§ 4
But the individuals who are admitted to an everlasting life in the Elysian land at the end of the world are much too distantly removed from the habitations of the living for them to be credited with the power of influencing the world of men.[23] They resemble the gods only in the enjoyment accorded to them of an unendingly conscious life. Of the omnipotence of [62] the gods they have not the smallest share[24] any more than the dwellers in Erebos, from whose fate their own is otherwise so different. We must not suppose, therefore, that the origin of the stories of the promotion of individual heroes above their companions and their translation into a distant dwelling-place, is to be sought in any cultus offered to those individuals in their previous earthly dwelling-place. Every religious cult is the worship of something real and powerful; no popular religion and no poet’s fancy would have given the national heroes, if they were to be regarded as powerful and worshipped accordingly, such a distant and inaccessible home.
It was the free activity of the poetic fancy which created and embellished this last refuge of human aspiration upon the Elysian plain. The needs which this new creation was chiefly intended to satisfy were poetical and not religious.
The atmosphere of the younger of the two Homeric epics already differs widely from that of its older companion, the Iliad, with its heroic delight in the untiring manifestation of vital energy. It is likely that the feelings of the conquerors of a new home upon the Asiatic coast may have differed considerably from those of the same people confirmed in undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their conquests. It seems as if the Odyssey reflected the temper and aspiration of these Ionian city-dwellers of a later time. A spirit of contentment and leisure seems to flow like an undercurrent through the whole poem, and has made for itself a haven of rest in the midst of the busy action of the story. When the poet’s own feelings find their true expression they show us idyllic scenes of quiet enjoyment of daily life; magnificent in the country of the Phæacians, gay and more homely at the farm of Eumaios; pictures of quiet repose after the fights of the heroic past, that have now faded into a mere pleasant memory, such as we get in the house of Nestor, or in the Palace of Menelaos and the regained Helen. Or, again, we have a description of nature in a mood of liberality and gentleness, as upon the island of Syriê, the home of Eumaios’ childhood, upon which in ample possession of cattle, wine and corn, a people live free from necessity and pain, till they arrive at a good old age when Apollo and Artemis with their gentlest shafts bring swift death to them (Od. xv, 403 ff.). If you ask the poet where this fortunate island lies he will tell you that it lies over there beyond Ortygiê where the sun turns back. But where is Ortygiê,[25] and who can point out the place where the sun begins his return journey far in the West? The country of idyllic happiness lies indeed almost beyond [63] the limit of this world. Phœnician merchant-men who go everywhere may perhaps reach that land as well (415 ff.), and Ionian seamen in this earliest period of Greek colonization into which the composition of the Odyssey reaches may well have hoped to find far out over the sea such propitious habitations of a new life.
In the same way the country and the life of the Phæacians seem like an ideal picture of an Ionian state newly founded in a distant land far from the turmoil, the restless competition, and all the limitations of their familiar Greek homes. But this unclouded dream-picture, bathed in purest light, lies far away in a distant land all but inaccessible to man. Only by chance is a strange ship cast away on to that coast, and at once the magic ships of the Phæacians carry back the stranger through night and cloud to his own home again. True, there is no reason to see in the Phæacians a sort of ferry-people of the dead, neighbours of the Elysian fields. Still, the poetic fancy which invented the country of the Phæacians is not unrelated to that which gave rise to the idea of an Elysian plain beyond the bounds of the inhabited world. Given the idea that a life of untroubled bliss can only be had in the remotest confines of the earth, jealously guarded from all intrusion, only one more step remains to be taken before men come to believe that such bliss is really only to be found where neither accident nor purpose can ever bring men, more remote even than the Phæacians, than the country of the Æthiopians, the beloved of the gods, or than the Abioi of the North, already known to the Iliad. It must lie beyond the bounds of real life. Such idyllic longings have given rise to the picture of Elysium. The happiness of those who there enjoy everlasting life seemed to be fully safeguarded only if their place of abode were removed for ever beyond the range of all exploration, out of reach of all future discovery. This happiness is imagined as a condition of perfect bliss under the most benignant sky; easy and untroubled says the poet, is the life of men there, in this resembling the life of the gods, but at the same time without aspiration and without activity. It is doubtful whether the poet of the Iliad would have considered such a future worthy of his heroes, or given the name of happiness to such felicity as this.