concubinage prevailed in the camp before Troy, it was “only single concubinage.”  In his larger treatise he goes so far as to apologize for these ruffians—­who captured and traded off women as they would horses or cows—­on the ground that they were away from their wives and were indulging in the “mildest and least licentious” of all forms of adultery!  Yet Gladstone was personally one of the purest and noblest of men.  Strange what somersaults a hobby ridden too hard may induce a man to make in his ethical attitude!

ODYSSEUS, LIBERTINE AND RUFFIAN

If we now turn from the hero of the Iliad to the hero of the Odyssey, we find the same Gladstone declaring (II., 502) that “while admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope;” and in the shorter treatise he goes so far as to say (131), that

“the subject of the Odyssey gives Homer the opportunity of setting forth the domestic character of Odysseus, in his profound attachment to wife, child, and home, in such a way as to adorn not only the hero, but his age and race.”

The “profound attachment” of Odysseus to his wife may be gauged in the first place by the fact that he voluntarily remained away from her ten years, fighting to recover, for another king, a worthless, adulterous wench.  Before leaving on this expedition, from which he feared he might never return, he spoke to his wife, as she herself relates (XVIII., 269), begging her to be mindful of his father and mother, “and when you see our son a bearded man, then marry whom you will, and leave the house now yours”—­namely for the benefit of the son, for whose welfare he was thus more concerned than for a monopoly of his wife’s love.

After the Trojan war was ended he embarked for home, but suffered a series of shipwrecks and misfortunes.  On the island of Aeaea he spent a whole year sharing the hospitality and bed of the beautiful sorceress Circe, with no pangs of conscience for such conduct, nor thought of home, till his comrades, in spite of the “abundant meat and pleasant wine,” longed to depart and admonished him in these words:  “Unhappy man, it is time to think of your native land, if you are destined ever to be saved and to reach your home in the land of your fathers.”  Thus they spoke and “persuaded his manly heart.”  In view of the ease with which he thus abandoned himself for a whole year to a life of indulgence, till his comrades prodded his conscience, we may infer that he was not so very unwilling a prisoner afterward, of the beautiful nymph Calypso, who held him eight years by force on her island.  We read, indeed, that, at the expiration of these years, Odysseus was always weeping, and his sweet life ebbed away in longing for his home.  But all the sentiment is taken out of this by the words which follow:  [Greek:  epei ouketi aendane numphae] “because the nymph pleased him no more!” Even so Tannhaeuser tired of the pleasures in the grotto of Venus, and begged to be allowed to leave.