Mr. Wheeler had some difficulty in explaining certain inconsistencies in the poets.
Mr. Clarke quoted the remark of Achilles (?) concerning Elysium,—that a day of hard labor on earth was preferable to an eternity of pleasure in Elysian fields!
Margaret said that in Elysium, as in Tartarus, souls waited. These restless Greeks could do nothing. They were cut off from action, which was their delight. All their punishments seem to consist of frustrated effort,—the consequence of some presumption. Tantalus was ever thirsty and ever famished because he had aspired to nectar and ambrosia. Ixion, who would have scaled the heavens, was condemned to incessant revolution upon a wheel, which never paused yet never accomplished anything. The Danaides, who murdered the love which wooed them, were doomed to fill a broken vessel with water which as constantly escaped. Sisyphus, who had never labored except for a selfish end, was to roll a stone up hill, which as constantly rolled down,—fit emblem of all selfish labor. As for Tityrus, who sought to violate the secrets of Nature, the vulture fed always upon his entrails.
Wheeler said this did not represent frustrated effort.
Margaret said, No: this was remorse; but there was an admirable instance of the former given by Goethe, of a man who wove rope from the sedges which grew upon the banks of Lethe, for an ass who continually devoured it. The moral seemed to be that the ass could just as well have eaten them unwoven. Goethe goes on to say that the Greeks only thought that the poor man had a prodigal wife, but that the moderns would look deeper and see more in the fable.
We all weave sedges for asses to eat, thought I.
Margaret seemed to think that every heart might have an experience which would correspond to Tartarus. Every hero must visit it at least once.
I suggested Pluto, Persephone, the Fates, the Gorgons, the Furies, and Cerberus. Pluto was equal to Neptune and Jupiter.