Chapter 4 MISSIONS IMPOSSIBLE
Supermen are expected to achieve feats of which ordinary mortals are incapable.Today epic adventures form a significant part of the output of the film industry.There is a market for such stories,especially when they bear even a very small relation to fact and even when much of what is related borders on fantasy.The same was true of the ancient world.
In this chapter we shall examine two such stories.The first,that of Jason,is very old.It originates from about 1300 B.C.,a generation before the Trojan War.The first written mention of it is found around 800 B.C..[1]The story comes from the region of Thessaly in Greece,which is where early epic poetry developed.Jason’s journey was viewed by the ancient Greeks as the first long distance journey ever undertaken.To modern readers it is a classic Mission Impossible.
Jason and the Argonauts
The king of northern Greece,Athamas,had two children,Phrixos and Helle,by his first wife,whom he then left and married Ino.Ino proved a cruel stepmother.Having schemed to cause a famine throughout the kingdom,she deceived her husband into believing that the Delphic oracle required that Phrixos be sacrificed to Zeus in order to end the famine.
So Phrixos was taken to the altar and his throat was about to be cut when a ram with a golden fleece was sent down by the gods and carried off Phrixos and his sister on its back.As they flew over the strait that now divides Europe from Asia,Helle fell off the ram’s back and drowned.[2]Her brother held on and eventually arrived at Kolchis on the eastern shores of the Black Sea.[3]There he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave its golden fleece to King Aeetes,who nailed it to a tree in a grove dedicated to Ares（Mars）,the god of war,and put there to guard it a dragon who never slept.An oracle foretold that Aeetes would lose his kingdom if he lost the fleece.
Jason was the son of King Aison of Iolkos,[4]who had been deposed by his half-brother,Pelias.Aison had sought to ensure the safety of his son by entrusting him to the centaur Chiron.[5]When Jason grew up to be a strong youth,Chiron told him about his royal birth and sent him to avenge the wrong committed against his father.
Jason started to travel to his native city to confront King Pelias.On the way he met a feeble old woman who needed to be helped across a turbulent mountain stream.Jason carried her across on his back.He did not know that the old lady was none other than the goddess Hera in disguise.In this way he secured the assistance of a powerful friend.[6]
Wading across the stream,Jason had lost a sandal and so when he arrived at the court of King Pelias he was shod on only one foot.Pelias had been warned by an oracle to beware of a man wearing only one sandal and so he treated Jason with caution.When Jason revealed his true identity,Pelias pretended to welcome him and announced that he would be willing to give up his kingdom if Jason was able to bring back the golden fleece from Kolchis.
With the help of the goddesses Hera and Athena,Jason built a ship which he named Argo.[7]The prow of the ship was made from a sacred oak tree provided by the goddess Athena.This oak was prophetic,and sometimes spoke.Fifty heroes,known as the Argonauts,gathered for the expedition.They included Peleus,the father of Achilles,the father and grandfather of Odysseus and,to begin with,Herakles himself.
The Argonauts first landed on the island of Lemnos where there lived a race of women who had neglected their worship of the goddess Aphrodite（Venus）.Aphrodite had punished them by making them smell so foul that their husbands,unable to bear to be near them,had taken women from the Thracian mainland opposite Lemnos.The women had then angrily killed every male inhabitant of the island while they slept.The Argonauts consorted with these women and Jason fathered twins with their queen.Herakles,disgusted with this behavior,successfully pressured them to leave.
However,according to the most widely accepted narrative,Herakles did not remain long with the expedition.When the Argonauts landed on Mysia,[8]his companion,the beautiful youth Hylas,went in search of fresh water.He found a spring but the nymphs there fell in love with him and abducted him.Herakles persisted in searching for Hylas,and the other Argonauts eventually set sail without him.
Reaching the Greek shore of the Bosporus,they found Phineus,a son of Poseidon.Phineus was a blind prophet who had been cursed by the gods for revealing their secrets.[9]Whenever he sat down to eat,he would be visited by harpies,creatures who were half woman and half bird,and they would steal some of his food and defile the rest with their excrement.The Argonauts chased the harpies until they promised to give up their persecution of Phineus.
The grateful Phineus then revealed the location of Kolchis and foretold to the Argonauts as much as he could about their journey.In particular he warned them of the famous Symplegades or clashing rocks they would meet as they entered the Black Sea.He told them to send a dove through first and to follow as the rocks recoiled when the dove got through.They followed his advice,entered the Black Sea and reached Kolchis on its southeastern coast.
At Kolchis the Argonauts met with King Aeetes.The king was unwilling to surrender the golden fleece as an oracle had prophesied that his life would depend on its being kept safely.So he told the Argonauts they could have the fleece only if they accomplished some tasks which he believed they would find impossible.First he required Jason to yoke to a plough two bulls which had bronze feet and breathed fire;then to sow some dragon’s teeth which would spring up as armed men,whom Jason had then to kill.
Jason agreed to undertake these tasks.He was assisted by the king’s daughter,Medea,who had fallen in love with him.[10]Medea gave Jason magic ointment to rub over his body and a shield and so made him invulnerable.She also told him to throw rocks into the midst of the armed men,which would cause them to attack each other rather than Jason himself.However,Medea’s help came at a price.She required Jason to marry her and take her back home with him to Iolkos.
Jason was therefore able to complete the tasks Aeetes had assigned him.When he had done so,Aeetes broke his promise to hand over the Golden Fleece and plotted to set fire to the Argo and kill its crew.However,forewarned by Medea,who also drugged the serpent of a thousand coils which guarded the Golden Fleece,Jason seized the fleece.Together with Medea,he and the Argonauts then fled the island.Medea prevented her father stopping them by killing her brother and scattering his body parts over the island,rightly calculating that Aeetes would stop to retrieve the body parts for proper burial.
Jason journeyed home in a very indirect way.[11]The Argo was blown off course by Zeus as punishment for Medea’s murder of her brother.As a result the Argo itself spoke,recommending a diversion to the island of Aeaea where Medea could be cleansed by her aunt,Circe.
The Argonauts also had to pass the island where the Sirens resided.The Sirens were creatures with the heads and voices of women and the bodies of birds.They enticed sailors on to the rocks with their beautiful singing.[12]The Argonauts were only able to survive them with the help of Orpheus,[13]who played his lyre so beautifully and so loudly that it drowned out the bewitching songs of the Sirens.
There were more adventures.On the island of Crete,the Argonauts met Talos,a bronze giant who had been designed by the god Hephaistos[14]to defend the island for King Minos of Crete.[15]Talos walked round Crete three times a day,breaking off cliffs and throwing them at approaching ships.His weakness,however,like that of Achilles,lay in one of his feet.A vein above the ankle,if pierced,would leak golden blood.Medea managed to drug him so that he either allowed the bronze nail holding in the vein to be removed,or became insane and destroyed himself on the rocks.
When the Argonauts arrived back on Iolkos,Jason gave the Golden Fleece to Pelias and married Medea.However,the marriage did not end well,as we shall see in a later chapter.Jason soon tired of his wife,who,insane with jealousy,exacted a vicious revenge upon him.His treachery to Medea cost him the support of Hera.Before departing from Corinth,Medea had left Jason a note warning him to beware of the Argo.Jason died as a result of the stern of the Argo falling on him.
The Odyssey
More famous still than the story of Jason and the Argonauts is the story of the return of Odysseus from the Trojan war.[16]Indeed the epic adventures of Odysseus have provided the word“odyssey”for the English language.The story is recounted in the second of Homer’s great epic poems,the Odyssey.[17]
Odysseus（Ulysses）[18]was the Greek King of Ithaca and one of the leaders of the expedition against Troy.Because of his love for his wife,Penelope,he had at first been unwilling to join the expedition and ploughed salt into his fields so as to appear to be insane.However,his friends,being suspicious,laid his young son,Telemachus,in front of the plough.When Odysseus turned aside to avoid killing him,his deception was exposed and he was eventually persuaded to go to war.
It was Odysseus who devised the idea of the wooden horse as a means of taking Troy.In the sack of Troy,many temples were razed to the ground and so many of the Greek warriors,including Odysseus,incurred the wrath of the gods as they returned home.Odysseus was made to wander from place to place for ten years before he reached home.During this period he was protected by the goddess Athena and persecuted by Poseidon.[19]
Ten days after leaving Troy,Odysseus’ ships were driven to a land where the inhabitants’ only food was lotus fruit and blossom.The effect of the lotus was to cast a magic spell over those who ate it and cause them to lose their memory and become lethargic.The scouts Odysseus sent ahead were invited by the natives to eat the lotus fruit.Immediately after doing so,they fell into a deep sleep and lost all ambition to return home.After a while Odysseus set out to find out where they were.Discovering what had happened,he forbade the rest of his men to touch the fruit and ordered them to drag their companions back to the ships,where they were tied to the benches until they had slept off the effects of the lotus.
Next Odysseus and his men arrived on the land where the Cyclopes lived,the huge one-eyed monsters generated by Gaia in the Greek creation myth.Having moored their ships,Odysseus and twelve of his companions went into the island in search of food.They came upon a deep,gloomy cave where they found milk and cheese,which they ate greedily.Foolishly they then waited for the owner to return.Eventually Polyphemus,the largest of all the Cyclopes,appeared.Polyphemus was the son of the god Poseidon.
Polyphemus drove his flocks into the cave and blocked the entrance with a great stone.Seeing Odysseus and his men,he asked who they were.Odysseus replied that he was Nobody,the captain of a wrecked ship.Polyphemus grabbed two Greeks with one hand,dashed their brains out and ate them for supper.The following morning he devoured two more before driving his flocks out to pasture and sealing the cave with the huge stone.
Odysseus’ cunning now came to his aid.He resorted to a trick in order to make his escape.Finding a long stake,he sharpened it in the fire.When Polyphemus returned and had devoured another two Greeks,Odysseus offered him the wine which he had brought in a goatskin.Having drunk the wine,Polyphemus fell into a deep sleep.Odysseus then took the stake and drove it deep into the monster’s eye.Shrieking with pain,Polyphemus called for help.His fellow Cyclopes,responding from outside,asked what the matter was — whether he was being attacked.Polyphemus replied that he was being attacked by“Nobody”and so the other Cyclopes left him to fend for himself.
Next morning,Polyphemus half opened the cave to let out his sheep.Odysseus tied his men and himself underneath the woolly bodies of the sheep so that Polyphemus would not detect them as he stroked the backs of the sheep when they left the cave.In this way the Greeks made their escape,stealing the best of the sheep in the process.As they sailed away,Odysseus taunted Polyphemus,who hurled large rocks in the direction of his voice.[20]The Greeks escaped,but they had incurred the further wrath of Poseidon.
Odysseus and his companions then drifted to the island of Aeolus,king of the winds.Aeolus treated them well and entertained them.When they left,he gave Odysseus a leather pouch in which all the winds except the favourable west wind which they needed were imprisoned.Not knowing what was in the pouch,and thinking it might contain a valuable treasure which Odysseus was keeping for himself,Odysseus’ companions opened it.As a result the winds were loosed and their ships were tossed back to the island of Aeolus.This time Aeolus,believing their misfortunes indicated the disfavor of the gods,was no longer willing to help them.So they made their way to the island of the cannibal Laestrygonians,from whom they had a narrow escape;all the ships were destroyed and their crews eaten by the cannibals except for Odysseus’ own.
They next reached the island where the golden-haired sorceress Circe[21]resided.Odysseus divided his men into two groups,one led by himself,the other by Eurylochus.Eurylochus’ group was sent to explore the island first.Arriving outside Circe’s house,they found wolves and lions who were in fact humans whom Circe had transformed into animals by her magic.Circe’s beautiful singing attracted the sailors’ attention.When she emerged and invited them into the house,all except Eurylochus followed her.There she gave them food mixed with a drug which caused them to forget their native land;and after the meal,she waved her wand and transformed them into pigs.
Eurylochus returned to the ship to report the loss of his companions to Odysseus,who set out to find Circe himself.On the way he met Hermes,[22]who provided him with a plant which would act as an antidote to Circe’s drug.And he advised Odysseus that,when Circe waved her wand,he should rush at her as though to kill her;she would then retreat in fear and invite him to share her bed;but he should only do so if she would swear by the gods not to take away his manhood.
It all happened as Hermes had predicted.Moreover,anxious to please her guest,Circe also released Odysseus’ companions by smearing them with a magic ointment.They all stayed with Circe for a whole year,feasting.Circe bore Odysseus a son,Telogonus.
Circe advised Odysseus to go down to Hades[23]to seek the advice of the prophet Tiresias.[24]In Hades Tiresias told Odysseus that he had a good chance of reaching home but that he must not steal the cattle of the sun god Helios on the island of Trinacria.Besides Tiresias,Odysseus met many others in the Underworld：his mother told him of his wife Penelope’s resistance to the suitors who were trying to persuade her that her husband was long dead;the Greek King Agamemnon told him of his murder by his wife Clytemnestra.[25]Achilles appeared,lamenting that he was no longer in the land of the living,and Odysseus tried to console him by reporting the deeds of Achilles’s son,Neoptolemos.Odysseus also saw many famous sights：Sisyphus[26]pushing a huge rock up a mountain,only to find it slip back as he reached the top;and Tantalus[27]standing up to his neck in a pool of water which vanished as he bent down to drink it.
Having returned from Hades to Circe’s island,Odysseus set out once again,sailing first to the island of the Sirens,who were terrible creatures with the heads and voices of women and the bodies of birds,who lured sailors onto the rocks by their sweet songs.On Circe’s advice,Odysseus plugged the ears of his sailors with wax and had himself tied to the mast as his ship passed by the island.The Sirens tempted Odysseus further with the gift of foreknowledge and he cried out to his men to release him,but they refused to do so.
Next they had to steer his way between Scylla and Charybdis.[28]Scylla was a sea monster with twelve feet and six necks supporting six dogs’ heads each with three rows of teeth.[29]Lurking in a cave high upon a rock,she would emerge to seize the crew of any passing ship.Opposite Scylla,on another cliff,sat another monster,Charybdis,who three times each day swallowed the waters of the sea and three times threw them up again.Odysseus lost some of his men to Scylla rather than risk them all being sucked into the whirlpool created by Charybdis.
Escaping Scylla and Charybdis,Odysseus and his men proceeded to the island of Trinacria,where the sun god,Helios,[30]kept his cattle.Both Circe and Tiresias had warned Odysseus to avoid the place and above all not to harm the cattle there.However,Odysseus was faced with a mutiny from his men and so they landed.Stranded by bad weather,all was well until their food ran out.Then some of Odysseus’ famished men,led by Eurylochus,slaughtered the sun god’s cattle in Odysseus’ absence.Helios complained to Zeus.When Odysseus and his men left the island,a terrible storm arose.Zeus sent a thunderbolt which smashed the ship and all Odysseus’ men were drowned.Odysseus alone,clinging to the mast,survived,being tossed on the waves for ten days.
Washed ashore,Odysseus found himself in the company of Calypso,[31]a divine nymph,[32]who enchanted him with her singing,offered to make him immortal and became his lover for seven years,bearing him at least two children.Then Athena sent Hermes to order Calypso to let Odysseus go.Calypso provided him with a raft and he rowed out to sea,only to be attacked by Poseidon,who was still furious at the injury done to his son,the Cyclops Polyphemus,and therefore sent a storm to batter Odysseus’ raft.Protected by a kind sea-goddess,[33]Odysseus nonetheless survived and was washed up,completely exhausted,on the shore of the land of the Phaeacians.
When Nausicaa,the daughter of the king of the Phaeacians,went to the sea-side with her maids to wash their clothes,she was amazed to find a half-naked stranger lying in the bushes.She gave him some of her brother’s clothes and invited him to her father’s court,where Odysseus was well treated.Eventually he revealed his true identity and the King of the Phaeacians provided a ship to take him back to Ithaca.After ten years,Odysseus had at last reached his native land.
Back on Ithaca,Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar.Athena told him of his wife’s constancy,how Penelope had tricked the suitors,all 112 of them,by telling them that she was weaving a shroud for Odysseus’ father and that they must await her decision as to whom she might marry until the shroud was complete.Every evening she had undone the work she had accomplished during the day.However,after more than three years,she had been betrayed by one of her maids and seems to have accepted that she could not delay choosing from among the suitors much longer.Athena advised Odysseus to go first to his faithful swineherd Eumaios.While he was with Eumaios,his son Telemachus appeared.[34]Prompted by Athena,Odysseus revealed his identity and together they planned the destruction of the suitors.
Odysseus then proceeded to his own palace as a beggar.On his way he was kicked roughly by his old goatherd.On arrival,not yet revealing his identity,he met Penelope,who revealed that she planned to marry whichever of the suitors was able to shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve axe-heads with Odysseus’ bow.This is a curious moment.Penelope has been presented up to this point as the model of a faithful wife.Was she now preparing to submit to one of the suitors? Or,more likely,is this another occasion on which she was living up to her reputation for being circumspect and resourceful.[35]Knowing that only Odysseus was strong enough to string his own bow,was this another delaying tactic? Did she indeed recognize Odysseus and create the contest to provide the opportunity for him to destroy the suitors?
At first he was ridiculed by the young suitors.But,when none of them was able to rise to Penelope’s challenge,he took the bow and strung it.At the sign of a thunderbolt from Zeus,he then shot an arrow through the twelve axe-heads and revealed his identity.There followed the brutal and merciless slaughter not only of all the suitors but also of the twelve of Penelope’s servants who had proved disloyal by consorting with the suitors;they were made to cleanse the palace of blood and then hanged.All this by the husband who had himself been guilty of serial infidelity with Circe and Calypso.The goatherd too was killed — after his ears,nose,hands,feet and genitals had first been cut off.So,although Odysseus and Penelope were reunited,it was by no means a peaceful homecoming.The odyssey ends therefore with the extreme violence that characterized the Trojan War itself.
However,it was not in the nature of a Greek hero to settle down to a peaceful retirement.Soon afterwards,Odysseus put out to sea again in search of new adventures and travelled far to the west,never to return.He was reputed to have found the land of the Blest.The decision to make this final journey was the subject of one of the most celebrated poems of 19th century England,Tennyson’s Ulysses.[36]In a fine summary of the hero’s undaunted and restless spirit,Tennyson’s poem ends with a description of Ulysses and his new companions as they set out once more:
These lines convey the nobility of restless determination.However,that has not been the universal characterization of Odysseus.When the Romans conquered Greece,they adopted much of Greek culture.Indeed,the Roman poet Horace later wrote that“Captive Greece took her rude conqueror captive”and,although the Romans did have their own gods,in general they simply adopted Greek gods,renaming them.The Romans,however,looked less favorably on Odysseus（Ulysses）than on most Greek gods and heroes.Partly this may be because the Romans considered themselves the descendants of Aeneas of Troy,the city for whose destruction Odysseus was responsible.But principally it was because the Romans despised Odysseus’ cunning.Rather than viewing it as masterful and intelligent,they saw it as deceitful and dishonest.Added to which,Odysseus was viewed as impious and hedonistic.This serves to remind us that,even in classical times,the views of heroes of mythology were shaped to reflect the values and concerns of each new age and that even so major figure as Odysseus could be cast in a different light.[37]
注释
[1]The legend of Jason and the Argonauts is probably older than the Iliad and the Odyssey but it comes down to us in its developed form through a much later epic poem,the Argonautica,by Apollonios of Rhodes,in the 3rd century B.C..Apollonios was the head of the great library at Alexandria in Egypt.
[2]The strait used to be called the Hellespont after Helle.Today it is called the Dardanelles.
[3]In modern Georgia.
[4]In Thessaly.
[5]Unlike other centaurs who had a reputation for being wild and violent,Chiron,a son of Kronos,was highly reputed as a tutor to many heroes,including Achilles and Theseus.
[6]This story has remarkable similarities to the Christian myth of St Christopher.In the course of carrying a child across a river,the child became almost unbearably heavy.When he reached the other side,Christopher discovered the child to be Christ himself.
[7]The meaning of“Argo”is swift.
[8]Now in the northwest of Turkey.
[9]As his punishment,Phineus had been given the choice of being blind and having a long life,or having his sight and a short life.He chose the former.Helios,the sun god,sent the harpies to persecute Phineus because he was angry that Phineus had chosen to live in darkness rather than in the sun he provided.
[10]Hera had persuaded Aphrodite（Venus）to get her son Eros（Cupid）to shoot his arrow into the heart of Medea and so cause her to fall in love with Jason.
[11]The return journey of the Argo is lengthy and confused and there are various versions of it.Instead of returning through the Hellespont,the Argo left the Black Sea via the Danube,reached the Adriatic,sailed up the Po and got as far as the Rhine before returning to the Mediterranean.Going so far west accounts for the legend that Jason was the founder of Aemona,which is today Ljubljana,the capital of Slovenia.More generally,the multiple accounts of the journey reflect the expansion of the Greek world at the time the narrative was being developed before the 6th century B.C..
[12]“Siren voices”has entered the language as a way of conveying something alluring but dangerous.
[13]Orpheus was the son of Apollo and a highly gifted musician.Apollo gave him his golden lyre（harp）.
[14]Hephaistos（Vulcan）was the god of blacksmiths,metallurgy,fire and volcanoes.He served as blacksmith to the gods.He made Achilles’ armour,Hermes’ winged helmet and sandals,Aphrodite’s girdle and Eros’ bow and arrows.
[15]This is not the only account.Alternatively,Talos is described as a gift from Zeus to Europa,the mother of King Minos.
[16]For an account of the Trojan war,see Chapter 7 below.
[17]The Odyssey was written in the 8th century B.C.and is 12,110 dactylic hexameters long.
[18]Ulysses by James Joyce is one of the most important“stream of consciousness”novels of the first half of the 20th century.Published in 1922,it draws frequent parallels between its leading characters and those in the myth.The film Oh Brother,Where Art Thou? by Joel and Ethan Coen（2000）also draws heavily on the Ulysses story,with George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill playing the Ulysses role.
[19]Poseidon（Neptune）was the brother of Zeus.He was god of the sea.He is usually depicted carrying a trident,which was made for him by the Cyclopes.With the help of Apollo he built the walls of the city of Troy.
[20]This scene is the subject of a fine painting of around 1848 by the British artist,J.M.W.Turner.
[21]Circe was the daughter of the sun god,Helios.She is mentioned as a famous witch in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
[22]Hermes（Mercury）was appointed the messenger of Zeus and the other gods and equipped with a pair of winged sandals and a winged cap to enable him to travel swiftly.
[23]Hades is both the Greek name of the god of the Underworld（Pluto to the Romans）and also the name given to the Underworld itself.Hades,a brother of Zeus,ruled the Underworld with his wife Persephone（Proserpina）,judging whether those sent to them should be sent on to Tartarus,a place of torment,the closest Greek equivalent to the Christian hell,or Elysium,the land of the Blest.There were five rivers in Hades：Cocytus,Phlegethon,Acheron,Lethe and Styx.A surly old man,Charon,ferried new arrivals across Acheron in return for a coin.On the other side sat the three-headed dog Cerberus.Usually the living could not get into and the dead could not get out of Hades.However,there were exceptions.Odysseus was one such.
[24]Tiresias,from the city of Thebes,had been struck with blindness by the goddess Athena,whom he had accidentally caught sight of when she was naked in the woods bathing.Later,realizing that Tiresias’ offence was unintentional,but unable to reverse his blindness,Athena endowed him with a share of her own wisdom and persuaded Apollo to grant him the gift of prophecy.
[25]Agamemnon’s father,Atraeus,had committed the terrible crime of serving his brother Thyestes with a dish made from the severed limbs of Thyestes’ own children.This brought a curse on the family of Atraeus.As a result,when Agamemnon returned from Troy,his wife Clytemnestra attacked her husband in his bath,ensnaring him in a net before hacking him death with an axe.It is unclear whether Clytemnestra’s motive was that Thyestes’ only surviving son,Aigisthos,was her lover or that Agamemnon had murdered her first husband in front of her and sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in order to enable the Greek fleet to sail to Troy.
[26]Sisyphus had been a tyrant in Corinth.His punishment had been decreed as a result of repeated acts of deceit towards several of the gods,including Zeus himself.
[27]Tantalus,a son of Zeus,stole ambrosia and nectar from Zeus’ table and revealed secrets of the gods.From his punishment is derived the English word“tantalizing,”signifying temptation without satisfaction.
[28]Having to choose between Scylla and Charybdis is sometimes seen as the origin of the English phrase“between and rock and a hard place,”meaning having to choose between two equally disagreeable alternatives.
[29]Originally a sea nymph,she had been transformed into a monster as a result of the jealousy of Poseidon’s wife.
[30]Helios was the son of the Titan sun god Hyperion.Sometimes he is rather confusingly identified with Apollo,the son of Zeus,who was both a sun god and the god of music and poetry,as well as being renowned for his youthful,manly beauty.Helios was the grandfather of Medea.Also frequently called Phoebus in Western literature,he drove his chariot,the sun,across the sky each day.
[31]Since 1934“calypso”has been the name of a kind of improvised music of West Indian origin,but there is no known connection between this and the Calypso of Greek mythology.
[32]A“nymph”is a lesser deity,usually a beautiful female figure,often in the service of a superior deity.
[33]Leucothea,formerly Ino,wife of Athamas and step-mother of Phrixus and Helle.She received the name Leucothea when she was deified by Zeus for having taken care of his son Dionysus（Bacchus）during his infancy.
[34]Telemachus had recently returned from a journey to King Menelaus of Sparta to discover whether his father was still alive.
[35]“wise”（“periphron”）is the description most commonly used of Penelope in Homer.
[36]Written in 1833 in Tennyson’s early twenties,the poem reflects the poet’s acute grief at the death of his very close friend,Arthur Hallam,and his Stoic determination to overcome that grief and move forwards.
[37]In the early 14th century,in the Divine Comedy Dante placed Odysseus at very nearly the bottom of hell.