> : x - , RD eS See RTE Ren ESE ag eS eye NT: C) LASSICS* B Oeil UNIVERSITY OF ia RING Ts Tom Turner Collectio 831 HS8o0NXe Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. University of Illinois Library L161—H41 ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. A SERIES OF MONTHLY VOLUMES. Price 2s. 6d. bound in cloth. THE aim of the present series will be to explain, sufficiently for general readers, who these great writers were, and what they wrote; to give, wherever possible, some connected out- line of the story which they tell, or the facts which they record, checked by the results of modern investigations ; to present some of their most striking passages in approved English translations, and to illustrate them generally from modern writers ; to serve, in short, as a popular retrospect of the chief literature of Greece and, Rome. Volumes now published— I. HOMER: THE ILIAD. II HOMER: THE ODYSSEY. A Prospectus may be had on application to the Publishers. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. Times, January 10. ** We can confidently recommend this first volume of ‘ Ancient Classics for English Readers’ to all who have forgotten their Greek, and desire to refresh their knowledge of Homer. As for those to whom the series is chiefly addressed, who have never learned Greek at all, this little book gives them an opportunity which they had not before—an opportunity not only of remedy- - ing a want they must have often felt, but of remedying it by no patient and irksome toil, but by a few hours of pleasant reading.” Civil Service Gazette, January 15. ‘‘No more happy idea has been conceived of late than that of which this is the first instalment. . . . If the other volumes to follow equal the ‘ Iliad,’ the series will be a most charming and instructive one, and the ‘ Ancient Classics for English Readers’ will be a most invaluable aid to modern education.” 2 Saturday Review, January 8. ‘* If the other volumes are as well executed as this, the monthly issue will soon furnish excellent guidance to the whole field of classical literature, and when the way is thus rendered clear, good translations will be read with far more pleasure and dis- crimination, We anticipate that the judicious and novel design - of such a series will meet, as it deserves, with widespread and lasting favour; and that, with its success, juster ideas will more generally prevail of the characteristics of the great writers of old.” Lincoln Mercury. ‘The idea of this rendering of the classics is a very happy one, and the work, judging from the first volume, is likely to be carried out with scholarly taste and judgment.” Liverpool Albion. ‘‘Few can learn Greek and Latin sufficiently well to read the classics in the original, and few have time in this busy age to read elaborate translations ; but these concise prose sketches of the great classics will be within the scope of all readers, and will be welcome to most of them.” Glasgow Citizen. ** A series of this kind must prove at once interesting and use- ful, and we anticipate for it a large measure of success.” ’ Sherborne Journal. “‘TIn fact these are classical novels, and it will speak well of the taste of the age if they are read as generally as they deserve to be.” Bristol Mercury. * SHADES, . d : : : ; een ‘yt! VI. ULYSSES’ RETURN TO ITHACA, ; ’ Patol" “ VII, THE RETURN OF TELEMACHUS FROM SPARTA, 95 # VIII. ULYSSES REVISITS HIS PALACE, . ; erLuU n IX. THE DAY OF RETRIBUTION, . : : 9 Od eu X. THE RECOGNITION BY PENELOPE, . ; e116 . NS n XI, CONCLUDING REMARKS, : . ; 125 Si ; It has been thought desirable in these pages to use the Latin names of the Homeric deities and heroes, as more familiar to English ears, As, however, most modern tran- slators have followed Homer’s Greek nomenclature, it may be convenient here to give both. Zeus = Jupiter. Here = Juno. Arés = Mars, Poseidon = Neptune. Pallas Athene = Minerva. Aphrodité = Venus. Hephaistos =. Vulcan. Hermes = Mercury. Artemis = Diana, Odysseus = Ulysses, Aias = Ajax. The passages quoted, unless otherwise specified, are from the admirable translation of Mr Worsley. a ae a ee a INTRODUCTION, THE poem of the Odyssey is treated in these pages as the work of a single author, and that author the same as the composer of the Iliad. It would be manifestly out of place, in a volume which does not profess to be written for critical scholars, to discuss a question on which they are so far from being agreed. But it may be satisfactory to assure the reader who has neither leisure nor inclination to enter into the controversy, that in accepting, as we do, the Odyssey as from the same “‘ Homer” to whom we owe the Tale of Troy, he may fortify himself by the authority of many accom- plished scholars who have carefully examined the ques- tion. Though none of the incidents related in the Iliad are distinctly referred to in the Odyssey—a point strongly urged by those who would assign the poems to different authors—and therefore the one cannot fairly be regarded as a sequel to the other, yet there is no important discrepancy, either in the facts previously assumed, or in the treatment of such characters as appear upon the scene in both. A. C. vol. ii. A HOMER. bo The character of the two poems is, indeed, essentially different. The Iliad is a tale of the camp and the battle-field: the Odyssey combines the romance of travel with that of domestic life. The key-note of the Iliad is glory: that of the Odyssey is rest. This was amongst the reasons which led one of the earliest of Homer’s critics to the conclusion that the Odyssey was the work of his old age. In both poems the interest lies in the situations and the descriptions, rather than in what we moderns call the “plot.” This latter is not a main consideration with the poet, and he has no hesi- tation in disclosing his catastrophe beforehand. The interest, so far as this point is concerned, is also weak- ened for the modern reader by the intervention through- out of supernatural agents, who, at the most critical turns of the story, throw their irresistible weight into the scale. Yet, in spite of this, the interest of the Odyssey is intensely human. Greek mythology and Oriental romance are large ingredients in the poem, but its men and women are drawn by a master’s hand from the actual life; and, since in the two thousand years between our own and Homer's day nothing has changed so little as human nature, therefore very much of it is still a story of to-day. The poem before us is the tale of the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus—or Ulysses, as the softer tongue of the Latins preferred to call him—on his way home from the siege of Troy to his island-kingdom of Ithaca. The name Odysseus has been variously interpreted. Homer himself, who should be the best authority, tells us that it was given to him by his grandfather Autoly- INTRODUCTION. | 3 cus to signify “ the child of hate.” Others have inter- preted it to mean “suffering ;” and some ingenious scholars see in it only the ancient form of a familiar sobriquet by which the hero was known, “the little one,” or “the dwarf,”—a conjecture which derives some support from the fact that the Tyrrhenians knew him under that designation. It may be remembered that in the Iliad he is described as bearing no comparison in stature with the stalwart forms of Agamemnon and Menelaus; and it is implied in the description that there was some want of proportion in his figure, since he appeared nobler than Menelaus when both sat down. But in the Odyssey itself there appears no reference to any natural defect of any kind. His character in this poem corresponds perfectly with that which is dis- closed in the Iliad. There, he is the leading spirit of the Greeks when in council. Scarcely second to Achilles or Diomed in personal prowess, his advice and opinion are listened to with as much respect as those of the veteran Nestor. In the Iliad, too, he is, as he is called in the present poem, “the man of many devices.” His accomplishments cover a larger field than those of any other hero. Achilles only can beat him in speed of foot; he is as good an archer as Ajax Oileus or Teucer ; he throws Ajax the Great in the wrestling-match, in spite of his superior strength, by a happy use of science, and divides with him the prize of victory. To him, as the worthiest successor of Achilles—on the testimony of the Trojan prisoners, who declared that he had wrought them most harm of any—the armour of that great hero was awarded at his death. He is not tragic enough to 4 HOME R. fill the first place in the Iliad, but we are quite prepared to find him the hero of a story of travel and adventure like the Odyssey, in which the grand figure of Achilles would be entirely out of place. The Odyssey has been pronounced, by a high classical authority, to be emphatically a lady’s book, ‘* The Iliad,” says the great Bentley, ‘‘ Homer made for men, and the Odyssey for the other sex.” This opinion somewhat contradicts the criticism of an older and greater master—Aristotle—who defines the Odyssey as being “ ethic and complex,” while the Iiad is “pathetic and simple.” Yet it was perhaps some such notion of the fitness of things which made Fénélon’s adaptation of Homer’s story, ‘The Adventures of Telemachus in search of Ulysses,’ so popular a French text-book in ladies’ schools a century ago, It is certain, also, that the allusions in our modern literature, and the subjects of modern pictures, are drawn from the Odyssey even more frequently than from the Lliad, although the for- mer has never been so generally read in our schools and colleges. Circe and the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, have pointed more morals than any incidents in the Siege of Troy. Turner’s pictures of Nausicaa and her Maidens, the Gardens of Alcinous, the Cyclops addressed by Ulysses, the Song of the Sirens—all amongst our national heirlooms of art—assume a fair acquaintance with the later Homeric fable on the part of the public for whom they were painted. The secret of this greater popularity may lie in the fact, that while the adventures in the Odyssey have more of the romantic and the imaginative, the heroes are less heroic—have more of INTRODUCTION. 5 the common human type about them—than those of the Iliad. The colossal figure of Achilles in his wrath does not affect us so nearly as the wandering voyager with his strange adventures, his hairbreadth escapes, and his not over-scrupulous devices. To our English sympathies the Odyssey appeals strongly for another reason—it is a tale of voyage and discovery. ‘It is,’ as Dean Alford says, “ of all poems a poem of the sea.” Inthe Iliad the poet never missed an opportunity of letting us know that—whoever he was and wherever he was born—he knew the sea well, and had a seaman’s tastes. But there his tale confined him chiefly to the plain before Troy, and such opportu- nities presented themselves but rarely. In the Odyssey we roam from sea to sea throughout the narrative, and the restless hero seems never so much at home as when he is on shipboard. It is not without reason that the most ancient works of art which bear the figure of: Ulysses represent him not as a warrior but as a sailor. The Tale of Troy, as has been already said, embraces in its whole range three decades of years. It is with the last ten that the Odyssey has to do; and as in the Iliad, though the siege itself had consumed ten years, it is with the last year only that the poet deals ; so in this second great poem also, the main action occupies no more than the last six weeks of the third and con- cluding decade. Between the Iliad and the Odyssey there is an in- terval of events, not related in either poem, but which a Greek audience of the poet’s own day would readily supply for themselves out of 2 store of current legend 6 HOMER. quite familiar to their minds, and embodied in more than one ancient poem now lost to us.* Troy, after the long siege, had fallen at last ; but not to Achilles. For him the dying prophecy of Hector had been soon ful- filled, and an arrow from the bow of Paris had stretched him in death, like his noble enemy, “ before the Sceean gates.” It was his son Neoptolemus, “ the red-haired,” to whom the oracles pointed as the destined captor of the city. Ulysses went back to Greece to fetch him, and even handed over to the young hero, on his arrival, the armour of his father—his own much- valued prize. In that armour Neoptolemus led the Greeks to the storm and sack of the city by night, while the Trojans were either asleep or holding deep carousal. It has been conjectured by some .that, under the name of Ulysses, the poet has but described, with more or less of that licence to which he had a double claim as poet and as traveller, his own wanderings and adven- tures by land and sea. It has been argued, in a treatise of some ingenuity,t that the poet, whoever he was, was himself a native of the island in which he places the home of his hero. There is certainly one passage which reads very much lke the circumstantial and loving description which a poet would give of his sea-girt birthplace, with every nook of which he would have been familiar from his childhood. It occurs in the scene where Ulysses is at last landed on the coast * See Iliad, p. 143. + Ulysses Homer; or, a Discovery of the True Author of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Constantine Koliades. INTRODUCTION. fi of Ithaca, which he is slow to recognise until his divine guide points out to him the different localities within sight :— ‘¢ This is the port of sea-king Phorcys old, And this the olive at the haven’s brow. Yonder the deep dark lovely cave behold, Shrine of the Naiad-nymphs! These shades enfold The stone-roofed bower, wherein thou oft hast stood, While to the Nymphs thy frequent vows uprolled, Steam of choice hecatombs and offerings good. Neritus hill stands there, high-crowned with waving wood.” * As conjecture only all such theories must remain ; but it may at least be safely believed that the author had himself visited some of the strange lands which he describes, with whatever amount of fabulous ornament he may have enriched his tale, and it has a certain interest for the reader to entertain the possibility of a personal narrative thus underlying the romance. * B. xiii. 345 (st. 45, Worsley). Moe Or DY, 5 SOY, CHAPTER I. PENELOPE AND HER SUITORS. Tue surviving heroes of the great expedition against Troy, after long wanderings, have at length reached their homes, with one exception — Ulysses has not been heard of in his island-kingdom of Ithaca. Ten years have nearly passed since the fall of Troy, and still his wife Penelope, and his aged father Laertes, and his young son Telemachus, now growing up to manhood, keep weary watch for the hero’s return. There is, moreover, a twofold trouble. in the house. It is not only anxiety for an absent husband, but the perplexity caused by a crowd of importunate suitors for her hand, which vexes the soul of Penelope from day to day. The young nobles of Ithaca and its de- pendent islands have for many years flocked to the palace to seek the hand of her whom they consider as virtually a widowed queen. It is to no purpose that 10 THE ODYSSEY. she professes her own firm belief that Ulysses still survives: she has no kind of proof of his existence, and the suitors demand of her that—in accordance with what would appear’ the custom of the country— she shall make choice of some one among them to take the lost hero’s place, and enjoy all the rights of sove- reignty. How far the lovers were attracted by the wealth and position of the lady, and how far by the force of her personal charms, is a point somewhat hard to decide. The Roman poet Horace imputes to them the less romantic motive. They were, he says, of that class of prudent wooers— “‘ Who prized good living more than ladies’ love ;” and he even hints that Penelope’s knowledge of their real sentiments helped to account for her obduracy. But Horace, we must remember, was a satirist by trade. A mere prosaic reader might be tempted to raise the question whether the personal charms of Penelope, irresistible as they miight have been when Ulysses first left her for the war, must not have been somewhat impaired during the twenty years of his absence ; and whether it was possible for a widow of that date (especially with a grown-up son continually present as a memento) to inspire such very ardent admiration. These arithmetical critics have always been the pests of poetry. One very painstaking antiquarian—Jacob Bryant —in the course of his studies on the Iliad, made the discovery, by a comparison of mythological dates, that Helen herself must have been nearly a hundred years old at the taking of Troy. But the PENELOPE AND HER SUITORS. 11 question of age has been unanimously voted imperti- nent by all her modern admirers: she still shines in our fancy with “‘The starlike beauty of immortal eyes ” which the Laureate saw in his ‘ Dream of Fair Women.’ The heroic legends take no count of years. Woman is there beautiful by divine right of sex, unless in those few special instances in which, for the purposes of the story, particular persons are necessarily repre- sented as old and decrepit. Nor is there any ground for supposing that the suitors of Penelope, like the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth, persisted in attributing to her fictitious charms. She is evidently not less beautiful in the poet’s eyes than in theirs. As beauty has been happily said to be, after all, ‘the lover’s gift,” so also the bestowal of it upon whom he will must be allowed to be the privilege of the poet. The island-queen herself says, indeed, that her beauty had fled when Ulysses left her, and could only be restored by his return ; but this disclaimer from the lips of a loving and mourning wife only makes her more charm- ing, and she is not the only woman, ancient or modern, who has borrowed an additional fascination from her tears. The suitors of Penelope, strange to say, are living at free quarters in the palace of the absent Ulysses. Telemachus is too young, apparently, to assert his rights as master of the house on his own or his — mother’s behalf. If the picture be true to the life— and there is no good reason to suppose it otherwise— 12 THE ODYSSEY. we must assume an age of rude licence even in the midst of considerable civilisation, when, unless a king or chief could hold his own by the strong hand, there was small chance of his rights being respected.