on to express Thought.

3. The final warning of Circe is mainly a repetition of what Tiresias
had told Ulysses already in the Underworld; from the latter she heard
it and puts it here into its place. Beware of slaying the cattle of the
Sun, oxen and sheep in two flocks, over which two bright nymphs keep
guard. There can scarcely be a doubt concerning the physical basis of
this myth. The seven herds of oxen, fifty to the herd, suggest the
number of days in the lunar year (really 354); the seven herds of sheep
suggest the corresponding nights. Lampelia (the Moon or Lamp of Night)
is the keeper of the one; Phaethusa (the Radiant one) is the keeper of
the other--namely the Sun as the day-bringer. Seldom has the old Aryan
form of the myth been so well preserved; the whole reads like a
transcript out of the Vedas.

Still stronger than the physical side is the spiritual suggestion. The
slaughter of these cattle of the Sun points to the supreme act of
negation in the intellectual man, to the sin against light. Ulysses and
his companions now know the way to reach home, having had the grand
experience with the Sirens and then with the Double Alternative;
moreover the leader has heard the warning twice. If they now do wrong,
it will be a wrong against the Sun, against Intelligence itself.

A certain critic finds fault with Circe because she repeats the warning
of Tiresias, and he holds that some botcher or editor, not Homer,
transferred the passage from one place to the other. Yet this
repetition is not only an organic necessity of the poem, but gives an
insight into the character of Circe: she cannot foresee of herself the
great intellectual transgression, but Tiresias can; the Sirens and the
Double Alternative, however, lie within her own experience. So she
copies where she cannot originate, and in this way she is decidedly
distinguished from Tiresias, though both are prophetic.

Such is the outlook upon the Future given by Circe, in the way of
warning, whereby the warned know what is coming. In the three
adventures we feel a certain connection, in fact an unfolding of one
out of the other, beginning with the primary conflict of the Senses,
which soon rises into the Understanding, and finally ends in a revolt
against Reason itself, the source of Light. They have the character of
typical forms, derived from the Past, yet they are certain to recur
again, and hence can be foretold.

II.

We now have reached the second port