From the adventure in the Ææan isle, as from so many others, Odysseus came out unscathed. But it was not without high moral necessity that he passed through them. The leading motive of his character is, in fact, found in his multiform experience. He is appointed to see and to suffer all that comes within the scope of Greek humanity. No vicissitudes, no perils are spared him. Protection from the extremity of evil must and does content him. For his keen curiosity falls in with the design of his celestial patroness, in urging him to drink to the dregs the costly draught of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet it is to be noted that from the house of the enchantress there is no exit save through the gates of hell.
Within the spacious confines of the universe there is perhaps but one race of beings whose implanted instincts and whose visible destiny are irreconcilably at war. Man is born to suffer; but suffering has always for him the poignancy of surprise. The long record of multiform tribulation which he calls his history, has been moulded, throughout its many vicissitudes, by a keen and ceaseless struggle for enjoyment. Each man and woman born into the world looks afresh round the horizon of life for pleasure, and meets instead the ever fresh outrage of pain. Our planet is peopled with souls disinherited of what they still feel to be an inalienable heritage of happiness. No wonder, then, that quack-medicines for the cure of the ills of life should always have been popular. Of such nostrums, the famous Homeric drug nepenthes is an early example, and may serve for a type.
We read in the Odyssey that Telemachus had no sooner reached man’s estate than he set out from Ithaca for Pylos and Lacedæmon, in order to seek news of his father from Nestor and Menelaus, the two most eminent survivors of the expedition against Troy. But he learned only that Odysseus had vanished from the known world. The disappointment was severe, even to tears, notwithstanding that the banquet was already spread in the radiant palace of the Spartan king. The remaining guests, including the illustrious host and hostess, caught the infection of grief, and the pleasures of the table were over-clouded.
Then Helena the child of Zeus strange things
Devised, and mixed a philter in their wine,
Which so cures heartache and the inward stings,
That men forget all sorrow wherein they pine.
He who hath tasted of the draught divine
Weeps not that day, although his mother die
And father, or cut off before his eyne