Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/58

48 The island on which he has been cast is Scheria, inhabited by the Phæacians, whose king and people are very far indeed from being of the ordinary type of mortal men. Whether the poet, in his description of these Phæacian islanders, was exercising his imagination only, or indulging his talent for satire, is a controverted question with Homeric critics. Those who would assign this poem of the Odyssey to a different author from the writer or writers of the Iliad, and to a much later date than that commonly given to Homer, have thought that in the good-humoured boastfulness of the Phæacian character, their love of pleasure and novelty, and their attachment to the sea, some Ionian poet was showing up, under fictitious names, the weaknesses of his own countrymen. Others take the Phæacians to be only another name for the Phœnicians, the sailors of all seas, who had probably in their character somewhat of the egotism and exaggeration which have been commonly reputed faults of men who have travelled far and seen much. Whatever may be the true interpretation of the story, or whether there be any interpretation at all, this curious episode in the adventures of Ulysses is unquestionably rather comic than serious. The names are all significant, somewhat after the fashion of those assumed by the Red men, The king (Alcinous) is "Strong-mind," son of "The Swift Seaman," and he has a brother called "Crusher of Men." The nautical names of his courtiers—"Prow-man" and "Stern-man," and the rest—are as palpably conventional as our own Tom Bowline