gratification is this, but happiness,
the outer again mirroring the inner; domestic harmony is the matter set
forth.

Hither Ulysses comes with his companions, "to the city and beautiful
houses" of AEolus. A city is here, but no civil life is introduced into
the story. "A whole month the monarch entertained me;" what was again
the interest? "He asked me about Ilium," the eternal theme, which lies
always in the background of Fairyland as well as of Historic Hellas.
The Trojan war and also "the Return of the Greeks" were recounted, we
may say, sung by Ulysses; the Iliad and the Odyssey, delighted also
those domestic AEolians. Was not Troy destroyed because of a wrong done
to the Greek Family? Finally Ulysses was gotten ready to be sent home
by his host.

AEolus, the ruler of the winds, gives them into the might of Ulysses; he
confines them in "a bullock's bladder," which, tied by a silver chain,
he places in the ship. It is manifest that the sea, deprived of these
windy powers, cannot hinder the passage. Again we behold the main fact
of the island: the unstable, uncertain, capricious, is held by the
fixed, the permanent; during his sojourn with AEolus, Ulysses has
obtained an inner hold, an anchorage of the moral kind, which he sorely
needed. This was given him by his view of the Family, which was the
real security of the island. All the conditions of his return (but one)
are placed in his hand, tied up in a bag. "Only the west-wind was
allowed to blow," which sent him homewards.

Still the supreme condition was not, could not be given by AEolus or by
anybody else, could not be tied up in a bag. The free man must be
alert, he must watch, and win his own salvation; his prime duty is to
keep the bag tied, and therein to exercise his will. This is just what
he failed to do at the last moment. He went to sleep when in sight of
Ithaca; his companions, led by curiosity and avarice (two blasts of the
soul) open the bag, expecting to find gold and silver, and find the
rushing winds. Of course all are driven back to the starting-point, to
the island, on which they soon land.

What will Ulysses do in such extremity? "Shall I drop into the sea and
perish, or shall I still endure and stay among the living?" Suicide
will not solve his problem: "I remained and suffered." Herein also we
trace the stamp of the hero, whose special call it is to master fate.

So Ulysses tries again to get the bladder of winds from AEolus,
confessing