Long ago, in a little
island called Ithaca, on the west coast of Greece, there lived a
king named Laertes. His kingdom was small and mountainous. People
used to say that Ithaca "lay like a shield upon the sea," which
sounds as if it were a flat country. But in those times shields
were very large, and rose at the middle into two peaks with a
hollow between them, so that Ithaca, seen far off in the sea, with
her two chief mountain peaks, and a cloven valley between them,
looked exactly like a shield. The country was so rough that men
kept no horses, for, at that time, people drove, standing up in
little light chariots with two horses; they never rode, and there
was no cavalry in battle: men fought from chariots. When Ulysses,
the son of Laertes, King of Ithaca grew up, he never fought from a
chariot, for he had none, but always on foot.
If there were no horses in
Ithaca, there was plenty of cattle. The father of Ulysses had
flocks of sheep, and herds of swine, and wild goats, deer, and
hares lived in the hills and in the plains. The sea was full of
fish of many sorts, which men caught with nets, and with rod and
line and hook.
Thus Ithaca was a good island to
live in. The summer was long, and there was hardly any winter; only
a few cold weeks, and then the swallows came back, and the plains
were like a garden, all covered with wild flowers--violets, lilies,
narcissus, and roses. With the blue sky and the blue sea, the
island was beautiful. White temples stood on the shores; and the
Nymphs, a sort of fairies, had their little shrines built of stone,
with wild rose-bushes hanging over them.
Other islands lay within sight,
crowned with mountains, stretching away, one behind the other, into
the sunset. Ulysses in the course of his life saw many rich
countries, and great cities of men, but, wherever he was, his heart
was always in the little isle of Ithaca, where he had learned how
to row, and how to sail a boat, and how to shoot with bow and
arrow, and to hunt boars and stags, and manage his hounds.
The mother of Ulysses was called
Anticleia: she was the daughter of King Autolycus, who lived near
Parnassus, a mountain on the mainland. This King Autolycus was the
most cunning of men. He was a Master Thief, and could steal a man's
pillow from under his head, but he does not seem to have been
thought worse of for this. The Greeks had a God of Thieves, named
Hermes, whom Autolycus worshipped, and people thought more good of
his cunning tricks than harm of his dishonesty. Perhaps these
tricks of his were only practised for amusement; however that may
be, Ulysses became as artful as his grandfather; he was both the
bravest and the most cunning of men, but Ulysses never stole
things, except once, as we shall hear, from the enemy in time of
war. He showed his cunning in stratagems of war, and in many
strange escapes from giants and man-eaters.
Soon after Ulysses was born, his
grandfather came to see his mother and father in Ithaca. He was
sitting at supper when the nurse of Ulysses, whose name was
Eurycleia, brought in the baby, and set him on the knees of
Autolycus, saying, "Find a name for your grandson, for he is a
child of many prayers."
"I am very angry with many men
and women in the world," said Autolycus, "so let the child's name
be A Man of Wrath," which, in Greek, was Odysseus. So the child was
called Odysseus by his own people, but the name was changed into
Ulysses, and we shall call him Ulysses.
We do not know much about Ulysses
when he was a little boy, except that he used to run about the
garden with his father, asking questions, and begging that he might
have fruit trees "for his very own." He was a great pet, for his
parents had no other son, so his father gave him thirteen pear
trees, and forty fig trees, and promised him fifty rows of vines,
all covered with grapes, which he could eat when he liked, without
asking leave of the gardener. So he was not tempted to steal fruit,
like his grandfather.
When Autolycus gave Ulysses his
name, he said that he must come to stay with him, when he was a big
boy, and he would get splendid presents. Ulysses was told about
this, so, when he was a tall lad, he crossed the sea and drove in
his chariot to the old man's house on Mount Parnassus. Everybody
welcomed him, and next day his uncles and cousins and he went out
to hunt a fierce wild boar, early in the morning. Probably Ulysses
took his own dog, named Argos, the best of hounds, of which we
shall hear again, long afterwards, for the dog lived to be very
old. Soon the hounds came on the scent of a wild boar, and after
them the men went, with spears in their hands, and Ulysses ran
foremost, for he was already the swiftest runner in Greece.
He came on a great boar lying in
a tangled thicket of boughs and bracken, a dark place where the sun
never shone, nor could the rain pierce through. Then the noise of
the men's shouts and the barking of the dogs awakened the boar, and
up he sprang, bristling all over his back, and with fire shining
from his eyes. In rushed Ulysses first of all, with his spear
raised to strike, but the boar was too quick for him, and ran in,
and drove his sharp tusk sideways, ripping up the thigh of Ulysses.
But the boar's tusk missed the bone, and Ulysses sent his sharp
spear into the beast's right shoulder, and the spear went clean
through, and the boar fell dead, with a loud cry. The uncles of
Ulysses bound up his wound carefully, and sang a magical song over
it, as the French soldiers wanted to do to Joan of Arc when the
arrow pierced her shoulder at the siege of Orleans. Then the blood
ceased to flow, and soon Ulysses was quite healed of his wound.
They thought that he would be a good warrior, and gave him splendid
presents, and when he went home again he told all that had happened
to his father and mother, and his nurse, Eurycleia. But there was
always a long white mark or scar above his left knee, and about
that scar we shall hear again, many years afterwards.
