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Page 1
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.
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