of AEolus, there was no
punishment, only banishment; thus we behold now the penalty, at the
hands of that institution which is specially to administer it. The
companions did no wrong to the Laestrigonians, but note that just here
judgment comes upon them. Ulysses escapes, but to him also these people
appear as destroyers, as man-devouring cannibals; so the State often
seems to the guilty, overwhelming the individual with its penal
vengeance.

The Cyclops was also a giant and a cannibal, full of hostility; but
mark the difference. He was the Strong Man of Nature, not human in
shape, with that one eye in his head; his violence was against
institutions, the violence of the wild barbarian, which has to be put
down by man. But the Laestrigonians live in a civilized order which has
to punish the transgressor; their shapes are not monstrosities of
nature, but magnified human bodies. Both are giants and cannibals, both
negative, but in a wholly different sense.

What is the location of the Laestrigonians? A subject much disputed
recently and of old, with very little profit. Some expressions are
puzzling: "The herdsman coming in greets the herdsman going out;" then
again, "a herdsman needing no sleep would earn double wages," which
implies apparently two periods for toil in twenty-four hours, the one
"for tending cows" and the other "for tending sheep;" and this is
possible, "for the paths of day and night are near" to each other, as
if somehow day and night ran their courses together. What does it all
mean? Some dim story of the polar world with its bright nights, which
story may have come from the far North into Greece, along with another
Northern product, amber, which was known to Homer, may lie at the basis
of this curious passage. But we can hardly place the Laestrigonians
under polar skies in spite of this polar characteristic. Others have
sought their locality in the Black Sea and have even seen their harbor
in that of Balaklava. All of which is uncertain enough, and destined to
remain so, but furnishes a marvelous field for erudite conjecture and
investigation. The certain matter here, and we should say the important
one also, is the institutional order and its negative attitude toward
Ulysses. That is, we must reach down and bring to light the ethical
thread which is spun through this wonderful texture of Fairy Tales,
before we have any real explanation, or connecting principle.

III.

Onward the wanderer, now wi