Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang

Author:Andrew Lang [Lang, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

VII

HOW ULYSSES CAME TO HIS OWN COUNTRY, AND FOR SAFETY DISGUISED HIMSELF AS AN OLD BEGGAR MAN

When Ulysses awoke, he found himself alone, wrapped in the linen sheet and the bright coverlet, and he knew not where he was. The Phaeacians had carried him from the ship as he slept, and put him on shore, and placed all the rich gifts that had been given him under a tree, and then had sailed away. There was a morning mist that hid the land, and Ulysses did not know the haven of his own island, Ithaca, and the rock whence sprang a fountain of the water fairies that men call Naiads. He thought that the Phaeacians had set him in a strange country, so he counted all his goods, and then walked up and down sadly by the seashore. Here he met a young man, delicately clad, like a king's son, with a double mantle, such as kings wear, folded round his shoulders, and a spear in his hand. 'Tell me pray,' said Ulysses, 'what land is this, and what men dwell here?'

The young man said: 'Truly, stranger, you know little, or you come from far away. This isle is Ithaca, and the name of it is known even in Troyland.'

Ulysses was glad, indeed, to learn that he was at home at last; but how the young men who had grown up since he went away would treat him, all alone as he was, he could not tell. So he did not let out that he was Ulysses the King, but said that he was a Cretan. The stranger would wonder why a Cretan had come alone to Ithaca, with great riches, and yet did not know that he was there. So he pretended that, in Crete, a son of Idomeneus had tried to rob him of all the spoil he took at Troy, and that he had killed this prince, and packed his wealth and fled on board a ship of the Phoenicians, who promised to land him at Pylos. But the wind had borne them out of their way, and they had all landed and slept on shore, here; but the Phoenicians had left him asleep and gone off in the dawn.

On this the young man laughed, and suddenly appeared as the great Goddess, Pallas Athênê. 'How clever you are,' she said; 'yet you did not know me, who helped you in Troyland. But much trouble lies before you, and you must not let man or woman know who you really are, your enemies are so many and powerful.'

'You never helped me in my dangers on the sea,' said Ulysses, 'and now do you make mock of me, or is this really mine own country?'

'I had no mind,' said the Goddess, 'to quarrel with my brother the Sea God, who had a feud against you for the blinding of his son, the Cyclops. But come, you shall see this is really Ithaca,' and she scattered the white mist, and

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