And now let me return, as I said in Chapter IV. that I intended doing, to the very singular—for I do not like to say feminine—nature of the arrangements made by Minerva for her protégé in the matter of his voyage to Pylos and Lacedæmon.
When Minerva first suggested it to him, she knew that Ulysses was on the point of starting from Calypso's island for Scheria, and would be back in Ithaca almost immediately. Yet she must needs choose this particular moment, of all others, for sending Telemachus on a perilons voyage in quest of news concerning him. We have seen how she preached to him; but surely if Telemachus had known that she was all the time doing her very utmost to make his voyage useless, he might have retorted with some justice that whether he was going to be a fool henceforward or no, he should not make such a fool of any young friend of his own as she was now making of himself. Besides, he was to be away, if necessary, for twelve months; yet here before he has been gone more than four or five days, Minerva fills him with an agony of apprehension about his property and sends him post haste back to Ithaca again.
The authoress seems to have felt the force of this, for in xiii. 416-419 she makes Ulysses remonstrate with Minerva in this very sense, and ask:—
"Why did you not tell him, for you know all about it? Did you want him, too, to go sailing about amid all kinds of hardships when others were eating up his estate?"
Minerva answered, "Do not trouble yourself about him. I sent him that he might be well spoken about for having gone. He is in no sort of difficulty, but is staying comfortably with Menelaus, and is surrounded with abundance of every kind. The suitors have put out to sea and are on the watch for him, for they mean to kill him before he can got home. I do not much think they will succeed, but rather that some of those who are now eating up your estate will first find a grave themselves."
What she ought to have said was:—
"You stupid man, can you not understand that my poetess had set her heart on bringing Helen of Troy into her poem, and could not see her way to this without sending Telemachus to Sparta? I assure you that as soon as ever he had interviewed Helen and Menelaus, I took—or will take, for my poetess's chronology puzzles my poor head dreadfully—stops to bring him back at once."
At the end of Book iv. Penelope shows a like tendency to complain of the manner in which she is kept in the dark about information that might easily have been vouchsafed to her.
Minerva has sent her a vision in the likeness of her sister Ipthime. This vision comes to Penelope's bedside and tells her that her son shall come safely home again. She immediately says:—