Complete works of samuel.., p.398
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 398
As regards its closeness to the text, the references to the poem which will be found at the beginning of each paragraph will show where the abridgement has been greatest, and will also enable the reader to verify the fidelity of the rendering either with the Greek or with Messrs. Butcher and Lang’s translation. I affirm with confidence that if the reader is good enough to thus verify any passages that may strike him as impossibly modern, he will find that I have adhered as severely to the intention of the original as it was possible for me to do while telling the story in my own words and abridging it.
One of my critics, a very friendly one, has hold me that I have “distorted the simplicity of the ‘Odyssey’ in order to put it in a ludicrous light.” I do not think this. I have revealed, but I have not distorted. I should be shocked to believe for one moment that I had done so. True, I have nothing extenuated, but neither have I set down aught in malice. Where the writer is trying to make us believe impossibilities, I have shown that she is doing so, and have also shown why she wanted us to believe them; but until a single passage is pointed out to me in which I have altered the intention of the original, I shall continue to hold that the conception of the poem which I lay before the reader in the following pages is a juster one than any that, so far as I know, has been made public hitherto; and, moreover, that it makes both the work and the writer a hundred times more interesting than any other conception can do.
I preface my abridgment with a plan of Ulysses’ house, so far as I have been able to make it out from the poem. The reader will find that he understands the story much better if he will study the plan of the house here given with some attention.
I have read what Prof. Jebb has written on this subject, * as also Mr. Andrew Lang’s Note 18 at the end of Messrs. Butcher and Lang’s translation of the “Odyssey.” I have also read Mr. Arthur Platt’s article on the slaying of the suitors, † and find myself in far closer agreement with Mr. Lang than with either of the other writers whom I have named. The only points on which I differ from Mr. Lang are in respect of the inner court, which he sees as a roofed hall, but which I hold to have been open to the sky, except the covered cloister or μέγαρα σκιόεντα, an arrangement which is still very common in Sicilian houses, especially at Trapani and Palermo. I also differ from him in so far as I see no reason to think that the “stone pavement” was raised, and as believing the ὀρσοθύρα to have been at the top of Telemachus’s tower, and called “in the wall” because the tower abutted on the wall.
These are details: substantially my view of the action and scene during the killing of the suitors agrees with Mr. Lang’s. I will not give the reasons which compel me to differ from Prof. Jebb and Mr. Platt, but will leave my plan of the house and the abridged translation to the judgement of the reader.
A was the body of the house, containing the women’s apartments and other rooms. It had an upper story, in which was Penelope’s room overlooking the court where the suitors passed the greater part of their time.
It also contained the store-room, which seems to have been placed at the far end of the house, perhaps in a basement. The store-room could be reached by a passage from a doorway A´, and also by back-passages from a side-entrance A″, which I suppose to have been the back door of the house. The women’s apartments opened on to the passage leading from A´ to the store-room.
B and B´ were the Megaron or Megara, that is to say inner court, of which B´ was a covered cloister with a roof supported by bearing-posts with cross-beams and rafters. The open part of the court had no flooring but the natural soil. Animals seem to have been flayed and dressed here, for Medon, who was certainly in the inner court while the suitors were being killed, concealed himself under a freshly-flayed ox (or heifer’s) hide (xxii. 363).
B´ was called the μέγαρα σκιόεντα or “shaded” part of the court, to distinguish it from that which was open to the sun. The end nearest the house was paved with stone, while that nearest the outer court (and probably the other two sides) were floored with ash. The part of the cloister that was paved with stone does not appear to have been raised above the level of the rest; at one end of the stone pavement there was a door a, opening on to a narrow passage; this door, though mentioned immediately after the ὀρσοθύρα or trap door (xxii. 126), which we shall come to presently, has no connection with it. About the middle of the pavement, during the trial of the axes, there was a seat b, from which Ulysses shot through the axes, and from which he sprang when he began to shoot the suitors;against one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloister, there was c, a spear-stand.
All the four sides of the cloisters were filled with small tables at which the suitors dined. A man could hold one of these tables before him as a shield (xxii. 74, 75).
In the cloisters there were also
d, an open hearth or fire-place in the wall at right angles to the one which abutted on the house. So, at least, I read τοίχου τοῦ ἑτέρου (xxiii. 90).
e, the table at which the wine was mixed in the mixing-bowl — as well, of course, as the other tables above mentioned.
f, a door leading into g, the tower in which Telemachus used to sleep [translating ἄγχι παῤ ὀρσοθύρην (xxii. 333) not “near the (ὀρσοθύρα,” but “near towards the ὀρσοθύρα”].
At the top of this tower there was a trap-door g´ (ὀρσοθύρα), through which it was possible to get out on to the roof of the tower and raise an alarm, but which afforded neither ingress nor egress — or the ὀρσοθύρα may have been a window.
C was the outer court or αὐλή approached by C´, the main entrance, or πρῶται θύραι, a covered gateway with a room over it. This covered gateway was the αἰθούση ἐρίδουπος, or reverberating portico which we meet with in other Odyssean houses, and are so familiar with in Italian and Sicilian houses at the present day. It was surrounded by C″, covered sheds or barns in which carts, farm implements, and probably some farm produce would be stored. It contained
h, the prodomus, or vestibule in front of the inner court, into which the visitor would pass through
i, the πρόθυρον or inner gateway (the word, πρόθυρον, however, is used also for the outer gateway), and
k, the tholus or vaulted room, above the exact position of which all we know is that it is described in xxii. 459, 460, as close up against the wall of the outer court. I suspect, but cannot prove it, that this was the room in which Ulysses built his bed (xxiii. 181-204).
D was the τυκτὸν δάπεδον or level ground in front of Ulysses’ house, on which the suitors amused themselves playing at quoits and aiming a spear at a mark (iv. 625-627).
The only part of the foregoing plan and explanatory notes that forces the text is in respect of the main gateway, which I place too far from the mouth of the λαύρα for one man to be able to keep out all who would bring help to the suitors; but considering how much other impossibility we have to accept, I think this may be allowed to go with the rest. A young woman, such as I suppose the writer of the “Odyssey” to have been, would not stick at such a trifle as shifting the gates a little nearer the λαύρα if it suited her purpose.
In passing, I may say that Agamemnon appears to have been killed (“Od.” iv. 530, 531) in much such a cloistered court as above supposed for the house of Ulysses. A banquet seems to have been prepared in the cloister on one side the court, while men were ambuscaded in the one on the opposite side.
Lastly, for what it may be worth, I would remind the reader that there is not a hint of windows in the part of Ulysses’ house frequented by the suitors.
Chapter 3: The Preponderance of Woman in the Odyssey
Having in my first chapter met the only à priori objections to my views concerning the sex of the writer which have yet been presented to me, I now turn to the evidence of female authorship which is furnished by the story which I have just laid before the reader.
What, let me ask, is the most unerring test of female authorship? Surely a preponderance of female interest, and a fuller knowledge of those things which a woman generally has to deal with, than of those that fall more commonly within the province of man. People always write by preference of what they know best, and they know best what they most are, and have most to do with. This extends to ways of thought and to character, even more than to action. If man thinks the noblest study for mankind to be man, woman not less certainly believes it to be woman.
Hence if in any work the women are found to be well and sympathetically drawn, while the men are mechanical and by comparison perfunctorily treated, it is, I imagine, safe to infer that the writer is a woman; and the converse holds good with man. Man and woman never fully understand one another save, perhaps, during courtship and honeymoon, and as a man understands man more fully than a woman can do, so does a woman, woman. Granted, it is the delight of either sex to understand the other as fully as it can, and those who succeed most in this respect are the best and happiest whether men or women; but do what we may the barriers can never be broken down completely, and each sex will dwell mainly, though not, of course, exclusively, within its own separate world. When, moreover, we come to think of it, it is not desirable that they should be broken down, for it is on their existence that much of the attraction of either sex to the other depends.
Men seem unable to draw women at all without either laughing at them or caricaturing them; and so, perhaps, a woman never draws a man so felicitously as when she is making him ridiculous. If she means to make him so she is certain to succeed; if she does not mean it she will succeed more surely still. Either sex, in fact, can caricature the other delightfully, and certainly no writer has ever shown more completely than the writer of the “Odyssey” has done that, next to the glorification of woman, she considers man’s little ways and weaknesses to be the fittest theme on which her genius can be displayed. But I doubt whether any writer in the whole range of literature (excepting, I suppose, Shakespeare) has succeeded in drawing a full length, life-sized, serious portrait of a member of the sex opposite to the writer’s own.
It is admitted on all hands that the preponderance of interest in the “Iliad” is on the side of man, and in the “Odyssey” on that of woman. Women in the “Iliad” are few in number and rarely occupy the stage. True, the goddesses play important parts, but they are never taken seriously.
Shelley, again, speaking of the “perpetually increasing magnificence of the last seven books” of the “Iliad,” says, “The ‘Odyssey’ is sweet, but there is nothing like this.” * The writer of the “Odyssey” is fierce as a tigress at times, but the feeling of the poem is on the whole exactly what Shelley says it is. Strength is felt everywhere, even in the tenderest passages of the “Iliad,” but it is sweetness rather than strength that fascinates us throughout the “Odyssey.” It is the charm of a woman not of a man.
So, again, to quote a more recent authority, Mr. Gladstone in his work on Homer already referred to, says:
It is rarely in the “Iliad” that grandeur or force give way to allow the exhibition of domestic affection. Conversely, in the “Odyssey” the family life supplies the tissue into which is woven the thread of the poem.
Any one who is familiar with the two poems must know that what Mr. Gladstone has said is true; and he might have added, not less truly, that when there is any exhibition of domestic life and affection in the “Iliad” the men are dominant, and the women are under their protection, whereas throughout the “Odyssey” it is the women who are directing, counselling, and protecting the men.
Who are the women in the “Odyssey”? There is Minerva, omnipresent at the elbows of Ulysses and Telemachus to keep them straight and alternately scold and flatter them. In the “Iliad” she is a great warrior but she is no woman: in the “Odyssey” she is a great woman but no warrior; we have, of course, Penelope — masterful nearly to the last and tossed off to the wings almost from the moment that she has ceased to be so; Euryclea, the old servant, is quite a match for Telemachus, “do not find fault, child,” she says to him, “when there is no one to find fault with” (xx. 135). Who can doubt that Helen is master in the house of Menelaus — of whom all she can say in praise is that he is “not deficient either in person or understanding” (iv. 264)? Idothea in Book iv. treats Menelaus de haut en bas, all through the Proteus episode. She is good to him and his men, but they must do exactly what she tells them, and she evidently enjoys “running” them, — for I can think of no apter word. Calypso is the master mind, not Ulysses; and, be it noted, that neither she nor Circe seem to have a manservant on their premises. I was at an inn once and asked the stately landlady if I could see the landlord. She bridled up and answered, “We have no landlord, sir, in this house; I cannot see what use a man is in a hotel except to clean boots and windows.” There spoke Circe and Calypso, but neither of them seem to have made even this much exception in man’s favour.
Let the reader ask any single ladies of his acquaintance, who live in a house of their own, whether they prefer being waited upon by men or by women, and I shall be much surprised if he does not find that they generally avoid having a man about the house at all — gardeners of course excepted. But then the gardener generally has a wife, and a house of his own.
Take Nausicaa again, delightful as she is, it would not be wise to contradict her; she knows what is good for Ulysses, and all will go well with him so long as he obeys her, but she must be master and he man. I see I have passed over Ino in Book v. She is Idothea over again, just as Circe is Calypso, with very little variation. Who again is master — Queen Arēte or King Alcinous? Nausicaa knows well enough how to answer this question. When giving her instructions to Ulysses she says:
“Never mind my father, but go up to my mother and embrace her knees; if she is well disposed towards you there is some chance of your getting home to see your friends again” (vi. 310-315).
Throughout the Phæacian episode Arēte (whose name, by the way, I take to be one of the writer’s tolerably transparent disguises, and to be intended to suggest Arĕte, or “Goodness”) is a more important person than Alcinous. I do not believe in her myself; I believe Penelope would have been made more amiable if Arēte had been as nice a person as the writer says she was; leaving her, however, on one side, so much more important are wives than husbands in the eyes of the author of the “Odyssey” that when Ulysses makes his farewell speech to the Phæacians, she makes him say that he hopes they may continue to give satisfaction to their wives and children (xiii. 44, 45), instead of hoping that their wives and children will continue to give satisfaction to them. A little lower down he wishes Queen Arēte all happiness with her children, her people, and lastly with King Alcinous. As for King Alcinous, it does not matter whether he is happy or no, provided he gives satisfaction to Queen Arēte; but he was bound to be happy as the husband of such an admirable woman.
So when the Duke of York was being married I heard women over and over again say they hoped the Princess May would be very happy with him, but I never heard one say that she hoped the Duke would be very happy with the Princess May. Men said they hoped the pair would be very happy, without naming one more than the other.
I have touched briefly on all the more prominent female characters of the “Odyssey.” The moral in every case seems to be that man knows very little, and cannot be trusted not to make a fool of himself even about the little that he does know, unless he has a woman at hand to tell him what he ought to do. There is not a single case in which a man comes to the rescue of female beauty in distress; it is invariably the other way about.
The only males who give Ulysses any help while he is on his wanderings are Æolus, who does him no real service and refuses to help him a second time, and Mercury, who gives him the herb Moly (x. 305) to protect him against the spells of Circe. In this last case, however, I do not doubt that the writer was tempted by the lovely passage of “Il.” xxiv., where Mercury meets Priam to conduct him to the Achæan camp; one pretty line, indeed (and rather more), of the Iliadic passage above referred to is taken bodily by the writer of the “Odyssey” to describe the youth and beauty of the god. * With these exceptions, throughout the poem Andromeda rescues Perseus, not Perseus Andromeda — Christiana is guide and guardian to Mr. Greatheart, not Mr. Greatheart to Christiana.
The case of Penelope may seem to be an exception. It may be urged that Ulysses came to her rescue, and that the whole poem turns on his doing so. But this is not true. Ulysses kills the suitors, firstly, because they had wasted his substance — this from the first to last is the main grievance; secondly, because they had violated the female servants of his house; and only, thirdly, because they had offered marriage to his wife while he was still alive (xxii. 36-38). Never yet was woman better able to hold her own when she chose, and I will show at full length shortly that when she did not hold it it was because she preferred not to do so.
I have dealt so far with the writer’s attitude towards women when in the world of the living. Let us now see what her instinct prompts her to consider most interesting in the kingdom of the dead. When Ulysses has reached the abode of Hades, the first ghost he meets is that of his comrade Elpenor, who had got drunk and fallen off the roof of Circe’s house just as Ulysses and his men were about to set sail. We are expressly told that he was a person of no importance, being remarkable neither for sense nor courage, so that it does not matter about killing him, and it is transparent that the accident is only allowed to happen in order to enable Ulysses to make his little joke when he greets the ghost in Hades to the effect that Elpenor has got there more quickly by land than Ulysses had done by water. Elpenor, therefore, does not count.
The order, however, in which the crowd of ghosts approach Ulysses, is noticeable. After the blood of the victims sacrificed by Ulysses had flowed into the trench which he had dug to receive it, the writer says: —
