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The The Humour of Homer
by
On the following day Alcinous holds a meeting of the Phaeacians and proposes that Ulysses should have a ship got ready to take him home at once: this being settled he invites all the leading people, and the fifty-two sailors who are to man Ulysses’ ship, to come up to his own house, and he will give them a banquet–for which he kills a dozen sheep, eight pigs, and two oxen. Immediately after gorging themselves at the banquet they have a series of athletic competitions, and from this I gather the poem to have been written by one who saw nothing very odd in letting people compete in sports requiring very violent exercise immediately after a heavy meal. Such a course may have been usual in those days, but certainly is not generally adopted in our own.
At the games Alcinous makes himself as ridiculous as he always does, and Ulysses behaves much as the hero of the preceding afternoon might be expected to do–but on his praising the Phaeacians towards the close of the proceedings Alcinous says he is a person of such singular judgment that they really must all of them make him a very handsome present. “Twelve of you,” he exclaims, “are magistrates, and there is myself–that makes thirteen; suppose we give him each one of us a clean cloak, a tunic, and a talent of gold,”–which in those days was worth about two hundred and fifty pounds.
This is unanimously agreed to, and in the evening, towards sundown, the presents began to make their appearance at the palace of King Alcinous, and the king’s sons, perhaps prudently as you will presently see, place them in the keeping of their mother Arete.
When the presents have all arrived, Alcinous says to Arete, “Wife, go and fetch the best chest we have, and put a clean cloak and a tunic in it. In the meantime Ulysses will take a bath.”
Arete orders the maids to heat a bath, brings the chest, packs up the raiment and gold which the Phaeacians have brought, and adds a cloak and a good tunic as King Alcinous’s own contribution.
Yes, but where–and that is what we are never told–is the 250 pounds which he ought to have contributed as well as the cloak and tunic? And where is the beautiful gold goblet which he had also promised?
“See to the fastening yourself,” says Queen Arete to Ulysses, “for fear anyone should rob you while you are asleep in the ship.”
Ulysses, we may be sure, was well aware that Alcinous’s 250 pounds was not in the box, nor yet the goblet, but he took the hint at once and made the chest fast without the delay of a moment, with a bond which the cunning goddess Circe had taught him.
He does not seem to have thought his chance of getting the 250 pounds and the goblet, and having to unpack his box again, was so great as his chance of having his box tampered with before he got it away, if he neglected to double-lock it at once and put the key in his pocket. He has always a keen eye to money; indeed the whole Odyssey turns on what is substantially a money quarrel, so this time without the prompting of Minerva he does one of the very few sensible things which he does, on his own account, throughout the whole poem.
Supper is now served, and when it is over, Ulysses, pressed by Alcinous, announces his name and begins the story of his adventures.
It is with profound regret that I find myself unable to quote any of the fascinating episodes with which his narrative abounds, but I have said I was going to lecture on the humour of Homer–that is to say of the Iliad and the Odyssey–and must not be diverted from my subject. I cannot, however, resist the account which Ulysses gives of his meeting with his mother in Hades, the place of departed spirits, which he has visited by the advice of Circe. His mother comes up to him and asks him how he managed to get into Hades, being still alive. I will translate freely, but quite closely, from Ulysses’ own words, as spoken to the Phaeacians.