Ulysses follows his instructions aided by Minerva, who makes him invisible as he passes through the town and through the crowds of Phæacian guests who are feasting in the king’s palace. When he has reached the queen, the cloak of thick darkness falls off, and he is revealed to all present, kneeling at the feet of Queen Arete, to whom he makes his appeal. It has already been made apparent in a passage extolling her virtue at some length, but which I have not been able to quote, that Queen Arete is, in the eyes of the writer, a much more important person than her husband Alcinous.
Every one, of course, is very much surprised at seeing Ulysses, but after a little discussion, from which it appears that the writer considers Alcinous to be a person who requires a good deal of keeping straight in other matters besides clean linen, it is settled that Ulysses shall be fêted on the following day and then escorted home. Ulysses now has supper and remains with Alcinous and Arete after the other guests are gone away for the night. So the three sit by the fire while the servants take away the things, and Arete is the first to speak. She has been uneasy for some time about Ulysses’ clothes, which she recognized as her own make, and at last she says, “Stranger, there is a question or two that I should like to put to you myself. Who in the world are you? And who gave you those clothes? Did you not say you had come here from beyond the seas?”
Ulysses explains matters, but still withholds his name, nevertheless Alcinous (who seems to have shared in the general opinion that it was high time his daughter got married, and that, provided she married somebody, it did not much matter who the bridegroom might be) exclaimed, “By Father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, now that I see what kind of a person you are and how exactly our opinions coincide upon every subject, I should so like it if you would stay with us always, marry Nausicaa, and become my son-in-law.” Ulysses turns the conversation immediately, and meanwhile Queen Arete told her maids to put a bed in the corridor, and make it with red blankets, and it was to have at least one counterpane. They were also to put a woollen nightgown for Ulysses. “The maids took a torch, and made the bed as fast as they could: when they had done so they came up to Ulysses and said, ‘This way, sir, if you please, your room is quite ready’; and Ulysses was very glad to hear them say so.”
On the following day Alcinous holds a meeting of the Phæacians and proposes that Ulysses should have a ship got ready to take him home at once: this being settled he invites all the leading people, and the fifty-two sailors who are to man Ulysses’ ship, to come up to his own house, and he will give them a banquet—for which he kills a dozen sheep, eight pigs, and two oxen. Immediately after gorging themselves at the banquet they have a series of athletic competitions, and from this I gather the poem to have been written by one who saw nothing very odd in letting people compete in sports requiring very violent exercise immediately after a heavy meal. Such a course may have been usual in those days, but certainly is not generally adopted in our own.
At the games Alcinous makes himself as ridiculous as he always does, and Ulysses behaves much as the hero of the preceding afternoon might be expected to do—but on his praising the Phæacians towards the close of the proceedings Alcinous says he is a person of such singular judgment that they really must all of them make him a very handsome present. “Twelve of you,” he exclaims, “are magistrates, and there is myself—that makes thirteen; suppose we give him each one of us a clean cloak, a tunic, and a talent of gold,”—which in those days was worth about two hundred and fifty pounds.
This is unanimously agreed to, and in the evening, towards sundown, the presents began to make their appearance at the palace of King Alcinous, and the king’s sons, perhaps prudently as you will presently see, place them in the keeping of their mother Arete.
When the presents have all arrived, Alcinous says to Arete, “Wife, go and fetch the best chest we have, and put a clean cloak and a tunic in it. In the meantime Ulysses will take a bath.”
Arete orders the maids to heat a bath, brings the chest, packs up the raiment and gold which the Phæacians have brought, and adds a cloak and a good tunic as King Alcinous’s own contribution.
Yes, but where—and that is what we are never told—is the £250 which he ought to have contributed as well as the cloak and tunic? And where is the beautiful gold goblet which he had also promised?
“See to the fastening yourself,” says Queen Arete to Ulysses, “for fear anyone should rob you while you are asleep in the ship.”