"Wind-like beneath, the immortal golden sandals Bare up his flight o'er the limitless earth and the sea; And in his hand that magic wand he carried, Wherewith the eyes of men he closes in slumber, Or wakens from sleeping."
He comes like the breath of morning awakening the world, to rouse our hero from the embrace of death; and the whole scene is beautifully attuned to an image of returning life. Therefore the interference of Hermes between Odysseus and Calypso is full of significance. We accordingly meet the same episode in the Circe tale. That this last is a later widening of the first story appears from many things; chiefly in this, that there is more moral in the history; for the truest myth is content to follow the actual workings of nature, without attempting to adorn a story with extraneous incident, or to convert its simplicity into the complexities of allegory. That turning the companions into swine was a punishment for luxury--that points the moral; the original Circe, we may be sure, only touched her lovers with her sleepy magic rod. It was the same wand with the "slepy yerde"[17] of Hermes, and she used it not wantonly but only because all whom she embraces must fall into the unwakeful slumber. If Circe's name does not reveal her nature so nakedly as Calypso's does, this is but consistent with the fact of her later creation. Nevertheless, we easily recognise by it death in one of its many types--a ravenous animal or bird, a hawk or wolf.[18]
When Odysseus is freed from the fatal embrace of Calypso, he is not at once restored to the common earth, but from his descent into hell goes heavenwards, or at least to the happy islands of the blessed. The land of the Phæaceans, Scheria, can scarcely be anything else than this Paradise, to which, according to one myth, Rhadamanthus fled from his brother Minos when he reigned in Crete. The Phæaceans, too, have had dealings with "yellow-haired Rhadamanthus," whom they carried back in their swift barques to Eubœa. The name of their island is merely land, shore;[19] perhaps at first only the farther coast of the sea of death.
"Far away do we live at the end of the watery plain, Nor before now have we ever had dealings with other mortals; But now there comes some luckless wanderer hither. Him it is right that we help; for all men, fellows and strangers, Come from Zeus; in his sight the smallest gift is pleasing."[20]