THE STORY OF ODYSSEUS AND THE OXEN OF THE SUN
(Greek: From the “Odyssey”)
When Odysseus (called also Ulysses) one of the heroes of the Trojan war, was returning to his home in Ithaca, he had many adventures and suffered many hardships which caused him to be years making the voyage from Troy to Ithaca. One of these adventures was his visit to the Isle of the Sun, about which he had been warned by the goddess Circè. Odysseus himself tells how the ship in which he and his comrades were embarked entered the great deep and reached the Isle Æacea, where the Morning, child of Dawn, abides and holds her dances, and the Sun goes up from the earth. There they landed, and drew their galley up on the beach. After disembarking, they all lay down to sleep beside the sea and waited for the holy Moon to rise.
As soon as Circè, for this was the island where this goddess dwelt, heard that Odysseus and his comrades were there, she quickly attired herself and came down to the beach with her maids who followed, bringing bread and store of meats and generous wines. Then the wise goddess, standing in their midst, spake to them and said, “Take food and wine, and hold a feast to-day, and with the dawn of morning you shall sail away. I will show you the way, and point out to you all its dangers, so that you may not come to any harm through following false counsels, either on the land or on the water.” The confiding minds of Odysseus and his men were easily swayed by her counsels. So all that day they sat and banqueted upon the abundant meats and generous wines. And when the sun went down and darkness came, the crew lay down to sleep beside the moorings of the ship, and Circè, taking the hand of Odysseus, led him apart, made him sit down, and sitting before him made him tell all that he had seen.
Then she addressed him, saying, “Thus far all is well; now needfully attend to what I say, and may some deity help you to remember it.” She told him first about the Sirens’ haunt, which it would be difficult for him to pass, and then about the horrible rocks where Scylla and Charybdis dwelt, giving him instructions how to meet these dangers; then continuing she said, “In your voyage you will reach the Isle Trinacria, where in pastures belonging to the Sun many beeves and fatling sheep of his are fed—seven herds of oxen, and as many flocks of sheep, and fifty in each flock and herd. They never increase and they never die, and they are tended by two shepherdesses, goddesses with redundant locks. One is named Lampetia, the other Phaëthusa. If your desire be to return to Ithaca, your home, only leave these flocks and herds unharmed, and you and all your men will return, though after many toils. But if you rashly harm them, I foretell destruction to your ship and all its crew; and if you should escape, yet your return will be late and in sorrow, with all your comrades lost.”
As she finished speaking, the Morning on her golden throne looked forth; the glorious goddess went her way into the isle, and Odysseus went to his ship and bade the men embark and cast the hawsers loose. Straightway they all went on board, and duly manned the benches, smiting the hoary waters with their oars. Then Circè, amber-haired, the mighty goddess of the musical voice, sent a fair wind behind the dark-prowed ship, which gayly bore them company and filled the sails.
Odysseus then told the crew all that Circè, the amber-haired, had said to him. He warns them of the dangers to come, and how they may be escaped, first the Sirens, and the rocks where Scylla and Charybdis dwelt. They escaped these dangers, and approached the pleasant island of the Sun, where the oxen with broad, beautiful foreheads were grazing, and flocks of sheep, the fatlings of the god who makes the round of heaven. While yet at sea, Odysseus heard from his ship the lowing of the herds in the stables and the bleating of the flocks, and when he heard them he immediately thought of the words the blind seer, Tiresias of Thebes, had said to him, and those of Circè, by whom he had often been warned to shun the island of the god whose light is sweet to all. Then with a sorrowing heart he said to his companions, “My comrades, sufferers as you are, listen to me, and I shall disclose the oracles which lately Tiresias and Circè gave me. The goddess earnestly admonished me not to approach the island of the Sun, whose light is sweet to all, for there she said some great misfortune lay in wait for us. Now let us speed the ship and pass the isle.”
The hearts of the men were broken by this speech, and one of them, Eurylochus, bitterly replied, “How austere you are, Odysseus. You are exceedingly strong and no labor tires your limbs; they must be made of iron, since by your will you deny to us, overcome with toil and sleeplessness, the chance to tread the land again, and make a generous banquet in that island amid the waters. You would have us sail into the swiftly coming night, and stray far from the island, through the misty sea. By night the mighty winds spring up that make a wreck of ships; and how can one escape destruction, should a sudden hurricane rise from the south or the hard-blowing west, causing a ship to founder in the dark in spite of all the sovereign gods? Let us obey the dark-browed Night, and take our evening meal, remaining close beside our gallant bark, and go on board again when morning breaks, and enter the wide sea.” The others all approved, and Odysseus knew at once that some god was meditating evil against them, and he replied, “Eurylochus, you force me to your will since I am only one. Now all of you, bind yourselves to me firmly, by an oath, that if you here shall meet a herd of beeves or flock of sheep, you will not dare to slay a single ox or sheep, but feed contented on the stores that Circè gave.” The crew swore as Odysseus asked, and when the solemn oath was taken they brought the galley to land and moored it in a winding creek, beside a fountain of sweet water. They then stepped from the deck and made ready their evening meal. They ate and drank until their thirst and hunger were appeased, and then they thought of those whom Scylla had snatched from the galley’s deck and devoured, and wept until sleep stole softly over them amid their tears. Now came the third part of the night; the stars were sinking, when the cloud-compeller, Jove, sent forth a violent wind with eddying gusts, and covered both the earth and the sky with clouds, and darkness fell from heaven. When morning came, the rosy-fingered daughter of the Dawn, they drew the ship into a spacious bay. The home of the nymphs was there, and there they saw the smooth fair places where they danced. Then Odysseus called a council of his men and said to them, “My friends, in our good ship are food and drink; we must abstain from these beeves, lest we be made to suffer, for these herds and these fair flocks are sacred to a dreaded god, the Sun—the all-beholding and all-hearing Sun.” All were swayed full easily by what he said. Now for an entire month the gales blew from the south, and after that no wind save east and south. As long as they had the bread and wine Circè had given them, the men spared the beeves, moved by the love of life. But when the stores on board the galley were consumed, they roamed the island in their need, and sought for prey. They snared with baited hooks the fish and birds—whatever came to hand—till they were gaunt with famine.
Meanwhile, Odysseus withdrew apart within the isle to supplicate the gods, hoping one of them might reveal the way of his return. As he strayed into the land apart from all the rest, he found a sheltered nook where no wind came, and prayed with washed hands to all the gods who dwelt in heaven. At last he fell into a soft slumber. But Eurylochus, in the meantime, was beguiling the men with fatal counsels.
“Hear, my companions, sufferers as you are, the words that I shall speak. All modes of death are hateful to the wretched race of men; but this of hunger, thus to meet our fate, is the most fearful. Let us drive apart the best of all the oxen of the Sun, and sacrifice them to the immortal ones, who dwell in the broad heaven. And if we come to Ithaca, our country, we will there build to the Sun, whose path is o’er our heads, a sumptuous temple, and endow its shrine with many gifts and rare. But if it be his will, approved by all the other gods, to sink our bark in anger, for the sake of these high-horned oxen, I should choose sooner to gasp my life away amid the billows of the deep, than pine to death by famine in this melancholy isle.”
The crew approved of this, and now from the neighboring herd they drove the best of all the beeves; for near the dark-prowed ship the fair broad-fronted herd with crooked horns was feeding. The crew stood round the victims and, offering their petitions to the gods, held tender oak leaves in their hands, just plucked from a tall tree, for in the good ship’s hold there was left no more white barley. When they had prayed, and slain and dressed the beeves, they hewed away the thighs and covered them with double folds of skin, and laid raw slices over these. They had no wine to pour in sacrifice upon the burning flesh, so they poured water instead, and roasted all the entrails thus. When the thighs were thoroughly consumed, the entrails tasted, all the rest was carved into small portions, and transfixed with spits.
Just at this moment Odysseus awoke, and hurrying to the shore and his good ship, he perceived the savory steam from the burnt offering, and sorrowfully, then, he called upon the ever-living gods:—“O Father Jove, and all ye blessed gods, who live forever, ’twas a cruel sleep in which ye lulled me to my grievous harm. My comrades here have done a fearful wrong.”
Then Lampetia, of the trailing robes, flew in haste to the Sun, who journeys round the earth, to tell him that the men had slain his beeves.
In anger then he thus addressed the gods:
“O Father Jove, and all ye blessed gods who never die, avenge the wrong I bear upon the comrades of Laertes’ son, Odysseus, who have foully slain my beeves, in which I took delight whene’er I rose into the starry heaven, and when again I sank from heaven to earth. If they make not large amends for this great wrong, I shall go down to Hades, there to shine among the dead.”
And cloud-compelling Zeus replied: “Still shine, O Sun! among the deathless gods and mortal men, upon the nourishing earth. Soon will I cleave with a white thunder-bolt their galley in the midst of a black sea.”
When Odysseus came to the ship beside the sea, he spoke to them all sternly, man after man, yet he could think of no redress. The beeves were dead, and now the gods amazed them with prodigies. The skins moved and crawled, the flesh, both raw and roasted on the spits, lowed with the voice of oxen. Six whole days the men feasted, taking from the herd the Sun’s best oxen. When Jove brought the seventh day, the tempest ceased; the wind fell, and they straightway went on board. They set the mast upright, and, spreading the white sails, they ventured on the great wide sea again.
When they had left the isle and there appeared no other land, but only sea and sky, the son of Saturn (Jove) caused a lurid cloud to gather o’er the galley, and to cast its darkness on the ship. Not long the ship ran onward, ere the furious west wind rose and blew a hurricane. A strong blast snapped both ropes that held the mast; the mast fell back; the tackle dropped entangled to the hold; the mast in falling on the galley’s stem, dashed on the pilot’s head and crushed the bones, and from the deck he plunged like one who dives into the deep. His gallant spirit left the limbs at once. Jove thundered from on high, and sent a thunder-bolt into the ship, that, quaking with the fearful blow, and filled with stifling sulphur, shook the men off into the deep. They floated round the ship like sea mews; Jupiter had cut them off from their return.
Odysseus moved from place to place, still in the ship, until the tempest’s force parted the sides and keel. The naked keel was swept before the waves. The mast had snapped just at the base, but round it was a thong made of a bullock’s hide. With this Odysseus bound the mast and keel together. He took his seat upon them and the wild winds bore him on.