Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/92

82 find him indulging in all the mournful irony of the Hebrew Preacher, in his perplexed thought before he was led to "the conclusion of the whole matter" complaining, like him, that "one event happeneth to all," and that "the wise man dieth as the fool;" that he, the bravest and most beautiful of living heroes, would have to meet the same lot as his victim Lycaon; so here, in the Odyssey, he adopts the text that "a living dog is better than a dead lion:"—

Such was the immortality to which Paganism condemned even its best and bravest.

One touching inquiry both Agamemnon and Achilles put to their visitor from the upper world. How fare their sons? Where is Orestes?—asks the great king. Did Neoptolemus, in the later days of the war, prove himself worthy of his father?—inquires Achilles. When he has been assured of this, the shade of the mighty hero, well satisfied,

There is no distinct principle of reward or punishment discernible in the regions of the dead, as seen by Ulysses. Indeed, anything like happiness in this shadowy future seems incompatible with the feelings put into the mouth of Achilles. Orion, the mighty hunter, appears to enjoy something like the Red Indian's paradise—pursuing, in those shadowy fields, the