THE ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS ***
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THE ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS AND THE TALE OF TROY
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THE ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS AND THE TALE OF TROY
BY PADRAIC COLUM
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PRESENTED BY
WILLY POGANY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED. PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1918.
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REPRINTED JUNE, OCTOBER, 1919; OCTOBER, 1920; AUGUST, 1922; MARCH, 1923; MAY, 1924; JUNE, 1925; MARCH, 1926; DECEMBER, 1926; AUGUST, 1927.
Norwood Press: J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
FOR HUGHIE AND PETER
THIS TELLING OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST STORY
BECAUSE THEIR IMAGINATIONS
RISE TO DEEDS AND WONDERS
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CONTENTS
PART I
HOW TELEMACHUS THE SON OF ODYSSEUS WAS MOVED TO GO ON A VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF HIS FATHER AND HOW HE HEARD FROM MENELAUS AND HELEN THE TALE OF TROY 1
PART II
HOW ODYSSEUS LEFT CALYPSO'S ISLAND AND CAME TO THE LAND OF THE PHAEACIANS; HOW HE TOLD HE FARED WITH THE CYCLÔPES AND WENT PAST THE TERRIBLE SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS AND CAME TO THE ISLAND OF THRINACIA WHERE HIS MEN SLAUGHTERED THE CATTLE OF THE SUN; HOW HE WAS GIVEN A SHIP BY THE PHAEACIANS AND CAME TO HIS OWN LAND; HOW HE OVERTHREW THE WOOERS WHO WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE AND CAME TO REIGN AGAIN AS KING OF ITHAKA. 125
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ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOUR PLATES
The Judgement of Paris _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE The Fair Helen 30
Achilles Victorious 106
The Princess Threw the Ball 138
The Sorrowing Odysseus 148
Circe 170
The Sirens 176
Penelope Unravelling the Web 221
PART I
HOW TELEMACHUS THE SON OF ODYSSEUS WAS MOVED TO GO ON A VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF HIS FATHER AND HOW HE HEARD FROM MENELAUS AND HELEN THE TALE OF TROY
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I
This is the story of Odysseus, the most renowned of all the heroes the Greek poets have told us of--of Odysseus, his wars and his wanderings. And this story of Odysseus begins with his son, the youth who was called Telemachus.
It was when Telemachus was a child of a month old that a messenger came from Agamemnon, the Great King, bidding Odysseus betake himself to the war against Troy that the Kings and Princes of Greece were about to wage. The wise Odysseus, foreseeing the disasters that would befall all that entered that war, was loth to go. And so when Agamemnon's messenger came to the island of Ithaka where he was King, Odysseus pretended to be mad. And that the messenger, Palamedes, might believe he was mad indeed, he did a thing that no man ever saw being done before--he took an ass and an ox and yoked them together to the same plough and began to plough a field. And when he had ploughed a furrow he sowed it, not with seeds that would grow, but with salt. When Palamedes saw him doing this he was nearly persuaded that Odysseus was mad. But to test him he took the child Telemachus and laid him down in the field in the way of the plough. Odysseus, when he came near to where the child lay, turned the plough aside and thereby showed that he was not a mad man. Then had he to take King Agamemnon's summons. And Agamemnon's word was that Odysseus should go to Aulis where the ships of the Kings and Princes of Greece were being gathered. But first he was to go into another country to seek the hero Achilles and persuade him also to enter the war against Troy.
