looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart;” whereas Homer’s ideas of sexual morality are, in the last analysis, hardly above those of a savage.  The dalliance of Odysseus with the nymphs, and the licentious treatment of women captives by all the “heroes,” do not, any more than the cowardly murder of the twelve maids, evoke a word of censure, disgust, or disapproval from his lips.

His gods are on the same low level as his heroes, if not lower.  When the spouse of Zeus, king of the gods, wishes to beguile him, she knows no other way than borrowing the girdle of Aphrodite.  But this scene (Iliad, XIV., 153 seq.) is innocuous compared with the shameless description of the adulterous amours of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey (VIII., 266-365), in presence of the gods, who treat the matter as a great joke.  For a parallel to this passage we would have to descend to the Botocudos or the most degraded Australians.  All of which proves that the severity of the punishment inflicted on the twelve maids of Odysseus does not indicate a high regard for chastity, but is simply another illustration of typical barbarous fury against women for presuming to do anything without the consent of the man whose private property they are.

WAS PENELOPE A MODEL WIFE?

If the real Odysseus, unprincipled, unchivalrous, and cruel, is anything but a hero who “adorns his age and race,” must it not be conceded, at any rate, that “the unwearied fidelity of Penelope, awaiting through the long revolving years the return of her storm-tossed husband,” presents, as Lecky declares (II., 279), and as is commonly supposed, a picture of perennial beauty “which Rome and Christendom, chivalry and modern civilization, have neither eclipsed nor transcended?”

We have seen that the fine words of Achilles regarding his “love” of Briseis are, when confronted with his actions, reduced to empty verbiage.  The same result is reached in the case of Penelope, if we subject her actions and motives to a searching critical analysis.  Ostensibly, indeed, she is set up as a model of that feminine constancy which men at all times have insisted on while they themselves preferred to be models of inconstancy.  As usual in such cases, the feminine model is painted with touches of almost grotesque exaggeration.  After the return of Odysseus Penelope informed her nurse (XXIII., 18) that she has not slept soundly all this time—­twenty years!  Such phrases, too, are used as “longing for Odysseus, I waste my heart away,” or “May I go to my dread grave seeing Odysseus still, and never gladden heart of meaner husband.”  But they are mere phrases.  The truth about her attitude and her-feelings is told frankly in several places by three different persons—­the goddess of wisdom, Telemachus, and Penelope herself.  Athene urges Telemachus to make haste that he may find his blameless mother still at home instead of the bride of one of the suitors.