Homer's Odyssey / A Commentary

by Denton Jaques Snider

II.

Ulysses and his companions now had to use the oar on seas without wind; "their spirit was worn out," hope had fled from them toiling through the becalmed deep. They arrive at the land of the Læstrigonians, a race of giants, into whose narrow harbor surrounded by its high precipices the ships enter, with the exception of that of Ulysses, who has learned caution. A kind of cave of the Giant Despair is that harbor, reflecting outwardly the internal condition of the men, after their weary labor coupled with the repulse from Æolus.

First of all we here observe a city with a civil order; there is the place of assembly, a king over men, with a royal palace. No husbandry appears, but there are wagons fetching wood to town on a smooth road (probably a made road); shepherds are specially designated, so that we may suppose a pastoral life prevails, yet these people in their city are not roving nomads. The Family also is noticed, being composed of the king, queen, and daughter; the latter is bringing water from the town fountain—a primitive, idyllic touch. But the stress is manifestly not upon the domestic but the civil institution; the State is here in full operation, in which fact we mark the contrast with the preceding island, Æolia. Another sharp contrast may be drawn between the Læstrigonians and the Cyclops; the latter are giants also, but have no civil order.

Ulysses, therefore, witnesses the State, in due gradation after the Family. He can come to both these institutions now, and see them at least, for he has put down Polyphemus, who, we recollect, was the negation of both. But only see them, not share in them; the curse of the Cyclops is still working upon him and in him; though he destroy a destroyer, that does not make him positive; the devil destroys the wicked, but that does not make him good. Hence the State rejects him as did the Family; he is by no means ready to return to Ithaca and Penelope. Such is his experience at present.

But why should the Læstrigonians be portrayed as giants? Of course the Fairy Tale deals in these huge beings for its own purpose. Æolus and his children seem to have been of common stature. The fancy can often play into the meaning, or suggest a glimpse thereof. The State may be called the Big Man, the concentrated personality of many persons; he strikes hard, he overwhelms the wrong-doer. Therefore he seems now so terrible to Ulysses, and is really so to the latter's companions, of whom all perish here except one shipful. It is the function of the State to punish; in the sweet domestic life of Æolus, there was no punishment, only banishment; thus we behold now the penalty, at the hands of that institution which is specially to administer it. The companions did no wrong to the Læstrigonians, but note that just here judgment comes upon them. Ulysses escapes, but to him also these people appear as destroyers, as man-devouring cannibals; so the State often seems to the guilty, overwhelming the individual with its penal vengeance.

The Cyclops was also a giant and a cannibal, full of hostility; but mark the difference. He was the Strong Man of Nature, not human in shape, with that one eye in his head; his violence was against institutions, the violence of the wild barbarian, which has to be put down by man. But the Læstrigonians live in a civilized order which has to punish the transgressor; their shapes are not monstrosities of nature, but magnified human bodies. Both are giants and cannibals, both negative, but in a wholly different sense.

What is the location of the Læstrigonians? A subject much disputed recently and of old, with very little profit. Some expressions are puzzling: "The herdsman coming in greets the herdsman going out;" then again, "a herdsman needing no sleep would earn double wages," which implies apparently two periods for toil in twenty-four hours, the one "for tending cows" and the other "for tending sheep;" and this is possible, "for the paths of day and night are near" to each other, as if somehow day and night ran their courses together. What does it all mean? Some dim story of the polar world with its bright nights, which story may have come from the far North into Greece, along with another Northern product, amber, which was known to Homer, may lie at the basis of this curious passage. But we can hardly place the Læstrigonians under polar skies in spite of this polar characteristic. Others have sought their locality in the Black Sea and have even seen their harbor in that of Balaklava. All of which is uncertain enough, and destined to remain so, but furnishes a marvelous field for erudite conjecture and investigation. The certain matter here, and we should say the important one also, is the institutional order and its negative attitude toward Ulysses. That is, we must reach down and bring to light the ethical thread which is spun through this wonderful texture of Fairy Tales, before we have any real explanation, or connecting principle.

III.

Onward the wanderer, now with his single ship, has to sail again; whither next? He arrives at another island called Ææa, "where dwells the fair-haired Circe, an awful Goddess, endowed with a singing voice, own sister of the evil-minded wizard Æætes, both sprung of the Sun and of Perse, daughter of Oceanus."

This genealogy we have set down in full, as given by the poet, on account of its suggestiveness. These names carry us back to the East, quite to primitive Arya; here is the Sun, the God of the old Vedas; here is Perse, curiously akin to Persia, which was light-worshiping in her ancient religion; then we come to Æætes, father of Medea, usually held to be of Colchis on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea, whence we busily pass to Hellas in many a legend, and from Hellas we now have traveled far westward into Fairyland. One ancient story, probably the first, placed Circe in the remote East; another, this of Homer for example, sends her to the far West; a third united the two and told of the Flight of Circe upon the chariot of the Sun from Orient to Occident, which is doubtless a much later form of the tale, though ascribed to Hesiod. Circe is of a higher ancestry than Polyphemus, though both go back in origin to the sea with their island homes; she, however, is a child of the light-giving body, and will show her descent in the end. Her name is related to the circle, and hints the circling luminary, on whose car she is said to have fled once. Here in Homer, however, we may note an inner circle of development; she passes through a round of experience, and seems to complete a period of evolution. She must be grasped as a movement, as a cycle of character, if you please; she develops within, and this is the main fact of her portrayal.