beyed his behest,
and fell upon the voyager in a furious tempest. A huge billow whirled
the raft around and threw Ulysses off into the deep; with difficulty be
regained his place, and escaped death.

A vivid picture of the grand obstacle to early navigation, of which
Neptune is the embodiment. Why should he not be angry at the man who
seeks to tame him? The raft means his ultimate subjection. Nature
resists the hand which subdues her at first, and then gracefully
yields. To be sure there had to be a mythical ground for Neptune's
anger at Ulysses: the latter had put out the eye of his son, the
Cyclops Polyphemus, which was another phase of the subjection of wild
nature to intelligence. For seventeen days Ulysses had easy sailing,
guided by the stars; but the sea has its destructive side which must
also be experienced by the much-enduring man.

Corresponding to this outer tempest, we observe an inner tempest in the
soul of Ulysses. "O me wretched! what is now to happen to me!" Terror
unmans him for the time being; regret weakens him: "Thrice happy, four
times happy the Greeks who fell on Troy's broad plain!" Thus he goes
back in memory to his heroic epoch and wishes for death then. Too late
it is, for while he is lamenting, a wave strikes him and tosses him out
into the deep; now he has to act, and this need of action saves him
from his internal trituration, as well as from external death.

With this renewed energy of the will, a new help appears, a divine aid
from the sea. For without his own strong effort, no God can rescue him,
however powerful. That toss out into the waves was not without its
blessing.

2. Ino Leucothea, Ino the white Goddess, beholds him with pity in his
extremity--she was once mortal herself but now is divine. Her function
seems to be to help the shipwrecked mariner; her name reminds the
reader of the white calm of the sea, elsewhere celebrated by Homer
(Book X, 94; Nitzsch's observation). Thus she appears to represent the
peaceful placid mood of the marine element, which rises in the midst of
the storm and imparts hope and courage, nay predicts safety. She gives
her veil to Ulysses, in which commentators trace a suggestion of the
fillet or sacred cloth which was given out from a temple in Samothrace,
and had the power of saving the endangered mariner, if he had tied it
round his body. As it is here employed, it strangely suggests a
life-preserver. At any rate Ino is the calming power opposed to