Ulysses, having told us who he is, proceeds to inform us of a second important fact: his soul's strongest aspiration. He longs to return to home and country. Ithaca, a small, rocky island, is the sweetest spot on earth to him; Circe and then Calypso tried to detain him, each wishing to keep him as husband; "but they could not shake the purpose of my heart." One thinks that he must, while saying this, have cast a sly glance at Arete, for whose approval it must have been intended, for she was no friend of Circe and Calypso.
It is a curious fact that Homer, in this short description, makes two mistakes in reference to the topography of Ithaca. The island can hardly be called low as here stated, nor does it lie westward of Cephallenia, but northeastward. A reasonable inference is that Homer was not an Ithacan, and did not know the island very well, though he may have seen it in a passing visit. Anaximander with his first map comes after Homer several hundred years.
The present Book has three plainly marked portions. First comes the wanton attack on the Ciconians, which connects immediately with the Trojan experience of Ulysses. Second is the country of the Lotus-eaters, to which he and his companions are driven by wind and storm. Third is the Land of the Cyclops, especially of Polyphemus, with whom he has his chief adventures. The first two portions are quite brief, are in fact introductory to the third, which takes up more than four-fifths of the Book, and is the Fairy Tale proper. We may observe the gradual transition: the Ciconians are a real people in geography and history; the Lotus-eaters are getting mythical, are but half-way historical; the Cyclops belong wholly to Fableland. Thus there is a movement out of the Trojan background of reality into the Fairy World.
Having marked the dividing lines, the next thing will be to find the connecting links between these three portions. They are not thrown together haphazard or externally joined into one Book; they have an internal thought which unifies them and which must be brought to light. The poet sees in images which are separate, but the thinker must unite these images by their inner necessity, and thus justify anew the poet.
I.
The first sentence strikes the leading thought: "The wind, bearing me from Troy, brought me to the Ciconians." Troy is the starting-point, the background out of which everything moves. After the fall of the city Nestor gives an account of the disputes of the Greek leaders and their separation (Book III. l. 134 et seq.); Ulysses is driven alone with his contingent across the sea toward Thrace, where he finds a city in peace, though it had been an ally of Troy. "I sacked the city, I destroyed its people;" he treated them as he did the Trojans, "taking as booty their wives and property." Such is the spirit begotten of that ten years' war in the character of Ulysses, a spirit of violence and rapine, totally unfitted for a civilized life, at bottom negative to Family and State. This is the spiritual starting-point from which he is to return to home and country through a long, long, but very needful discipline.
He is well aware that he has done something for which vengeance awaits him, so he urges his companions to flee at once. But they would not obey, they stayed there "drinking much wine and slaughtering sheep and oxen along the sea-shore." Revel and feasting follow, till the Ciconians rouse the outlying neighbors and drive the Greeks to the ships, with the loss of six companions for each ship. Such is the first incident after the Trojan War, showing clearly the destructive phase thereof, which has been drilled into the character by so long a period of bloodshed.
This is not yet Fairyland, but a real people and a real conflict. The Ciconians in the later historic time of Herodotus still dwelt in Thrace. Grotius in his famous book On the Rights of Peace and War cites the present instance as a violation of international justice. The grand positive ground of attacking Troy is not found here; there was no Helen detained in wrongful captivity. The sack of Ismarus pictures the evil results which spring from all war, even the most just. Again we must affirm that this deed of wrongful violence is the start toward the great Return, and hints what has to be overcome internally by the journey through Fairyland.
Later we find a fact, not here mentioned, pertaining to the sack of the city of the Ciconians. Ulysses had saved Maron, the priest of Apollo, who in gratitude gave him the strong wine with which he overcame Polyphemus in the cave. His merciful deed thus helped him conquer the monster of nature. But in general it is plain that Ulysses, though desiring to get back to an institutional life, is not ready by any means for such a step; he is in reality hostile to the very essence of institutional life. He is too much like the suitors now to be their punisher.
All put to sea again, to be tossed on that unruly element, with their little vessels exposed to wind and wave. "They call thrice by name each one of their dead companions" ere they set out; the meaning of this invocation has been much discussed, but it probably rests upon the belief that they could thus call the souls of the deceased to go along with them to home and country. The fact that just six were lost from each ship was made the ground of an assault upon Homer in antiquity by Zoilus, famed as the Homeromastix, or Homer's trouncer.