Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/138

114 would lead to the conclusion that the Saga was made up from various sources of tradition. The same result, I suggest, follows from a consideration of the rule of succession to the throne of Ithaca.

The position of Laertes, to begin with, is not free from difficulty. Tradition, as we have seen, appears to have varied as to whether Odysseus was really his son or the son of Sisyphus, the Master Thief. The latter view of the case obviously agrees better with the conception of his character as the impersonation of craft and worldly wisdom. Laertes, then, by one theory, represents an earlier, legitimate dynasty to which the family of Odysseus, who are assumed to be usurpers, naturally would desire to affiliate themselves. But of this there seems to be no good evidence in the poem. How he came to be deposed we are not told, and the tradition regarding him was apparently in an uncertain state, because what has been called his Aristeia or rehabilitation in the last book is generally regarded as a later addition to the original poem. We may perhaps see in him a reminiscence of one of those divine kings who are deposed when their strength declines, and they are no longer able to perform the priestly functions which were the business of all primitive kings, and which can be pleasing to the gods only when done by one in the fullest vigour of life. The old plan was to kill them off, and their successors feasted on them, and thus imbibed their valour and other virtues. In England we have the same tradition in the case of the Holy Mawle. As instances of this custom within the Hellenic area, it may be noted that it was a tradition in the island of Syra, that in ancient times people used to live so long, that it was necessary to fling them from a cliff; in Keos old people were forced to drink hemlock when a certain limit of age was reached.