[F] Of the personality of Homer, the maker of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," those great epic poems which were the common heritage of all Greeks, we have no knowledge. Tradition pictures him as blind and old. Seven cities claimed to be his birthplace. Probably he lived in the ninth century b.c., since the particular stages of social life which he portrays probably belong to that era. Beyond this, all is conjecture. The poems were not written down till a later date, when their authorship was already a matter of tradition; and when what we may call the canon of the text of the epics was laid down in the sixth century b.c., it may be readily supposed that they were not in the exact form which the master-poet himself had given them. Hence the ingenuity of the modern commentator has endeavoured to resolve Homer into an indefinite number of ballad-mongers, whose ballads were edited into their existing unity. On the whole, this view may be called Teutonic. Of the "Iliad," it suffices to say that it relates events immediately preceding the fall of Troy, at the close of the tenth year of the siege undertaken by the Greeks on account of the abduction of Helen from Menelaus by Paris. Of Chapman's translation we shall speak in the introduction to the "Odyssey."
[The Odyssey][G]
I.—How Ulysses Came to Phæacia, and of Nausicaa
Years had passed since the fall of Troy, yet alone Ulysses came not to his home in Ithaca. Therefore many suitors came to woo his wife Penelope, devouring his substance with riotous living, sorely grieving her heart, and that of her young son, Telemachus. But Ulysses the nymph Calypso had held for seven years an unwilling guest in the island of Ogygia. And now the gods were minded to bring home the man—
That wandered wondrous far, when he the town
Of sacred Troy had sacked and shivered down;
The cities of a world of nations
With all their manners, minds, and fashions
He was and knew; at sea felt many woes,
Much care sustained to save from overthrows
Himself and friends in their retreat for home;
But so their fates he could not overcome.
Then came Pallas Athene to Telemachus, and bade him take ship that he might get tidings of his sire. And he spake words of reproach to the company of suitors. To whom
Antinous only in this sort replied:
"High-spoken, and of spirit unpacified,
How have you shamed us in this speech of yours!
Will you brand us for an offence not ours?
Your mother, first in craft, is first in cause.
Three years are past, and near the fourth now draws,
Since first she mocked the peers Achaian;
All she made hope, and promised every man."
The suitors suffered Telemachus to depart, though they repented after; and he came with Athene, in disguise of Mentor, to Nestor at Pylos, and thence to Menelaus at Sparta, who told him how he had laid hold on Proteus, the seer, and learnt from him first of the slaying of his own brother Agamemnon; and, secondly, concerning Ulysses,
Laertes' son; whom I beheld
In nymph Calypso's palace, who compell'd
His stay with her, and since he could not see
His country earth, he mourned incessantly.