“Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said—‘We will return no more:’
And all at once they sang—‘Our island-home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.’”[35]
It has been thought that here we have possibly the bread-fruit tree of the South Sea Islands, with some hint of the effect produced by their soft and enervating climate, and that the voyage of Ulysses anticipated in some degree the discoveries of Anson and Cook. It is curious that, in Cook’s case, the seductions of those islands gave him the same trouble as they did Ulysses; for several of his crew thought, like the Greek sailors, that they had found an earthly paradise for which they determined to forget home and country, and had to be brought back to their ship by force. But the lotus-land of the poet is an ideal shore, to which some of us moderns may have travelled as well as Ulysses. Its deepest recesses will have been reached by the Buddhist who attains his coveted state of perfect beatitude, the “Nirvâna,” in which a man has found out that all having and being, and more especially doing, are a mistake. It is the dolce far niente of the Italian; the region free from all cares and responsibilities—“beyond the domain of conscience”—which Charles Lamb, half in jest and half in earnest, sighed for.
Bearing away from the shore of the Lotus-eaters, Ulysses and his crew next reached the island where the Cyclops dwell—a gigantic tribe of rude shepherds, monsters in form, having but one eye planted in the centre of their foreheads, who know neither laws, nor arts, nor commerce. Adventure and discovery have always a charm for Ulysses; and it was with no other motive, as he pretty plainly confesses, that he landed with his own ship’s crew to explore these unknown regions. The present adventure had a horrible conclusion for some of his companions. Alone, in a vast cave near the shore, dwelt the giant Polyphemus, a son of Neptune the sea-god, and folded his flocks in its deep recesses. They did not find the monster within: but the pails of brimming milk, and huge piles of cheese, stood ranged in order round the walls of the cavern. Nothing would satisfy Ulysses but to await the owner’s return. At evening he came, driving his flocks before him; and, as was his wont, began to busy himself in his dairy operations. By the red glow of the firelight he soon discovered the intruders, as they crouched in a corner. In vain they made appeal to his hospitality, reminding him that strangers were under the special care of Jupiter. What care the Cyclops race for the gods? So he seized two of the unhappy Greeks, dashed them on the ground—“like puppies”—devoured them, blood, bones, and all, after the manner of giants, and washed down his horrible supper with huge bowls of milk. Two more furnished him with breakfast in the morning. But the craft of Ulysses was more than a match for the savage. He had carried with him on his dangerous expedition (having a kind of presentiment that it would prove useful) a skin of wine of rare quality and potency, and of this he gave Polyphemus to drink after his last cannibal meal. Charmed with the delicious draught, the giant begged to know his benefactor’s name. The answer of Ulysses is the oldest specimen on record of the art of punning.
“‘Hear then; my name is Noman. From of old
My father, mother, these my comrades bold,
Give me this title.’ So I spake, and he
Answered at once with mind of ruthless mould:
‘This shall fit largess unto Noman be—
Last, after all thy peers, I promise to eat thee.”
Then, overcome by the potent drink, the savage lay down to sleep. Ulysses had prepared the thin end of a huge club of olive-wood, and this, pointed and well hardened in the fire, he and his comrades thrust into his single eye-ball, boring it deep in, “as the shipwright doth an auger.” Roaring with pain, and now fairly sobered, Polyphemus awoke, and shouted for help to his brother-Cyclops who dwelt in the neighbouring valleys. They came; but to all their questions as to what was the matter, or who had injured him, he only answered “Noman!”—and his friends turned away in disgust. After groping vainly round the cave in search of his tormentors, Polyphemus rolled the huge stone from the mouth of his den, and let his sheep go out, feeling among them for his captives, who would probably try thus to escape. But again the wit of the Ithacan chief proved too subtle for his enemy. The great sheep had been cunningly linked together three abreast, and every middle sheep carried a Greek tied under his belly; Ulysses, after tying the last of his companions, clinging fast to the wool of a huge ram, the king of the flock. So did they all escape to rejoin their anxious comrades. But when all had embarked, and rowed to a safe distance, then Ulysses stood high upon his deck, and shouted a taunting defiance to his enemy. The answer of Polyphemus was a huge rock hurled with all his might towards the voice, which fell just short of the vessel. Again Ulysses shouted, and bade him tell those who should hereafter ask him who did the deed, that it was even Ulysses the Ithacan. The Cyclops groaned with rage and grief—an ancient oracle had forewarned him of the name; but will the great Ulysses please to return, that he may entertain such a hero handsomely? He would have shown himself more simple than his enemy if he had. Then the blind monster lifted his cry to his great father the Sea-god, and implored his vengeance on his destroyer.
The one-eyed giant of Homer’s story became a very popular comic character in classical fiction. The only specimen of the old Greek satyric drama, as it was called—a peculiar kind of comedy, in which satyrs were largely introduced—is a play by Euripides, ‘The Cyclops,’ in which the principal incident is the blinding of Polyphemus by Ulysses. The monster rushes out of his cave, with his eye-socket burnt and bleeding, and stretches his arms across the entrance to intercept the escape of Ulysses, who creeps out between his legs. He roars out with pain, and is taunted by the “Chorus,”—a party of satyrs whom he has made his slaves, and who now rejoice in their deliverance.
“Chorus. Why make this bawling, Cyclops?
Cyclops. I am lost!
Ch. Thou’rt dirty, anyhow.
Cyc. Yea, and wretched too!
Ch. What! hast got drunk, and fallen into the fire?
Cyc. Noman hath slain me!
Ch. Then thou’rt wronged by no man.
Cyc. Noman hath blinded me!
Ch. Then thou’rt not blind.
Cyc. Would ye were so!—
Ch. Why, how could no man blind thee?
Cyc. Ye mock me.—Where is Noman?
Ch. Nowhere, Cyclops.
Cyc. O friends, if ye would know the truth, yon wretch
Hath been my ruin—gave me drink, and drowned me!
Ch. Ay—wine is strong, we know, and hard to deal with.
The poet Theocritus, in one of his Idylls, gives us Polyphemus, before his blindness, in love with the beautiful nymph Galatæa, who, having another lover with two eyes in the young shepherd Acis, does not encourage the addresses of the Cyclops. This is part of his remonstrance:—
“I know, sweet maiden, why thou art so coy;
Shaggy and huge, a single eyebrow spans
From ear to ear my forehead, whence one eye
Gleams, and an o’er-broad nostril o’er my lip.
Yet I—this monster—feed a thousand sheep,
That yield me sweetest draughts at milking-tide.
******
But thou mislik’st my hair?—Well, oaken logs
Are here, and embers yet a-glow with fire;
Burn, if thou wilt, my heart out, and my eye—
My lonely eye, wherein is my delight.”
—Theocritus, Idyll xi. (Calverley’s transl.)
This love-story of the Cyclops is better known, perhaps, to English readers, through Handel’s Pastoral, ‘Acis and Galatæa.’