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Updated: June 3, 2025
A great homesickness had seized Odysseus, but no escape came for eight years. Then Athene begged the gods to help him. They called on Hermes, who commanded Calypso to let him go. She wanted him to stay with her but promised to send him away. She told him to make a raft which she would furnish with food and clothing for his need.
Therewith he set to number the fair tripods and the cauldrons and the gold and the goodly woven raiment; and of all these he lacked not aught, but he bewailed him for his own country, as he walked downcast by the shore of the sounding sea, and made sore lament. Then Athene came nigh him in the guise of a young man, the herdsman of a flock, a young man most delicate, such as are the sons of kings.
The men voted for Poseidon, the women for Athene; and as there were more women than men by one, Athene conquered. Thereupon Poseidon was enraged, and immediately the sea flowed over all the lands of Athens. To appease the sea-god, the burgesses found it necessary to impose a threefold punishment on their wives.
By the lightnings of Father Zeus and the owl of Athene, the news I bring is certainly great and beautiful; but he who yearned to make you happy was snatched from you and, though his noble legacy must inspire pleasure and gratitude, it will nevertheless fill your poor eyes with sorrowful tears."
And as when a man giveth the hide of a great bull to his folk to stretch, all soaked in fat, and they take and stretch it standing in a circle, and straightway the moisture thereof departeth and the fat entereth in under the haling of many hands, and it is all stretched throughout, thus they on both sides haled the dead man this way and that in narrow space, for their hearts were high of hope, the Trojans that they should drag him to Ilios and the Achaians to the hollow ships; and around him the fray waxed wild, nor might Ares rouser of hosts nor Athene despise the sight thereof, albeit their anger were exceeding great.
Even as the son of Kronos the crooked counsellor sendeth a star, a portent for mariners or a wide host of men, bright shining, and therefrom are scattered sparks in multitude; even in such guise sped Pallas Athene to earth, and leapt into their midst; and astonishment came on them that beheld, on horse-taming Trojans and well-greaved Achaians.
And the men were sore afraid when they heard her voice, and threw their arms upon the ground and fled, if haply they might escape to the city. And when Ulysses would have pursued after them, Zeus cast a thunderbolt from heaven, so that it fell before the feet of Athene. And Athene cried, "Cease from the battle, son of Laertes, lest Zeus be wroth with thee."
And now would the rosy-fingered Dawn have risen upon their weeping, but the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, had other thoughts. The night she held long in the utmost West, and on the other side she stayed the golden-throned Dawn by the stream Oceanus, and suffered her not to harness the swift-footed steeds that bear light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, the steeds ever young, that bring the morning.
Yet, notwithstanding these superhuman powers, together with special favours displayed to him by Apollo, Athene, and other divinities, he found it expedient to cultivate his rites in secret, in terror of persecution by the Christians, whose attention he had drawn upon himself by writing a work in opposition to them.
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to perish, himself, in a miserable island that of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. We see by these examples that we are not to consult our own interest and ambition, but that we are to consider the interests of others as well as our own. George S. Osborne Athene House, 24 April, 1827
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