reeks, where they
were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as
wanderers from Troy was reported and believed.

I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the
ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as
well as that of the Argonauts--one of the most striking features in the
Hellenic legendary world. Among them all, the most interesting,
individually, is Odysseus, whose romantic adventures in fabulous places
and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by Homer.
The goddesses Calypso and Circe; the semi-divine mariners of Phaeacia,
whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman;
the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic Laestrygones, and the wind-ruler
AEolus; the Sirens, who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate
by their food,--all these pictures formed integral and interesting
portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reestablished in his
house and family. But so marked a personage could never be permitted to
remain in the tameness of domestic life; the epic poem called the
_Telegonia_ ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures.
Telegonus, his son by Circe, coming to Ithaca in search of his father,
ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing who he was.
Bitter repentance overtook the son for his undesigned parricide: at his
prayer and by the intervention of his mother Circe, both Penelope and
Telemachus were made immortal: Telegonus married Penelope, and
Telemachus married Circe.

We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical
ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the
Molossian.

It has already been mentioned that Antenor and AEneas stand distinguished
from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy
with the Greeks, which was by Sophocles and others construed as
treacherous collusion,--a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though
emphatically repelled, by the AEneas of Vergil. In the old epic of
Arctinus, next in age to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, AEneas abandons Troy
and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous death of Laocoon,
before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night battle:
yet Lesches, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as
having been carried away captive by Neoptolemus. In a remarkable passage
of the _Iliad_, Poseidon describes the family of Priam as having
incurred