Egressi, optata potiuntur Troes arena.
Supper followed, and sleep.
CHAPTER VIII.
HOMER’S MAGIC HERBS.
There are certain low-lying districts in southern Spain where the branched lily, or king’s spear, blooms in such profusion that whole acres, seen from a distance towards the end of March, show as if densely strewn with new-fallen snow. Just such in aspect must have been the abode of the Odyssean dead. There, along boundless asphodel plains, Odysseus watched Orion, a spectral huntsman pursuing spectral game: there Agamemnon denounced the treachery of Clytemnestra: there Ajax still nursed his wrath at the award of the Argive kings: there Achilles gnawed a shadowy heart in longing, on any terms, for action and the upper air: thither Hermes conducted the delinquent souls of the suitors of Penelope. A tranquil dwelling-place: where the stagnant air of apathy was stirred only by sighs of inane regret.
Homer’s asphodel grows only in the under-world, yet it is no mythical plant. It can be quite clearly identified with the Asphodelus ramosus,[[306]] now extensively used in Algeria for the manufacture of alcohol, and cultivated in our gardens for the sake of its tall spikes of beautiful flowers, pure white within and purple-streaked without along each of the six petals uniting at the base to form a deeply-indented starry corolla. The continual visits of pilfering bees attest a goodly store of honey; while the perfume spread over the northern shores of the Gulf of Corinth by the abundant growth of asphodel was said to have given their name, in some far-off century, to the Ozolians of Locris.
[306]. The daffodil has no other connexion with the asphodel than having unaccountably appropriated its name, through the old French affodille. It is a kind of narcissus, while the asphodel belongs to the lily tribe.
Introduced into England about 1551, it was succeeded, after forty-five years, by the yellow asphodel (Asphodelus luteus), of which already in 1633 Gerard in his Herbal reports ‘great plenty in our London gardens.’ Hence Pope’s familiarity with this kind, and his consequent matter-of-course identification of it with the classical flower in the lines,
By those happy souls who dwell
On yellow meads of asphodel: