On went the single ship till it came to the island of Aeaea, where Circe,
the dreadful daughter of the Sun, dwelt. She was deeply skilled in magic,
a haughty beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her parent, and
begot her and her brother Aeaetes (such another as herself) upon Perse,
daughter to Oceanus.
Here a dispute arose among Ulysses's men, which of them should go ashore
and explore the country; for there was a necessity that some should go to
procure water and provisions, their stock of both being nigh spent; but
their hearts failed them when they called to mind the shocking fate of
their fellows whom the Laestrygonians had eaten, and those which the foul
Cyclop Polyphemus had crushed between his jaws; which moved them so
tenderly in the recollection that they wept. But tears never yet supplied
any man's wants; this Ulysses knew full well, and dividing his men (all
that were left) into two companies, at the head of one of which was
himself, and at the head of the other Eurylochus, a man of tried courage,
he cast lots which of them should go up into the country, and the lot fell
upon Eurylochus and his company, two-and-twenty in number, who took their
leave, with tears, of Ulysses and his men that stayed, whose eyes wore the
same wet badges of weak humanity, for they surely thought never to see
these their companions again, but that on every coast where they should
come they should find nothing but savages and cannibals.
Eurylochus and his party proceeded up the country, till in a dale they
descried the house of Circe, built of bright stone, by the roadside.
Before her gate lay many beasts, as wolves, lions, leopards, which, by her
art, of wild, she had rendered tame. These arose when they saw strangers,
and ramped upon their hinder paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and his men,
who dreaded the effects of such monstrous kindness; and staying at the
gate they heard the enchantress within, sitting at her loom, singing such
strains as suspended all mortal faculties, while she wove a web, subtile
and glorious, and of texture inimitable on earth, as all the housewiferies
of the deities are. Strains so ravishingly sweet provoked even the sagest
and prudentest heads among the party to knock and call at the gate. The
shining gate the enchantress opened, and bade them come in and feast. They
unwise followed, all but Eurylochus, who stayed without the gate,
suspicious that some train was laid for them. Being entered, she placed
them in chairs of state, and set before them meal and honey, and Smyrna
wine, but mixed with baneful drugs of powerful enchantment. When they had
eaten of these, and drunk of her cup, she touched them with her charming-
rod, and straight they were transformed into swine, having the bodies of
swine, the bristles, and snout, and grunting noise of that animal; only
they still retained the minds of men, which made them the more to lament
their brutish transformation. Having changed them, she shut them up in her
sty with many more whom her wicked sorceries had formerly changed, and
gave them swine's food--mast, and acorns, and chestnuts--to eat.
[Illustration: _And straight they were transformed into swine_.]
Eurylochus, who beheld nothing of these sad changes from where he was
stationed without the gate, only instead of his companions that entered
(who he thought had all vanished by witchcraft) beheld a herd of swine,
hurried back to the ship, to give an account of what he had seen; but so
frighted and perplexed, that he could give no distinct report of anything,
only he remembered a palace, and a woman singing at her work, and gates
guarded by lions. But his companions, he said, were all vanished.
Then Ulysses, suspecting some foul witchcraft, snatched his sword and his
bow, and commanded Eurylochus instantly to lead him to the place. But
Eurylochus fell down, and, embracing his knees, besought him by the name
of a man whom the gods had in their protection, not to expose his safety,
and the safety of them all, to certain destruction.
"Do thou then stay, Eurylochus," answered Ulysses: "eat thou and drink in
the ship in safety; while I go alone upon this adventure: necessity, from
whose law is no appeal, compels me."
So saying, he quitted the ship and went on shore, accompanied by none;
none had the hardihood to offer to partake that perilous adventure with
him, so much they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly he pursued
his journey till he came to the shining gates which stood before her
mansion; but when he essayed to put his foot over her threshold, he was
suddenly stopped by the apparition of a young man, bearing a golden rod in
his hand, who was the god Mercury. He held Ulysses by the wrist, to stay
his entrance; and "Whither wouldest thou go?" he said, "O thou most erring
of the sons of men! knowest thou not that this is the house of great
Circe, where she keeps thy friends in a loathsome sty, changed from the
fair forms of men into the detestable and ugly shapes of swine? art thou
prepared to share their fate, from which nothing can ransom thee?" But
neither his words nor his coming from heaven could stop the daring foot of
Ulysses, whom compassion for the misfortune of his friends had rendered
careless of danger: which when the god perceived, he had pity to see
valour so misplaced, and gave him the flower of the herb _moly_, which is
sovereign against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly root, its
virtues but little known and in low estimation; the dull shepherd treads
on it every day with his clouted shoes; but it bears a small white flower,
which is medicinal against charms, blights, mildews, and damps. "Take this
in thy hand," said Mercury, "and with it boldly enter her gates; when she
shall strike thee with her rod, thinking to change thee, as she has
changed thy friends, boldly rush in upon her with thy sword, and extort
from her the dreadful oath of the gods, that she will use no enchantments
against thee; then force her to restore thy abused companions." He gave
Ulysses the little white flower, and, instructing him how to use it,
vanished.
When the god was departed, Ulysses with loud knockings beat at the gate of
the palace. The shining gates were opened, as before, and great Circe with
hospitable cheer invited in her guest. She placed him on a throne with
more distinction than she had used to his fellows; she mingled wine in a
costly bowl, and he drank of it, mixed with those poisonous drugs. When he
had drunk, she struck him with her charming-rod, and "To your sty!" she
cried; "out, swine! mingle with your companions!" But those powerful words
were not proof against the preservative which Mercury had given to
Ulysses; he remained unchanged, and, as the god had directed him, boldly
charged the witch with his sword, as if he meant to take her life; which
when she saw, and perceived that her charms were weak against the antidote
which Ulysses bore about him, she cried out and bent her knees beneath his
sword, embracing his, and said, "Who or what manner of man art thou? Never
drank any man before thee of this cup but he repented it in some brute's
form. Thy shape remains unaltered as thy mind. Thou canst be none other
than Ulysses, renowned above all the world for wisdom, whom the Fates have
long since decreed that I must love. This haughty bosom bends to thee. O
Ithacan, a goddess wooes thee to her bed."
[Illustration: '_Who or what manner of man art thou?_']
"O Circe," he replied, "how canst thou treat of love or marriage with one
whose friends thou hast turned into beasts? and now offerest him thy hand
in wedlock, only that thou mightest have him in thy power, to live the
life of a beast with thee, naked, effeminate, subject to thy will, perhaps
to be advanced in time to the honour of a place in thy sty. What pleasure
canst thou promise which may tempt the soul of a reasonable man? Thy
meats, spiced with poison; or thy wines, drugged with death? Thou must
swear to me that thou wilt never attempt against me the treasons which
thou hast practised upon my friends." The enchantress, won by the terror
of his threats, or by the violence of that new love which she felt
kindling in her veins for him, swore by Styx, the great oath of the gods,
that she meditated no injury to him. Then Ulysses made show of gentler
treatment, which gave her hopes of inspiring him with a passion equal to
that which she felt. She called her handmaids, four that served her in
chief, who were daughters to her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers,
and to her consecrated woods, to deck her apartments, to spread rich
carpets, and set out her silver tables with dishes of the purest gold, and
meat as precious as that which the gods eat, to entertain her guest. One
brought water to wash his feet, and one brought wine to chase away, with a
refreshing sweetness, the sorrows that had come of late so thick upon him,
and hurt his noble mind. They strewed perfumes on his head, and, after he
had bathed in a bath of the choicest aromatics, they brought him rich and
costly apparel to put on. Then he was conducted to a throne of massy
silver, and a regale, fit for Jove when he banquets, was placed before
him. But the feast which Ulysses desired was to see his friends (the
partners of his voyage) once more in the shapes of men; and the food which
could give him nourishment must be taken in at his eyes. Because he missed
this sight, he sat melancholy and thoughtful, and would taste of none of
the rich delicacies placed before him. Which when Circe noted, she easily
divined the cause of his sadness, and leaving the seat in which she sat
throned, went to her sty, and let abroad his men, who came in like swine,
and filled the ample hall, where Ulysses sat, with gruntings. Hardly had
he time to let his sad eye run over their altered forms and brutal
metamorphosis, when, with an ointment which she smeared over them,
suddenly their bristles fell off, and they started up in their own shapes,
men as before. They knew their leader again, and clung about him, with joy
of their late restoration, and some shame for their late change; and wept
so loud, blubbering out their joy in broken accents, that the palace was
filled with a sound of pleasing mourning, and the witch herself, great
Circe, was not unmoved at the sight. To make her atonement complete, she
sent for the remnant of Ulysses's men who stayed behind at the ship,
giving up their great commander for lost; who when they came, and saw him
again alive, circled with their fellows, no expression can tell what joy
they felt; they even cried out with rapture, and to have seen their
frantic expressions of mirth a man might have supposed that they were just
in sight of their country earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only
Eurylochus would hardly be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders, for
he remembered with a kind of horror how his companions had vanished from
his sight.
Then great Circe spake, and gave order that there should be no more
sadness among them, nor remembering of past sufferings. For as yet they
fared like men that are exiles from their country, and if a gleam of mirth
shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with the thought of their
helpless and homeless condition. Her kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses
and the rest, and they spent twelve months in all manner of delight with
her in her palace. For Circe was a powerful magician, and could command
the moon from her sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its place to make
it dance for their diversion, and by the help of her illusions she could
vary the taste of pleasures, and contrive delights, recreations, and jolly
pastimes, to "fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious
year as in a delightful dream."
At length Ulysses awoke from the trance of the faculties into which her
charms had thrown him, and the thought of home returned with tenfold
vigour to goad and sting him; that home where he had left his virtuous
wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus. One day when Circe had been
lavish of her caresses, and was in her kindest humour, he moved her
subtly, and as it were afar off, the question of his home-return; to which
she answered firmly, "O Ulysses, it is not in my power to detain one whom
the gods have destined to further trials. But leaving me, before you
pursue your journey home, you must visit the house of Ades, or Death, to
consult the shade of Tiresias the Theban prophet; to whom alone, of all
the dead, Proserpine, queen of hell, has committed the secret of future
events: it is he that must inform you whether you shall ever see again
your wife and country." "O Circe," he cried, "that is impossible: who
shall steer my course to Pluto's kingdom? Never ship had strength to make
that voyage." "Seek no guide," she replied; "but raise you your mast, and
hoist your white sails, and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind
shall waft you through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the
ocean and come to where grow the poplar groves and willows pale of
Proserpine: where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their
waves. Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and
make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, and
wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and turn away
thy face while thou pourest in, and the dead shall come flocking to taste
the milk and the blood; but suffer none to approach thy offering till thou
hast inquired of Tiresias all which thou wishest to know."
He did as great Circe had appointed. He raised his mast, and hoisted his
white sails, and sat in his ship in peace. The north wind wafted him
through the seas, till he crossed the ocean, and came to the sacred woods
of Proserpine. He stood at the confluence of the three floods, and digged
a pit, as she had given directions, and poured in his offering--the blood
of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, milk, and honey, and wine; and the
dead came to his banquet; aged men, and women, and youths, and children
who died in infancy. But none of them would he suffer to approach, and dip
their thin lips in the offering, till Tiresias was served, not though his
own mother was among the number, whom now for the first time he knew to be
dead, for he had left her living when he went to Troy, and she had died
since his departure, and the tidings never reached him; though it irked
his soul to use constraint upon her, yet in compliance with the injunction
of great Circe he forced her to retire along with the other ghosts. Then
Tiresias, who bore a golden sceptre, came and lapped of the offering, and
immediately he knew Ulysses, and began to prophesy: _be denounced woe to
Ulysses--woe, woe, and many sufferings--through the anger of Neptune for
the putting out of the eye of the sea-god's son. Yet there was safety
after suffering, if they could abstain from slaughtering the oxen of the
Sun after they landed in the Triangular island. For Ulysses, the gods had
destined him from a king to become a beggar, and to perish by his own
guests, unless he slew those who knew him not_.
[Illustration: _And the dead came to his banquet_.]
This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that Tiresias was empowered
to unfold, or else there was no longer place for him; for now the souls of
the other dead came flocking in such numbers, tumultuously demanding the
blood, that freezing horror seized the limbs of the living Ulysses, to see
so many, and all dead, and he the only one alive in that region. Now his
mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint from her son, and now
she knew him to be her son, and inquired of him why he had come alive to
their comfortless habitations. And she said that affliction for Ulysses's
long absence had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave.
Ulysses's soul melted at her moving narration, and forgetting the state of
the dead, and that the airy texture of disembodied spirits does not admit
of the embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about her to clasp
her: the poor ghost melted from his embrace, and, looking mournfully upon
him, vanished away.
Then saw he other females: Tyro, who when she lived was the paramour of
Neptune, and by him had Pelias and Neleus. Antiope, who bore two like sons
to Jove, Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes. Alcmena, the mother of
Hercules, with her fair daughter, afterwards her daughter-in-law, Megara.
There also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and wife of
Oedipus; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with her son, and when she had
discovered the unnatural alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself. He
continued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted by the dreadful
Furies. There was Leda, the wife of Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful
Helen, and of the two brave brothers Castor and Pollux, who obtained this
grace from Jove, that, being dead, they should enjoy life alternately,
living in pleasant places under the earth. For Pollux had prayed that his
brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son of Tyndarus, should
partake of his own immortality, which he derived from an immortal sire.
This the Fates denied; therefore Pollux was permitted to divide his
immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living alternately.
There was Iphimedia, who bore two sons to Neptune that were giants, Otus
and Ephialtes: Earth in her prodigality never nourished bodies to such
portentous size and beauty as these two children were of, except Orion. At
nine years old they had imaginations of climbing to heaven to see what the
gods were doing; they thought to make stairs of mountains, and were for
piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting Pelion upon that, and had perhaps
performed it, if they had lived till they were striplings; but they were
cut off by death in the infancy of their ambitious project. Phaedra was
there, and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and
Maera, and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.
But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, the
mighty leader of all the host of Greece and their confederate kings that
warred against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little of the blood at
that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was moved with compassion to see him
among them, and asked him what untimely fate had brought him there, if
storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or if he had perished in some
mutiny by his own soldiers at a division of the prey.
"By none of these," he replied, "did I come to my death; but slain at a
banquet to which I was invited by Aegisthus after my return home. He
conspiring with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my destruction,
training me forth to a banquet as an ox goes to the slaughter, and, there
surrounding me, they slew me with all my friends about me.
"Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows which she swore to me
in wedlock, would not lend a hand to close my eyes in death. But nothing
is so heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill her spouse
that married her a maid. When I brought her home to my house a bride, I
hoped in my heart that she would be loving to me and to my children. Now,
her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion on her whole sex. Blessed
husbands will have their loving wives in suspicion for her bad deeds."
"Alas!" said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality in your royal house of
Atreus, and that they are hated of Jove for their wives. For Helen's sake,
your brother Menelaus's wife, what multitudes fell in the wars of Troy!"
Agamemnon replied, "For this cause be not thou more kind than wise to any
woman. Let not thy words express to her at any time all that is in thy
mind, keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any bloody
contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall. Exceeding wise she is,
and to her wisdom she has a goodness as eminent; Icarius's daughter,
Penelope the chaste: we left her a young bride when we parted from our
wives to go to the wars, her first child sucking at her breast, the young
Telemachus, whom you shall see grown up to manhood on your return, and he
shall greet his father with befitting welcomes. My Orestes, my dear son, I
shall never see again. His mother has deprived his father of the sight of
him, and perhaps will slay him as she slew his sire. It is now no world to
trust a woman in. But what says fame? is my son yet alive? lives he in
Orchomen, or in Pylus, or is he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court?
As yet, I see, divine Orestes is not here with me."
To this Ulysses replied that he had received no certain tidings where
Orestes abode, only some uncertain rumours which he could not report for
truth.
While they held this sad conference, with kind tears striving to render
unkind fortunes more palatable, the soul of great Achilles joined them.
"What desperate adventure has brought Ulysses to these regions," said
Achilles; "to see the end of dead men, and their foolish shades?"
Ulysses answered him that he had come to consult Tiresias respecting his
voyage home. "But thou, O son of Thetis," said he, "why dost thou
disparage the state of the dead? Seeing that as alive thou didst surpass
all men in glory, thou must needs retain thy pre-eminence here below: so
great Achilles triumphs over death."
But Achilles made reply that he had much rather be a peasant slave upon
the earth than reign over all the dead. So much did the inactivity and
slothful condition of that state displease his unquenchable and restless
spirit. Only he inquired of Ulysses if his father Peleus were living, and
how his son Neoptolemus conducted himself.
Of Peleus Ulysses could tell him nothing; but of Neoptolemus he thus bore
witness: "From Scyros I convoyed your son by sea to the Greeks: where I
can speak of him, for I knew him. He was chief in council, and in the
field. When any question was proposed, so quick was his conceit in the
forward apprehension of any case, that he ever spoke first, and was heard
with more attention than the older heads. Only myself and aged Nestor
could compare with him in giving advice. In battle I cannot speak his
praise, unless I could count all that fell by his sword. I will only
mention one instance of his manhood. When we sat hid in the belly of the
wooden horse, in the ambush which deceived the Trojans to their
destruction, I, who had the management of that stratagem, still shifted my
place from side to side to note the behaviour of our men. In some I marked
their hearts trembling, through all the pains which they took to appear
valiant, and in others tears, that in spite of manly courage would gush
forth. And to say truth, it was an adventure of high enterprise, and as
perilous a stake as was ever played in war's game. But in him I could not
observe the least sign of weakness, no tears nor tremblings, but his hand
still on his good sword, and ever urging me to set open the machine and
let us out before the time was come for doing it; and when we sallied out
he was still first in that fierce destruction and bloody midnight
desolation of king Priam's city."
This made the soul of Achilles to tread a swifter pace, with high-raised
feet, as he vanished away, for the joy which he took in his son being
applauded by Ulysses.
A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses knew to be the ghost of Ajax, his
opponent, when living, in that famous dispute about the right of
succeeding to the arms of the deceased Achilles. They being adjudged by
the Greeks to Ulysses, as the prize of wisdom above bodily strength, the
noble Ajax in despite went mad, and slew himself. The sight of his rival
turned to a shade by his dispute so subdued the passion of emulation in
Ulysses that for his sake he wished that judgment in that controversy had
been given against himself, rather than so illustrious a chief should have
perished for the desire of those arms which his prowess (second only to
Achilles in fight) so eminently had deserved. "Ajax," he cried, "all the
Greeks mourn for thee as much as they lamented for Achilles. Let not thy
wrath burn forever, great son of Telamon. Ulysses seeks peace with thee,
and will make any atonement to thee that can appease thy hurt spirit." But
the shade stalked on, and would not exchange a word with Ulysses, though
he prayed it with many tears and many earnest entreaties. "He might have
spoke to me," said Ulysses, "since I spoke to him; but I see the
resentments of the dead are eternal."
Then Ulysses saw a throne on which was placed a judge distributing
sentence. He that sat on the throne was Minos, and he was dealing out just
judgments to the dead. He it is that assigns them their place in bliss or
woe.
Then came by a thundering ghost, the large-limbed Orion, the mighty
hunter, who was hunting there the ghosts of the beasts which he had
slaughtered in desert hills upon the earth. For the dead delight in the
occupations which pleased them in the time of their living upon the earth.
There was Tityus suffering eternal pains because he had sought to violate
the honour of Latona, as she passed from Pytho into Panopeus. Two vultures
sat perpetually preying upon his liver with their crooked beaks; which as
fast as they devoured, is forever renewed; nor can he fray them away with
his great hands.
There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, standing up to his chin in
water, which he can never taste, but still as he bows his head, thinking
to quench his burning thirst, instead of water he licks up unsavory dust.
All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of delicious flavor, hang in ripe
clusters about his head, seeming as though they offered themselves to be
plucked by him; but when he reaches out his hand, some wind carries them
far out of his sight into the clouds; so he is starved in the midst of
plenty by the righteous doom of Jove, in memory of that inhuman banquet at
which the sun turned pale, when the unnatural father served up the limbs
of his little son in a dish, as meat for his divine guests.
There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labours. His punishment is, to
be forever rolling up a vast stone to the top of a mountain, which, when
it gets to the top, falls down with a crushing weight, and all his work is
to be begun again. He was bathed all over in sweat, that reeked out a
smoke which covered his head like a mist. His crime had been the revealing
of state secrets.
There Ulysses saw Hercules--not that Hercules who enjoys immortal life in
heaven among the gods, and is married to Hebe or Youth; but his shadow,
which remains below. About him the dead flocked as thick as bats, hovering
around, and cuffing at his head: he stands with his dreadful bow, ever in
the act to shoot.
There also might Ulysses have seen and spoken with the shades of Theseus,
and Pirithous, and the old heroes; but he had conversed enough with
horrors; therefore, covering his face with his hands, that he might see no
more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and pushed off. The bark
moved of itself without the help of any oar, and soon brought him out of
the regions of death into the cheerful quarters of the living, and to the
island of Aeaea, whence he had set forth.
Read next: CHAPTER THREE - The Song of the Sirens--Scylla and Charybdis--The Oxen of the Sun--The Judgment--The Crew Killed by Lightning.
Read previous: CHAPTER ONE - The Cicons--The Fruit of the Lotus-tree--Polyphemus and the Cyclops--The Kingdom of the Winds, and God Aeolus's Fatal Present--The Laestrygonian Man-eaters.
Table of content of Adventures Of Ulysses
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
