals herself by flying into the air in the form of an eagle. This, by the way, she could not well do in either case if she was in a roofed hall, but might be conceived as doing if, as I suppose her to have been in both cases, she was in a roofed cloister that ran round an open court. There is a flavour of consecutive fifths in these flights,* if * I should explain to the non-musical writer thai it iB fordidden in music to have consecutive fifths or octaves between the same parts. 120 THE AUTHORESS OF THl?. ODYSSEY. indeed tliej are not dowDright octaves, and I cannot but tliink that the writer would have found a smoother progression open to her if she had cared to look for one ; hut letting this pass, the way in which white lies occur from the first book to the last, the punctiliousness, omnipresent, with which small religious observances are insisted upon, coupled with not a little unscrupulonsness when these have been attended to, the respect for gods and omens, and for the convenances generally • — all these seem to me to be more characteristic of a woman's writing than a man's. The seriousness, again, with which Telemachus is taken, the closeness with which he adheres to his programme, the precision with which he invariably does what his father, his mother, Minerva, or any responsible person tells him that he should do, except in one passage which is taken almost verhatim from the Iliad^* the way in which Miuerva beautifies him and preaches to him ; the unobtrusive but exemplary manner in which he discharges all his religious, moral, and social duties — all seem to me to point in the direction of thinking that the writer is a woman and a young one. Ilow does Minerva preach to him ? When he has washed h*s hands in the sea he prays that she will help him on his intended voyage in search of news concerning his father. The goddess then comes up to him disguised as Mentor, and speaks as follows ; I ** Telemachus, if j^ou are made of the same stuff as your father you will be neither fool or coward henceforward, for Ulysses never broke his word nor left his work half done. If, then, you take after him your voyage will not be fruitless, but unless you have the blood of Ulysses and Penelope in your veins I see no likeHhood of your succeeding. Sons are seldom as good men a» their fathers ; they are generally worse not better ; still, as you are not going to be either fool or coward henceforward, and are not entirely without some share of your father's wise discernment, I look with hope upon your undertaking " (ii. 270 280). * Od. i. 35fi-359, cf. II vi. 400-493. The word "war" in the Iliad becomeg ♦< speech " in the Odyssey. There is no other chan^^'e. LOVE OF PREACHING. 121 Hence the grandmotlierly reputation wliicli poor Mentor is^ never likely to lose. It was not Mentor but Minerva. The writer does not make Minerva say that daughters were rarely as good women as their mothers were. I had a very dear kind old aunt who when I was a boy used to talk to me just in this way. " Unstable as water," she would say, " thou shalt not excel." I almost heard her saying it (and more to the same effect) when I was translating the passage above given. My uncles did not talk to me at all in the same way. I may add parenthetically here, but will . deal with the subject more fully in a later chapter, that all the time Minerva was lecturing Telemachus she must have known that his going would be worse than useless, inasmuch as Ulysses was, by her own arrangements, on the very eve of his return ; and indeed he was back again in Ithaca before Telemachus got home. See, again, the manner in which Penelope scolds him in Book xviii. 215 &c., for having let Ulysses and Irus fight. She says : — " Telemachus, I fear you are no longer so discreet and well conducted as you used to be. When you were younger 3^ou had a greater sense of propriety; now, however, that you are grown up, though a stranger to look at you would take you for the son of a well-to-do father as far as size and good looks go, your conduct is by no means what it should have been. What is all this disturbance that has been going on, and how came you to allow a stranger to be so disgracefully ill-treated ? What would have happened if he had suffered serious injury while a suppliant in our house ? Surely this would have been very discreditable to you.'* I do not believe any man could make a mother rebuke her son so femininely. Again, the fidelity with which people go on crying incessantly for a son who has been lost to them for twenty years, though they have still three sons left,* or for a brother whom they have never even seen,t is part and parcel of that jealousy for the sanctity of domestic life, in respect of which women are apt to be more exacting than men. * Od. ii. 15-23. f Od, iv. 186-188. Neither of these passages is given in my pibridgement. 122 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. And yet in spite of all tins tlie writer makes Telemaclins take no pains to hide the fact that his grievance is not so much the alleged ill-treatment of his mother, nor yet the death of his father, as the hole which the extravagance of the suitors is making in his own pocket. When demanding assistance from his fellow countrymen, he says, of the two great evils that have fallen ujDon his house :— **The first of these is the loss of my excellent father, who was chief among all you here present and was like a father to every one of you. The second is much more serious, and ere long will be the y utter ruin of my estate. The sons of all the chief men among you are pestering my mother to marry them against her will. They are afraid to go to her father Icarius, asking him to choose the one he likes best, and to provide marriage gifts for his daughter, but day . after day they keep hanging, about my father's house, sacrificing our oxen, sheep, and fat goats for their banquets, and never giving so much as a thought to the quantity of wine they drink. No estate can stand such recklessness (ii, 46-48)," Moreover it is clear throughout Books iii. and iv., in which Telemachus is trying to get news of his father, that what he really wants is evidence of his death, not of his being alive, though this may only be because he despairs of the second alternative. The indignation of Telemachus on the score of the extravagance of the suitors is noticeably shared by the writer all through the poem ; she is furious about it ; perhaps by reason of the waste she saw going on in her father's house. Under all she says on this head we seem to feel the rankling * of a private grievance, and it often crosses my mind that in the suitors she also saw the neighbours who night after night came sponging on the reckless good nature of Alcinous, to the probable eventual ruin of his house. ^ Woman, religion, and money are the three dominant ideas in the mind of the writer of the Odyssey, In the Iliad the belli causa is a woman, money is a detail, and man is most\ in evidence. In the Odyssey the belli causa is mainly money, and woman is most in evidence — often when she does not appear to be so — ^just as in the books of the Iliad in which the MONEY m ILIAD AND IN ODYSSEY. 123 Trojans are supposed to be most triumpliaut over the Ach^ans, it is the Trojans all the time whose slaughter is most dwelt up)on. It is strange that the Odyssey, in which money is so constantly present to the mind of the writer, should show not even the faintest signs of having been written from a business point of view, whereas the Iliad^ in which money appears but little, abounds with evidence of its having been written to take with a certain audience whom the writer both disliked and despised- — and hence of having been written with an eye to money. I wall now proceed to the question whether Penelope is being, if I may say so, whitewashed. Is the version of her conduct that is given us in the Odyssey the then current one, or is the writer manipulating a very different story, and putting another face on it — as all poets are apt to do with any story that they are re-telling ? Tennyson, not to mention many earlier writers, has done this with the Arthurian Legends^ the original form of which takes us into a moral atmosphere as different as can well be conceived from the one we meet with in the Idylls of the King, There is no improbability (for other instances will occur to the reader so readily that I need not quote them) in the supposition that the writer of the Odyssey might choose to recast a story which she deemed insulting to her sex, as well as disgusting in itself ; the question is, has she done so or not ? Do traces of an earlier picture show up through the oue she has painted over it, so distinctly as to make it obvious what the original picture represented ? If they do not, I will give up my case, but if they do, I shall hold it highly improbable that a man in the Homeric age would undertake the impossible task of making Penelope at the same time plausible and virtuous. I am afraid I think he would be likely to make her out blacker than the last poet who had treated the subject, rather than be at any pains to whiten her. Least of all would Homer himself have been prompted to make Penelope out better than report says she was. He would y not have carel whether she was better or worse. He is fond of 124 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. women, but he is also fond of teasing tliem, and he shows not the slightest signs of any jealousy for female honour, or of a desire to exalt women generally. He shows no more sign of this than he does of the ferocity with which punishment is inflicted on the women of Ulysses' household — a ferocity which is in itself sufficient to make it inconceivable that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be by the same person. ( 125 ) CHAPTER V. ON THE QUESTION WHETHER OR NO PENELOPE IS BEING WHITEWASHED. It is known that scandalous versions of Penelope's conduct were current among the ancients ; indeed they seem to havex prevailed before the completion of the Epic cycle, for in the Telegojiy, which is believed to have come next in chronological order after the Odyssey^ we find that when Ulysses had killed the suitors he did not go on living with Penelope, but settled^ in Thesprotia, and married Callidice, the queen of the country. He must, therefore, have divorced Penelope, and he could hardly have done this if he accepted the Odyssean version of her conduct. According to the author of the Telegony^ Penelope and Telemachus go on living in Ithaca, where eventually Ulysses returns and is killed by Telegonus, a son who had been born to him by Circe. For further reference to ancient, though a good deal later, scandalous versions, see Smith's Dictionary under " Penelope." Let us see what the Odyssey asks us to believe, or rather, swallow. We are told that more than a hundred young men fall violently in love, at the same time, with a supposed widow, who before the close of their suit can hardly have been under forty, and who had a grown up son — pestering her for several years with addresses that they know are most distasteful to her. They are so madly in love with her that they cannot think of proposing to any one else (ii. 205-207) till she has made her choice. When she has done this they will go ; till then, they will pay her out for her cruel treatment of them by eating her son Telemachus out of house and home. This, therefore, they proceed to do, and Penelope, who is a model both wife and mother, suffers agonies of grief, partly because of the death of her husband, and partly because she cannot get the suitors out of the house. 126 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Oue wonlcl have tlionglit all she had to do was to bolt the doors as soon as the suitors had left for the night, and refuse to open them in the morning ; for the suitors never sleep in the • same house with Penelope. They sleep at various places in the town, in the middle of which Ulysses' house evidently stands, and if they were meek enough to let themselves be turned out, they would be meek enough to let themselves be kept out, if those inside showed anything of a firm front. Not one of them ever sees Penelope alone ; when she comes into their presence she is attended by two respectable female servants who stand on either side of her, and she holds a screen or veil modestly before her face— true, she was forty j*^' but neither she nor the poetess seem to bear this in mind, so we may take it as certain that it was modesty and nothing else that made her hold up the veil. The suitors were not men of scrupulous delicacy, and in spite of their devotion to Penelope lived on terms of improper intimacy with her women servants — none of whom appear to have been dismissed in- stantly on detection. It is a little strange that not one of those suitors who came from a long distance should have insisted on being found in bed as well as board, and so much care is taken that not one breath of scandal should attach to Penelope, that we infer a sense on the writer's part that it was necessary to put this care well in evidence. I cann'ot think, for example, that Penelope would have been represented as I nearly so incredulous about the return of Ulysses in Book xxiii., if she had been nearly as virtuous as the writer tries to make her out. The amount of caution with which she is credited is to some extent a gauge of the thickness of the coat of white- wash which the writer considers necessary. In all Penelope's devotion to her husband there is an ever present sense that the lady doth protest too much. Still stranger, however, is the fact that these ardent passionate lovers never quarrel among themselves for the possession of their middle-aged paragon. The survival of the fittest does not seem to have had any place in their system. ^ They show no signs of jealousy, but jog along cheek by jowl as a very happy family, aiming spears at a mark, playing THE WHITEWASHING OF PENELOPE. 127 draughts, flaying goats and singeing pigs in the yard, drinking an untold quantity of wine, and generally holding high feast. They insist that Penelope should marry somebody, but who the happy somebody is to be is a matter of no importance * No one seems to think it essential that she shall marry himself in par- ticular. Not one of them ever finds out that his case is hopeless and takes his leave ; and thus matters drift on year after year — during all which time Penelope is not getting any younger — the suitors dying of love for Penelope, and Penelope dying- only to be rid of them. Granted that the suitors are not less in love with the good cheer they enjoy at Telemachus's expense, than they are with his mother ; but this mixture of perfect lover and perfect sponger is so impossible that no one could have recourse to it unless aware that he (or she) was in extreme difficulty. If men are in love they will not sponge ; if they sponge they are ^ not in love ; we may have it either way but not both ; when, therefore, the writer of the Odyssey not only attributes such impossible conduct to the suitors, but asks us also to believe that a clever woman could not keep at any rate some few of x her hundred lovers out of the house, although their presence had been for many years in a high degree distasteful to her, we may know that we are being hoodwinked as far as the writer can Jioodwink us, and shall be very inclinable to believe that the suitors were not so black, nor Penelope so white, as we are being given to understand. As for her being overawed by the suitors, she talks very plainly to them at times, as for example in ^n\\\, 274-280, and again in xix. 322 where she speaks as though she were perfectly able to get rid of any suitor who was obnoxious to her. Over and above this we may infer that the writer who can tell us such a story with a grave face cannot have even the faintest conception of the way in which a man feels towards a woman he is in love with, nor yet much (so far as I may rf venture to form an opinion) of what women commonly feel * Od, ii. 127-128 and 205-207. 128 THE AUTHOKESS OF THE ODYSSEY. towards tlie man of their choice ; I conclude, therefore, that K she was still very young, and unmarried. At any rate the story told above cannot have been written by Homer ; if it is by a man at all it must be by some prehistoric Fra Angelico, who had known less in his youth, or forgotten more in his old age, than the writer of the Iliad is at all likely to have done. If he had still known enough to be able to write the Odyssey^ he would have remembered more than the writer of the Odyssey shows any signs of having ever known. A man, if he had taken it into his head (as the late Lord Tennyson might very conceivably have done) to represent Penelope as virtuous in spite of current scandalous stories to tlie contrary— a man, would not have made the suitors a band of lovers at all. He would have seen at once thxit this was out of the question, and would have made them mere • marauders, who overawed Penelope by their threats, and were only held in check by her mother wit and by, say, some three or four covert allies among the suitors themselves. Do what he might he could not make the permanent daily presence of the suitors plausible, but it would be possible ; whereas the combination of perfect sponger and perfect lover which is offered us by the writer of the Odyssey is grotesquely im- possible, nor do I imagine that she would have asked us to accept it, but for her desire to exalt her sex by showing how a X clever woman can bring any number of men to her feet, hood- wink them, spoil them, and in the end destroy them. This, how- ever, is surely a woman's theme rather than a man's — at least I know of no male writer who has attempted anything like it. "W^e have now seen the story as told from Penelope's point of view ; let us proceed to hear it from that of the suitors. We find this at the beginning of Book ii., and 1 will give Autinous's speech at fuller length than I have done in my abridgement. After saying that Penelope had for years been encouraging every single suitor by sendijig him flattering messages (in which, by the way, Minerva fully corroborates him in Book xiii. 379-381) he continues : — ** And then there was that other trick she played us. She set up a great tambour frame in her room, and began to work on an Penelope's web* 129 enormous piece of fine needlework. * Sweethearts/ said she, * Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry again immediately ; wait — for I would not have my skill in needlework perish unrecorded — till I have completed a pall for the hero Laertes, to be ready against the time when death shall take him. He is very rich, and the women of the place will talk if he is laid out without a pall.* *' This was what she said, and we assented ; whereon we could seo her, working on her great web all day, but at night she would un- pick the stiches again by torchlight. She fooled us in this way for three years and we never found her out, but as time wore on and she was now in her fourth year, one of her maids, who knew what she was doing, told us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work ; so she had to finish it, whether she would or no. *'The suitors, therefore, make you this answer, that both you and the A^chseans may understand : * Send your mother away, and bid her marry the man of her own and her father's choice,' for I do not know what will happen if she goes on plaguing us much longer with the airs she gives herself on the score of the accomplishments Minerva has taught her, and because she is so clever. We neVer yet heard of such a woman. We know all about Tyro, Alcmena, Mycene, and the famous women of old, but they were nothing to your mother any one of them. It was not fair of her to treat us in that way, and as long as she continues in the mind with which heaven has now endowed her, so long shall we go on eating up your estate ; and I do not see why she should change, for it is she who gets the honour and glory, and it is you, not she, who lose all this substance. We however, will not go about our business, nor anywhere else, till she has made her choice and married some one or other of us '* (ii. 93-128). Eouglily, then, the authoress's version is that Penelope is>> an injured innocent, and the suitors', that she is an artful heartless flirt who prefers having a hundred admirers rather than one husband. Which comes nearest, not to the truth — - for we may be sure the suitors could have said a great deal more than the writer chooses to say they said — but to the original story which she was sophisticating, and retelling in a way that was more to her liking ? The reader will have noted that on this occasion the suitors seem to have been in the house after uightfalL 130 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. We cannot forget that when Telemacliiis first told Minerva about the suitors, he admitted that his mother had not point blank said that she would not marry again. " She does not," he says, " refuse the hateful marriage, nor yet does she bring matters to an end " (i. 249, 250). Apparently not ; but if not, why not ? Not to refuse at once is to court courtshix^, and if she had not meant to court it she seems to have been adept enough in the art of hoodwinking men to have found some means of " bringing the matter to an end." Sending pretty little messages to her admirers was not « exactly the way to get rid of them. Did she ever try snubbing ? Nothing of the kind is placed on record. Did she ever say, " Well Antinous, whoever else I may marry, you may make your mind easy that it will not be you." Then there was \ boring — did she ever try that ? Did she ever read them any of her grandfather's letters ? Did she sing them her own songs, or play them music of her own composition ? I have always found these courses successful when I wanted to get rid of people. There are indeed signs that something had been done in this direction, for the suitors say that they cannot stand her high art nonsense and aasthetic rhodomontade any longer, but it is more likely she had been trying to attract than to repel. Did she set them by the ears by repeating with embellishments what they had said to her about one another ? Did she ask Antinous or Eurymachus to sit to her for her web — give them a good stiff pose, make them stick to it, and talk to them all the time ? Did she find errands for them to run, and then scold them, and say she did not want them ? or make them do commissions for her and forget to pay them, or keep on sending them back to the shop to change things, and they had given ever so much too much money and she wished she had gone and done it herself? 'Did she insist on their attending family worship ? In a word, did she do a single one / of the thousand things so astute a matron would have been at no loss to hit upon if she had been in earnest about not wishing to be courted ? With one touch of common sense the whole fa})ric crumbles into dust. Telemachus in his rejoinder to the suitors does not deny a PENELOPE USED NO DUE DILIGENCF. 131 single one of their facts. He does not deny that his mother^ had been in the habit of sending them encouraging messages, nor does he attempt to exphiin her conduct about the web. This, then, being admitted, and it being also transparent that Penelope had used no due diligence in sending her lovers to the right about, can we avoid suspecting that there is a screw loose somewhere, and that a story of very different character is being manipulated to meet the exigencies of the writer ? And shall we go very far wrong if we conclude that according to the original version, Penelope picked out her web, not so much in order to delay a hateful marriage, as to prolong a veryir agreeable courtship ? It was no doubt because Laertes saw what was going on that he went to live in the country and left off coming into the town (i. 189, 190), and Penelope probably chose the particular form her work assumed in order to ensure that he should not come near her. Why could she not set about making a pall for ^ somebody else ? Was Laertes likely to continue calling, when every time he did so he knew that Euryclea would only tell him her mistress was upstairs working at his pall, but she would be down directly ? Do let the reader try and think it out a little for himself. As for Laertes being so badly off as Anticlea says he was in Book xi., there is not one grain of truth in that story. The writer had to make him out poor in order to explam his not having interfered to protect Penelope, but Penelope's excuse for making her web was that he was a man of large property. It is the same with the suitors. When it is desired to explain Telemachus's not having tried in some way to recover from them, they are so poor that it would be a waste of money to^ siig them ; when, on the other hand, the writer wants Penelope to air her woman's wit by getting presents out of them (xviii. 274-280), just before Ulysses kills them, they have any amount of money. One day more, and she would have been too late. The writer knew that very well, but she was not going to let Penelope lose her presents. She evidently looks upon man as fair game, which male writers are much less aptA to do. Of course the first present she receives is a new dress. k2 132 THE AUTHOHESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Eeturning to Laertes, lie must have had money, or how could Ulysses be so rich ? Where did Ulysses' money come from ? He could hardly have made much before he went to Troy, and he does not appear to have sent anything home thence. Nothing has been heard from him, and in Book x.,* he appears to be bringing back his share of the plunder with him — in which case it was lost in the shipwreck off the coast of the Thrinacian island. He seems to have had a dowry of some kind with Penelope, for Telemachus says that if he sends his mother away he shall have to refund it to his grandfather Icarius, and urges this fact as one of the reasons for not sending her (ii. 132, 133); the greater part, however, of Ulysses' enormous wealth must have come to him from Laertes, who we may be sure kept more for himself than he gave to his son. What, then, had become of all this money— for Laertes seems to have been a man of very frugal habits ? The answer is that it was still in Laertes' hands, and the reason for his never coming to town now was partly, no doubt, the pall ; partly ^(the scandalous life which his daughter was leading; but mainly the writer's inability to explain his non-interference unless she got him out of the way. The account, again, which Ulysses' mother gives him in Hades (xi. 180, &c.) of what is going on in Ithaca shows a sense that there is something to conceal. She says not one word about the suitors. All she says is that Telemachus has fl^^^"^ to see a good deal of company, which is only reasonable seeing that he is a magistrate and is asked out everywhere himself (xi. 185-187). Nothing can be more coldly euphemistic, nor show a fuller sense that there was a good deal more going on than the speaker chose to say. If Anticlea had believed her daughter-in-law to be innocent, she would have laid the whole situation before Ulysses. It may be maintained that the suitors were not yet come to Ithaca in force, for the visit to Hades occurs early in the wanderings of Ulysses, and before his seven years' sojourn with Calypso, so that Anticlea may really have known nothing * Od. X. li». \}nii passage is not given in my abridgement. ULYSSES' MOTHBB OH THE SITUATION. 133 about the suitors ; but the writer has forgotten this, and has represented Telemachus as already arrived at man's estate. In truth, at this point Telemachus was at the utmost only- twelve or thirteen years old, and a children's party was all the entertainment he need either receive or give. The writer has made a slip in her chronology, for throughout the poem Tele- machus is represented as only just arriving at man's estate in the twentieth year of Ulysses' absence. It is evident that in describing the interview with Anticlea the writer has in her mind the state of things existing just before Ulysses' return, when the suitors were in full riot. This, indeed, appears still more plainly lower down, when Agamemnon, also in Hades, says that Telemachus was a baby in arms when the Trojan war broke out, and that he must now be grown up (xi. 448, 449). The silence therefore of Ulysses' mother is wilful so far as the writer is concerned. She must have conceived of Anticlea as knowing all about the suitors perfectly well — for she did not die till Telemachus was, by her own account, old enough to be a magistrate. The explanation I believe to be, that at the time Book xi. was written, the writer had as yet no intention of adding Books i.-iv., and from line 187 of Book xiii. to Book xxiv. but proposed to ignore the current scandalous stories about Penelope, and to say as little as possible about her. I will deal with this more fully when I come to the genesis and develop- ment of the poem, but may as weU say at once that the difficulty above pointed out will have to remain unexplained except as a slip in chronology on the part of a young writer who was piecing n^.w work on to old. Any one but the writer herself would have seen it and avoided it ; indeed it is quite possible that she came to see it, and did not think it worth her while to be at the trouble of altering it. If this is 60 I, for one, shall think none the worse of her. ( 134 ) CHAPTER VL FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE CHARACTER OF PENELOPE — THE JOURNEY OF TELEMACHUS TO LACEDiEMON. The question whether or no the writer of the Odyssey i3 putting her own construction on grosser versions of Penelope's conduct current among her countrymen, has such an impor- tant bearing on that of the writer's sex, that I shall bring further evidence to show how impossible she finds it to conceal the fact that those who knew Penelope best had no confidence in her. Minerva with quick womanly instinct took in tlie situation at a glance, and went straight to the point. On learning from Telemachus that Penelope did not at once say she would not marry again, she wastes no words, but says promptly, " If your Vmother's mind is set on marrying again" (and surely this implies that the speaker had no doubt that it was so set) " let her go back to her father" (i. 276). From this we may infer that Minerva had not only formed her own opinion about Penelope's intentions, but saw also that she meant taking her time about the courtship, and was not likely to be brought to the point by any measures less decisive than sending her back ^ to her father's house. We know, moreover, what Minerva thought of Penelope from another source. Minerva appears to Telemachus in a dream when he is staying with King Menelaus, and gives him to understand that his mother is on the point of marrying Eurymachus, one of the suitors (xv. 1-42). This was (so at least we are intended to suppose) a wanton falsehood on Minerva's part. Nevertheless if the matter had ended there, nothing probably would have pleased Telemachus better ; for in spite of his calling the marriage " hateful," there can be no question that he would have been only too thankful to get his mother out of the house, if she would go of her own free will. MINERVA ALARMS TELEMACHUS. 135 Penelope says he was continually urging her to marry and go, on the score of the expense he was being put to by the "^ protracted attentions of the suitors (xix. 530-534). Penelope indeed seems to have been such an adept at lying that it is very difficult to know when to believe her, but Telemachus says enough elsewhere to leave no doubt that, in spite of a certain decent show of reluctance, he would have been glad that his mother should go. Unfortunately Minerva's story does not end with sayiug that Penelope means marrying Eurymachus ; she adds that in this case she will probably steal some of Telemachus's pro- perty. She says to him : — ** You know what women are; they always want to do the best they can fur the man who is married to them at the moment. They forget all about their first husband and the children that they have had by him. Go home, therefore, at once, and put everything in charge of the most respectable housekeeper you can find, until it shall please heaven to send you a wife of your own " (xv. 20-26). This passage not only betrays a want of confidence iiiA Penelope which is out of keeping with her ostensible antece- dents, but it goes far to show that Minerva had read the Cypria, in which poem (now lost) we are told that Helen did exactly what is here represented as likely to be done by Penelope ; but leaving this, surely if Penelope's antecedents had been such as the writer wishes us to accept, Telemachus would have made a very different answer to the one he actually made. He would have said, " My dear Minerva, what a word has escaped the boundary of your teeth. My mother steal my property and go off with an unprincipled scoundrel like Eurymachus ? No one can know better than yourself that she is the last woman in the world to be capable of such ^ conduct." And then he would have awoke as from a hideous dream. What, however, happens in reality ? Telemachus does indeed wake up (xv. 43) in great distress, but it is about his property, not about his mother. " Who steals my mother steals trash, but whoso filches from me my family heirlooms^ &c." He kicks poor Pisistratus to wake him, and says they 136 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. must harness the horses and be oiF home at once. Pisistral^us rejoins that it is pitch dark ; come what may they must really wait till morning. Besides, they ought to say good bye to Menelaus, and get a present out of him ; he will be sure to give them one, if Telemachus will not be in such an unreason- able hurry. Can anything show more clearly what was the inner mind both of Minerva and Telemachus about Penelope — and also what kind of ideas the audience had formed about her ? How differently, again, do Minerva and Telemachus regard the stealing. Telemachus feels it acutely and at once. Minerva takes it as a matter of course — but then the i)roperty was not hers. The authoress of the Odyssey is never ' severe about theft. Minerva evidently thinks it not nice of Penelope to want to marry again l>efore it is known for certain that - Ulysses is dead, but she explains that Eurymachus has been exceeding all the other suitors in the magnificence of his presents, and has lately increased them (xv. 17, 18). After all, Penelope had a right to please herself, and as long as she was going to be bond Jidc married, she might steal as much as she could, without loss of dignity or character. The writer put this view into Minerva's mouth as a reasonable one for a woman to take. So perhaps it was, but it is not a man's view. Here I will close my case— as much of it, that is to say, as I have been able to give in the space at my disposal — for the view that the writer of the Odyssey was whitewashing Penelope. As, however, we happen to be at Laced^jemon let me say what more occurs to me in connection with the visit of Telemachus to King Menelaus that bears on the question whether the writer is a man or a woman. When Telemachus and Nestor's son Pisistratus reached Laceda^mon at the beginning of Book iv., Menelaus was celebrating the double marriage of his son Megapenthes and of his daughter Hermione, The writer says : — they reached the low lying city of Lacedjemon, where they drove straight to the abode of Menelaus, [and found Lim in his own house feasting with his many clansmen in honour of the wedding of his son, and also that of his daughter whom he was INTERPOLATED MARRIAGE OF HERMIOKE. 137 giving in marriage to the son of that valiant warrior Achilles. He had given his consent and promised her to him while he was still at Troy, and now the gods were bringing the marriage about, so he was sending her with chariots and horses to the city of the Myrmidons over whom Achilles' son was reigning. For his only son he had found a bride from Sparta, the daughter of Alector. This son, Megapenthes, was born to him of a bondwoman, for heaven had vouchsafed Helen no more children after she had borne Hermione who was fair as golden Yenus herself (iv. 1-14). ] I have enclosed part of the above quotation in brackets not because I have any doubt that the whole of it is by the same hand as the rest of the poem, but because I am convinced that the bracketed lines were interpolated by the writer after her work had been completed, or at any rate after Books iv. and XV. had assumed their present shape. The reason for the interpolation I take to be that she could not forgive herself for having said nothing about Hermione, whose non-appearance in Book xv. and in the rest of Book iv. she now attempts to explain by interpolating the passage above quoted, and thus making her quit Laced^emon for good and all at the very beginning of this last named book. But whatever the cause of the interpolation may have been, an interpolation it certainly is, for nothing can be plainer from the rest of Book iv. than that there were no festivities going on, and that the only guests were uninvited ones — to wit Telemachus and Pisistratus. True, the writer tried to cobble the matter by introducing lines 621-624, which in our texts are always inclosed in brackets as suspected- -I supjpose because Aristarchus marked them with oheli^ though he did not venture to exclude them. The cobble, however, only makes things worse, for it is obviously inadequate, and its abruptness puzzles the reader. Accepting, then, lines 2-19 and 621-624 of Book iv. as by the writer of the rest of the poem, the reader will note how far more interesting she finds the marriage of Hermione than that of Megapenthes — of whose bride, by the way, there is no trace in Book xv. The marriage of the son is indeed mentioned in the first instance before that of the daughter ; but surely this is only because vlko^^ i^Se Ovyarpos lends itself more readily to 138 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. a hexameter verse than any transposition of the nonns would do. Having mentioned that both son and danghter are to be married, the writer at once turns to Hermione, and appears only to marry Megapenthes because, as his sister is being married, he may as well be married too. A male WTiter would have married Megapenthes first and Hermione afterwards ; nor would he have thought it worth while to make a very awkward interpolation in his poem merely in order to bring Hermione into it, for by this time she must have been over thirty, and it would have been easy to suppose that she had been married years ago during Menelaus's absence. As regards the second and shorter interpolation (iv. 621-624), it refers to the day after the pretended marriages, and runs as follows : — ■ Thus did they converse [and guests kept coming to the king's house. They brought sheep and wine, while their wives had put up bread for them to take with them. So they were busy cooking their dinners in the courts.] Passing over the fact that on such a great occasion as the marriage of his son and daughter, Menelaus would hardly expect his guests to bring their own provisions with them (though he might expect them as Alcinous did* to do their own cooking) I would ask the reader to note that the writer cannot keep the women out even from a mere cobble. A man might have told us that the guests brought meat and wine and bread, but his mind would not instinctively turn to the guests' wives putting uj) the bread for them. I say'nothing about the discrepancy between the chronology of Telemachus's visit to Sparta, and of Ulysses' journey from the island of Calypso to Ithaca where he arrives one day before- Telemachus does. The reader will find it dwelt on in Colonel Mure's Language and Literature of A7icie?2t Greece, Vol. I., pp. 439, 440. I regard it as nothing more than a slip on the part of a writer who felt that such slips are matters of very * Od. viii. 38-40, cf. also 61. It would seem that Alcinous found the provisions "which the poorer guests cooked for themselves and ate outside in the court yards. The magnates ate in the covered cloister, and were no doubt cooked for. COLLAPSE OF MENELAUs' SPLENDOUR. 139 small importance ; but I will call attention to the manner in which the gorgeousness of Menelaus's establishment as described in Book iv. has collapsed by the time we reach Book XV., though as far as I can determine the length of Telemachus's stay with Menelaus, the interval between the two books should not exceed one entire day. When Telemachus has informed Menelaus that he must go home at once, Menelaus presses his guests to stay and have something to eat before they start ; this, he tells them, will be not only more proper and more comfortable for them, but also cheaper. We know from IL vii. 470-475 that Menelaus used to sell wine when he was before Troy, as also did Agamemnon, but there is a frank hourgoisie about this invitation which a male writer would have avoided. Still franker, however, is the offer of Menelaus to take them on a personally conducted tour round the Peloponesus. It will be very profitable, for no one will send them away empty handed ; every one will give them either a bronze tripod or a cauldron, or two mules, or a gold chalice (xv. 75-85). As for the refreshments which they are to have immediately, the king explains that they will have to take potluck, but says he will tell the women to see that there is enough for them, of what there might happen to be in the house. That is just like Menelaus's usual fussiness. Why could he not have left it all to Helen ? After reading the Odyssey I am not surprised at her having run away with Paris ; the only wonder is that a second great war did not become necessary very shortly after the Trojan matter had been ended. Surely the fact that two young bachelors were going to stay and dine was not such a frightful discord but that it might have been taken unprepared, or at any rate without the monarch's personal interference. " Of what there may be in the house " indeed. We can see that the dinner is not going to be pro- fusely sumptuous. If there did not happen to be anything good in the house — and I suspect this to have been the case — Menelaus should have trusted Helen to send out and get some- thing. But there should have been no sending out about it ; 140 THLl AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Meuelaus and Helen onglit never to have had a naeal without every conceivable delicacy. What a come down, again, is there not as regards the butler Eteoneus. He was not a real butler at all — he was only a kind of char-butler ; he did not sleep in the house (xv. 96), and for aught we know may have combined a shop round the corner with his position in Menelaus' household. Worse than this, he had no footman, not even a boy, under him, for Menelaus tells him to light the fire and set about cooking dinner (xv. 97, 98), which he proceeds to do without one syllable of remon- strance. What has become of Asphalion ? Where are the men servants who attended to Telemachus and Pisistratus on their arrival ? They have to yoke their own horses now. The upper and under women servants who appear at all Odyssean meals are here as usual, but we hear nothing more of Adraste, Alcippe, and l^hylo. It seems as though after describing the splendour of Menelaus's house in Book iv. the writer's nerve has failed her, and by Book x,y, her instinctive thrift has re-- asserted itself. And now let me return, as I said in Chapter iv. that I intended doing, to the very singular — for I do not like to say feminine — nature of the arrangements made by Minerva for hey protege in the matter of his voyage to Pylos and Lacedsemon. When Minerva first suggested it to him, she knew that Ulysses was on the point of starting from Calypso's island for Scheria, and would be back in Ithaca almost immediately. Yet she must needs choose this particular moment, of all others, for sending Telemachus on a perilous voyag^e in quest of news concerning him. We have seen how she preached to him ; but surely if Telemachus had known that she was all the time doing her very utmost to make his voyage useless, he; might have retorted with some justice- that whether he wasi going to be a fool henceforward or no, he should not make such a fool of any young friend of his own as she was now making of himself. Besides, he was to be away, if necessary, for twelve months ; yet here before he has been gone more than four or five days, Minerva fills him with an agony of apprehension about his property and sends him post haste back to Ithaca again. WHY TELEMACHUS WAS SENT TO PYLOS. 141 The aiitlioress seems to have felt the force of this, for in xiii. 416-419 she makes Ulysses remonstrate with Minerva in this very sense, and ask : — ** Why did you not tell him, for you knew all about it? Did you want him, too, to go sailing about amid all kinds of hardships when others were eating up his estate ? " Minerva answered, ** Do not trouble yourself about him. I sent him that he might be well spoken about for having gone* He is in no sort of difficulty, but is staying comfortably with Menelaus, and is surrounded with abundance of every kind. The suitors have put out to sea and are on the watch for him, for they mean to kill him before he can get home. I do not much think they will succeed, but rather that some of those who are now eating up your estate will first find a grave themselves." What she ought to have said was : — ** You stupid man, can you not understand that my poetess had set her heart on bringing Helen of Troy into her poem, and could / not see her way to this without sending Telemachus to SjDarta ? I assure you that as soon as ever he had interviewed Helen and Menelaus, I took — or will take, for my poetess's chronology puzzles my poor head dreadfully — steps to bring him back at once." At the end of Book iv. Penelope shows a like tendency to complain of the manner in which she is kept in the dark about information that might easily have been vouchsafed to her. Minerva has sent her a vision in the likeness of her sister Ipthime. This vision comes to Penelope's bedside and tells her that her son shall come safely home again. She imme- diately says : — ** If, then, you are a goddess, or have heard news from Heaven tell me about that other unhappy one. Is he still alive, or is he dead and in the house of Hades ? " And the vision answered, *'I shall not tell you for certain whether he is alive or dead, and there is no use in idle conversation." On this it vanished through the thong-hole of the door. 1 may add that I never quite understood the fastening of the Odyssean bedroom door, till I found my bedroom at the Hotel Centrale, Trapani, fastened in the Odyssean manner. x ^^ ( 142 ) CHAPTER VII. FURTHER INDICATIONS THAT THE WRITER IS A WOMAN — YOUNG — HEADSTRONG — AND UNMARRIED. I WILL now touch briefly on the principal passages, over and above large general considerations and the details to which I have already called attention, which seem to me to suggest a woman's hand rather than a man's. I shall omit countless more doubtful instances, many of which the reader will have noted, or easily discover. At the very outset of the poem (i. 13) the writer represents Ulysses as longing to get back to his wife. He had stayed a whole year with Circe, and but for the remonstrances of his men would have stayed no one can say how much longer. He had stayed seven years with Calypso, and seems to have remained on excellent terms with her until the exigencies of the poem made it necessary to send him back to Ithaca. Surely a man of his sagacity might have subtracted Calypso's axe and auger, cut down the trees at the far end of the island, and made his raft years ago without her finding out anything about it ; for she can hardly have wanted either axe or auger very often. As for the provisions, if Ulysses was not capable of accumu- lating a private hoard, his cunning has been much overrated. If he had seriously wanted to get back to Penelope his little cunning that is put in evidence would have been exercised in this direction. I am convinced, therefore, that though the authoress chooses to pretend that Ulysses was dying to get back to Penelope, she knew perfectly well that he was in no great hurry to do so ; she was not, however, goiug to admit anything so derogatory to the sanctity of married life, or at any rate to the power which a wife has over her husband. OCCASIOKAL NOTES. 143 An older woman might have been at less pains to conceal the fact that Penelope's hold on Ulysses was in reality very slight, but the writer of the Odyssey is nothing if she is not young, self-willed, and unmarried. No matron would set her- self down to write the Odyssey at all. She would have too much sense, and too little daring. She would have gained too much — and lost too greatly in the gaining. The poem is such a tour de force as none but a high-spirited, headstrong girl who had been accustomed to have her own way would have attempted, much less carried to such a brilliantly successful conclusion ; I cannot, therefore, conceive the writer as older than the original of the frontispiece at the beginning of this book — if indeed she was so old. The very beautiful lines in which the old nurse Euryclea lights Telemachus to bed, and folds up his clothes for him (i. 428-442), suggest a woman's hand rather than a man's. So also does the emphasising Laertes' respect for his wife's feelings (i. 430-433). This jealousy for a wife's rights suggests a writer who was bent on purifying her age, and u|)holding a higher ideal as regards the relations between husband and wife than a man in the Homeric age would be likely to insist on. The price paid for Euryclea (i. 431) is, I do not doubt, a rejoinder to the Iliadic insults of xxiii. 2G2-264, in which a woman and a tripod are put up in one lot as a prize, and also of XXIII. 702-705, in which a tripod is represented as worth twelve oxen, and a good serviceable maid of all work only four oxen. A matron would have let Homer's passage severely alone, and a man would not have resented it so strongly as to make him write at it by declaring Euryclea to have been bought for twenty oxen. An Iliadic passage of some length is interrupted (iii. 448-455) for the purpose of bringing in Nestor's wife and daughters, and describing their delight at seeing a heifer killed ; the Iliadic passage is then resumed. A man, or older woman, once 144 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. launched on an Iliadic passage would have stuck to it till it failed tliem. They would not have cared whether the ladies of Nestor's household liked seein^: the heifer killed or no. When Helen mixes Nepenthe with the wine which was to be handed round to Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisistratus, we learn its virtues to be so powerful that a man could not weep during all the day on which he had drunk it, not even though he had lost both his father and his mother, or had seen a brother or a son cut to pieces before his eyes (iv. 220-226). From the order in which these relationships present themselves to the writer's mind I opine that her father and. mother were the most important persons in her world, and hence that she was still young and unmarried. A little lower we find Helen more or less penitent for having run away with Paris. Helen was Jove's own daughter, and therefore had a right to do pretty much as she chose ; still it was held better to redeem her as far as possible, by making her more or less contrite. The contrition, however, is of a very curious kind. It was Venus, it seems, who ought to be peni- tent for having done Helen so great a wrong. It is the wrong that has been done to her that she laments, rather than any misdoino^ of her own. Is a man, or matron, likely to have conceived the idea of making Helen walk round the wooden horse, pat it, call out the names of the heroes who were inside, and mimick the voices of their wives (iv. 274-279) ? Ulysses must have told her that the horse was coming, and what it would contain, when he entered Troy in disguise and talked with her. A man might have made Helen walk round the horse, pat it, and even call out the names of the heroes, but he would never have thought K of making her mimick their wives. The writer finds the smell of fish intolerable, and thinks it necessary to relieve Menelaus and his three men from a dis- tressing situation, by getting Idothca to put some scent under OCCASIOXAL NOTES.' 145 each man's nostrils (iv. 441-446). There is, however, an arriere pensee here to which I will call attention later (see Chapter xii. near the end). Very danghterly also is the pleasure which Idothea evidently feels in playing a trick upon her father. Fathers are fair game — at all events for young goddesses. The whole of iv. 625-847 is strongly suggestive of a woman's writing, but I cannot expect any one to admit this w^ithout reading either the original or some complete translation. Calypso's jealously of Penelope (v. 203, &c.) is too prettily < done for a man. A man would be sure to overdo it. Book vi. is perhaps the loveliest in the whole poem, but I can hardly doubt that if it were given to a Times critic of to-day as an anonymous w^ork, and he was told to determine the sex of the writer he would ascribe it to a young unmarried woman without a moment's hesitation. Let the reader note how IN'ausicaa has to keep her father up to having a clean shirt on when he ought to have one (vi. 60), whereas her younger brothers appear to keep her up to having one for them when they want one. These little touches suggest drawing from life by a female member of Alcinous' own family who knew his little ways from behind the scenes. Take, again, the scene in which Ulysses first meets Nausicaa. A girl, such a girl as N'ausicaa herself, young, un- married, unattached, and without knowledge of what men commonly feel on such points, having by a cruel freak of fortune got her hero into such an awkward predicament, might conceivably imagine that he would argue as the writer of the Odyssey has made Ulysses do, but no man, except such a woman's tailor as could never have written the Odyssey^ would have got his hero into such an undignified position at \x\%^ much less have made him talk as Ulysses is made to talk. How characteristic, again, of the man-hatress is Nausicaa's 146 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. attempt to make out that in Ulyssses she had found a man to whom she really might become attached — if there were no obstacle to their union. I find it hard to pass over Book vii., especially line 230, &c., where Arete wants to know how Ulysses came by his clothes, and 294, in which it is said that young people are apt to be thoughtless. Surely this is a girl giving a rap on the knuckles to older people, by echoing what she is accustomed to hear them say. In Book viii. the games, which are no doubt suggested by those in IL xxiii. are merely labelled " sports," not a single detail being given except that Ulysses' disc made a sound of y some sort as it went through the air (viii. 190), which I do not believe it would do. In the Iliad details are given of every vcontest, and the games do not take place as they do in the Odyssey immediately after a heavy meal, from which we can hardly suppose that the competitors would be excluded. I say nothing about the modesty of the female goddesses in not coming to see Mars and Venus caught in the toils of Vulcan (viii. 324), nor yet about the lovely new dress with which the Graces consoled Venus when she had been liberated (viii. 366), for I have omitted the whole of this episode in my abrido^ement. ^ The love of her own home and parents which is so obvious throughout the poem is never more apparent than in the speech of Ulysses (ix. 34-36). He says that however fine a house a man may have in a foreign land, he can never be really happy away from his father and mother.' How diff'erent this from the saying which Aristophanes puts into the mouth of Mercury [Plut, 1151) to the eff*ect that a man's fatherland is any place in which he is making money ; or again from Euripides, who in a fragment of Phaethon says that a man's fatherland is any land that will feed him. It is only a young and aff*ectionate girl who could have made Ulysses (who is not much given to OCCASIONAL NOTES. 147 sentiment) speak so warmly* Middle-aged people, whether men or women, are too much spotted with the world to be able to say such things. They think as Aristophanes and Euripides do. In lines 120, 121 of Book ix. the writer tells us that hunts- men as a general rule will face all sorts of hardship in forest and on mountain top. This is quite true, but it is not the way in which men speak of chamois-hunters. As for the Cyclops incident, delightful as it is, it is impossible as a man or matron's writing. It was very kind of Polyphemus, drunk though he was, to stay without moving a muscle, till Ulysses and his men had quite finished boring out his eye with a burning beam that was big enough for a ship's mast, but Baron Munchausen is the only male writer who could offer us anything of the kind, and his is not a case in point. Neither, after all, is Book ix. of the Odyssey^ for the writer is not taking Polyphemus seriously* ^ The distress which Polyphemus caused to Ulysses and his men by flinging down a bundle of firewood is too graphic a touch not to have been drawn from life* I have often fancied that the whole Cyclops incident may have been suggested by one of those merende^ or pic-nics which Italians and Sicilians are still so fond of, and that the writer of the Odyssey went with her friends to Pizzolungo and the cave where the scene is laid, which was then really much what an alpe is now — an abode of shepherds who made cheese in the cave itself* I like to fancy (for I know that it is nothing more than fancy) that the writer of the Odyssey was delighted with all she saw, but that as she was looking at the milk dishes some huge unkempt shepherd came in with a load of firewood on his back, and gave a sudden shock to her nervous system by flinging it down too violently. Him she transformed into the local giant that exists on Mt. Eryx now under the name of Conturrano.* * See Chapter x, l2 148 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. It is very hard to say what the authoress thought that Polyphemus did in the matter of his ewes and lambs. The lambs were in the yards all day, for Ulysses' men saw them there and wanted to steal them (ix. 226, 227). Besides, Poly- phemus could not have got any milk from the ewes if their lambs had been with them in the day-time. Having driven the ewes into his cave (I omit the she-goats for brevity) he milked them, and then put their lambs with them (ix. 245). The question is, did he take them away again after they had got what they could from a milked ewe, or did he leave them with their mothers all night ? On the one hand we have no hint of their removal, which would be a long and troublesome task ; on the other we are told in line 309 that he milked the ewes in the morning, and again gave each one of them her lamb ; on the evening of the same day he repeats this process (line 342), and he could hardly give the ewes their lambs unless he had first removed them. The difficulty is that if he removed them they would certainly die in a very few days of such diet as Polyphemus allows them, for whatever he did was Kara /nolpav, according to his usual practice ; while if he did not remove them, he could not have got any milk. Whatever he did, we may be sure that the writer of the Odijssey had got it wrong, and there is not much to be gained by trying to find out what she thought, for it is obvious that she did not think. I asked my friend, Sigr. Giuseppe Pagoto of Mt. Eryx, what was the practise of Sicilian shepherds now, and received the following answer : — In Sicily they do not milk ewes that have lately lambed ; they keep the lambs shut up and take the ewes to feed. In the evening they let the lambs suck, and then shut them up again. During the night the ewes make a great deal of milk, and this is again sucked by the lambs in the morning, and not milked. Our shepherds do not take any of the milk until the lamb has been killed. Perhaps in those days the pastures were so abundant that the ewes gave milk enough to nourish the lambs, and still have some for milking. This is the only way in which what Polyphemus did can be explained. OCCASIONAL NOTE?. 149 I believe the true explanation to be that the shepherd from whose alpe the scene was in part drawn, drove in a number of ewes some of which had lambs, while the lambs of others had been already killed and eaten. The authoress saw the shep- herd milk a number of ewes, and then bring in a number ol lambs, but she did not understand that the ewes which had been milked had got no lambs, while those that had lambs still living had not been milked. I think she knew she was hazy about it, otherwise she would not have cut her version short with a iravja Kara fxolpav — " all in due course." It being evident that Circe is quite as capable a prophet as Tiresias, why should poor Ulysses be sent down to Hades ? Obviously because the writer had set her heart on introducing colloquies with the dead. Granted; but a writer who was less desirous of making out that women know as much as volQxx^ would not have made Circe know quite so much. Why, as soon as Ulysses has returned from Hades, repeat to him the warning about the cattle of the Sun which Tiresias had given . him in the same words, and add a great deal more of her own ? Why, again, did she not tell Ulysses to be particularly careful to ask Tiresias about the Wandering Cliffs, in respect of which she had confessed that her information was deficient ? Ulysses does not appear to have said anything, but he must have thought a good deal. Young people are impatient of such small considerations. Who, indeed, can let fancy, naivete^ and the charm of sj^ontaneity have free and graceful play, if he or she is to be troubled at every touch and turn by the suggestions of common sense ? The young disdain precision too contemp- V tuously ; while older people are apt to think of nothing else. The same desire to exalt the capabilities of woman appears in making the Sun leave his sheejD and cattle in the sole charge of the two nymjohs Lampetie and Phaethusa (xii. 132) who, by the way, proved quite unable to protect them. But then the Sun was a man, and capable of any folly. The comparison of Ulysses to a hungry magistrate (xii. 439, 150 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. 440), which is obviously hamorous, is neither a man's nor a matron's simile for such a thrilling situation. To me it suggests the hand of a magistrate's daughter who had often seen her father come home tired and cross at having been detained in court. The present from Helen to Telemachus of a wedding dress (xv. 125-129) was more likely to occur to a young woman than to a man. I think also that a - male writer would have given something to poor Pisistratus, who has been very good and amiable all through. It does not appear that Telemachus tipped Eteoneus or any other of Menelaus' servants, though from XX. 296, 297 it is plain that it was quite usual for visitors to give something to the servants of a house at which they were staying. He is very rude about not saying good-bye to Nestor (xv. 199-201), and he never says good-bye to Pisistratus as he ought. Ulysses, again, seems to have no sense of obligation what- ever to Circe or Calypso. He has no other idea than that of taking as much and giving as little as he can. So in Hades he does not begin by asking how Penelope is, but how she is behaving, and whether she is protecting his estate (xi. 177, &c.). In Book xvii. 495 the old nurse and housekeeper, who has hitherto always been Euryclea, suddenly becomes Eurynome, a name which we have not yet had. Eurynome from this point is frequently mentioned, though the context always suggests, and sometimes compels, the belief that Euryclea is intended. In Book XX. 4, for example, we are told that Eurynome threw u cloak over Ulysses after he had lain down to rest, but in line 143 of the same Book, Euryclea says she threw the cloak over him herself — for surely this is intended, though the plural according to very common custom is used instead of the singular. The alternation of the two names becomes very baffling, till finally in Book xxiii. 289-293 both Eurynome and Euryclea appear on the scene together, which cobbles the difficulty, but does not make a good job of it — for one woman would have been quite enough to do all that there was to do. OCCASIONAL NOTES. 151 What happened, I take it, was this. In the first line where we meet with Eurynome, the name Earyclea could not be made to scan very easily, and the writer, thinking she would alter it later, wrote Eurynome. Having done so once, she used the names Eurynome and Euryclea according as metrical conve- nience inspired her. This went on for some time, till in the end she found it would be a great deal of trouble to re-write all the passages in which Eurynome had appeared ; she there- fore determined to brazen it out, and pretend that she had all along meant Euryclea and Eurynome to be two people. To put their separate existence beyond question, she brings them both on together. I do not say that this is feminine, but I can find nothing like it in the Iliad, 1 have sometimes thought the last six or seven Books, though they contain some of the most exquisite passages in the whole poem, were written in greater haste than the earlier ones, while the last hundred lines or so of Book xxiv. suggest that the writer was determined to end her work without much caring how. I have also wondered whether the husband who in Book vi. was yet to find may not have been found before Book xxiv. was written ; but I have nothing to urge in support of this speculation. Argus (xvii. 2.92) is not a very good name for a dog. It is the stock epithet for hounds in both J/fa^ and Oclysseiji'^vA means " fleet." The whole scene between Ulysses and Argus is perhaps the most disappointing in the Odyssey, If the dog was too old or feeble to come to Ulysses, Ulysses should have gone up to him and hugged him — fleas or no fleas ; and Argus should not have been allowed to die till this had been put in evidence. True, Ulysses does wipe away one tear, but he should have broken utterly down^ — and then 'to ask Eum^us whether Argus was any use, or whether he was only a show dog — tliis will not do even as acting. The scene is well con- ceived but badly executed ; it betrays the harder side of the writer's nature, and has little of the pathos which Homer would have infused into it.. When Euma3us says what kind of man he would be likely 152 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. to ask to the house if he was free to choose, he puts a divine first, a physician next, then a carpenter, and then a bard (xvii. 384). The only wonder is that the writer did not put the bard before the carpenter, and doubtless she would have done so had she not wanted to give the bard a whole line to himself. A woman, writing at the present day would be apt to consider the clergyman, and the doctor, as the first people Tyho should be invited, but a man in the Homeric age would hardly have chosen as Eumteus is made to do. I do not believe that any man living could wash Ulysses' feet and upset the bath so delightfully as Euryclea does (xix. 388, &c.), and at the same time make Penelope sit by and observe nothing of what was going on. He could not rise to the audacity of saying that Minerva had directed Penelope's attention elsewhere, notwithstanding the noise which Ulysses' leg made, and the upsetting of a bath full of water, which must have run over all that part of the cloister. A man would have made Penelope desire suddenly to leave the cloister, just before the accident happened, and lie down upon that couch which she had never ceased to water with her tears, &c. ; she could then have come back, remembering that she had for- gotten something, after the foot-bath had been refilled and the niess cleaned up. But he could not have done it at all. It will be observed that the stronger the indications become that Ulysses is on the point of returning, the more imperative Penelope finds it to marry one of the suitors without a day's delay. She has heard about the hawk tearing the dove ; she has heard Telemachus sneeze ; she has been assured that Ulysses was among the Thesprotian^, quite near, and would be in Ithaca immediately ; she has had a dream which would have made any one wait, say, for at least a week longer, unless determined to take the gloomiest possible view of the situation; but no ; on the following day she must marry and leave the house. Her words seem to me like those of a woman gloating over the luxury of woe, as drawn by another woman who has never kuo^n real trouble. Nothing can better show the OCCASIONAL NOTES. 153 X hollowness of Penelope's distress from first to last. A woman who felt herself really drowning wonld have clutched at any one of the straws above mentioned, and made it buoy her up /( for weeks or months ; and any writer who had known real sorrow would also know how certain she would be to do this. A man could only so draw his heroine if he was laughing at her in his sleeve ; whereas the writer of the Odyssey is doing her very utmost to take herself seriously. Penelope seems firmly convinced that she is keeping ex- cellent guard over her son's estate all the time, and that if she were to leave the house everything would go to rack and ruin. She implies this to Ulysses when he is disguised as a beggar (xix. 524). One wonders how Ulysses could restrain himself from saying, "Well, Madam, if you cannot prove more success- ful as a guardian than you have been doing this many years past, the sooner you leave the house the better for Telemachus." IvTo great poet would compare his hero to a paunch full of blood and fat, cooking before the fire (xx. 24-28). The humour, for of course it is humorously intended, is not man's humour, unless he is writing burlesque. This the writer of the Odyssey is not doing here, though she has intentionally approached it very nearly in a great part of the Phosacian episode. The only other two points which suggest a female hand in Book XX. — I mean with especial force — are the sympathy which the writer betrays with the poor weakly woman who could not finish her task (105, &c.), and the speech of Tele- machus about his mother being too apt to make much of second rate people (129-133). The twelve axes set up in Book xxi. remain in the court /\ during the whole time that the suitors are being killed. How, I wonder, is it that not one of the suitors picked up a single axe ? A dozen men with a dozen axes should have made short work of Ulysses and his men. True, by my own hypothesis the heads had been taken off the handles, but they must have been wedged, or bound, either on to the handles or to some 154 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. other like pieces of wood, so as to raise them high enough for any one to shoot through the handle-holes. It should have been an easy matter either to fix the heads on to the handles again, or to extemporise new ones. If the writer had not forgotten all about the axes in her desire to begin with the shooting, she would have trumped up a difficulty of some kind. Perhaps she thought that the audience, hearing nothing more about them, would forget all about the axes too — and she was not far wronsr. The instinctive house-wifely thrift of the writer is nowhere more marked than near the beginning of Book xxii., where amid the death-throes of Antinous and Eurymachus she cannot forget the good meat and wine that were spoiled by the up- setting of the tables at which the suitors had been sitting. The killing of the suitors is aggressive in its want of plausibility. If Melanthius could go to the store-room, no matter how, the other suitors could have followed him and attacked Ulysses from behind ; for there is evidently a passage from the store-room to the place where Ulysses is standing. Again, the outer yard was open to the suitors all the time. Surely with the axes still at command they could have cut the Byblus-fibre roj^e that was the only fastening of the main gate; some of them at any rate might have got out. The first ninety lines of the Book are as fine as the Iliad, but from line (say) 100 to line 330 the writer is out of her depth, and knows it. The most palpably feminine part is where Minerva comes to help Ulysses disguised as Mentor (xxii. 205-240). The suitors menace her, and in a rage she scolds not them but Ulysses, whom she rates roundly. Having done this, she flies away and sits on a rafter like a swallow. All readers will help poets, playwrights, and novelists, by making believe a good deal, but we like to know whether we are in the hands of one who will flog us uphill, or who will make as little demand upon us as possible. In this portion of OCCASIONAL NOTES. 155 Book xxH. the writer is flogging us uphill. She does not care how much she may afflict the reader in his efforts to believe her — the only thing she really cares for is her revenge. She mast have every one of the suitors killed stone dead, and all the guilty women hanged, and Melanthius first horribly tor- tured and then cut in pieces. Provided these objects are attained, it is not necessary that the reader should be able to believe, or even follow, all the ins and outs of the processes that lead up to them. I will therefore not pursue the absurdities with which the killing of the suitors abounds. I would, however, point out that in Book xvi. 281, &c., where the taking away of the armour from the cloister walls was first mooted, it was proposed that enough to arm Ulysses and Telemachus should be left accessible, so that they might snatch it up in a moment without having to go all the way down into the store- room after it, at the risk of Telemachus's forgetting to shut the door — as young people so often do. I suppose Ulysses forgot all about this sensible precaution, when he and Telemachus were hiding the armour at the beginning of Book xix. Or shall we suppose that the idea of catching Melanthius in the store-room had not occurred to the poetess when she was writing Book xvi., but had struck her before she reached Book xix., and that she either forgot, or did not think it worth while, or found it inconvenient, to cancel lines 295, 296 of Book xvi. ? From what I have seen of the authoress I incline to this last opinion, and hold that she made Ulysses omit to leave a little of the armour accessible to himself and Tele- machus, because she had by this time determined to string Melanthius up in the store-room, and did not see how to get him inside it unless she made Telemachus go there first and leave the door open ; and, again, did not see how to get Tele- machus down to the store-room if she left armour near at hand, for him to snatch up. As for Telemachus bringing up four helmets, four shields, eight spears, he was already fully armed when the fight began (xxi. 434), so three helmets, three shields and six spears should have done. Fouy helmets, four shields, and eight spears 156 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. is a heavy load ; bat Melanthius carried twelve shields, twelve helmets, and twelve spears apparently all at one time. We are in an atmosphere of transpontine melodrama, but the only wonder is that the absurdities are not even grosser than they are, seeing that the writer was a young woman with a strong will of her own. Woman she must have been ; no male writer could have resisted the temptation to kill EumaBUS. It is the faithful servant's role to be mortally wounded on occasions of this sort. There are very few more suitors to be killed, and Minerva is going to raise her aegis immediately, so that he could be perfectly well spared ; possibly the writer felt that she should be shorthanded with the cleaning up of the blood and the removal of the dead bodies, but more probably she hated the suitors so bitterly that she would not let them score a single point. How evidently relieved she feels when she has got the killing over, and can return to ground on which she is strong, such as the saving of Phemius and Medon, and the cleaning down of the house. What are we to say of making Penelope, whose room looked out upon the cloister, sleep soundly all through the killing of the suitors ? What of her remarks to Euryclea when she has been waked ? What, again, of her interview with Ulysses, and the dance which Ulysses presently advises ? what, indeed, of the whole Book ? Surely it is all perfectly right as coming from some such person as the one portrayed in my frontispiece, but who can conceive the kind of man or matron who .could write it? The same applies to Book xxiv. What man or middle-aged woman could have written the ineffably lovely scene between Ulysses and Laertes in the garden ? or have made Ulysses eat along with Dolius, whose son and daughter he had killed on the preceding day ? A man would have been < certain to make Ulysses tell Dolius that he was very sorry, but there had been nothing for it but to hang his daughter and to OCCASIONAL NOTES. 157 cut his son's nose and ears off, draw out liis vitals, and then cut off his hands and feet. Probably, however, he would have kept Dolius and his sons out of the Book altogether. When Ulysses and Penelope are in bed (xxiii. 300-343) and are telling their stories to one another, Penelope tells hers first. 1 believe a male writer would have made Ulysses' story come v first and Penelope's second. ( 158 ) CHAPTER VIIL THAT ITHACA AND SCHERIA ARE BOTH OF THEM DRAWN FROM TRAPANI AND ITS IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURHOOD. I HAVE now given, though far more briefly than the subject requires, some of my reasons for believing that from the first Book of the Odyssey to the last we are in the hands of a young woman. AVho, then, was she ? Where did she live and write ? She was of flesh and blood, lived in time and place, looked on sea and sky, came and went somewhither and somewhen — but where ? and when ? and above all, who ? It will be my object to throw what light I can upon these subjects in the following chapters. I will follow the same course that I have taken earlier, and retrace the steps whereby 1 was led to my conclusions. By the time I had finished Book x. I was satisfied that the Odyssey was not a man's work, but I had seen nothing to make me think that it was written rather at one place than at another. When, however, I reached xiii. 159-164, in which passage Neptune turns the Pha3acian ship into a rock at the entrance of the Scherian harbour, 1 felt sure that an actual feature was being drawn from, and made a note that no place, however much it might lie between two harbours, would do for Scheria, unless at the end of one of them there was a small half sunken rock. Presently I set myself to consider what combination of natural features I ought to look for on the supposition that Scheria was a real place, and made a list of them as follows : — /I. The town must be placed on a point of land jutting out as a land's end into the sea between two harbours, or bays in which ships could ride (vi. 2G3); it must be connected with the mainland by a narrow neck of land, and as I have just said, must have a half sunken formidable rock at the entrance of one of the harbours. SCHEIIIA AND TRAPANI* 159 2. There must be no river running into either harbour, or Nausicaa would not have had to go so far to wash her clothes. The river when reached might be nothing but a lagoon with a spring or two of fresh water running into it, for the clothes were not, so it would seem, washed in a river ; they were washed in public washing cisterns [Od, vi. 40, 86, 92) which a small spring would keep full enough of water " to wash clothes even though they were very dirty." The scene is laid close on the sea shore, for the clothes are put out to dry on a high bank of shingle which the sea had raised, and Nausicaa's maidens fly from Ulysses along the beach and spits that run into the sea. 3. There must be a notable mountain at no great distance from the town so as to give point to Neptune's threat that he would bury it under a high mountain. Furthermore, the whole combination above described must lie greatly further west of Euboea than Ithaca was, and hence greatly west of Ithaca (vii. 321), Surely, if a real place is being drawn from, these indications are am]3le to ensure its being easily found. Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in their fear of jumping to a conclusion to forget that there is such a thing as jumping away from one, and Homeric scholars seem to have taken a leaf out of their book in this respect. How many striking points of correspondence, I wonder, between an actual place and one described in a novel, would be enough to create a reasonable assurance that the place in which they were combined was the one that was drawn from ? I should say four well marked ones would be sufficient to make it extremely improbable that a like combination could be found elsewhere ; make it five, and unless we find something to outweigh the considerations which so close a correspondence between the actual place and the one described in the novel would suggest, or unless by some strange coincidence the same combination in all its details can be shown to occur in some other and more probable locality, we may be sure that the novel was drawn from the place ; for every fresh detail in the combination required decreases the probability of error in geometrical ratio if it be duly complied with. 160 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. Let ns suppose that a policeman is told to look out for an elderly gentleman of about sixty ; lie is a foreigner, speaks a little English but not much, is lame in his left foot, has blue eyes, a bottle nose, and is about 5ft. lOin. high. How many of these features will the policeman require before he feels pretty sure that he has found his man ? If he sees any foreigner he will look at him. If he sees one who is about 5ft. lOin. high he will note his age, if this proves to be about sixty years, and further, if the man limps on his left foot, he will probably feel safe in stopping him. If, as he^sure to do, he finds he has a bottle nose, he will leave the blue eyes and broken English alone, and will bring the man before the magistrate. If it is then found that the man's eyes are hazel, and that he either speaks English fluently or does not speak it at all — is the magistrate likely to discharge the prisoner on account of these small discrepancies between him and the description given of him, when so many other of the required characteristics are found present ? Will he not rather require the prisoner to bring forward very convincing proof that it is a case of mis- taken identity ? Or to take another illustration, which is perhaps more strictly to the point as involving comparison between an actual place and one described in a novel. Here is an extract from a novel : — Grammerton, like other fair cities, was built on a hill. The highest point was the fine old Elizabethan School, then, and now, of European reputation. Opposite it was the old shattered and ruined castle, overlooking the bubbling and boiling shallows of the broad and rapid river Saber . . . From the hill the town sloped rapidly down on every side towards the river, which made it a peninsula studded with habitations. {The Beauclercs^ father and son, by Charles Clarke, Chapman and Hall. Vol. i. p. 28.) Is there any man of ordinary intelligence and acquainted with Shrewsbury who will doubt that Shrewsbury was the place that Mr. Clarke was drawing from ? When I have urged the much more numerous and weightier points of agreement between Scheria as described in the Odyssey, and Trapani as it still exists, eminent Homeric GRAMMERTON AND SHREWSBURY^ 161 scholars have told me, not once nor twice — and not meekly, but with an air as though they were crnshing me — that my case rests in the main on geographical features that are not '• unknown to other parts of the coast, and upon legends which also belong to other places. Grammerton, they argue — ^to return to my illustration — must not be held as Shrewsbury, for at Harrow as well as- Shrewsbury the School is on the highest part of the town. There is a river, again, at Eton, so that Eton may very well have been the place intended. It is highly fanciful to suppose that the nnme Saber nmy Imve been a mere litemry travesty of Sabrina. At Nottingham there is a castle which was in ruins but a few years since, and from which one can see the Trent. Nottingham, therefore, is^ quite as likely to be the original of Grammerton as Shrewsbury is. And so on ad infinitum. This line of argument consists in ignoring that the force of the one opposed ta it lies in the demonstrable existence o-f a highly complex combination, the component items of which are potent when they are all found in the same place, but impotent unless combined. It is a line which eminent Homeric scholars almost invariably take wheo discussing my Odyssean theory, but it is not one whlcb will satisfy those before whom even the most eminent of Homeric scholars must in the end bow — I mean, men of (>rdinter, I went down to the map room of the British Museum intending to search the Mediterranean from the TroB.d to Gibraltar if necessary ; but remembering that I ought to look (for reasons already given) some distance West of Greece, and also that the writer of the Odyssey appeared to have lived on a coast that looked West not East, I resolved to search the West coasts first. I knew that Colonel Mure and a respectable weight of ancient testimony Jiad placed the Cyclopes on Mt. Eryx, and it seemed to me that the island where Ulysses hunted the goats, and the whole Cyclopes incident suggested drawing from life more vividly than any other part of the voyages. 1 knew, moreover, that m2 164 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY. tlie writer was a young woraan who was little likely to have ^ travelled, and hence felt sure that if one place could be found, none of the others would be long in finding ; I asked, therefore, for the map of the Libyboean promontory, as the West coast West of Greece that offered the greatest prospect of success, and hardly had I got it in my hand before I found the combi- "nation I wanted for Scheria lying right under Mt. Eryx. The ^^ Walker &> Boutall sc^ land's end jutting into the sea — the two harbours one on either side of it — the narrow entrance between two marshes — the high mountain hard by — the rock at the entrance of one of the harbours — the absence of any river — will be found in the map here given, which Messrs. Walker & Boutall have made for me from the Italian Government survey, and from our own Admiralty chart. But this was not all. Not only was the rock of the right height, and so turned as to give the idea of a ship coming into THE ROCK MALCONSIGLIO. 165 port, but it it bore the strange name of Malconsiglio, or " Evil counsel." I was so much struck with this that I wrote to Trapani enquiring whether there existed any local tradition in connection with the rock, and was told that there were two— the one absurd, and the other to the effect that the rock had been a ship of Turkish Pirates who were coming to attack Trapani, but were turned into stone at the entrance of the harbour by the Madonna di Trapani. I did not doubt that the name and the legend between them preserved the Odyssean version, in a Christianised form — the legend recording the fact of a ship's having been turned into stone as it was entering harbour, and the name telling us the other fact that this had been brought about in consequence of an evil counsel. I believe the above sufficient for reasonable assurance that Scheria was drawn from Trapani, and will, therefore, proceed to establish that the Ithaca scenes are drawn also from the same place and its immediate neighbourhood. To this end it will be incumbent upon me to find that near Trapani, though not actually at the town, there exists, or can be shown to have in all reasonable probability existed, a harbour which has, or had, a current in it, and which lies hard by the foot of a mountain. This harbour should have a shelving bottom, for the Phaeacian crew which brought Ulysses to Ithaca ran half the ship's length on shore before the way was off it. At no great distance there must be two caves near together (xiii. 103-112 and 347-349). One of them must have two entrances — one turned towards the North, by which people can go down into the cave, and the other towards the South, by which the gods alone can enter. It must have water in it, and also prehistoric implements should be found there. From near it one must be able to see harbours (in the plural), and it should be on the side of a mountain. Here Ulysses hid the treasures that the Phaeacians had given him. The other cave need present no special features. A man ascending the mountain from these caves, and keeping along the top of it should come to a place on ground commanding an extensive prospect, where there is a spring and a rock that is called Raven. This site must be bitterly 166 THE AUTnOSESS OP THE ODYSSEY. cold in winter, and must be about two hours' walk from Trapani ; the path to the town must be so rugged that a man in ordinary vigour would not like to take it without having a stick ; and lastly, it must pass a notable mound or hill much nearer Trapani than the high ground above alluded to, and commanding a full view of the city and harbour. The reader who turns to the abridgement of Books xiii., xiv., xv., xvi. and xvii. given in this work, will find that all these' points are necessary. They all of them exist at this day, even to the calling of the rock "Raven," except one — I mean the mouth of the harbour where the Pha3acians entered ; this is now silted up, like the harbour of Selinunte,* which I might almost call on the same coast. The inner part of the harbour is still full of sea water, but has been converted into Salt Works f which are lelightly below the level of the sea. The bed of the old exit is clearly seen, and there are still rushes in it though it is quite dry : it is very narrow, is often full in winter, and is marked with dotted lines in the Italian Ordnance Map, but not so in our Admiralty Chart. The existence of this bed was pointed oirt to me by Signor Sugameli, of Trapani. He assured me that till 1848 when the Salt Works were made, the whole space covered by them was an open mere where his father used to go to shoot wild ducks. One great difficulty in making the Salt Works was the abund- ance of fresh water springs, which made it necessary to cement the salt pans in order to keep the fresh water from mixing with the salt. It was perhaps from some of these springs that the ttXvvol, or washing cisterns, of ri. 40 w^ere supplied — unless indeed Nausicaa washed the clothes in sea water as I have seen women in the island of Pantellaria still do. Given a mass of water, nearly a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad, with a narrow exit, and the tide, which here has a rise and fall of from two to three feet, would cause a current that at times would be strong, and justify its being described * A few years ago the stone work at the entrance to the harbour of Selinunte was excavated, but it was silted over again in a single winter. t Shown in the plan as the Salt Works of S. Cusumano. THE HARBOUR RHEITHRON. NOW SALT WOKKS OF S. CUSUMANO. MOUTH OF THE UARBOUU RHEUl'HRON, NOW SILTED UP. {To face p. IGG.) THE HARBOUn RHEITHRON AND THE CAVES. 167 as a river and also as a harbour with a current in it ; returning for a moment to Scheria, I suppose this to be the river at the mouth of which Ulysses landed, and the river's staying his flow (v. 451), I take to mean that he arrived there just at the turn of the tide. I may also say that this harbour is used five times in the Odyssey : — 1. As the " flowing harbour, in the country beyond the town, under Mt. Neritum '' — reading, as explained earlier, N77/5/Tft) for Ntjlo) — where Minerva said she left her ship, when she was talking with Telemachus i. 185, 186. 2. As the place where Ulysses landed in Scheria and where Nausicaa washed her clothes. 3. As the place where Ulysses landed in Ithaca. 4. As the place where Telemachus landed in Ithaca on his return from Pylos (xv. 495 &c.). 5. As the spot pointed to by Ulysses as the one where his ship was lying " in the country beyond the town " (xxiv. 308). I will now return to the two caves which ought to be found at no great distance from the head of this harbour. It is clear from the text that there were two not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the second cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he has been only told of one. I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards from one another, at the place marked in the map as the grotta del toro. The one is conspicuous, but without special feature ; the other, which is not very easily seen, and which is called by the peasants the grotta del toro^ looks due North, and is universally believed to contain a treasure, which a bull who lives in its recesses is continually grinding, but which can only be found by a virgin, who will eat a whole pomegranate without spilling a single pip. I suspect the toro to be a children's corruption of tesoro. The bull having thus got into the cave has never got out again, and as the treasure is also confidently known to exist — well — what can the bull be there for but to turn a mill and grind the treasure ? 168 THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSET. The cave runs due South into the rock by a passage so rough and narrow that no one is likely to go more than a very few feet with it. No one, therefore, can enter the cavern from the South — it is only the gods who can do so. In August, 1894, I visited the ground with some Sicilian friends, and we discoursed with the contacUno who had charge of the farm on which the caves are found. While we were talking there came up a nice intelligent lad on a donkey, and he seemed much interested in our conversation. *' Is there," we asked, pointing to the grotta del toro^ " a treasure in the cave ? " "Certainly," was the immediate answer. Here the boy broke in. He was quite sure there was one. Everybody knew it. It could not be doubted. ^' Is there a treasure in the other cave ? " " Oh, no." " Which of the two caves is called the grotta del toro ? " " That one " — from both peasant and boy, who pointed at once to the cave that corresponded with the Odyssey, " You are quite sure that the other cave is not called ' la grotta del toro ' ? " " Quite." " Where does the grotta del toro go to ? " " It gets narrow and goes far into the rock." " Has any one ever been to the end of it ? " "K'o, no ; no one knows where it ends. There was a cattle driver who went in once to explore it, but he never came back, and they say that after this there was a wall built to stop any one from going further." "Have you ever been inside the cave yourself?" "Yes." " Have you been as far as the wall ? " "No." " How far did you go ? " "Not very far ; I was afraid." " Then you have no idea how far the cave goes ? " " No." " Is there water in the cave at all times ? " THE GrvOTTA DEL TOEO. 169 "Yes." " Have yon seen it ? " " I was there in May last, and there was water then/' " Is there water there now ? " " I should think so, but cannot be certain." " Can you take u« to it ? " " No ; the key of the ground is at Trapani." "They say there is a bull in the further recesses of the cavern ? " " They say so, but we have never seen him ; all we know for certain is that there is a treasure." Here the boy again brightened up, and said that this was certain. When we had finished our questions the contadim took one of our party aside, and said, confidentially, " Be sure of me, for I have a strong stomach" [i.e.^ I can keep a secret). " When you come to remove the treasure, which I can see that you intend to do, you must take me with you and give me my share. If you come by night the dogs will bark, and I shall know that you are there. I will then come down and help you, but you must give me my share." I wrote the above conversation down, in Italian, immediately on my return to Trapani, and my Sicilian friends signed it, at my request, as a correct report. It occurs to me to add that there is no other cave near Trapani to which any story of a hidden treasure attaches. Last year (May, 1896) I visited the cave again, this time with my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones, who has gone over the whole of the ground described in this book, to make sure that I have not overstated my case. We were accompanied by Signor Sugameli of Trapani, to whom I owe the correction of my error in believing the more conspicuous of the two caves to be called the grotta del toro — for so, on my first visit to Trapani in 1892, my friends in the town had assured me, not knowing the existence of the one which really bears the name. Jones and Signor Sugameli scrambled into the interior of the cavern, but I, being elderly and somewhat lame, did not venture. They found the cave end, after about thirty feet, in 170 THE AUTHORESS OF THF. ODYSSEY. a mass of solid rock ; but few who have gone above ten or twelve feet will be likely to go any further, and I can well believe that the writer of the Odyssey, like the peasants of to-day, believed that no one could get to the end of it. My friends found water. The cave is full of bees' nests in summer, as are all the caves hereabouts. They are small, solitary, of red clay, and about the size of the cup of an acorn. All the caves in the neighbourhood of Mt. Eryx abound in remains of stone-age man, some fine examples of which may be seen in the museum at Palermo. These remains would doubtless be more common and more striking three thousand years or so ago than they are at present, and I find no difficulty in thinking that the poetic imagination of the wa^iter of the Odyssey ascribed them to the nymphs and naiads. From hard by both the caves one can see, of course, the precipices of Mt. Eryx, which I suppose to be Neritum in the mind of the writer (xiii. 351), the straight paths on the cultivated land some couple of hundred feet below, the harbour of the old merman Phorcys, and also the harbours of Trapani, all which are requisite by lines xiii. 195, 196, and 345-351. The reader will note that while more than one Scherian detail is given casually and perhaps unintentionally, as for example the harbour where Ulysses landed in Scheria, and the harbours, which I do not doubt are the two harbours of Trapani, there is no Ithacan detail given so far which conflicts with any feature in the description of Scheria. The number and value of the points of correspondence between the cave in which Ulysses hid his treasure, and the grotta del toro greatly exceed those between Grammerton and Shrewsbury. Nevertheless it will be well to see whether his movements on leaving the cave confirm my view or make against it. I suppose him to have ascended the steep, and then, doubt- less, wooded slopes of Mt. Eryx and to have passed along its high and nearly level summit [U afcpta<;, xiv. 2) to the other end of the mountain, where the Norman Castle stands now 2500 feet above the sea level. Here he descended some two or HITT OF EUM.EUS AKD RAVEN ROCK. 171 tliree liundred feet to the spot now called i runzi, where there is a spring near a precipice which is still called il ruccazzii dei corvi^ i.e. " the rock of the ravens," it being on this part of the mountain that these birds breed most freely. This walk would take him about two hours, more or less. The site is seen from far and wide, it is bitterly cold in winter, and is connected with Trapani by a rough mountain path which Ulysses may well have been afraid to travel without a stick (xvii. 195).* The path passes close to the round-topped Colle di Sta Anna which answers perfectly to the'^E/Qua^o? X6(f)o