# Homer: The Odyssey/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
TELEMACHUS GOES IN QUEST OF HIS FATHER.
Hitherto, and throughout the first four books of the poem, Telemachus, and not Ulysses, is the hero of the tale. The voyagers soon reach the rocky shores of Pylos, the stronghold of the old "horse-tamer," Nestor. He has survived the long campaign in which so many of his younger comrades fell, and is now sitting, surrounded by his sons, at a great public banquet held in honour of the Sea-god. Telemachus, with a natural modesty not unbecoming his youth, is at first reluctant to accost and question a chieftain so full of years and renown, and his attendant guardian has to reassure him by the promise that "heaven will put words into his mouth." There is no need of question yet, however, either on the side of hosts or guests. Pisistratus, the youngest son of Nestor, upon whom the duties of "guest-master" naturally fall, welcomes the travellers with the invariable courtesy accorded by the laws of Homeric society to all strangers as their right, bids them take a seat at the banquet, and proffers the wine​cup—to the supposed Mentor first, as the elder. He only requests of them, before they drink, to join their hosts in their public supplication to Neptune; for he will not do them the injustice to suppose prayer can be unknown or distasteful to them, be they who they may—"All men have need of prayer." When the prayer has been duly made by both for a blessing on their hosts and for their own safe return, and when they have eaten and drunk to their hearts' content, then, and not till then, Nestor inquires their errand. The form in which the old chief put his question is as strongly characteristic of a primitive civilisation as the open hospitality which has preceded it. He asks the voyagers, in so many words, whether they are pirates?—not for a moment implying that such an occupation would be to their discredit. The freebooters of the sea in the Homeric times were dangerous enough, but not disreputable. It was an iron age, when every man's hand was more or less against his neighbour, and the guest of to-day might be an enemy to-morrow. Nestor's downright question may help a modern reader to understand the waste of Ulysses' substance in his absence by the lawless spirits of Ithaca. It was only so long as "the strong man armed kept his palace" in person that his goods were in peace. Telemachus, in reply, declares his name and errand, and implores the old chieftain, in remembrance of the days when he and Ulysses fought side by side at Troy, to give him, if he can, some tidings of his father.
Nestor shows the same love of story-telling which marks his character in the Iliad. Modern critics who are inclined to accuse the old chief of garrulity should remember that, in an age in which there were no daily newspapers with their "special correspondents," a good memory and a fluent tongue were very desirable qualifications of old age. The old campaigner in his retirement was the historian of his own times. Unless he told his story often and at length amongst the men of a younger generation when they met at the banquet, all memory of the gallant deeds of old would be lost, and even the professional bard would have lacked the data on which to build his lay. Many a Nestor must have been ready—in season and out of season—to
"Shoulder his crutch, and show how fields were won,"
before any Homer could have sung of the Trojan war. Even now, we are ready to listen readily to the veteran's reminiscences of a past generation, whether in war or peace, who has a retentive memory and a pleasant style—only he now commonly tells his story in print.
Nestor proceeds to tell his guests how the gods, after Troy was taken, had stirred up strife between ​the brother-kings Agamemnon and Menelaus; and how, in consequence, the fleet had divided, Menelaus with one division sailing straight for home, while the rest had waited with Agamemnon in the hope of appeasing the wrath of heaven. Ulysses, who had at first set sail with Menelaus, had turned back and rejoined his leader. Of his subsequent fate Nestor knows nothing; but he bids the young man take courage. He has heard of the troubles that beset him at home; but if Minerva vouchsafes to the son the love and favour which (as was known to all the Greeks) she bore to his father, all will go well with him yet. Neither Nestor nor Telemachus are aware (though the reader is) that the Wisdom which had made Ulysses a great name was even now guiding the steps of his son. One thing yet the youth longs to hear from the lips of his father's ancient friend—the terrible story of Agamemnon's death by the hands of his wife and her paramour, and the vengeance taken by his son Orestes. It is a tale which he has heard as yet but darkly, but has dwelt upon in his heart ever since the goddess, at her visit under the shape of Mentes, made such significant reference to the story. Nestor tells it now at length—the bloody legend which, variously shaped, became the theme of the poet and the dramatist from generation to generation of Greek literature. In Homer's version we miss some of the horrors which later writers wove into the tale; and it is not unlikely that, in the simpler form in which it is here given, we have the main facts of an actual domestic tragedy. During Agamemnon's long absence in the Trojan war, his queen Clytemnes​tra, sister of Helen, had been seduced from her marriage faith by her husband's cousin Ægisthus. In vain had the household bard, faithful to the trust committed to him by his lord in his absence, counselled and warned his lady against the peril; and Ægisthus at last, hopeless of his object so long as she had these honest eyes upon her, had caused him to be carried to a desert island to perish with hunger. So she fell, and Ægisthus ruled palace and kingdom. At last Agamemnon returned from the weary siege, and, landing on the shore of his kingdom, knelt down and kissed the soil in a transport of joyful tears. It is probably with no conscious imitation, but merely from the correspondence of the poet's mind, that Shakespeare attributes the very same expression of feeling to his Richard II:—
Agamemnon meets with as tragical a reception from the usurper of his rights as did Richard Plantagenet:—
For seven years the adulterer and usurper reigned in security at Mycenæ. But meanwhile the boy Orestes, stolen away from the guilty court by his elder sister, was growing up to manhood, the destined avenger of blood, at Athens. In the seventh year he came back in disguise to his father's house, slew Ægisthus, and recovered his inheritance. There was a darker shadow still thrown over Agamemnon's death by later poets, which finds no place in Homer. The tragic interest in the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles, which are founded on this story, lies in their representing Clytemnestra herself as the murderess of her husband, and Orestes, as his father's avenger, not hesitating to become the executioner of his mother as well as of her paramour.
Nestor has finished his story, and the travellers offer to return to their vessel and continue their quest; but the old chieftain will not hear of it. That night, at least, they must remain as his guests—on the morrow he will send them on to the court of Menelaus at Sparta, where they may chance to learn the latest tidings of Ulysses. Telemachus's guardian bids him accept the invitation, then suddenly spreads wings, and takes to flight in the likeness of a sea-eagle; and both Nestor and Telemachus recognise at last that, in the ​shape of Mentor, the goddess of wisdom has been so long his guide. A sacrifice is forthwith offered in her honour—a heifer, with horns overlaid with gold; a public banquet is held as before, and then, according to promise, Telemachus is sped on his journey. A pair of swift and strong-limbed horses—the old chief knew what a good horse was, and charged his sons specially to take the best in his stalls—are harnessed for the journey, and good provision of corn and wine, "such as was fit for princes," stored in the chariot. Pisistratus himself mounts beside his new friend as driver. Their first day's stage is Pheræ, where they are hospitably entertained by Nestor's friend, Diodes; and, after driving all the following day, they reach the palace gates of Menelaus, in Sparta, when the sun has set upon the yellow harvest fields, "and all the ways are dim."
At Sparta, too, as at Pylos, the city is holding high festival on the evening of their arrival. A double marriage is being celebrated in the halls of Menelaus. Hermione, his sole child by Helen, is leaving her parents to become the bride of Neoptolemus (otherwise known as Pyrrhus, the "red-haired"), son of the great Achilles; and at the same time the young Megapenthes, Menelaus's son by a slave wife, is to be married in his father's house. There is music and dancing in the halls when the travellers arrive; but Menelaus, like Nestor, will ask no questions of the strangers until the bath, and food, and wine in plenty, have refreshed them, and their horses have good barley-meal and rye set before them in the mangers. The magnificence of ​Menelaus's palace, as described by the poet, is a very remarkable feature in the tale. It reads far more like a scene from the 'Arabian Nights' than a lay of early Greece. The lofty roofs fling back a flashing light as the travellers enter, "like as the splendour of the sun or moon." Gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and electrum, combine their brilliancy in the decorations. The guests wash in lavers of silver, and the water is poured from golden ewers. Telemachus is struck with wonder at the sight, and can compare it to nothing earthly.
The palaces of Sparta, as seen in Homer's vision, contrast remarkably with the estimate formed of them by the Greek historian of a later age. Thucydides speaks of the city as having no public buildings of any magnificence, such as would impress a stranger with an idea of its real power, but wearing rather the appearance of a collection of villages. It is difficult to conceive that the actual Sparta of a much earlier age could have contained anything at all corresponding to this Homeric ideal of splendour; and the question arises, whether we have here an indistinct record of an earlier and extinct civilisation, or whether the poet drew an imaginary description from his own recollections of the gorgeous barbaric splendour of some city in the further East, which he had visited in his travels. If this be nothing more than a poet's exaggerated and idealised view of an actual state of higher civilisation, which once really existed in the old Greek kingdoms, and ​disappeared under the Dorian Heraclids, it is a singular record of a backward step in a nation's history; and the Homeric poems become especially valuable as preserving the memorials of a state of society which would otherwise have passed altogether into oblivion. There is less difficulty in believing the possible existence of an ante-historical civilisation which afterwards became extinct, if we remember the splendours of Solomon's court, as to which the widespread traditions of the East only corroborate the records of Scripture, and all which passed away almost entirely with its founder. It is remarkable that in the ancient Welsh poem, 'Y Gododin,' by Aneurin Owen, of which the supposed date is A.D. 570, there are very similar properties and scenery: knights in "armour of gold" and "purple plumes," mounted on "thick-maned chargers," with "golden spurs," who must—if ever they rode the Cambrian mountains—have been a very different race from the wild Welsh who held Edward Longshanks at bay. Are we to look upon this as merely the common language of all poets? and, if so, how comes it to be common to all? Were the Welsh who fought in the half-mythical battle of Cattraeth as far superior, in the scale of civilisation, to their successors who fell at Conway, as the Spartans under Menelaus (if Homer's picture of them is to be trusted) were to the Spartans under Leonidas? or was there some remote original, Oriental or other, whence this ornate military imagery passed into the poetry of such very different nations?
So, too, when Helen—now restored to her place in Menelaus's household—comes forth to greet the ​strangers, her whole surroundings are rather those of an Eastern sultana than of any princess of Spartan race.
These elaborate preparations for her "work"—which is some delicate fabric of wool tinged with the costly purple dye—have little in common with the household loom of Penelope. Here, as in the Iliad, refinement and elegance of taste are the distinctive characteristics of Helen: and they help to explain, though they in no way excuse, the fascination exercised over her by Paris, the accomplished musician and brilliant converser, rich in all the graces which Venus, for her own evil purposes, had bestowed on her favourite. Helen is still, as in the Iliad, emphatically "the lady;" the lady of rank and fashion, as things were in that day, with all the fashionable faults, and all the fashionable good qualities: selfish and luxurious, gracious and fascinating. Her transgressions, and the seemingly lenient view which the poet takes of them, have been discussed sufficiently in the Iliad. They are all now condoned. She has recovered from her miserable infatuation; and if we are inclined to despise Menelaus for his easy ​temper as a husband, we must remember the mediæval legends of Arthur and Guinevere, to whom Helen bears, in many points of character, a strong resemblance. The readiness which Arthur shows to have accepted at any time the repentance of his queen is almost repulsive to modern feeling, but was evidently not so to the taste of the age in which those legends were popular; nor is it at all clear that such forgiveness is less consonant with the purest code of morality than the stern implacability towards such offences which the laws of modern society would enjoin. Menelaus has forgiven Helen, even as Arthur—though not Mr Tennyson's Arthur—would have forgiven Guinevere. But she has not forgiven herself, and this is a strong redeeming point in her character; "shameless" is still the uncompromising epithet which she applies to herself, as in the Iliad, even in the presence of her husband and his guests.
They, too, have been wanderers since the fall of Troy, like the lost Ulysses. The king tells his own story before he interrogates his guest:—
He has grown rich in his travels, and would be happy, but for the thought of his brother Agamemnon's miserable end. Another grief, too, lies very close to his ​heart—the uncertainty which still shrouds the fate of his good comrade Ulysses.
The son is touched at the reminiscence, and drops a quiet tear, while for a moment he covers his eyes with his robe. It is at this juncture that Helen enters the hall. Her quick thought seizes the truth at once; as she had detected the father through his disguise of rags when he came as a spy into Troy, so now she recognises the son at once by his strong personal resemblance. Then Menelaus, too, sees the likeness, and connects it with the youth's late emotion. Young Pisistratus at once tells him who his friend is, and on what errand they are travelling together. Warm is the greeting which the King of Sparta bestows on the son of his old friend. There shall be no more lamentation for this night; all painful subjects shall be at least postponed until the morrow. But still, as the feast goes on, the talk is of Ulysses. Helen has learnt, too, in her wanderings, some of the secrets of Egyptian pharmacy. She has mixed in the wine a potent Eastern drug, which raises the soul above all care and sorrow—
The "Nepenthes" of Helen has obtained a wide poetical celebrity. Some allegorical interpreters of the poem would have us understand that it is the charms of conversation which have this miraculous power to make men forget their grief. Without at all questioning their efficacy, it may be safely assumed that the poet had in his mind something more material. The drug has been supposed to be opium; but the effects ascribed to the Arabian "haschich"—a preparation of hemp—correspond very closely with those said to be produced by Helen's potion. Sir Henry Halford thought it might more probably be the "hyoscyamus," which he says is still used at Constantinople and in the Morea under the name of "Nebensch."
Not till the next morning does Telemachus discuss with Menelaus the object of his journey. What little the Spartan king can tell him of the fate of his father is so far reassuring, that there is good hope he is yet alive. But he is—or was—detained in an enchanted island. There the goddess Calypso holds him an unwilling captive, and forces her love upon him. He longs sore for his home in Ithaca; but the spells of the enchantress are too strong. So much has Menelaus learnt, during his own wanderings, while wind-bound ​at Pharos in Egypt, from Proteus, "the old man of the sea"—
"Who knows all secret things in ocean pent."
The knowledge had to be forced from him by stratagem. Proteus was in the habit of coming up out of the sea at mid-day to sleep under the shadow of the rocks, with his flock of seals about him. Instructed by his daughter Eidothea—who had taken pity on the wanderers—Menelaus and some of his comrades had disguised themselves in seal-skins (though much disturbed, as he confesses, by the "very ancient and fish-like smell"), and had seized the ancient sea-god as he lay asleep on the shore. Proteus, like the genie in the Arabian tale, changed himself rapidly into all manner of terrible forms; but Menelaus held him fast until he was obliged to resume his own, when, confessing himself vanquished by the mortal, the god proceeded in recompense to answer his questions as to his own fate, and that of his companion chiefs, the wanderers on their way home from Troy. The transformations of Proteus have much exercised the ingenuity of the allegorists. The pliancy of such principles of interpretation becomes amusingly evident, when one authority explains to us that here are symbolised the wiles ​of sophistry—another, that it is the inscrutability of truth, ever escaping from the seeker's grasp; while others, again, see in Proteus the versatility of nature, the various ideals of philosophers, or the changes of the atmosphere. From such source had the king learnt the terrible end of his brother Agamemnon, and the ignoble captivity of Ulysses; but for himself, the favourite of heaven, a special exemption has been de-creed from the common lot of mortality. It is thus that Proteus reads the fates for the husband of Helen:—
The grand lines of Homer are thus grandly rendered by Abraham Moore. Homer repeats the description of the Elysian fields, the abode of the blest, in a subsequent passage of the poem, which has been translated almost word for word—yet as only a poet could translate it—by the Roman Lucretius. Mr Tennyson has the same great original before him when he makes his King Arthur see, in his dying thought,
The calm sweet music of these lines has charmed ​many a reader who never knew that the strain had held all Greece enchanted two thousand years ago. It has been scarcely possible to add anything to the quiet beauty of the original Greek, but the English poet has at least shown exquisite skill in the setting of the jewel. But Homer has always been held as common property by later poets. Milton's classical taste had previously adopted some of the imagery; the "Spirit" in the 'Masque of Comus' speaks of the happy climes which are his proper abode:—
Gladly would Menelaus have kept the son of his old comrade with him longer as a guest, but Telemachus is impatient to rejoin his galley, which waits for him at Pylos. His host reluctantly dismisses him, not without parting gifts; but the gift which the king would have had him take—a chariot and yoke of three swift horses —the island-prince will not accept. Ithaca has no room for horse-coursing, and he loves his rocky home all the better.
There is much consternation in the palace of Ulysses when the absence of Telemachus is at last discovered. ​Antinous and his fellow-revellers are struck with astonishment at the hold step he has suddenly taken, and with alarm at the possible result. Antinous will man a vessel at once, and waylay him in the straits on his return. The revelation of this plot to Penelope by Medon, the herald, one of the few faithful retainers of Ulysses' house, makes her for the first time aware of her son's departure; for old Eurycleia has kept her darling's secret safe even from his mother. In an agony of grief she sits down amidst her sympathising maidens, and bewails herself as "twice bereaved," of son and husband. She lifts her prayer to Minerva, and the goddess hears. When Penelope has wept herself to sleep, there stands at the head of her couch what seems the form of her sister Iphthimè, and assures her of her son's safety: he has a guardian about his path "such as many a hero would pray to have." Even in her dream, Penelope is half conscious of the dignity of her visitor; and, true wife that she is, she prays the vision to tell her something of her absent husband. But such revelation, the figure tells her, is no part of its mission, and so vanishes into thin air. The sleeper awakes—it is a dream indeed; but it has left a lightness and elasticity of spirit which the queen accepts as an augury of good to come.
* ↑ Probably the modern Coryphasium.
* ↑ See Hayman's Odyssey, I. 118, note.
* ↑ The Esquimaux adopt the very same stratagem in order to get near the seals. "Sir Edward Beecher, in a dissertation on Escmimaux habits read before the British Association, told a story, that he was once levelling his rifle at a supposed seal, when a shipmate's well-known voice from within the hide arrested his aim with the words, 'Don't shoot—it's Husky, sir!'"—Hayman's Odyssey, app. xliii.