Homer: The Odyssey/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE RETURN OF TELEMACHUS FROM SPARTA.
The story returns to Telemachus, whom we left at Sparta. His stay at that court has been prolonged a whole month, for which the excuse, we must suppose, is to be found in the hospitalities of Menelaus and the fascinations of Helen. No wonder that his guardian goddess admonishes him in a dream that, under his present circumstances, such delays are dangerous. Penelope has a hard time of it in his absence, even her father pressing her to marry some one of her suitors. Nay, Minerva more than hints—though we beg our readers not to accept such an insinuation against Penelope, even on the authority of a goddess—that Eurymachus, one of the richest of the rivals, is beginning to find favour in her eyes. Telemachus is roused once more to action: awakening his young friend Pisistratus, he proposes that they should set out on their return at once—before the day breaks. The son of the old "Horse-tamer" sensibly reminds him that driving in the dark is very undesirable, and it is agreed to wait for the morning. Menelaus, with genuine courtesy, refrains from any attempt to detain his guests longer than seems agreeable to themselves. A portion of his speech, as rendered by Pope, has passed into a popular maxim as to the true limits of hospitality, and has been quoted, no doubt, by many, with very little idea that they were indebted to Homer for the precept—
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest."
Another maxim of the hospitable Spartan has long been adopted by Englishmen—that all wise men, who have a long day's journey before them, should lay in a substantial breakfast. This the travellers do, and then prepare to mount their chariot; Telemachus bearing with him, as the parting gift of his royal host, a bowl of silver wondrously chased, "the work of Vulcan"—too fair to come from any mortal hand—which Menelaus had himself received from the King of Sidon; while Helen adds an embroidered robe "that glistened like a star," one of many which she has woven with her own hands, which she begs him to keep to adorn his bride on her marriage-day. Even as they part, lo! there is an omen in the sky—an eagle bearing off a white goose in her talons. Who shall expound it? Menelaus, who is appealed to, is no soothsayer. Helen alone can unlock the riddle:—
Reared in the bleak rock, nursling of the hill,
And in the stormy ravin of his wild will
Seized on the white goose, delicately bred,—
So brave Ulysses, after countless ill,
Comes from afar off, dealing vengeance dread."
Telemachus blesses her for the happy interpretation, and promises that, should the word come true, he will worship the fair prophetess in Ithaca as nothing less than a divinity. Whether or no he made good his vow the poet does not tell us. Worse mortals have been canonised both in ancient and modern calendars. And whether Helen was honoured thus in Ithaca or not, she certainly was at Sparta, where we are told that she displayed her new powers as a divinity once at least in a very appropriate manner—transforming a child of remarkable ugliness, at the prayer of its nurse, into a no less remarkable beauty.
The young men make their first evening halt at Pheræ, as before, and reach Nestor's court at Pylos next day. Telemachus insists on driving straight to the bay where his patient crew still await him with the galley—for he knows old Nestor will try to detain him, out of kindness, if he once set foot again in the palace—and instantly on his arrival they hoist sail for home. They round the peninsula in the night, and with the morning's dawn they sight the spiry peaks of Ithaca. The crew moor the vessel in a sheltered bay, while Telemachus—to escape the ambuscade which he knows to have been laid for him—makes straight for the swineherd's lodge, instead of entering the town. As he draws near the threshold, the watch-dogs know his step, and run out to greet him; Eumæus himself, in his delight at the meeting, drops from his hands the bowl of wine which he was carefully mixing as a morning draught for his disguised guest, and falls on his young lord's neck, kissing him, and weeping tears of joy.
Returnest; yet my soul did often say
That never, never more should I have sight
Of thy sweet face, since thou didst sail away.
Enter, dear child, and let my heart allay
Its yearnings ; newly art thou come from far:
Thou comest all too seldom—fain to stay
In the thronged city, where the suitors are,
Silently looking on while foes thy substance mar."
Ulysses preserves his disguise, and rises from his seat to offer it to the young chief. But Telemachus, like all Homer's heroes, is emphatically a gentleman; and he will not take an old man's place, though that man be but a poor wayfarer clad in rags. When he has broken his fast at his retainer's table, he would know from him who the stranger is. Eumæus repeats the fictitious history which he has heard from Ulysses, and Telemachus promises the shipwrecked wanderer relief and protection. He sends Eumæus to announce his own safe return to Penelope; and when the father and son are left alone, suddenly Minerva appears—visible only to Ulysses and to the dogs, who cower and whine at the supernatural presence—and bids him discover himself to his son. The beggar's rags fall off, a royal robe takes their place, and he resumes all the majesty of presence which he had worn before. But Telemachus does not recognise the father whom he has never known; the sudden transformation rather suggests to him some heavenly visitant. He was but an infant when Ulysses went to Troy; and even when his father assures him of his identity, he will not believe. There is a quiet sadness, but no reproach, in the hero's reply:—
Behold me as I am! By earth and sea
Scourged with affliction, in the twentieth year,
Safe to mine own land at the last I flee."
It is long before either, in their first emotion, can find words to tell their story. Ulysses takes his son fully into his counsels, and charges him to keep the news of his return as yet a secret even from his mother, until they two shall discover who among the household can be trusted to aid them in the extermination of the intruders and their powerful retinue. He knows that his day of vengeance is come at last, and nothing less than this will satisfy him. Telemachus has some timorous misgivings, according to his nature—What are they two against so many? But Ulysses knows that the gods are on his side—Minerva and the Father of the gods himself; or shall we say with the allegorists, in this case, the Counsels of Heaven and the Justice of Heaven? There is a grand irony in the question which he puts to his son—"Thinkest thou these allies will suffice, or shall we seek for other helpers?"