CHAPTER XIII

THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY--GREEK HEROES--TANGLEWOOD TALES--THE WONDER BOOK

Once upon a time, nearly three thousand years ago, a poet in a song which he sang of heroes described the making of a suit of armour.

The poet's name was Homer. His poem is called _The Iliad_. Some day possibly you will read for yourselves _The Iliad_ in the original Greek, for Homer was a Greek. There are many good translations, both in poetry and prose. The beautiful translation known as _The Iliad of Homer_, done into English prose by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, is one of the best translations for our present purpose.

In Homer's day people believed in the existence of many gods, some more important and others of less consequence. These gods, both men and women, imagined by the Greeks, were like human beings, only more powerful and more beautiful. But they were not any better than ordinary men and women. Indeed, the gods of the Greeks were often bad-tempered, jealous, cruel, and faithless. The Greeks imagined that their gods had favourites among men and women. When a battle was raging, the gods were supposed to help one side or the other; and in _The Iliad_ you may read how Aphrodite helped her favourite, Paris, how {86} Poseidon was on the side of the Achaians, and Apollo aided Hector. The most powerful and important gods, of whom the greatest was Zeus, lived on Mount Olympus. But the Greeks believed that the sea, rivers, streams, springs, hillsides, and trees, were the dwelling-places of various deities or gods.

_The Iliad_ is an epic of the Trojan War which was fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. The famous hero Achilles, who had quarrelled with King Agamemnon, would not go to fight himself, but he lent his armour to his noble friend Patroklos, who drove the Trojans from the ships, but was himself slain by Hector, son of King Priam of Troy. Achilles was then without armour, and Thetis, a goddess, said by the Greeks to be the mother of Achilles, went on his behalf to a very clever god, named Hephaistos, who was lame, but had wonderful skill in making armour. Hephaistos, if he had lived now, would likely have been a great engineer.

In the eighteenth book of _The Iliad_, we can read a description of Hephaistos, of some of the marvels he had made and of his meeting with Thetis.

Hephaistos "from the anvil rose limping, a huge bulk, but under him his slender legs moved nimbly. The bellows he set away from the fire, and gathered all his gear wherewith he worked into a silver chest; and with a sponge he wiped his face and hands and sturdy neck and shaggy breast, and did on his doublet, and took a stout staff and went forth limping; but there were handmaidens of gold that moved to help their {87} lord, the semblances of living maids. In them is understanding at their hearts, in them are voice and strength, and they have skill of the immortal gods. These moved beneath their lord, and he gat him haltingly near to where Thetis was, and set him on a bright seat, and clasped her hand in his and spake and called her by her name."

It is delightful to understand while we read that the Greeks three thousand years ago were already imagining the marvels which could be accomplished by mankind. Many of these marvels actually have been achieved since then, only not exactly in the shape that the Greeks imagined.

Hephaistos made, for Thetis to give to Achilles, a shield and a corslet and a helmet and greaves. He made them strong and beautiful. On the shield he fashioned wondrous pictures of life among the Greeks, marriage feasts, dancing, law courts, a city besieged, armies fighting, herds of cattle, harvesting, feasting, a vineyard, and youths and maidens gathering grapes. If you turn to this eighteenth book of Homer's _Iliad_, you may spend a very happy hour reading of Hephaistos and the armour.

These songs made by Homer are one of the glories of mankind. In everything he sang, there is the special genius of the ancient Greeks, a power to create beauty, so perfect in all its proportions that it gives people when they read his songs a feeling of strength and steadiness as well as joy. Yet, it is true at the same time, that parts of _The Iliad_ and _The Odyssey_ show us a world which was savage and barbarous.

In _The Odyssey_, Homer tells of the wanderings {88} of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, on his way back from the Trojan war to his own island on the west coast of Greece. His adventures are as wonderful as any that have ever been related in song or story. The description of his home-coming, to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, is one of the stories rightly called universal, for such stories belong to everyone. A charming part of _The Odyssey_ contains the story of Odysseus in his wanderings coming to Scheria where King Alcinous reigns. Nausicaa, the King's daughter, with her maidens, had gone out in the early morning to wash the clothes of her father, mother and brethren, and after their labour, the princess and her companions were playing a game of ball when their cries of excitement woke the weary Odysseus from his slumbers. You will find this adventure of Odysseus in the sixth book of _The Odyssey_, of which there is a prose translation by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang.

There are many other stories of the early Greeks. Some of them have been re-told in three books, written for young people. In _The Heroes_ by Charles Kingsley you may read of Perseus, the Argonauts and Theseus. _Tanglewood Tales_ and _The Wonder Book_ were written by Nathaniel Hawthorne for his children. One of the best of the stories in _The Wonder Book_ is called The Miraculous Pitcher, a tale of two old people, Philemon and his wife Baucis, and of what happened to them. These stories are not exactly fairy-tales, because people believed in that far away time that the gods visited them and played pranks like boys and girls.

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These three books, _The Heroes_, _Tanglewood Tales_ and _The Wonder Book_ are easy to read and interesting. Yet, after a while, although perhaps not for some years, you likely will find that you would rather turn to a translation of _The Iliad_ or _The Odyssey_, so that you may read for yourself Homer's songs telling of the world long ago in its youth, and of these great heroes.

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