Vathy does not occur in the Odyssey under any name, nor is there any trace of antique structures about it. In the illustration the narrow entrance at the right is Vathy; the cove in the centre, with the island off it, is the port of Phorcys, where Ulysses was landed, and which, for the uses of ancient mariners, who beached their ships instead of anchoring them, was a better port than Vathy. It corresponds in the minutest detail to Homer’s account of it,—a smooth, sandy beach, complete shelter from all winds, and only varying in any particulars in its surroundings by a greater distance from the grotto where the Phæacians hide the presents Ulysses brings with him; but of this more is to be said.
The Odyssey gives no intimation of any city near the landing-place. The port of Ulysses’ own capital was much nearer Phæacia, and the ship might have landed him at his own door. The reason of this excessive caution was that during so long a time he had had no news from home, and his Phæacian friends knew that he might find his city in the hands of an enemy.
[Illustration: PORT OF PHORCYS AND NERITON, FROM THE MOUTH OF ULYSSES’ CAVE.]
Awaking, then, from the sleep in which he had been so gently landed by the crew of the Phæacian ship, he finds himself in a strange land, as he supposed, and in complete solitude, and arms himself with his habitual cunning, distrusting everything. When Athena comes to him in the form of a shepherd, he asks where he is; and being told that he is at last in the long-sought Ithaca, he is transported with joy, but conceals his emotion and addresses the goddess with these hasty words, disguising the truth and telling his story falsely, always turning in his mind many artifices: “I, too, have heard, in the far-off, immense island of Crete, of the island of Ithaca. It is, then, in that country that I have arrived with my treasures. I have left an equal part to my children because I fly from my native land, where I killed the dear son of Idomeneus,” etc., etc., going on with a long history to account for his presence in Ithaca, a place unknown to him, which fable he only drops when Athena throws off her disguise; but he still is unconvinced that he is in Ithaca. She calls his attention to Neriton in front of him, and having convinced him, helps him hide his treasures in the grotto, when they sit down under the olive-tree over its entrance, and she tells him how matters stand at home, and contrives plans for getting rid of the pretendants, who would, no doubt, put an end to him if he fell into their hands. This seems to be his conviction, for he exclaims: “Great gods! if you had not enlightened me I should have perished in my palace, like Agamemnon. Come, let us plan a means by which I may revenge myself on them all.” This hint of the fate of Agamemnon, whose end he had learned, is the clue to his cautious deportment. They plan as follows: He will be disguised by Athena, so that not even his wife shall know him, and will then go to Eunæus, who keeps his swine by the Raven’s Cliff, near Arethusa’s fountain, and wait with him studying up the position, while she goes off to Lacedæmon to bring back Telemachus, whom she had sent there nominally to get news of his father, but really, as she informs Ulysses, to give him an opportunity, hitherto wanting, to see the world and acquire renown. Here they separate, and Ulysses takes the secret path.