Cyllenius now to Pluto’s dreary reign
  Conveys the dead, a lamentable train! 
  The golden wand, that causes sleep to fly,
  Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye,
  That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day,
  Points out the long uncomfortable way. 
  Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent
  Thin hollow screams, along the deep descent. 
  As in the cavern of some rifty den,
  Where flock nocturnal bats and birds obscene,
  Cluster’d they hang, till at some sudden shock,
  They move, and murmurs run through all the rock: 
  So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts;
  And such a scream fill’d all the dismal coasts.

There they overhear Ajax giving Achilles a minute account of his funeral,—­the grandest ever seen,—­and when questioned describe Penelope’s stratagem in regard to the Web and to Ulysses’ bow.

Meanwhile Ulysses has arrived at his father’s farm, where the old man is busy among his trees.  To prepare Laertes for his return, Ulysses relates one of his fairy tales ere he makes himself known.  Like Penelope, Laertes proves incredulous, until Ulysses points out the trees given him when a child and exhibits his scar.

  Smit with the signs which all his doubts explain,
  His heart within him melts; his knees sustain
  Their feeble weight no more; his arms alone
  Support him, round the loved Ulysses thrown: 
  He faints, he sinks, with mighty joys oppress’d: 
  Ulysses clasps him to his eager breast.

To celebrate their reunion, a banquet is held, which permits the Ithacans to show their joy at their master’s return.  Meanwhile the friends of the suitors, having heard of the massacre, determine to avenge them by slaying father and son.  But, aided by Minerva and Jupiter, these two heroes present so formidable an appearance, that the attacking party concludes a treaty, which restores peace to Ithaca and ends the Odyssey.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 3:  The quotations of the Odyssey are taken from Pope’s translation.]

[Footnote 4:  See chapter on Venus in the author’s “Myths of Greece and Rome.”]

LATIN EPICS

Latin literature took its source in the Greek, to which it owes much of its poetic beauty, for many of its masterpieces are either translations or imitations of the best Greek writings.  There have been, for instance, numerous translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, the first famous one being by the “father of Roman dramatic and epic poetry,” Livius Andronicus, who lived in the third century B.C.  He also attempted to narrate Roman history in the same strain, by composing an epic of some thirty-five books, which are lost.

Another poet, Naevius, a century later composed the Cyprian Iliad, as well as a heroic poem on the first Punic war (Bellum Punicum), of which only fragments have come down to us.  Then, in the second century before our era, Ennius made a patriotic attempt to sing the origin of Rome in the Annales in eighteen books, of which only parts remain, while Hostius wrote an epic entitled Istria, which has also perished.  Lucretius’ epic “On the Nature of Things” is considered an example of the astronomical or physical epic.