Homer's Odyssey / A Commentary

by Denton Jaques Snider

Still, if the passage be an interpolation, this must have taken place early in the history of the poems. Pausanias the traveler declares that he saw the dancing scene of the Phæacians depicted upon the throne of Apollo at Amyclæ, the artist of which probably flourished about 600 B. C. The old philosopher Heraclitus, who would scourge Homer from the festivals of the Gods, doubtless had this passage in mind. Plato censures its indecency specially, and, as is well known, would exclude all Homer from his ideal Republic. The ancients thus accepted the passage as Homeric, with the exception of some of the later grammarians.

Next come the many attempts, old and new, to allegorize the Olympian scene, or to explain it away. From the fact that the sun keeps watch and is mentioned twice in this part, the latest school of mythologists, the comparative so-called, have taken much comfort, and have at once found in the whole a sun-myth. Some ancient expositors, according to Athenæus, interpreted it as a story written for the purpose of deterring the listeners from doing similar bad deeds, pointing to the punishment even of Gods herein designated; thus they sought to save the credit of Homer, treating him quite as some commentators have treated certain morally questionable stories in the Bible. Thus along down the ages to the present the loves of Venus and Mars have created trouble.

Undoubtedly the song has meaning and deserves a rational exposition. Has it any connection with the other songs of this Book, or with Homer in general? It is certainly a product of early Greek poesy; can it be organically jointed into anything before it and after it? The burlesque tone which it assumes towards certain Olympians has caused it to be connected with the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and with the war of the Gods in the Iliad (Book Twenty-First). Let us extend our horizon, and take a new look in various directions.

In the first place this song connects with Troy and the Iliad like the other two songs of Demodocus. The cause of the Trojan War and of its poem was the deed of Paris. The seducer, the wife, the husband—Paris, Helen, Manelaus—are the three central figures of the legend. Here this legend is thrown up among the Gods themselves, who furnish three corresponding characters—Mars, Venus, Vulcan. Then there is the wrong and the punishment of the wrong in both cases. Such is the theme of the Trojan War as it appears in the Iliad. Thus the three songs of Demodocus indicate a Pre-Iliad, an Iliad, and a Post-Iliad in due order.

In the second place one asks very emphatically: Why this present treatment of the Gods on Homer's part? But here we must make an important distinction. The Supreme God, Zeus, does not appear, nor does Juno nor does Pallas, indeed none of the Goddesses except the guilty one. The disgrace falls upon two mainly: Mars and Venus. In the Iliad they are Trojan deities hostile to the Greeks, and here the Greek poet serves them up together in an intermezzo, which makes them comic. Indeed the Greek Hero Diomed fights and puts down just these two Trojan deities in the Fifth Book of the Iliad. So must every Greek Hero at Troy conquer Mars and Venus (Violence and Lust, to give a suggestion of their purport) before Helen can be restored to home and country; he must put down the hostile city and its Gods. Note too, whither the Greek poet sends each of these deities after their release: Mars flies off to Thrace, a distant, barbarous country, beyond the borders of Hellas, where he can find his own; Venus on the contrary slips away southeastward to Cyprus inhabited by peoples Oriental or Orientalizing, and therein like Troy and herself. Both rush out of Greece with all speed; they belong somewhere in the outskirts of the Greek world.

We may now see why the Phæacians, without being so very wicked, could find an element in the song which they enjoyed. To them, with the Trojan War always in mind, this was the theme: the adulterous Trojan deities caught and laughed out of Olympus—those being the two deities who first misled by desire and then tried to keep by war the beautiful Helen, the Greek woman. Throwing ourselves back into his spirit, we may also see why Ulysses, the old war-horse from Troy, "was rejoiced in his heart, hearing the song" which degraded and burlesqued the Gods whom he had fought ten years, and who were, in part at least, the occasion of his wandering ten more. Venus and Mars did not find much sympathy in the Phæacian company, we may be sure. Why then regard them as Gods? The Greek deified everything; even the tendencies which he felt himself obliged to suppress had something of the divine in them. Calypso, whom Ulysses subordinated at last to the higher principle, was a Goddess; Troy, the hostile city, had its deities, whom the Greek recognised. Now its two chief deities are involved in a common shame, and flee from Olympus, flee almost outside of the Greek world. Certainly the audience could take some ethical satisfaction in that.

Then there is a third consideration different from the two preceding, both of which seek to look at the song from the ancient Greek standpoint. But from our modern standpoint it is also to be regarded. There is no doubt that we see here the beginning of the end of polytheism; the many Gods collide with one another, some are now put out and all will be finally put out; they are showing their finitude and transitoriness. Still further, we catch a glimpse of the sensuous side of Greek life, the excess of which at last brought death. Homer is the prophet of his people, when read with insight; he tells not only what they are, but hints what they are to become.

In general, we pass in this second part of the present Book as we have divided it, to the sensuous element of the Phæacian world, the inactive, quiet, self-indulgent phase, in decided contrast to the preceding part which shows a love of manly action in games and in war. Let us still further develop the twofold way in which this fact is brought out.

1. The second song of Demodocus has the general theme of the Trojan War and suggests the grand event of the aforetime. It manifestly carries the Trojan scission into Olympus and drives out in disgrace the Trojan deities. Vulcan, the wronged husband, is the divine artificer; he makes a network of chains which could not be broken, "like a spider's web, so fine that no one could see it, not even a God;" in this snare the guilty deities are caught, exposed, punished. These invisible, yet unbreakable chains have an ethical suggestion, and hint the law which is also to be executed on Olympus, as it was below in Troy. As Vulcan is the artist among the Gods, we are prompted to find also an artistic bearing in the scene; the artist catches the wrong-doers by his art and holds them fast in a marvelous net where they still lie, and shall lie for all time; even the intercession of Neptune cannot get them free. The scene is indeed caught out of the reality and holds to-day; the dashing, finely-uniformed son of Mars (so called at present) is most apt to win the heart of the gay, fashionable, beautiful daughter of Venus, have an escapade, and cause a scandal. Oft too they are caught in our modern, most adroitly woven spider's web, which goes under the name of newspaper, and held up, if not before a seeing Olympus, at least before a reading public, which not seldom indulges in conversation very much in the style of the Gods as here set forth. We moderns do not go to the market-place to hear such a strain, but have it brought to us in the Morning Journal. One advantage the Phæacian had: Arete and Nausicaa did not go to the market-place, where this song was sung, only men were there, but the print will enter the household where are wife and daughter. At any rate, we have to pronounce the song of Demodocus typical, universal, nay, ethical in spite of its light-hearted raillery, inasmuch as the deed is regarded as a breach of divine law, is exposed and punished, and the recompense for the release of the guilty pair, the penalty, is duly stated in accordance with law. Not every modern story-teller is so scrupulous, in meting out justice to ethical violation.

2. So much for the song; we turn again to the Phæacians, who are not now engaged in athletic, but in a milder sport, the dance. Youths moved their bodies in tune to the strain; still in Greece the dance and the song often go together. Then two danced alone without the song, but employed a ball, tossing it from one to the other, for the amusement of the spectators. A rhythmical movement of the body in the dance shows more internality than the athletic game, but it is less hardy, is more indicative of luxury and effeminacy.