François Fénelon
The Adventures of Telemachus
Books XVI to XVIII
Translated by N. Hewitt © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved.
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Contents
BOOK XVI
The chiefs of the army assembled the following day to grant a king to the Daunians. They took pleasure in seeing the two camps mingle together with such unexpected friendliness, and thereafter the two armies were no longer but one. Wise Nestor could not be found in this council because grief, combined with old age, had wilted his heart, just as the rain beats down and causes to languish, at night, a flower, which was that morning, during the dawning of the day, the glory and ornament of the green countryside. His eyes had become two fountains of tears that could not go dry; far from them fled sweet Sleep, which casts its spells on the most searing pains. Hope, which is the life of the heart of man, was extinguished in him. All nourishment was bitter to this luckless old man. Even the light was odious to him.
His soul no longer asked for anything but to quit his body and plunge into the eternal night of the empire of Hades. All his friends spoke to him in vain. His heart, failing, was disgusted by all friendship like a sick man is disgusted by the best foods. To all one could say to him of the most touching things, he only responded with groans and sobs. From time to time, he was heard to say, “O Pisistratus, Pisistratus, Pisistratus, my son, you are calling me; I am following you. Pisistratus, you will render death sweet to me. O my dear son, I no longer desire any possession, other than seeing you again on the banks of the Styx.”
He spent entire hours without uttering a single word, but wailing and raising his hands and eyes drowned in tears to the sky.
Meanwhile, the assembled princes awaited Telemachus, who was alongside the body of Pisistratus. He spread over his body flowers by the handful. He added exquisite perfumes as he shed bitter tears.
“O my dear comrade,” he said, “I will never forget having seen you in Pylos, having followed you to Sparta, having found you again on the edge of the great Hesperia. I owe you a thousand cares. I loved you, you loved me too. I knew your valour. It would have surpassed that of many famous Greeks. Alas, it caused you to perish with glory, but it robbed the world of a nascent virtue that would have equaled that of your father. Yes, your wisdom and your eloquence at a mature age would have been like that of this old man, the admiration of all Greece. You already had that sweet insinuation that cannot be resisted when he speaks; that naïve way of recounting a story; that wise restraint, which is like magic in appeasing angry spirits; that authority, which comes from prudence and the strength of good counsel. When you spoke, all lent an ear, all were rapt, all desired to find you were right. Your speech, plain and humble, flowed gently into hearts like the dew on sprouting grass. Alas, so many good things we possessed a few hours ago are taken from us forever. Pisistratus, whom I embraced this morning, is no more. There only remains to us a painful memory of him. At least if you had closed the eyes of Nestor before we closed yours, he would not see what he sees, he would not be the most wretched of all fathers.”
After these words, Telemachus had the bloody cut, which was on Pisistratus’ side, washed and he had him laid out on a bed of purple, where his drooping head, with the pallor of death, resembled a young tree that—having covered the ground with its shade, and pushed toward the sky its flowering branches —was hacked by the blade of a woodsman’s axe: it no longer holds to its roots, nor to fertile mother Earth, who nourished the heartwood at her breast. It languishes, its verdure fades, it can no longer support itself. It falls, and its limbs, which hid the sky, drag in the dust wilted and dried—it is no longer anything but a trunk, felled and stripped of all its charms. Thus, Pisistratus, prey to Death, was already carried away by those who must put him on the fatal pyre.
Already the flame mounts to the sky. A Pylian troop, eyes downcast and filled with tears, their arms upended, slowly lead it. The body is soon burned. The ashes are placed in a golden urn and Telemachus, who takes care of everything, entrusts this urn, like a great treasure, to Callimachus, who had been Pisistratus’ governor.
“Keep,” he said to him, “these ashes, sad but precious remains of the one whom you loved. Keep them for his father, but wait to give them to him when he will have enough strength to ask for them—what provokes pain in one moment eases it in another.”
Then Telemachus entered the assembly of the leagued kings, where each fell silent to listen to him as soon as they spotted him. He blushed from it, and they could not make him speak. The praises they gave him, through public acclamations, over all he had done, increased his shame. He would have wanted to be able to hide. It was the first time he looked uncomfortable and uncertain.
Finally, he asked, as a favour, they no longer praise him. “It is not that I do not like them,” he said, “above all when they are given by such good judges of virtue, but it is that I fear liking them too much. They corrupt men. They fill them with themselves. They render them vain and presumptuous. One must merit them and shun them. The best praises resemble the false. The most wicked of all men, who are the tyrants, are those who have themselves praised by flatterers the most. What pleasure is there in being praised like them? Good praise is that which you will give me in my absence, should I be fortunate enough to merit it. If you truly believe me good, you must also believe I want to be modest and fear vanity. Spare me, then, if you esteem me, and do not praise me like a man in love with praise.”
After speaking so, Telemachus no longer responded to those who continued to elevate him to the sky and, through an air of indifference, he soon stopped those accolades they were giving him. They began to fear annoying him in praising him. So the praises ended, but the admiration increased. Everyone knew of the tenderness he had shown for Pisistratus and the cares he had taken to render the last rites to him. The entire army was more touched by those signs of the goodness of his heart than by all the wonders of wisdom and valour that emanated from him.
“He is wise, he is valiant,” they said to each other in private. “He is a friend of the gods and the true hero of our age. He is above humanity. But all that is only admirable, all that only astonishes us. He is humane, he is good, he is a loyal and affectionate friend, he is compassionate, open-handed, beneficent, and gives himself entirely to those whom he ought to love. He is the delight of those who live with him. He has rid himself of his haughtiness, his indifference, and his pride. Voila, what is useful. That is what touches hearts. That is what softens us toward him and makes us sensitive to all his virtues. That is what causes us all to give our lives for him.”
Barely were these discourses ended when they hastened to speak of the necessity of giving a king to the Daunians. Most of the princes who were in the council opined that the country must be divided among them as a conquered land. They offered Telemachus, for his part, the fertile country of Arpi that bears twice yearly the rich fruits of Demeter, the sweet presents of Dionysus, and the evergreen fruits of the olive tree consecrated to Athena.
“This land,” they said to him, “should make you forget poor Ithaca with its huts, the frightful cliffs of Dulichium, and the wild woods of Zachynthus. Search no longer for your father, who must have perished in the waves of the promontory of Caphereus through the vengeance of Nauplius and the anger of Poseidon; nor for your mother, whom her suitors have possessed since your departure; nor for your homeland, whose land is not favoured by heaven like that which we are offering you.”
He listened patiently to these speeches, but the rocks of Thrace and Thessaly are no more deaf nor more insensitive to the pleas of hopeless lovers than Telemachus was to these offers.
“As for me,” he responded, “I am touched by neither riches, nor delights. What does it matter if one possesses a greater stretch of land and commands a greater number of men? One only has more obstacles from it and less liberty. Life is full of enough misfortunes, even for the wisest and most moderate men, without still adding to it the difficulties of governing other men, who are indocile, restless, unjust, deceptive, and ungrateful. When a man wants to be master over men for the love of himself—only thinking of his own authority, his pleasures and his glory in it—then he is impious, he is tyrannical, he is the scourge of humankind.
“When, on the contrary, a man only wants to govern men according to true rules for their own good, he is less their master than their tutor. He only has the difficulty of it, which is infinite, and he is very distant from wanting to extend his authority further. The shepherd who does not eat the flock, who protects it from wolves in exposing his life, who watches over them night and day to drive them to the best pastures, has no desire to increase the number of his sheep and to steal those of his neighbours. That would be to increase his difficulties.
“Although I may never have governed,” added Telemachus, “I have learned, through the laws and through the wise men who made them, how arduous it is to lead cities and kingdoms. I am therefore content with my poor Ithaca. Though it may be small and poor, I will have enough glory, provided I reign there with justice, piety, and courage, even though I may not reign there too soon. Would to the gods that my father, escaped from the fury of the waves, may reign there until the most extreme old age, and may I be able to learn under him for a long time how one must vanquish his own passions in order to know how to moderate those of an entire people!”
Then Telemachus said, “Listen, O princes assembled here, to what I believe must be said to you for your own interest. If you give the Daunians a just king, he will lead them with justice. He will teach them how useful it is to preserve good faith and to never usurp the goods of his neighbours. That is what they have never been able to understand under the impious Adrastus. As long as they are led by a wise and moderate king, you will have nothing to fear from them. They will be obliged to you for this good king whom you will have given them. They will be obliged to you for the peace and prosperity which they enjoy. These peoples, far from attacking you, will bless you unceasingly, not only the king, but also the people; all will be the work of your hands.
“If, on the contrary, you want to divide their country among you, here are the woes I predict for you. This people, pushed to despair, will restart the war. They will fight justly for their liberty, and the gods, enemies of tyranny, will fight with them. If the gods join them, sooner or later you will be confounded, and your prosperity will dissipate like smoke. Counsel and wisdom will be taken away from your chiefs, courage from your armies, abundance from your lands. You will flatter yourselves, you will be brazen in your enterprises, you will silence the good people who want to speak the truth, you will fall all of a sudden, and they will say of you, ‘Is that those flourishing peoples who were supposed to make the law for all the land and who now flee before their enemies—they are the toy of the nations who trample them underfoot. Voila, this is what the gods have done; this is what unjust, lofty, and inhumane peoples merit.’
’“Furthermore, consider that if you undertake to divide among you this conquest, you will reunite against you all the neighbouring peoples. Your league, formed to defend the common liberty of Hesperia against the usurper Adrastus, will become odious, and it is you yourselves whom all the peoples will accuse, rightly, of wanting to impose universal tyranny.
“But let us assume you are victorious not only over the Daunians, but all the other peoples—this victory will destroy you. Here is how. Consider how this enterprise will disunite all of you. As it is not based on justice, you will not have any rules to limit among you the claims of each. Each will desire that his part in the conquest be proportionate to his might. None of you will have enough authority among the others to make this division peacefully. Voila, there you have the source of a war of which your grandchildren will see no end. Is it not worth much more to be just and restrained than to follow one’s ambition with so much peril and through so many inevitable misfortunes?
“Profound peace, sweet and innocent pleasures that accompany it, happy abundance, friendliness with your neighbours, glory which is inseparable from justice, authority that a man acquires in becoming—through good faith—the arbiter of all the foreign peoples, are these possessions not more desirable than the mad vanity of an unjust conquest? O princes, O kings, you see that I speak to you selflessly. Listen, then, to the one who loves you enough to contradict you and to displease you in representing the truth to you.”
While Telemachus was speaking so, with an authority that had never been seen in any other, and as all the princes, astounded and suspended, were admiring the wisdom of his counsel, a confused noise was heard that spread throughout the camp and came to the spot where the assembly was being held.
“A foreigner,” they said, “has come to land on these coasts with a troop of armed men. This stranger is of a high mien. Everything about him appears heroic; one can easily see he has suffered for a long time and his great courage has put him above all his sufferings. At first, the peoples of the country who guard the coast wanted to repulse him as an enemy who comes to cause a disturbance. But, after drawing his sword with an intrepid air, he declared he would know how to defend himself if attacked, but he was only asking for peace and hospitality. Immediately, he presented an olive branch as suppliant. They listened to him. He asked to be led to those who govern on this coast of Hesperia, and they brought him here to have him speak to the assembled kings.”
No sooner had this discourse ended than they saw this stranger enter with a majesty that surprised the entire assembly. One would have easily believed it was the god Ares when he assembles on the mountains of Thrace his bloodthirsty troops. He began to speak thus:
“O you shepherds of the peoples, who are no doubt assembled here either to defend the homeland against its enemies or to cause the most just laws to flourish, listen to a man whom Fortune has persecuted. May the gods never have you experience similar misfortunes. I am Diomedes, king of Aetolia, who wounded Aphrodite at the siege of Troy. The vengeance of this goddess pursues me throughout the universe. Poseidon, who can refuse nothing to the divine daughter of the sea, delivered me over to the rage of the winds and the waves, which have shattered my vessels against the reefs many times. The inexorable Aphrodite has taken all hope from me of seeing my kingdom again, my family, and that sweet light of a country where I first beheld the day. No, I will never see again all that was the most dear in the world to me.
“I come, after so many shipwrecks, to seek on these unknown shores a little repose and an assured retreat. If you revere the gods—and above all Zeus, who cares for foreigners—if you are sensitive to compassion, do not refuse me in this vast country some corner of infertile land, some wilderness, some sands, or some steep rock, to found, along with my companions, a city that may be at least a sad image of our lost homeland. We only ask for a little space that may be of no use to you. We will live in peace with you in a close alliance. Your enemies will be ours. We will join in with all your interests. We will only ask for the liberty to live according to our laws.”
While Diomedes was speaking so, Telemachus, his eyes fixed on him, displayed all the different passions on his face. When Diomedes began to speak of his long misfortunes, he hoped this man, so majestic, would be his father. As soon as he had declared that he was Diomedes, Telemachus’ face wilted like a beautiful flower the black Northwinds come to tarnish with their cruel breath. Then Diomedes’ speech, complaining of the long anger of a deity, touched him through the memory of the same disgraces suffered by his father and him. Tears mixed with pain and joy streamed down his cheeks, and all at once he flung himself at Diomedes to embrace him.
“I am,” he said, “the son of Odysseus, whom you knew, and who was not useless to you when you took the famous horses of Rhesus. The gods have treated him mercilessly like you. If the oracles of Erebus are not deceivers, he still lives. But alas, he does not live for me. I abandoned Ithaca to seek him. Now, I am unable to see again either Ithaca or him. Judge by my misfortunes the compassion I have for yours. It is the advantage there is in being unfortunate that one knows how to empathise with the difficulties of others. Though I am only a foreigner here, I can, great Diomedes (for despite the miseries that burdened my homeland during my childhood, I have not been so poorly raised as to be ignorant of your glory in combat), I can, O most invincible of all the Greeks after Achilles, procure some assistance for you. These princes you see are humane. They know there is neither virtue, nor true courage, nor solid glory without humaneness. Misfortune adds a new lustre to the glory of great men. Something is lacking in men when they have never been unfortunate. They are lacking in their lives examples of patience and steadfastness. Suffering virtue touches all hearts that have some taste for virtue. Allow us, then, the care of consoling you. Since the gods lead you to us, it is a present they are giving us, and we must believe ourselves lucky to be able to ease your pains.”
While he was speaking, Diomedes, stunned, was staring at him and felt his heart stirred. They embraced each other as if they had been bonded in a close friendship for a long time. “O worthy son of wise Odysseus,” Diomedes said, “I recognise in you the sweetness of his face, the charm of his discourse, the strength of his eloquence, the nobleness of his sentiments, the wisdom of his thoughts.”
At the same time, Philoctetes also embraces the great son of Tydeus. They recount their sad adventures to each other. Then Philoctetes said to him, “Undoubtedly, you will be glad to see wise Nestor again. He has just lost Pisistratus, the last of his children. There no longer remains to him in life but a trail of tears leading him to the tomb. Come console him. An unfortunate friend is more suitable than any other to ease his heart.”
Straightaway they entered the tent of Nestor, who barely recognised Diomedes, so much had sadness beaten down his spirit and his senses.
At first Diomedes wept with him, and their conversation was, for the old man, a redoubling of pain. But little by little, the presence of that friend appeased his heart. One easily recognised that his woes were suspended a bit through the diversion of recounting what he had suffered, and of hearing, in turn, what had befallen Diomedes.
While they were talking, the kings assembled with Telemachus examined what they should do. Telemachus counselled them to give Diomedes the country of Arpi and to choose, as king of the Daunians, Polydamas, who was of their nation. This Polydamas was a famous captain whom Adrastus, through jealousy, had never wanted to use for fear of someone attributing to this able man the successes for which he hoped to have the glory alone.
Polydamas had often warned in private that Adrastus was risking his life and the health of his state too much in this war against so many conspired nations. He had wanted to push him toward more upright and moderate conduct toward his neighbours—but men who hate the truth also hate the people who have the boldness to tell it; they are not touched by their sincerity, by their zeal, or by their selflessness. A deceptive prosperity hardened Adrastus’ heart against the most salutary counsels. In not heeding them, he triumphed daily over his enemies. Haughtiness, bad faith, and violence always put victory on his side. All the misfortunes with which Polydamas had so long threatened him did not happen. Adrastus mocked him for such a timid wisdom that always foresaw inconveniences. Polydamas was insufferable to him. He distanced him from all offices. He left him to languish in solitude and poverty.
At first, Polydamas was crushed by this disgrace. But it gave him what he was lacking by opening his eyes to the vanity of great fortunes. He became wise at his own expense. He rejoiced in having been unfortunate. He learned little by little to keep quiet, to live on little, to tranquilly nourish himself with the truth, to cultivate hidden virtues that are even more estimable than glaring ones, and lastly, to do without men.
He dwelt at the foot of Mount Garganus in a wilderness, where a half-vaulted rock served him as a roof, a stream that tumbled from the mountain appeased his thirst, some trees gave him their fruits. He had two slaves who cultivated a small field. He worked along with them with his own hands. The land more than paid him for his troubles and never left him lacking for anything. He had not only fruits and vegetables in abundance, but even all kinds of fragrant flowers. There, he deplored the misfortunes of peoples whom the foolish ambition of a king drag along to their ruin. There, he waited each day for the just, yet patient gods to cause Adrastus to fall. The more his prosperity grew, the more Polydamas believed to see the irremediable downfall near—for the lucky imprudence in one’s errors and the power ascended to the last excesses of absolute authority are the forerunners to the toppling of kings and kingdoms. When he learned of the defeat and death of Adrastus, he showed no joy, not in having foreseen it, nor in being delivered from this tyrant. He only groaned for fear of seeing the Daunians in servitude.
Voila. That is the man whom Telemachus proposed to have reign. He had known of his courage and virtue for some time, for
Telemachus, following Mentor’s counsel, never ceased to inform himself everywhere of the good and bad qualities of all people who were in some notable post, not only among the allied nations he served in this war, but even among the enemies. His principal care was to discover and examine men everywhere who had some talent or a particular virtue.
The allied princes had, at first, some repugnance for putting Polydamas in the kingship. “We have experienced,” they said, “how much a king of the Daunians, when he loves war and knows how to wage it, is formidable to his neighbours. Polydamas is a great captain, and he can throw us into great perils.”
But Telemachus answered them, saying, “Polydamas, it is true, knows warfare, but he loves peace, and, you see, those are the two things that must be wished for. A man who knows the misfortunes, dangers, and difficulties of war is much more capable of avoiding it than another who has no experience of it. He has learned to appreciate the happiness of a tranquil life. He condemned Adrastus’ enterprises. He foresaw in them the gruesome aftermath. A weak prince, ignorant and inexperienced, is more to be feared by you than a man who will recognise and decide everything for himself. The weak and ignorant prince will only see through the eyes of an impassioned favourite, or of a flattering, restless, and ambitious minister. In this way the blind prince will commit to war without wanting to wage it. You will never be able to assure yourselves of him, for he can never be sure of himself. He will not keep his word. He will soon reduce you to that extremity, where it will be necessary either that you destroy him or he crushes you. Is it not more useful, more certain, and at the same time more just and more noble, to respond faithfully to the trust of the Daunians and give them a king worthy of commanding?”
The entire assembly was persuaded by this speech. They went to propose Polydamas to the Daunians, who were impatiently awaiting a response. When they heard the name of Polydamas, they responded, “We indeed recognise now that the allied princes want to act in good faith with us and make an everlasting peace, since they want to give us as king a man so virtuous and capable of governing us. If they had proposed to us a cowardly, effeminate, and poorly taught man, we would have believed they only sought to crush us and corrupt the form of our government, and we would have secretly preserved a deep resentment for a conduct so harsh and so cunning. But the choice of Polydamas shows us a genuine candour. The allies undoubtedly expect nothing from us but what is just and noble since they grant us a king who is incapable of doing anything against the liberty and glory of our nation. Therefore, may we profess before the just gods that the rivers will ascend again to their source before we will cease loving peoples so beneficent. May our last descendants remember the beneficence we receive today and renew from generation to generation the peace of the golden age throughout the coast of Hesperia.”
Telemachus then proposed to them giving Diomedes the countryside of Arpi to found a colony there. “The new people,” he said to them, “will be obliged to you for their establishment in a country you do not occupy. Remember, all men must love each other, the land is too vast for them, they must indeed have neighbours, and it is worth more to have those who are obliged to you for their establishment. Be touched by the misfortune of a king who cannot return to his country. Polydamas and he, being united together by the bonds of justice and virtue, which alone are lasting, will maintain you in a profound peace and will render you formidable to all the neighbouring peoples who would think to extend their border. You see, O Daunians, we have given to your land and to your nation a king capable of elevating its glory to the skies; give also, since we are asking it of you, a land that is useless to you to a king who is worthy of all kinds of assistance.”
The Daunians responded that they could refuse Telemachus nothing, since it was he who had procured Polydamas for them as their king. Straightaway, they departed to search for him in his wilderness and to have him reign over them. Before departing, they gave the fertile plains of Arpi to Diomedes for him to found a new kingdom there. The allies were delighted by it because this colony of Greeks would be able to provide powerful succour to the allies should the Daunians ever want to renew the usurpations of which Adrastus had given the wicked example. All the princes thought only of separating. Telemachus, tears in his eyes, departed with his troop after tenderly embracing the valiant Diomedes, the wise and inconsolable Nestor, and the famous Philoctetes, worthy heir to the arrows of Heracles.
END OF BOOK XVI
BOOK XVII
The young son of Odysseus burned with impatience to find Mentor in Salentum and embark with him to see Ithaca again, where he hoped his father would have arrived. When he was approaching Salentum he was quite astonished to see all the surrounding countryside, which he had left practically uncultivated and deserted, cultivated like a garden and filled with diligent workmen. He recognised the work of the wisdom of Mentor. Then, entering into the city, he noticed there were far fewer artisans for the delights of life and much less magnificence. He was shocked by it, for he naturally liked all things that have brilliance and politesse. But other thoughts soon occupied his heart. He saw in the distance Idomeneus coming toward him along with Mentor. Immediately his heart was stirred with joy and tenderness.
Despite all the success he had had in the war against Adrastus, he feared Mentor would not be content with him, and as he advanced, he searched Mentor’s eyes to see if he had anything to reproach himself for.
Straightaway, Idomeneus embraced Telemachus like his own son, then Telemachus flung himself at Mentor’s neck and soaked him with his tears.
Mentor said to him, “I am content with you. You made great errors, but they have served you to know yourself and to distrust yourself. Often, one draws more fruit from his errors than from his beautiful deeds. Great deeds swell the heart and inspire a dangerous presumption. Errors make a man reflect and restore the wisdom to him that he had lost in his successes. What remains for you to do, it is to praise the gods and not desire men praise you. You have done great things. But confess the truth—it is hardly you by whom they were done. Is it not true they came to you like something foreign which was put in you? Were you not capable of spoiling them through your quick temper and your imprudence? Do you not feel as if Athena somehow transformed you into another man above yourself in order to do through you what you have done? She held all your faults in suspense, just as Poseidon, when he appeases the tempests suspends the angry waves.”
While Idomeneus was curiously interrogating the Cretans who were returning from the war, Telemachus was listening thus to Mentor’s wise counsel. Then he gazed in every direction with astonishment and said to Mentor, “This is a change for which I do not quite understand the reason. Has some calamity befallen
Salentum during my absence? How does it come about that one no longer notices that magnificence that burst forth everywhere before my departure? I no longer see gold, or silver, or precious stones; the clothing is plain; the buildings they have built are less vast and less ornate; the arts languish—the city has become a lonely place.”
Mentor answered him, smiling, “Have you noticed the state of the countryside around the city?”
“Yes,” replied Telemachus. “I saw ploughing honoured, and the fields cleared everywhere.”
“Which is worth more,” added Mentor, “a superb city of marble, gold, and silver, with a neglected and unproductive countryside, or a countryside cultivated and productive, with an average city, modest in its mores? A great city heavily populated with artisans busy softening the mores through the delights of life, when it is surrounded by a kingdom, poor and badly cultivated, resembles a monster whose head is of an enormous size and whose entire body, stretched thin and deprived of nourishment, is not proportionate to this head. It is the number of people and the abundance of food that makes up the true strength and the true riches of a kingdom.
“Idomeneus now has an innumerable people, tireless in work, who fill the entire length of his country. All his country is no longer but one single city; Salentum is only the centre of it. We have transported from the city to the countryside the men that were lacking in the countryside and were superfluous in the city. Furthermore, we have attracted into this country many foreign peoples. The more these peoples multiply, the more they multiply the fruits of the land through their work; this proliferation, so gentle and so peaceful, increases a kingdom more than a conquest.
“We have only rejected from this city the superfluous arts which deter the poor from cultivating the land for their true needs and which corrupt the rich by casting them into flamboyance and softness. But we have done no harm to fine arts, nor to the men who have a true genius for cultivating them. In this way, Idomeneus is much mightier than he was when you were marveling at his magnificence. That dazzling brilliance concealed a weakness and a destitution that would soon have toppled his empire. Now he has a much greater number of men, and he feeds them more easily. These men, accustomed to work, to difficulty, and to the scorn of life for the love of good laws, are all ready to fight to defend these lands cultivated by their own hands. Soon this state, which you believe is waning, will be the marvel of Hesperia.
“Remember, O Telemachus, there are two pernicious things in the government of peoples to which one almost never brings any remedy. The first is an unjust and overly violent authority in kings; the second is luxury, which corrupts mores.
“When kings are accustomed to no longer knowing any laws other than their absolute wills, and they no longer rein in their passions, they can do anything. But, by dint of being almighty, they sap the foundations of their might. They no longer have either fixed rules, or maxims of government. Everyone flatters them over and over. They no longer have people, there only remains to them slaves, of which the number diminishes each day. Who will tell them the truth? Who will set bounds to this torrent? All cede. The wise flee, hide, and groan. There is only a sudden and violent revolution that may bring back to its natural course this overflowing might. Often, the same blow that could restrain it brings it down with no recourse. Nothing threatens a calamitous downfall so much as an authority one pushes too far. It is like a bow stretched too far that finally breaks all of a sudden if not released. But who is it who will dare to release it? Idomeneus was spoiled down to the bottom of his heart by that authority so flattering. He had been toppled from his throne, but he had not been set straight. It was necessary for the gods to send us here to disabuse him of that blind and outrageous might that does not suit men. It was even necessary for a kind of miracle to open his eyes.
“The other evil that is almost incurable is luxury. Just as too much authority poisons kings, luxury poisons an entire nation. They say that luxury serves to feed the poor at the expense of the rich, as if the poor could not earn their livelihood more usefully in multiplying the fruits of the land without softening the rich through the refinements of voluptuousness. An entire nation accustoms itself to regarding as necessities of life the most superfluous things. Every day new necessities are invented, and one can no longer do without things one did not know of thirty years before. This luxury is called ‘good taste,’ ‘perfection of the arts,’ and ‘politesse of the nation.’ This vice, which attracts an infinity of other ones to it, is lauded as a virtue; it spreads its contagion from the king to the last dregs of the people.
“The closest relatives of the king want to imitate his magnificence, the elites that of the king’s relatives, the average people want to equal the elites—for who is it who does himself justice? The little people want to pass as average people. Everyone does more than he is able, some through flamboyance and to boast of their riches; others through a feigned modesty to hide their poverty. Even those who are wise enough to condemn such great disorder are not wise enough to dare to raise their head first and give the opposite example. The entire nation ruins itself. All stations are blended together.
“The passion for acquiring goods so as to maintain a vain expenditure corrupts the purest souls. It is no longer a question of being rich; poverty is an infamy. Whether you be learned, capable, virtuous, train men, win battles, save the homeland, sacrifice all your interests—you are scorned if your talents are not enhanced through flamboyance. Even those who do not have any goods want to appear to have them. They spend as if they have them, they borrow, they deceive, they use a thousand unworthy artifices to attain them. But who will remedy these evils? The tastes and habits of an entire nation must change. New laws must be given. Who will be able to undertake it, if not a philosopher king, who would know how, through the example of his own moderation, to shame all those who love an ostentatious expenditure and to encourage the wise, who will be very glad to be authorised in a respectable frugality?”
Telemachus, listening to this discourse, was like a man who awakes from a deep sleep. He sensed the truth of these words, and they were engraved on his heart, just as a skilful sculptor impresses the traits he wants in marble so that he gives it softness, life, and movement. Telemachus said nothing, but, passing over all he had just heard, he ran his eyes over the things that had changed in the city. Then he said to Mentor, “You have made Idomeneus the wisest of all the kings. I no longer recognise him, neither him nor his people. I even avow that what you have done here is infinitely greater than the victories we just brought home. Luck and military strength are very much a part of the outcome of war. The glory in combat must be shared with our soldiers. But all your work comes from one head alone. You had to work alone against a king and against all his people to correct them. The outcome of war is always gruesome and odious. Here, everything is the work of a celestial wisdom. Everything is sweet, everything is pure, everything is lovable— everything indicates an authority that is beyond man. When men desire glory, why do they not seek it in this diligence to do good? O how they poorly understand glory, to hope for a solid glory in ravaging the land and spreading human blood over it!”
Mentor showed a manifest joy on his face in seeing Telemachus so disabused of victories and conquests, at an age when it was so natural that he would be drunk on the glory he had acquired.
Then Mentor added, “It is true, all you see here is good and laudable. But know, one can do things still better. Idomeneus moderates his passions and applies himself to governing his people with justice. But he still does not fail to make many errors, which are the unfortunate aftermath of his old errors. When men want to quit evil, evil seems to still pursue them for a long time. There remains with them bad habits, a weak nature, inveterate mistakes, and an almost incurable bias. Fortunate are those who have never strayed!
They can do good more perfectly. The gods, O Telemachus, will demand more of you than of Idomeneus, because you have known truth since your youth, and you have never been delivered over to the seductions of an overly great prosperity.
“Idomeneus,” continued Mentor, “is wise and enlightened, but he applies himself too much to details and does not meditate enough on material affairs in order to formulate plans. The capability of a king, who is above other men, does not consist in doing everything by himself. It is a gross vanity to expect to do everything and to persuade the world that one is capable of it. A king must govern in choosing, and in guiding, those who govern under him. He must not handle the details, for that is to perform the function of those who have to work under him. He should only have an account rendered of it, and know enough about it to go into that accounting with discernment. It is to govern marvellously in choosing and in applying, according to their talents, the ones who govern. The supreme and perfect government consists in governing those who govern. They must be observed, tested, restrained, corrected, animated, elevated, lowered, replaced, and always kept in hand.
“To want to examine everything for oneself—it is distrust, it is pettiness, it is jealousy over middling details, which consumes time and the freedom of mind essential for the big things. To form big plans, you must have a free and rested mind. You must think at ease, in complete disengagement from all dispatches of thorny affairs. A mind drained by details is like the dregs of wine that no longer have either strength or delicateness. Those who govern through details are always convicted by the present without extending their sights to a distant future. They are always swept up in the affair of the day, and that affair being the only one occupying them, it makes too strong an impression, it contracts their mind— for one can only judge affairs properly when one compares them all together and places them all in a certain order so they have the consequences and proportions of them.
“To fail to follow this rule in governing, it is to resemble a musician who is content to find some melodious sounds and who does not go to the trouble of uniting and harmonising them to compose a sweet and stirring music. It also resembles an architect who believes he has done everything he can, provided he assembles great columns and lots of well-carved stones, without thinking of the order and proportions of the ornamentation of his edifice. In the time he builds a room, he does not anticipate that he must build a convenient staircase. When he works on the core of the building, he thinks of neither the court, nor the portal. His work is only a confused assembly of magnificent parts, which are not made for one another. This work, far from doing honour to him, is a monument that will eternalise his shame—for the work reveals that the worker did not know how to think broadly enough to conceive at the same time the general design of his entire work. It is a characteristic of short and subordinate intelligence. When a man is born with this predisposition limited to detail, he is only suited to execute under others. Do not doubt it, O my dear Telemachus, the government of a kingdom demands a certain harmony, like music, and just proportions, like architecture.
“If you want me to continue using the comparison to these arts, I will make you understand how mediocre men are who govern through detail. The one who, in a concert, only sings certain things, though he sings them perfectly, is only a singer; the one who conducts the entire concert and who arranges, at the same time, all the parts, is the only master of music. In the same way, the one who carves the columns, or constructs one side of a building, is only a mason, but the one who thought of the entire edifice, and who has all the proportions of it in his head, is the only architect. In this way, those who work, who expedite, who handle the most affairs are those who govern the least; they are only subordinate workers.
“The true genius who leads the state, is the one who, in doing nothing, has everything done: who thinks, who invents, who penetrates into the future, who returns to the past, who arranges, who adjusts, who prepares from a distance, who unceasingly holds firm to fight against Fortune—like a swimmer against the torrent of water—who is attentive night and day to leave nothing to chance.
“Do you think, Telemachus, that a great painter works assiduously from morning until nightfall so as to rush through his works more swiftly? No. That bothersome and servile work would put out all the fires of his imagination. He would no longer work from genius. All must be done sporadically and by sallies, according to where his taste leads him and his mind incites him. Do you think he spends his time blending colours and preparing pencils? No. Those are the tasks of his students. He reserves himself for the work of thinking; he only thinks of making bold traits that give nobility, life, and passion to his figures; he has in his head the thoughts and sentiments of the heroes he wants to represent. He transports himself into their centuries and into all the circumstances where they were. To this kind of enthusiasm, he must combine a wisdom that restrains him, that everything may be true, correct, and in proportion to each other. Do you believe, Telemachus, that any less elevation of genius and expended effort would be needed to make a great king than to make a good painting? Conclude, therefore, that the occupation of a king must be to think, to form great projects, and to choose the men suitable to execute them under him.”
Telemachus answered, “It seems to me that I understand everything you say. But if things work in this way, a king would often be deceived, not entering into the details himself.”
“It is you yourself whom you deceive,” Mentor rejoined. “What keeps one from being deceived, it is the general knowledge of government. People who do not have principles in their affairs and who do not have true intellectual discernment always go by feel. It is luck when they are not deceived. They do not even know precisely what they seek, nor what they must aim for. They only know how to distrust, and to distrust the upright men who contradict them rather than the deceivers who flatter them.
“On the contrary, those who do have principles with regard to government, and who are knowledgeable about men, know what they must seek in them and the means of attaining it. They recognise, more or less, whether the people whom they use are suitable instruments for their designs and whether they join in their views so as to aim for attaining the goal they propose. Indeed, as they do not throw themselves into burdensome details, they have a clearer mind to see things from a single broad view of the overall work and to observe whether it is advancing toward the main end. If they are deceived, at least they are hardly deceived in the essentials. Indeed, they are above petty jealousies which indicate a narrow mind and a base soul.
“They realise one cannot avoid being deceived in the great affairs, since one must make use of men, who are so often deceivers. One loses more through irresolution, where distrust casts him, than he would lose in allowing himself to be deceived a little. One is only too happy when he is only deceived in middling things. The big things do not fail to move along, and that is the only thing a great man must worry about. Deception must be severely repressed when it is discovered; but one must count on some deception if he does not want to be truly deceived. An artisan, in his boutique, sees everything with his own eyes and does everything with his own hands; but a king, in a great state, cannot do everything nor see everything. He must only do the things no one else under him can do; he must only look at what enters into the decision of important things.”
Lastly, Mentor said to Telemachus, “The gods love you and are preparing a reign for you filled with wisdom. All you see here is done less for the glory of Idomeneus than for your instruction. All these wise establishments you marvel at in Salentum are only the shadow of what you will do one day in Ithaca if you respond through your virtues to your high destiny. It is time we think of leaving here. Idomeneus keeps a vessel ready for our return.”
Immediately Telemachus opened up his heart to his friend, though somewhat painfully, about an attachment that was making him regret leaving Salentum. “You will fault me perhaps,” he said to him, “for falling in love too easily in the places I pass through, but my heart would continually reproach me if I hid from you that I love Antiope, the daughter of Idomeneus. No, my dear Mentor, it is not a blind passion like the one you healed me of on the island of Calypso. I recognised well the depth of the cut that Eros had given me alongside Eucharis. I still cannot pronounce her name without being troubled. Time and absence have not been able to blot it out. That calamitous experience teaches me to distrust myself. But as for Antiope, what I feel has nothing resembling it. It is not passionate love; it is tasteful, it is estimable, it is convicting. How happy I would be if I spent my life with her! If ever the gods give my father back to me, and he permits me to choose a wife, Antiope will be my spouse.
“What touches me in her, it is her quietness, her modesty, her reticence, her assiduous work, her skill for wool and embroidery works, her diligence in leading her father’s household since her mother died, her scorn for vain finery, the obliviousness and even ignorance that appears in her of her beauty. When Idomeneus commands her to lead the dances of the young Cretans to the sound of flutes, one would take her for laughing Aphrodite, who is accompanied by the Graces. When he brings her with him on the hunt in the forests, she looks majestic and adept at drawing the bow, like Artemis amidst her nymphs. She alone does not know it, and everyone admires her.
“When she enters the temples of the gods and she carries the sacred things in baskets on her head, one would think she herself is the deity that inhabits the temples. With what reverence and what religion we see her offering sacrifices and diverting the anger of the gods when some wrongdoing must be expiated or some sinister presage averted!
“Lastly, when one sees her with a troop of women, holding in her hand a golden needle, one would believe it is Athena herself who took on this earth a human form and who inspires the fine arts in men. She inspires others to work. She eases the work and the boredom of it through the enchantment of her voice when she sings all the marvellous stories of the gods. And she surpasses the most exquisite painting with the delicateness of her embroideries. Lucky the man that a sweet marriage will unite with her. He will have nothing to fear other than losing her and outliving her.
“I take here, my dear Mentor, the gods as my witnesses that I am all ready to depart. I will love Antiope as long as I live, but she will not delay for a moment my return to Ithaca. If another must possess her, I will spend the rest of my days in sadness and bitterness, but in the end, I will forsake her. Although I know the absence may cause me to lose her, I do not want to speak either to her or to her father of my love, for I must only speak of it to you alone, until Odysseus, remounted on his throne, will have declared to me that he consents to it. You can recognise by that, my dear Mentor, how much this attachment is different from the passion by which you saw me blinded by Eucharis.”
Mentor responded to Telemachus, “I am convinced of this difference. Antiope is sweet, natural, and wise. Her hands do not scorn work, she looks far ahead, she foresees all, she knows how to be silent and act accordingly without eagerness, she is busy at all hours and never embarrasses herself because she does each thing properly. The good orderliness of her father’s house is her glory. She is more adorned by it than by her beauty. Even though she attends to everything and is charged with correcting, refusing, economising (things that cause almost all women to be hated), she makes herself lovable to the entire household. One does not find in her the emotion, or hardheadedness, or glibness, or temperament, as in other women. With a single look she makes herself heard, and one fears displeasing her.
“She gives precise orders. She only orders what can be executed. She corrects with kindness, and in correcting she encourages. The heart of her father rests on her, just like a traveller, beaten down by the blaze of the sun, rests in the shade on tender grass. You are right, Telemachus. Antiope is a treasure worthy of being sought after in the most distant lands. Her mind, no more than her body, is never attired with vain ornaments. Her imagination, though lively, is restrained. She only speaks through necessity, and, if she opens her mouth, sweet persuasion and simple charms flow from her lips. As soon as she speaks, everyone falls quiet, and she blushes from it. She comes close to suppressing what she wants to say when she perceives they are listening to her so attentively. We have barely heard her speak.
“Do you remember, O Telemachus, the day her father summoned her? She appeared, eyes lowered, covered with a large veil, and she only spoke in order to moderate the anger of Idomeneus, who wanted to have one of his slaves rigorously punished. At first, she entered into his affliction. Then she calmed him. Lastly, she made him understand what could excuse that wretch and, without making the king feel he was too quick-tempered, she inspired feelings of justice and compassion in him. Thetis, when she flatters old Nereus, does not appease with more gentleness the angry waves. In this way, Antiope, without taking any authority and without prevailing with her charms, will one day manage the heart of her spouse as she now touches her lyre when she wants to draw the most tender chords from it.
“Once again, Telemachus, your love for her is just. The gods destine it for you. You love her with a reasonable love. You must wait until Odysseus gives her to you. I praise you for not having wanted to reveal your feelings to her, but know that, if you had apprised her of your designs indirectly, she would have rejected them and would have ceased esteeming you. She will never promise herself to anyone. She will allow herself to be given by her father; she will only ever take for a spouse a man who reveres the gods and who would fulfil all proprieties.
“Have you observed, as I have, that she reveals herself even less and she lowers her eyes even more since your return? She knows all that befell you of good fortune in the war. She is not ignorant of either your birth or of your adventures or of all the gods have placed in you. It is what renders her so modest and so reserved. Let us go, Telemachus, let us go to Ithaca. There only remains for me to have you find your father and to put you in a position to obtain a wife worthy of the golden age. Were she a shepherdess in cold Algidus, instead of the daughter of the king of Salentum, you would be only too lucky to possess her.”
Idomeneus, who feared the departure of Telemachus and Mentor, only thought of delaying it. He represented to Mentor that without him, he could not rule on a difference of opinion that had arisen between Diophanes, priest of Olympian Zeus, and Helopdorus, priest of Apollo, about the presages one draws from the flight of birds and the entrails of victims.
“Why,” Mentor responded, “would you meddle in sacred things? Leave the decision to the Etruscans, who have the tradition of the most ancient oracles and who are inspired to be the interpreters of the gods. Only use your authority to snuff out those disputes when they emerge. Show neither partiality nor bias. Be content to support the decision when it is made. Remember, a king must be submissive to religion, and he must never undertake to rule it. Religion comes from the gods; it is above kings. If kings meddle in religion, instead of protecting it, they will force it into servitude. Kings are so mighty and other men so weak that all will be in peril of being corrupted at the discretion of kings, should they enter into questions that regard sacred things. Leave the decision, then, in complete liberty to the friends of the gods, and limit yourself to repressing those who will not obey their judgement when it has been pronounced.”
Then Idomeneus complained of the predicament he was in concerning a great number of petitions among various individuals who were pressing him to judge.
“Decide,” Mentor responded to him, “all the new questions that will establish general maxims of jurisprudence and interpret the laws, but never burden yourself with judging individual cases. They will come all in droves to besiege you. You will be the only judge of your people; all the other judges who are under you will become useless, you will be overwhelmed, and the least affairs will steal you away from the great ones without your being able to sufficiently sort out the details of the least ones. Be very careful, therefore, of casting yourself into this predicament. Send the affairs of individuals back to the regular judges; only do what no one else can do so as to unburden yourself—you will then be doing the true functions of a king.”
“They still press me,” said Idomeneus, “to do certain marriages. The persons of a distinguished birth who followed me into every war and who lost very great possessions in serving me would like to find some type of compensation by wedding certain rich daughters. I only have to say a word to procure these arrangements for them.”
“It is true,” responded Mentor, “it would only cost you a word, but that word itself would be too costly to you. Would you want to take away from fathers and mothers the liberty and consolation of choosing their sons-in-law, and by consequence their heirs? That would be to subject every family to the most rigorous enslavement. You would make yourself responsible for all the domestic woes of your citizens. Marriages have enough thorns without also giving this bitterness to them. If you have loyal servants to reward, give them uncultivated land; add ranks and honours to this proportionate to their station and their services; add to that, if you must, some silver taken from your funds intended for your expenditures—but never pay your debts by sacrificing rich daughters, in spite of their parents.”
Idomeneus soon passed from this question to another. “The Sybarites,” he said, “are complaining we usurped lands that belong to them and that we have given those lands, as fields to be cleared, to the foreigners whom we have recently lured here. Should I cede to these people? If I do it, each will think he only has to make claims against us.”
“It is not just,” responded Mentor, “to believe the Sybarites in their own cause, but it also is not just to believe you in yours.”
“Who do we believe then?” rejoined Idomeneus.
“Neither of the two parties,” pursued Mentor, “should be believed. An arbitrator must be chosen from a neighbouring people who are not suspect to either side, such as the Sipontines. They have no interests contrary to yours.”
“But am I obliged,” responded Idomeneus, “to believe some arbitrator? Am I not king? A sovereign, is he obliged to submit himself to foreigners about the extent of his dominion?”
Mentor resumed the discourse thus:
“Since you want to hold firm, you must have judged your right is good. On the other hand, the Sybarites yield nothing. They maintain their right is certain. In this opposition of sentiments, there must be an arbitrator, chosen by the parties, to reconcile you, or may the fate of arms decide. There is not a middle ground. Were you to enter into a republic where there was neither magistrate nor judges, and where each family believed itself in the right to do justice for itself through violence about all its claims against its neighbours, you would deplore the misfortune of such a nation, and you would be horrified by that frightful disorder where every family arms itself against each other.
“Do you believe the gods would regard with any less horror the whole world, which is the universal republic, if each people, who are only like one great family, believe themselves fully in the right to do, through violence, justice themselves with regard to all their claims against the other neighbouring peoples? An individual who possesses a field as the inheritance from his ancestors, can only maintain it through the authority of the laws and through the judgement of the magistrate. He would be very severely punished as a seditionist should he want to keep through force what justice has given him. Do you think kings may immediately use violence to sustain their claims without having attempted all the paths of gentleness and humanity? Justice, is it not even more sacred and more inviolate for kings in relation to entire countries than for families in relation to a few ploughed fields? Will one be unjust and a thief when he takes only a few acres of land? Will one be just, will he be heroic, when he takes provinces?
“If he prejudges, if he flatters himself, if he turns a blind eye to the small interests of individuals, must he not fear even more flattering himself and being blind about the great interests of the state? Will he believe himself in a matter where he has so many reasons to distrust himself? Will he not fear being wrong in the cases where the mistake of a single man has frightful consequences? The mistake of a king who flatters himself about his claims often causes devastation, famines, massacres, plagues, deprivations of mores whose calamitous effects extend into the most distant centuries. A king who always assembles so many flatterers around him, will he not fear being flattered on those occasions?
“If he agrees to some arbitration to end the difference of opinion, he shows his fairness, his good faith, his moderation. He makes public the solid reasons on which his claim is based. The chosen arbitrator is a friendly mediator and not a rigorous judge. One does not submit blindly to his decisions but has great deference toward him. He does not pronounce a sentence as a sovereign judge; he makes propositions, and something is sacrificed, through his counsels, in order to preserve peace. If war comes despite all the cares a king takes to preserve peace, he has at least, then, the witness of his conscience, the esteem of his neighbours, and the just protection of the gods.”
Idomeneus, touched by this speech, consented to the Sipontines being mediators between him and the Sybarites.
Then the king, seeing all means of detaining the two foreigners were eluding him, tried to stop them with a stronger bond. He had noticed Telemachus was in love with Antiope, and he hoped to get to him through this passion. With this in mind, he had her sing several times during the feasts. She did it so as not to disobey her father, but with so much modesty and sadness one easily saw the difficulty she suffered in obeying him. Idomeneus went so far as to want her to sing of the victory brought home over the Daunians and Adrastus. But she could not resolve herself to sing the praises of Telemachus. She respectfully demurred, and her father dared not compel her. Her sweet and touching voice penetrated the heart of the young son of Odysseus. He was very moved.
Idomeneus, who had his eyes fixed on him, took pleasure in his distress. But Telemachus pretended not to perceive the designs of the king. He could not keep himself on these occasions from being extremely touched, but reason was above feelings in him, and it was no longer that same Telemachus whom a tyrannical passion had once captivated on the island of Calypso. While Antiope was singing, he kept a profound silence. As soon as she had finished, he hastened to turn the conversation to some other matter.
The king, unable by this path to succeed in his design, finally resolved to have a great hunt in which he wanted, against custom, to give for the pleasure of his daughter. Antiope wept, not wanting to go on it, but the absolute order of her father must be executed.
She mounts a horse, lathery, skittish, and resembling those that Castor tamed for combat. She handles him effortlessly. A group of young girls ardently follow her. She appears in the midst of them like Artemis in the forests. The king sees her, and he cannot tire of seeing her. Seeing her, he forgets all his past woes. Telemachus sees her too, and he is even more touched by Antiope’s modesty than by her skills and all her charms.
The dogs pursued a wild boar of an enormous size and furious like the one of Calydon. His long bristles were hard and raised like darts. His gleaming eyes were full of blood and fire. His breathing made itself heard from a distance, like the dull sound of the seditious winds when Aeolus recalls them into his cavern to appease the tempests. His tusks, long and hooked like the sharp scythe of the reaper, gashed the trunks of the trees. All the dogs that dared approach him were ripped apart. The boldest hunters in pursuit of it, feared reaching it.
Antiope, light in the race like the wind, did not fear attacking it up close. She hurls a shaft piercing it above the shoulder. The blood of the ferocious animal streams, rendering it more furious. It wheels toward the one who wounded it. Immediately, Antiope’s horse, despite his pride, shudders and recoils. The monstrous boar lunges against him like the heavy machines that rattle the walls of the most fortified cities. The steed staggers and goes down. Antiope finds herself falling to the ground, in no state to avoid the fatal strike from the tusks of the boar animated against her. But Telemachus, alert to Antiope’s danger, has already dismounted. Faster than lightning, he flings himself between the downed horse and the boar, which comes back to avenge its blood; he holds in his hands a long spear and sinks it almost entirely into the flank of the horrible animal that falls full of rage.
At that instant, Telemachus severs the head that still causes fear seeing it up close and stuns all the hunters. He presents it to Antiope. She blushes. She consults the eyes of her father, who, after having been gripped with fright, is transported with joy to see her out of peril and motions she should accept the gift. In taking it, she says to Telemachus, “I receive from you with gratitude another gift more grand, for I owe you my life.”
No sooner had she spoken than she feared having said too much. She lowered her eyes, and Telemachus, who saw her embarrassment, only dared say these words to her: “Happy is the son of Odysseus to have preserved a life so precious! But happier still if he could spend his alongside you!”
Antiope, without responding, brusquely rejoined the troop of her young companions, where she remounted.
Idomeneus would have, from that moment, promised his daughter to Telemachus. But he hoped to inflame his passion further, by leaving him in uncertainty, and even believed he could still retain him in Salentum through the desire to assure his marriage. Idomeneus reasoned thus to himself, but the gods toy with the wisdom of men. What should have detained Telemachus was precisely what pressed him to depart. What he was beginning to feel put him in a just distrust of himself.
Mentor redoubled his attentions to inspire in him an impatient desire to return to Ithaca, and he pressed Idomeneus at the same time to allow him to depart. The vessel was already prepared, for Mentor, who ruled every moment of Telemachus’ life in order to elevate him to the highest glory, only stopped in each place as long as necessary to train his virtue and to have him gain experience. Mentor had attended to have the vessel readied ever since Telemachus’ arrival.
But Idomeneus, who had had much repugnance in seeing it readied, fell into a mortal sadness and into a pitiful desolation when he saw that his two guests, from whom he had drawn so much assistance, were going to abandon him. He shut himself up in the most secret part of his house. There he eased his heart, heaving groans and shedding tears. He forgot the need to eat. Sleep no longer softened his searing pains. He withered, he was consumed by his anxieties like a great tree that covers the ground with the shade of its thick branches and in which a worm begins to gnaw the trunk in the slender channels where the sap flows for its nourishment; this tree, which the winds have never shaken, that fruitful Earth is pleased to nourish at her breast and the axe of the ploughman has always respected, does not stop languishing without anyone being able to uncover the cause of its malady; it wilts, it despoils itself of its leaves, which are its glory; thereafter, it only reveals a trunk covered with a split bark and dry branches—so appeared Idomeneus in his pain.
Telemachus, touched with tenderness, dared not speak to him. He feared the day of departure. He sought pretexts to delay it, and would have stayed in this uncertainty for a long time had Mentor not said, “I am glad to see you so changed. You were born harsh and haughty; your heart only allowed itself to be touched by your conveniences and your self-interests, but you have finally become a man, and you are beginning, through the experience of your misfortunes, to empathise with the woes of others. Without this empathy, one has neither goodness, nor virtue, nor the capacity to govern men. But you must not push it too far, nor fall into a feeble friendship. I would willingly speak to Idomeneus to gain his consent to our departure, and I would spare you the embarrassment of a conversation so unpleasant, but I do not want a painful shyness and timidity to dominate your heart. You must accustom yourself to combining courage and firmness with a tender and sensitive friendship. You must fear afflicting men unnecessarily. You must enter into their pain when you cannot avoid causing it to them and soften the blow as much as you can when it is impossible to spare them from it entirely.”
“It is in seeking that softening,” responded Telemachus, “that I would prefer that Idomeneus learned of our departure from you than from me.
Mentor quickly said to him, “You are mistaken, my dear Telemachus. You were born like the children of kings raised in the royal purple, who only desire all be done in their fashion and all nature obeys their will, yet who do not have the fortitude to resist anyone to their face. It is not that they worry about men, nor that they fear, through goodness, afflicting them, but rather that, for their own comfort and convenience, they do not want to see sad and discontented faces around them. The difficulties and desolations of men do not touch them, provided they are not under their eyes. If they hear them spoken of, this discourse importunes and saddens them. In order to please them, one must always say all is well. While they are in their delights, they do not want either to see or to hear anything that could disrupt their joy. If they must rebuke, correct, set someone straight, resist the pretensions and unjust passions of an importune man, they will always give the commission of it to some other person. Rather than speaking for themselves with a gentle firmness on those occasions, they would rather allow the most unjust favour to be snatched from them. They will spoil their most important affairs for want of knowing how to decide against the sentiment of those with whom they have affairs every day.
“This weakness one senses in them makes everyone only think of prevailing upon it. They press them, they importune them, they overwhelm them, and they succeed in overwhelming them. At first, they flatter and laud the kings so as to insinuate themselves. But, as soon as they are in their confidence and alongside them in posts of some authority, they lead them far astray; they impose the yoke on them. The kings groan under it and often want to shake it off, but they bear it all their life. They are defensive over appearing to be governed, yet they always really are. They cannot even do without being so, for they are like those weak branches of the vine that, not having any support for themselves, always wrap around the trunk of some great tree.
“I will not tolerate, O Telemachus, you falling into this fault, which renders a man an imbecile in governing. You, who are tender to the point of not daring to speak to Idomeneus, you will no longer be touched by his afflictions as soon as you have left Salentum; it is not his grief that touches you, it is his presence that causes you to feel uncomfortable. Go, speak to Idomeneus yourself. Learn on this occasion to be both tender and firm. Show him your grief in forsaking him, but show him also, in a decisive tone, the necessity of our departure.”
Telemachus dared not resist Mentor, nor go find Idomeneus. He was ashamed of his fear, and he did not have the courage to overcome it. He hesitated. He took two steps and came back to Mentor straightaway to allege some new reason to defer.
But Mentor’s look alone took his words away and caused all his beautiful pretexts to disappear.
“Is this then,” Mentor said, smiling, “that victor over the Daunians, that liberator of great Hesperia, that son of wise Odysseus, who should be, after him, the oracle of Greece? He dares not say to Idomeneus that he can no longer delay his return to his homeland in order to see his father again! O peoples of Ithaca, how unfortunate you will be one day if you have a king whom painful shyness dominates and who, out of weakness, sacrifices the greatest interests for the sake of the least! You see, Telemachus, what difference there is between valour in combat and courage in affairs. You did not fear Adrastus’ weapons, yet you fear Idomeneus’ sadness. You see, that is what dishonours princes who have done the greatest deeds—after having appeared like heroes in war, they show themselves to be the least of men in everyday matters where others sustain themselves with vigour.”
Telemachus, sensing the truth in these words, and stung by this reproach, brusquely left without heeding his own thoughts. But no sooner had he appeared in the place where Idomeneus was seated, his eyes downcast, languishing and beaten-down with sadness, than they feared one another. They dared not look at one another. They heard each other without saying anything, and each feared the other would break the silence. They both began to weep.
At last, Idomeneus, pressed by an excess of pain, cried out, “What does it serve to seek virtue if it rewards so poorly those who love it? After having shown me my weakness, they abandon me! O well! I am going to fall back into all my woes. May they no longer speak to me about good governance. No, I cannot do it. I am weary of men. Where do you want to go, Telemachus? Your father is no more. You seek him uselessly. Ithaca is the prey of your enemies. They will slay you if you return there. Someone among them will have married your mother. Remain here. You will be my son-in-law and my heir. You will reign after me. Even during my life, you will have an absolute power here. My trust in you will be unlimited. If you are insensitive to all these advantages, at least leave me Mentor, who is my every resource. Speak. Answer me. Do not harden your heart. Have pity on the most unhappy of all men. What! You say nothing? Ah! I understand how cruel the gods are to me. I feel it even more rigorously than in Crete, when I pierced my own son.”
Finally, Telemachus responded in a troubled and timid voice, “I am not my own. The destinies call me back to my homeland. Mentor, who has the wisdom of the gods, orders me in their name to depart. What do you want me to do? Will I renounce my father, my mother, my homeland which must be even more dear to me than them? Born to be king, I am not destined to a gentle and tranquil life, nor to follow my own inclinations. Your kingdom is richer and more powerful than that of my father. But I must prefer what the gods destine for me to that which you have the goodness to offer me. I would believe myself happy if I had Antiope for my wife, without hoping for your kingdom. But, to render myself worthy of it, I must go where my duties call me and it would be my father who asks you for her on my behalf.
“Did you not promise to send me back to Ithaca? Is it not on the basis of this promise that I fought for you against Adrastus with the allies? It is time I think of mending my domestic woes. The gods, who have given Mentor to me, have also given Mentor to the son of Odysseus so as to have him fulfil his destiny. Do you want that I lose Mentor after having lost all the rest? I no longer have possessions, nor retreat, nor father, nor mother, nor assured homeland. There only remains to me a wise and virtuous man, who is the most precious gift of Zeus. Judge yourself if I can renounce him and consent that he abandon me. No, I would rather die. Snatch my life from me. Life is nothing. But do not snatch Mentor from me.”
As Telemachus was speaking, his voice grew stronger, and his timidity disappeared. Idomeneus did not know how to respond, but he could not abide what the son of Odysseus said to him. While he could no longer speak, he tried, through his looks and gestures, to at least cause pity. At that moment, he saw Mentor appear, who said these grave words to him:
“Do not grieve. We are forsaking you, but wisdom which presides over the councils of the gods will remain with you. Only think how very fortunate you are that Zeus would have sent us here to save your kingdom and bring you back from your waywardness. Philocles, whom we have rendered to you, will serve you loyally. The reverential awe for the gods, the taste for virtue, the love of the peoples, the compassion for the destitute will always be in his heart. Listen to him. Use him with confidence and without jealousy. The greatest service you can draw from him is to oblige him to tell you all your faults without softening. You see, that is what the greatest courage of a good king consists of—that of seeking true friends who point out his errors to him. Provided you have this courage, our absence will not harm you, and you will live happily. But if flattery, which slithers in like a serpent, finds a path to your heart again so as to cause you to distrust selfless counsel, you are lost.
“Do not allow yourself to be weakly beaten down by pain but strive to follow virtue. I told Philocles all he should do to unburden you and to never abuse your trust. I can answer to you for him. The gods have given him to you as they have given me to Telemachus. Each must courageously follow his destiny. It is useless to be aggrieved. If ever you have need of my help after I have rendered Telemachus to his father and his country, I will come back to see you. What could I do that would give me a more manifest pleasure? I seek neither goods, nor authority on earth. I only want to help those who seek justice and virtue. Would I ever be able to forget the trust and friendship you have shown me?”
At these words, Idomeneus was changed all at once. He felt his heart appeased just as Poseidon with his trident appeases the raging waves and the blackest tempests. There only remained in him a gentle and peaceful pain. It was more a sadness and a tender feeling than an acute pain. Courage, trust, virtue, hope for the succour of the gods began to be reborn within him.
“O well, my dear Mentor,” he said, “I must then lose everything and not be discouraged. At least remember Idomeneus. When you arrive in Ithaca, where your wisdom will fill you with prosperity, do not forget that Salentum was your work and you have left an unhappy king there whose only hope is in you. Go, worthy son of Odysseus, I no longer detain you. I am far from resisting the gods who have loaned me so great a treasure. Go also, Mentor, the greatest and wisest of all men (if, however, humanity can do what I have seen you do, and if you are not a deity beneath a borrowed shape to instruct weak and ignorant men), go, guide the son of Odysseus, more fortunate in having you than in being the victor over Adrastus. Go, both of you. I no longer dare to speak. Forgive my sighs. Go, live, be happy together. There no longer remains anything in the world for me but the memory of having possessed you here. O beautiful days, such happy days, days of which I did not well know the price, days too rapidly unfolded, you will never come back! Never will my eyes see what they see!”
Mentor took that moment to depart. He embraced Philocles, who soaked him with his tears, unable to speak. Telemachus wanted to take Mentor by the hand so as to pull him away from that of Idomeneus, but Idomeneus, taking the path to the harbour, put himself between Mentor and Telemachus. He looked at them, he groaned, he began choked-up speeches but was unable to complete any of them.
At the same time, they heard confused cries on the shoreline covered with sailors. They tend the ropes. The favourable wind rises. Telemachus and Mentor, tears in their eyes, take their leave of the king, who holds them tightly in his arms for a long time and follows them with his eyes as far as he is able.
END OF BOOK XVII
BOOK XVIII
Meanwhile, the sails swell, the anchors are raised, the land seems to flee. The experienced pilot already spies from afar the Leucata mountain, whose head hides in a whirl of freezing fog, and the Acroceraunian mountains, that still show a proud face to the sky after having been so often crushed by thunderbolts.
During this voyage, Telemachus said to Mentor, “I believe now to grasp the maxims of governance which you have explained to me. At first, they appeared to me like a dream, but bit by bit, they sort themselves out in my mind and stand out clearly, just as all objects appear murky and confused in the morning at the first lights of the dawn, but then they seem to emerge as if from chaos, when the light, gradually rising, renders them so to speak, their shapes and natural colours. I am very persuaded the essential point of government is to discern the different characters of mind well in order to choose and to apply them according to their talents. But it remains for me to know how one can be knowledgeable about men.”
Then Mentor responded, “You must study men in order to know them, and in order to know them you must see them often and deal with them. Kings should converse with their subjects, draw them out, consult them, test them through small posts, of which they have them render an account, to see if they are capable of higher functions.
“How is it, my dear Telemachus, that you learned in Ithaca to be knowledgeable about sculptures? It is by dint of seeing them and noting not only their faults but their perfections with experienced people. In the same way, speak often of the good and the bad qualities of men with other wise and virtuous men who, having studied their characters for a long time, will gradually teach you how they are made and what is permitted to expect of them.
“What taught you to know the good and the bad poets? It is the frequent reading and reflection with people who have the taste for poetry. What is it that gave you discernment about music? It is the same application of observing the various musicians. How can one hope to govern men well, if one does not know them? And how will one know them, if one never lives with them? It is not living with them to only see them all in public, where one only says, on both sides, things indifferent and artfully prepared; it is a question of seeing them in private, of drawing from the bottom of their hearts all the hidden resources that are there, of feeling them out from all sides, of sounding them out in order to discover their maxims. But, to judge men well, you must begin by knowing what they should be. You must know what true and solid merit is in order to discern those who have it from those who do not.
“Men never cease speaking of virtue and merit without knowing what merit and virtue precisely are. They are only beautiful names, vague terms for most men, who honour themselves in speaking of them at all hours. You must have certain principles of justice, reason, and virtue in order to know those who are reasonable and virtuous. You must know the maxims of a good and wise government to know the men who have those maxims and those who distance themselves from them through a false subtlety. In a word, to measure several bodies, we must have a fixed measure. To judge, we must, in the same way, have consistent principles to which all our judgements reduce.
“You must know precisely what the goal of human life is, and to what end you should propose to govern men. This sole and essential goal is to never desire authority and greatness for oneself, for that ambitious pursuit will only go toward satisfying a tyrannical pridefulness. Rather, one should sacrifice oneself in the infinite difficulties of government so as to render men good and happy. Otherwise, he tiptoes, haphazardly groping his way along throughout his life. He goes like a ship on the open sea that does not have a pilot, does not consult the heavens, and to whom all the neighbouring coasts are unknown. It can only wreck.
“Often, princes, for want of knowing what true virtue consists of, do not know what they should look for in men. True virtue has for them something of harshness; it appears too austere and too independent to them, it frightens and embitters them. They turn to flattery. From then on, they can no longer find either sincerity or virtue. From then on, they chase after a vain phantom of false glory, which renders them unworthy of the true. They soon become accustomed to believing there is no true virtue on earth—for the good know the wicked well, but the wicked do not know the good and cannot believe there are any.
“Such princes only know how to distrust everyone equally; they hide, they shut themselves off, they are defensive about the least things. They fear men and are feared by them. They flee the light; they do not dare appear in their natural state. Although they do not wish to be known, they do not fail to be, for the malignant curiosity of their subjects penetrates and guesses everything. But they know no one. The self-interested people who obsess over them are delighted to see them inaccessible—a king inaccessible to men is also inaccessible to the truth; it is blackened through vile reports and all that could open his eyes to it is distanced from him. Those kinds of kings spend their lives in a wild and fierce grandeur where, incessantly afraid of being deceived, they inevitably always are and merit being so. As soon as they only speak to a small number of people, they commit themselves to receiving all the passions and prejudices of those people. Even good people have their faults and their biases. Moreover, they are at the mercy of the scandal-mongering rapporteurs, a low and malignant nation, that feed on venom, that poison innocent things, that magnify petty ones, that invent evil rather than ceasing to harm, that play for their own interest off of the distrust and shameful curiosity of a weak and umbrageous prince.
“Know, then, O my dear Telemachus, know men. Examine them, draw them out about one another, test them little by little, and do not deliver yourself over to any. Profit from your experience when you have been deceived in your judgements, for you will be deceived sometimes, and the wicked are too subtle not to dupe the good through their disguises. Learn from that to not judge a person too swiftly, neither the good in them nor the bad in them; either is very dangerous. In this way, your past mistakes will instruct you very usefully.
“When you find talents and virtue in a man, make use of them with confidence, the honnête homme wants his uprightness noticed. They prefer esteem and confidence to treasures. But do not spoil them by giving them unlimited power. The one who would have always been virtuous no longer is, because his master gave him too much authority and too many riches. Whomever is loved enough by the gods to find in all his kingdom two or three true friends with wisdom and a constant goodness soon finds through them other persons who resemble them to fill the lesser ranks. Through the good men in whom he confides, he learns what he cannot discern by himself about his other subjects.”
“But must I,” said Telemachus, “make use of the wicked when they are capable, as I have often heard said?”
“You are often,” answered Mentor, “in need of using them. In a nation, agitated and in disorder, you often find unjust and artful men who are already in authority. They have important posts that cannot be taken away from them. They have acquired the confidence of certain powerful people whom you need managed. They must be managed by those men, those scoundrels, because they fear them and they can upset everything. You must indeed make use of them for a time, but you must also have in sight the goal of gradually rendering them unnecessary.
“As for real and intimate trust, be very wary of ever placing it in them, for they can abuse it and then hold your secret against you; a shackle more difficult to break than all iron shackles. Use them for passing negotiations, treat them well, engage them through their very passions to be loyal to you, for you will only hold them in that way. But do not include them in your most secret deliberations. Always have a recourse ready to remove them at your discretion. But never give them the key to your heart, nor to your affairs. When your state becomes peaceful, orderly, led by wise and upright men, of whom you are sure, little by little the wicked, whom you were compelled to use, will become unnecessary. Then you must not stop treating them well, for it is never permitted to be ungrateful, even when it comes to the wicked. But, in treating them well, you must try to render them good. It is necessary to tolerate certain faults in them, for which humanity is forgiven. You must nevertheless, little by little, take away authority and repress the evils they would do openly if they were allowed to do them. After all, it is a wickedness to do good through the wicked, and even though this wickedness may often be unavoidable, you must aim, nevertheless, little by little, toward making it end.
“A wise prince, who only wants good order and justice, will come, in time, to do without corrupt and deceiving men. He will find enough good men who have an adequate capability. But it is not enough to find good subjects in a nation, it is essential to train new ones.”
“That has to be,” responded Telemachus, “a great obstacle.”
“Not at all,” resumed Mentor. “The effort you make in seeking able and virtuous men to promote, excites and animates all the others who have talent and courage. Each makes an effort. How many men are there who idly languish in obscurity, and who would become great men, if emulation and the hope of success animates them to work! How many men are there who, destitute and powerless to elevate themselves through virtue, attempt to elevate themselves through crime! If then, you attach rewards and honours to genius and virtue, how many subjects will train themselves? But how many you will train in having them ascend, by degrees, from the lowest posts to the highest; you will train talents, you will test the breadth of minds and the sincerity of virtue. Those men who attain the highest positions will have been raised under your eyes from the lowest. You will have followed them all their lives, step by step; you will evaluate them, not by their words but by all the results of their deeds.”
While Mentor was reasoning in this way, they caught sight of a Phaeacian vessel that had put in at a small deserted and wild island rimmed with frightful rocks. At the same time the winds fell silent, and even the gentlest zephyrs seemed to hold their breath. The entire sea became as smooth as glass. The deflated sails could no longer animate the vessel. The efforts of the oarsmen, already tired, were futile. It was necessary to land on that island, which was more a reef than land suitable to being inhabited by men. In other weather less calm, one would not have been able to land there without great peril.
The Phaeacians who were waiting for the wind did not appear less impatient than the Salentines to continue their voyage. Telemachus approached them on those steep shores. Straightaway, he asks the first man he meets if he had seen Odysseus, king of Ithaca, in the house of King Alcinous.
The one whom he had addressed was, by chance, not Phaeacian. He was an unknown foreigner who had a majestic air, yet sad and beaten-down. He appeared lost in thought, and, at first, barely listened to Telemachus’ question. But finally, he answered him.
“You are not wrong. Odysseus was received by King Alcinous, as in a place where they revere Zeus and show hospitality. But he is no longer there, and you would seek him uselessly. He departed to see Ithaca again, should the appeased gods finally suffer he may ever bow before his household gods.”
No sooner had this stranger sadly uttered these words than he lunged into a small thick wood on top of a rock from where he sadly gazed at the sea, shunning the men he saw and seeming to be afflicted at being unable to depart. Telemachus stared at him. The more he stared at him, the more he was stirred and stunned.
“That stranger,” he said to Mentor, “answered me like a man who barely listens to what is said to him and who is filled with bitterness. I pity unfortunate wretches ever since I have been one, and I sense that my heart takes an interest in this man without knowing why. He received me poorly enough; barely did he deign to listen to me and answer. Nevertheless, I cannot stop wishing for an end to his woes.”
Mentor, smiling, responded, “Voila, that is what the misfortunes of life serve to do—they render princes moderate and sensitive to the difficulties of others. When they have only ever tasted the sweet poison of prosperity, they believe themselves gods, they want mountains flattened to satisfy them, they count men for nothing, they want to toy with all of nature. When they hear suffering spoken of, they do not know what it is. It is a phantasm to them. They have never seen the distance between good and evil. The woes of misfortune alone can give them humaneness and change their hearts of stone into human hearts. Then they feel that they are men and know how they should treat other men like them. If a stranger causes you so much pity because he is, like you, wandering on this shore, how much more compassion shall you have for the people of Ithaca when you see them suffering one day. That people whom the gods will have entrusted to you, as a flock is entrusted to a shepherd, will perhaps be unhappy through your ambition, or through your flamboyance, or through your imprudence—for peoples only suffer through the errors of kings who should watch over them to prevent suffering.”
While Mentor was speaking in this way, Telemachus was plunged into sadness and grief. He responded at last, a little emotionally.
“If all these things are true, the state of a king is unfortunate indeed. He is a slave to all those whom he appears to command. He is created for them. He owes his entire being to them; he is burdened with all their needs. He is the man of the people as a whole and of each individual. He must adapt to their weaknesses, which he corrects as father, to render them wise and happy. The authority he appears to have is not his; it can do nothing, neither for his glory, nor for his pleasure. His authority is that of the laws. He must obey them. Strictly speaking, he is only the defender of the laws in order for the laws to reign. He must keep vigil and work to maintain them. He is the man the least free and the least tranquil in his whole kingdom. He is a slave who sacrifices his repose and his liberty for the liberty and felicity of the public.”
“It is true,” replied Mentor, “that the king is only king in order to care for his people like a shepherd for his flock, or like a father for his family. But, do you find, my dear Telemachus, that he would be unhappy in having so much good to do for so many people? He redresses the wicked through punishments, he encourages the good through rewards, he represents the gods in leading all humankind to virtue. Has he not enough glory in keeping the laws? That of putting himself above the laws is a false glory that only merits horror and scorn. If he is wicked, he can only be unhappy, for he would not know how to find any peace in his passions and in his vanity. If he is good, he should enjoy the purest and the most solid of all pleasures—to work for virtue and to expect from the gods an eternal reward.”
Telemachus, agitated within by a secret pain, seemed to have never understood these maxims even though he had been filled with them and he had taught them to others himself. A black humour was giving him, contrary to his true feelings, a contradictory and subtle mind to reject the truths Mentor was explaining. Telemachus opposed these reasonings with the ingratitude of men.
“Why take so much trouble,” he said, “to make oneself loved by men, who perhaps will never love you, to do good to the wicked, who will use the good you do to harm you?”
Mentor answered him patiently. “You must count on the ingratitude of men and not fail to do good to them. You must serve them less for the love of them than for the love of the gods who command it. The good one does is never wasted; if men forget it, the gods remember it and reward it. Moreover, if the multitude is ungrateful, there are always virtuous men who are touched by your virtue. Even the multitude, though changing and capricious, do not fail, sooner or later, to do justice, of a sort, to genuine virtue.
“But do you want to stop men from being ungrateful? Do not only work to render them powerful, rich, formidable through arms, happy through pleasures. That glory, that abundance, and those delights corrupt them; they will only serve to make them more wicked, and, consequently, more ungrateful. It is to give them a sinister present. It is to offer them a delicious poison.
“So, apply yourself to redressing mores, inspiring justice, sincerity, reverential awe of the gods, humaneness, fidelity, moderation, selflessness in them. In rendering them good, you will keep them from being ingrates. You will give them the truly good thing, which is virtue, and virtue, if it is solid, will always attach them to the one who inspired it in them. In this way, by giving them truly good things, you will do good for yourself, and you will not have to fear their ingratitude.
“Should it be surprising that men are ungrateful toward princes who have only ever exercised them in injustice, boundless ambition against their neighbours, inhumanity, haughtiness, bad faith? The prince should only expect from them what he taught them to do. If, on the contrary, he strives through his example and through his authority to render them good, he would find the fruit of his work in their virtue, or at the least he would find in his virtue and in the friendship of the gods something with which to console himself in all his disappointments.”
No sooner had this discourse ended than Telemachus eagerly approached the Phaeacians from the vessel that was stopped on the shore. He addressed himself to an old man among them and asked him where they were coming from, where they were going, and if they had seen Odysseus.
The old man answered, “We are coming from our island, which is that of the Phaeacians. We are going in search of merchandise toward Epirus. Odysseus, as you were already told, spent time in our homeland, but he left there.”
“Who is,” Telemachus quickly added, “that man so sad who seeks the most deserted places while waiting for your vessel to depart?”
“He is,” the old man answered, “a foreigner who is unknown to us. But they say his name is Cleomenes, that he was born in Phrygia, that an oracle had foretold his mother, before his birth, that he would be king, provided he did not stay in his homeland, and that, if he did stay, the anger of the gods would make itself felt to the Phrygians through a cruel plague. As soon as he was born, his parents gave him to sailors who carried him to the island of Lesbos. He was raised there in secret at the expense of his homeland, which had so great an interest in keeping him at a distance.
“Soon he became tall, robust, agreeable, and adept at all the exercises of the body. He even applied himself, with much enjoyment and genius, to the sciences and fine arts. But he could not be tolerated in any country. The prediction about him made him famous. He was soon recognised wherever he went. Everywhere, kings feared he would relieve them of their diadems. Thus, he has been wandering since his youth, and he can find no place in the world where he would be allowed to stop. He has often stayed with peoples very distant from his own, but no sooner has he arrived in a city than his birth and the oracle that regards it is discovered. He has a fine time hiding himself and choosing in each place some type of obscure life. His talents always shine, they say, in spite of himself, not only in war but in scholarship and in the most important affairs. In each country, there always appears some unforeseen event that drags him in and makes him known to the public.
“It is his merit that causes his misfortune. It causes him to be feared and excluded from every country where he desires to live. His destiny is to be esteemed, loved, marvelled at everywhere, yet rejected by all the known lands. He is no longer young, and nevertheless he still has not found any coast, neither in Asia, nor in Greece, where they would want to let him live in repose.
“He seems unambitious, and he seeks no fortune. He would think himself only too happy had the oracle never promised kingship to him. There remains no hope to him of ever seeing his homeland again, for he knows he could only bring grief and tears to all the families. Even kingship, by which he suffers, does not seem desirable to him. He runs after it, in spite of himself, through a sad fatalism, from kingdom to kingdom, and it seems to flee before him, mocking this poor wretch into his old age. Ill-fated gift of the gods that troubles all his most beautiful days and that will only cause him troubles at an age when infirm men no longer need anything but repose! He is going, he says, to seek in the direction of Thrace some people, uncivilised and lawless, whom he can assemble, establish policies, and govern for several years. After that, the oracle being accomplished, there will no longer be anything to fear from him in the most flourishing kingdoms. He is counting on retiring then in freedom to a village in Carie, where he will devote himself to agriculture, which he loves passionately. He is a wise and moderate man who reveres the gods, knows men well, and knows how to live in peace with them without judging them. Voila, that is what is told of this stranger, of whom you ask me news.”
During this conversation, Telemachus often turned his eyes back toward the sea, which was beginning to chop. The wind was whipping up the swells, which were going to pound the rocks, whitening them with their foam. At that moment, the old man said to Telemachus, “I must leave. My companions cannot wait for me.”
Saying these words, he ran to the shore. They board. Only muddled cries are heard along the shore through the ardour of the sailors impatient to depart.
That stranger, named Cleomenes, had wandered for some time in the middle of the island, ascending to the summit of all the rocks and considering from there all the vast expanse of the sea with a profound sadness. Telemachus had not lost sight of him, and he did not cease observing his steps. His heart was tender toward this virtuous, wandering, unfortunate man destined for the greatest things and serving as the toy of rigorous Fortune, far from his homeland. At least, he said to himself, I will perhaps see Ithaca again. But this Cleomenes can never hope to see Phrygia again.
The example of a man even more unfortunate than him eased Telemachus’ pain. Finally this man, seeing his vessel was ready, descended from those cliffs with as much quickness and agility as Apollo in the forests of Lycia, having knotted his blond hair and crossed over precipices to shoot the deer and wild boar with his arrows.
Already, this stranger is on the vessel that ploughs the bitter water and distances itself from land. Then a hidden pressing pain seizes Telemachus’ heart; he is afflicted without knowing why, tears stream from his eyes, and nothing is so sweet to him as to weep. At the same time, he spies on the shore all the Salentine sailors, bedded down on the grass and sleeping soundly. They were weary and beaten-down. Sweet Sleep had slipped into their limbs, and all the moist poppies of the night had been spread over them in the middle of the day by the power of Athena. Telemachus is astonished to see this universal sleepiness in the Salentines, while the Phaeacians had been so attentive and in a hurry to take advantage of the favourable wind.
But he is still more preoccupied watching the Phaeacian vessel about to disappear amidst the waves than with walking toward the Salentines to awaken them. An amazement and a secret distress keep his eyes fixed on that vessel already departed, of which he no longer sees anything but the sails as a bit of white on the azure water. He is not even listening to Mentor who is speaking to him, and he is completely beside himself in a frenzy resembling that of the maenads, when they hold the thyrsus in hand and cause their mad cries to reverberate on the riverbanks of the Hebros, along with the Rhodope and Ismarus mountains.
Finally, he returned from that trance a bit, and tears began to stream again from his eyes. Then Mentor said to him, “I am not surprised, my dear Telemachus, to see you weep. The cause of your pain, unknown to you, is not unknown to Mentor. It is nature that speaks and makes itself felt; it is what touches your heart. The stranger who gave you such a shock is the great Odysseus. What an old Phaeacian recounted to you about him, in the name of Cleomenes, it is only a fiction made up to hide more surely the return of your father to his kingdom. He is going with them straight to Ithaca. He is already very near the harbour, and he is finally seeing those places so long desired. Your eyes saw him, as you had once been foretold, but without knowing him. Soon you will see him and you will know him, and he will know you.
“But now the gods can not permit your recognising him outside of Ithaca. His heart was no less moved than yours. He is too wise to reveal himself to any mortal in a place where he could be exposed to the betrayals and insults of the cruel suitors of Penelope. Odysseus, your father, is the wisest of all men. His heart is like a deep well; one would not know how to draw his secret from it. He loves the truth and never says anything that wounds it. But he only says it in need, and wisdom, like a seal, always keeps his lips closed to every unnecessary word. How moved he was in speaking to you, how violently he fought himself not to be revealed! What did he not suffer in seeing you! Voila, that is what renders him sad and beaten-down.”
During this discourse, Telemachus, touched and distressed, could not hold back a torrent of tears. His sobs even kept him from responding for a long time. Finally, he exclaimed, “Alas, my dear Mentor, I indeed felt in this stranger a certain something that attracted me to him and left me shaken. But why did you not tell me before his departure that it was Odysseus, since you knew him? Why did you allow him to depart without speaking to him and without seeming to know him? What is this mystery, then? Will I always be unfortunate? The angry gods, do they want to hold me like thirsty Tantalus, whom a deceiving water teases, fleeing from his lips? Odysseus, Odysseus, have you escaped me forever? Perhaps I will see him no more. Perhaps the suitors of Penelope will cause him to fall into the ambushes they have prepared for me. At least, if I had followed him, I would die with him. O Odysseus, O Odysseus, if a tempest does not cast you yet again against some reef (for I have everything to fear from enemy Fortune), I tremble with fear that you will only arrive in Ithaca with a fate as gruesome as Agamemnon in Mycenae. But why, dear Mentor, did you envy me my happiness? Now I would be embracing him, I would already be with him in the harbour of Ithaca. We would be fighting to vanquish all our enemies.”
Mentor answered, smiling, “You see, my dear Telemachus, how men are made. Here you are completely desolated because you saw your father without recognising him. What would you not have done yesterday to be assured he was not dead? Today, you are assured of it with your own eyes, and this assurance, which should fill you with joy, leaves you in bitterness! Thus, the sick heart of mortals always counts for nothing that which it has most desired as soon as it possesses it and is ingenious in tormenting itself about that which it does not yet possess.
“It is to exercise your patience that the gods keep you in suspense like this. You regard this time as wasted but know that it is the most useful of your life—for these difficulties serve to exercise you in the most necessary of all the virtues of those who should command. You must be patient in order to become the master of yourself and other men. Impatience, which appears to be strength and vigour in the soul, is only weakness and impotence in bearing difficulty. The one who does not know how to wait and to suffer is like the one who does not know how to keep quiet about a secret; both lack firmness with regard to self-restraint. He is like a man who races in a chariot, and who does not have a firm enough hand to stop, when he must, his spirited steeds. They no longer obey the bit, they bolt, and the feeble man, from whom they escape, is broken apart in his fall—just as the impatient man is dragged along by his untamed and fierce desires into an abyss of misfortunes. The greater his power, the more calamitous his impatience is to him; he waits for nothing, he does not give himself time to measure anything, he forces everything in order to satisfy himself. He breaks the branches to pick the fruit before it is ripe; he shatters doors rather than wait they be opened for him; he wants to reap, while the wise ploughman sows. All that he does hastily and untimely is done poorly and cannot last, no more than his flighty desires can.
“Such are the foolish projects of a man who believes himself almighty and who delivers himself over to his impatient desires in order to abuse his power. It is to teach you to be patient, my dear Telemachus, that the gods test your patience so and seem to toy with you in a roving life where they always keep you in uncertainty. The good things you hope for reveal themselves to you and flee like a light dream that awakening causes to disappear to teach you that the very things one believes he holds in his hands escape in an instant. The wisest lessons of Odysseus will not be as useful to you as his long absence, and the difficulties you suffered in seeking him.
Then Mentor wanted to put the patience of Telemachus to one last, even harder test. At the moment when the young man was ardently pressing the sailors to hasten the departure, Mentor stopped him all of a sudden and pushed him to make a great sacrifice to Athena on the shore. Telemachus docilely does what Mentor desires: two altars of grass are erected, the incense smokes, the blood of the victims flows. Telemachus heaves tender sighs to the sky and acknowledges the powerful protection of the goddess.
No sooner was the sacrifice completed than he follows Mentor down the gloomy path of a small neighbouring wood. There, he all of a sudden perceives the face of his friend is taking on a new shape.
The wrinkles of his brow fade away like shadows disappear when Dawn, with her rose-red fingers, opens the gates of the East and inflames the entire horizon. His deep and austere eyes transform into the blue eyes of a celestial sweetness, filled with a divine flame. His grey and unkempt beard disappears. Noble and proud features, mixed with sweetness and charm, reveal themselves to the dazzled eyes of Telemachus. He recognises the face of a woman with a complexion smoother than a flower, tender and newly budding in the sun; he sees the whiteness of the lilies mingled with blooming roses. On this face glows an eternal youthfulness with a natural and unadorned majesty. An ambrosial fragrance emanates from her flowing habits. Her habits radiate like the vivid colours with which the sun, rising, paints the sombre vaults of the sky and the clouds that it comes to gild.
This deity does not touch the ground. She floats lightly through the air, like a bird parts it with its wings. She holds in her mighty hand a shining lance capable of making the most warlike cities and nations tremble. Even Ares would be frightened by it. Her voice is gentle and restrained, but strong and insinuating. All her words are flaming arrows that pierce young Telemachus’ heart and cause him to feel an indescribably delicious sweetness. On her helmet appears the sad bird of Athens, and on her glistening breast the redoubtable aegis. At these signs Telemachus recognises Athena.
“O goddess,” he said, “it is you yourself then who has deigned to guide the son of Odysseus for the love of his father.” He wanted to say more, but his voice failed him. His lips tried in vain to express his thoughts that leapt impetuously from the bottom of his heart. The presence of the deity overwhelmed him and he was like a man who, in a dream, is oppressed to the point of losing his breath, and who, through the arduous agitation of his lips, cannot form any speech.
Finally, Athena pronounced these words: “Son of Odysseus, listen to me for the last time. I have instructed no other mortal with as much care as you. I have led you by the hand through shipwrecks, unknown lands, bloody wars, and all the evils that can test the heart of man. I have shown you, through manifest experiences, the true and the false maxims by which one is able to reign. Your errors have been no less useful to you than your misfortunes—for who is the man who can govern wisely, if he has never suffered and if he has never profited from the sufferings his errors have brought him?
“You have filled, like your father, the lands and seas with your sad adventures. Go. You are now worthy of walking in his footsteps. There only remains to you a short and easy crossing to Ithaca, where he is arriving at this moment. Fight along with him; obey him like the least of his subjects. Give thereby the example to others. He will give Antiope to you for a wife, and you will be happy with her for having less sought beauty than wisdom and virtue.
“While you reign, put all your glory in restoring the golden age. Listen to all, believe few people. Be very wary of believing yourself too much. Fear deceiving yourself, but never fear allowing others to see that you have been deceived. Love the peoples. Do your utmost to be loved by them. Fear is necessary when love is lacking, but it must always be used with regret, as the most violent and dangerous remedy. Always consider, from a distance, all the consequences of what you want to undertake. Anticipate the most terrible inconveniences and know that true courage consists of envisioning all perils and scorning them when it becomes necessary. The one who does not want to see them does not have enough courage to tranquilly bear the sight of them. The one who sees them all, who avoids all those that can be avoided, and who aims at the others without emotion, is alone wise and magnanimous.
“Flee softness, splendour, overabundance: show your glory in simplicity. May your virtues and your good deeds be the ornaments of your person and your palace; may they be the guard that surrounds you, and may everyone learn from you what true honour consists of. Never forget that kings do not reign for their own glory but for the good of the peoples. The good they do multiplies from generation to generation to the most distant posterity. The evils they do have the same stretch. A poor reign sometimes causes calamity for several centuries.
“Above all, be on guard against your temper. It is an enemy that you will carry with you everywhere until death. It will enter into your counsel and will betray you if you listen to it. Temper causes the most important opportunities to be lost. It brings inclinations and childish aversions, to the detriment of the greatest interests. It causes the greatest affairs to be decided for the smallest reasons. It obscures every talent, lessens courage, renders a man unequal, weak, vile, and insufferable. Fight this enemy.
“Revere the gods, O Telemachus. This reverence is the greatest treasure of the heart of man. With it will come wisdom, justice, peace, joy, pure pleasures, true liberty, sweet abundance, unstained glory.
“I am forsaking you, O son of Odysseus. But my wisdom will not forsake you provided you always feel you can do nothing without it. It is time you learned to walk all alone; I only separated from you in Phoenicia and in Salentum to accustom you to being deprived of this sweetness, just as one weans children when it is time to take away milk to give them solid food.”
Barely had the goddess finished this speech when she rose into the air and wrapped herself in a cloud of gold and azure, where she disappeared. Telemachus, sighing, stunned, and beside himself, bowed down to the ground, lifting his hands to the sky. Then he went to awaken his companions, hastened to depart, arrived in Ithaca, and recognised his father at the home of loyal Eumaeus.
END OF BOOK XVIII