The great Autolycus blessed Odysseus on departing, and gave him rich gifts of gold and priceless gems, and many words of sage advice. "I shall see thee no more," he said; "but thy name shall be spoken countless ages hence, and men shall say, 'How shrewd and far-seeing, brave in war, and wise in counsel, was Odysseus!'"
ADVENTURE VII.
AT OLD CHEIRON'S SCHOOL.
After a long, hard journey by land and sea, Odysseus and his tutor, with bold Echion, came to Iolcos. Aged Peleus, king of Phthia and the fertile plains of Iolcos, greeted them with show of heartiest welcome; for he remembered that Laertes had been his friend and comrade long years before, when together on the Argo they sailed the briny deep, and he was glad to see the son of that old comrade; and he took Odysseus by the hand, and led him into his palace, and gave him of the best of all that he had.
"Tarry with me for a month," he said. "My ships are now at sea, but they will return; and when the moon rises again full and round, as it did last night, I will send you safe to Corinth on the shores of the Bay of Crissa."
And so Odysseus and the bard staid a whole month at Iolcos, in the house of Peleus the king. There were feasting and merriment in the halls every day; and yet the time hung heavily, for the boy longed to re-behold his own loved Ithaca, and could hardly wait to see the moon grow full and round again.
"What mountain is that which looms up so grandly on our left, and whose sides seem covered with dark forests?" asked Odysseus one day, as he walked with his tutor beside the sea.
"It is famous Mount Pelion," said the bard; "and that other mountain with the steeper sides, which stands out faintly against the far horizon, is the scarcely less famed Ossa."
"I have heard my father speak of piling Pelion upon Ossa," said Odysseus, "but I cannot understand how that can be done."
"There were once two brothers, the tallest that the grain-giving earth has ever reared," said Phemius. "Their names were Otus and Ephialtes; and they threatened to make war even against the deathless ones who dwell on Mount Olympus. They boasted that they would pile Ossa on Olympus, and Pelion, with all its woods, upon the top of Ossa, that so they might make a pathway to the sky. And, had they lived to manhood's years, no one can say what deeds they would have done. But silver-bowed Apollo, with his swift arrows, slew the twain ere yet the down had bloomed upon their cheeks or darkened their chins with the promise of manhood. And so Pelion still stands beside the sea, and Ossa, in its own place, guards the lovely vale of Tempe."[1]