command of the Olympians is borne to
this lower Goddess; Hermes is the voice of the higher ethical divinity
to the lower one of mere nature. But even the higher God has his
physical counterpart, is not yet wholly a spirit; so Hermes eats his
ambrosia and drinks his nectar set before him by Calypso in true Greek
fashion and misses the smoke of sacrifices along his barren route.

It is curious to see how Hermes plays with polytheism, hinting ever so
slyly the contradiction in the Greek Pantheon. "Why dost thou a God ask
me a God why I come?" It is indeed an absurd question, for a God ought
to know in advance. In numerous places we can trace a subtle Homeric
humor which crops out in dealing with his many deities, indicating a
start toward their dissolution. Then with a strong assertion of the
supremacy of one God, Zeus, Hermes utters the unwilling word: Ulysses
must depart from this island.

The answer of Calypso is significant, she charges the Gods with
jealousy; "Ye grudge the Goddesses openly to mate with men," which
proposition she nails by several examples. But the Gods reserve to
themselves the privilege of license with mortal women. A complaint
still heard, not in the Olympian but in our Lower World; men are not
held to the same code of morals that women are! But Calypso yields up
her lover whom she "thought to make immortal and ageless." What else
can she do? It is true that she saved him once and has preserved him
till the present; she is, however, but a stage which must now be
transcended. Appetite may preserve man, still he is to rise above
appetite.

3. Now Ulysses is brought before us. The first fact about him is, his
intense longing to return home; he is found "sitting on the shore, and
his eyes were never dry of tears" as he looked out on the sea toward
his country; "for the nymph was no longer pleasing to him," whatever
may have been the case once. Surely the hero is in bonds which he
cannot break, though he would; a penitential strand we may well find in
his sorrow; thus he is ready for release.

Calypso, therefore, announces to him the divine plan: he must make a
raft and commit himself to the waters. She has to obey, for is she not
really conquered by Ulysses? Certainly the divine order requires her to
send the man away from her island. Yet the return is by no means made
easy, but is to be won by hardest effort; he must grapple with the
waves, with angry Neptune after leaving Calypso. No wonder that